The Schwa Was Here

“Hello, I’d like to speak to M. Taylor.”

“Speaking. Who’s this?”

“Sorry, sir. Wrong number.”

My mother thought I was nuts, the way I spent an hour every evening making these calls. She thought I must have been driven temporarily insane by puberty, or something. In addi­tion to giving me zits and body odor, it made me a phone freak. The way I saw it, though, it was a kind of a penance. My per­sonal punishment for taking advantage of the Schwa the way I did when we first discovered the Schwa Effect, and for pushing him away because I wanted to be the one dating Lexie. And for not taking him to the Night Butcher before he blew all that money on the billboard. Picking up that phone and calmly dial­ing one stranger after another was like some weird badge of honor. It became a part of my daily routine—something I did without thinking—like the way I would look for schwas drawn in new places each time I went out. I was finding a lot of them. Christina must have seen them, too, because she drew one on her lunch box. I couldn’t explain it any more than I could ex­plain why I felt compelled to make those calls every day.

“Hi, is this M. Taylor?”

“Yes.”

“The ’M’ doesn’t stand for Margaret, does it?”

“Well, yes, it does. Can I help you?”

“Probably not. You’re not selling a house in Brooklyn are you?”

“Why? Are you interested? It’s in excellent condition!”

I nearly had a coronary on the spot. I had never gotten this far before. I was so used to hanging up, I didn’t even know what to say next.

“Hello?” she said. “Are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’m looking for someone who lived there. A kid named Calvin Schwa.”

“Oh, are you one of his friends?”

Again nothing but dead air on my end of the line. It then oc­curred to me that this was the infamous Aunt Peggy. Don’t ask me what imbecile decided Peggy was short for Margaret. I was feeling kind of rubber-brained. It’s like when you call the radio station when they ask for the ninth caller, but you’re never the ninth caller, so when they actually pick up and talk to you, you figure it must be some mistake. Then they put you on the radio, you sound like a complete fool, and then you hang up before you can give them your address, so they can’t mail you your concert tickets. Don’t laugh—it happened.

“Yeah, I’m a friend,” I told Aunt Peggy. “Is he there? Can I talk to him?”

“I’m afraid he isn’t here. I could take a message, though.”

“Well, could you tell me why he moved like that? And why you’re selling his house?”

I heard Aunt Peggy sigh. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I suppose it’s common knowledge by now. They were having trouble with finances,” she told me. “And Calvin’s father, well, he doesn’t handle this sort of thing well. I put the house up for sale for him, and he moved in with me.”

“Will Calvin be back later tonight? I really need to talk to him.”

“Oh, he didn’t come here with his father,” Aunt Peggy said. “He stayed with a friend in Brooklyn so he could finish out the school year.”

“Great—could you give me the number?”

“Of course. His name is Anthony Bonano. If you hold on, I’ll get the number.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear, and looked at it like it had suddenly turned into a banana.

“Hello?” said Aunt Peggy. “Are you still there? Do you want that number?”

“Uh . . . That’s okay,” I said. “Never mind.” I hung up and stared at the phone for a full minute. It was then that I finally decided to just let this be. So, the Schwa had disappeared, but like his mother, it was completely of his own doing. It might have been misguided like so many things he did, but I had to respect his decision, and although I had a sneaking suspicion what he was up to, I wasn’t about to hunt him down. I had al­ready done my penance.

The Schwa never came back to Brooklyn, and life went on with­out him. Lexie’s parents returned from their European spree, and just as Crawley said, they hated my guts, which really wasn’t a problem, since I’m fairly used to people hating my guts.

“They’re convinced anyone with the last name Bonano has to have Mafia ties,” Lexie told me, which is like saying anyone named Simpson is either related to Homer or O.J.

“Let ’em think that,” I told her. “They’ll be afraid to piss me off.” Which I think is why they don’t say boo when I’m around. It turns out that fake-dating Lexie felt a lot like the real thing, without all that boyfriend-girlfriend pressure.

As for Crawley, he did find himself another pair of dog walk­ers: Howie and Ira—who I think keep hoping another couple of granddaughters will turn up.

“You’ll like Howie,” I told Crawley. “He’s like a Rubik’s Cube with every side the same color.”

When they first showed up, Howie begins this discussion with Crawley about the dog’s names. “They’re named after the seven deadly sins and seven virtues,” Crawley tells him.

Howie considers this deeply, then says, “Why not the four freedoms?”

“That,” says Crawley, “would leave ten dogs u

Howie raises his eyebrows. “Not if you named the rest after the Bill of Rights.”

Crawley goes red in the face with anger, Ira gets it on film, and their relationship is off to a flying start.

My father was too proud to call Crawley right away. He looked for work for about six weeks, then finally made the phone call and took a meeting with Old Man Crawley. He re­turned from Crawley’s in shell shock, but with a job. Well, more than just a job. The old hermit crab made my father a partner in his new restaurant. He let my dad turn it into whatever he wanted, and in true Crawley fashion, he threatened my father with everything short of eternal damnation if the restaurant ever failed. Dad, in his wisdom, decided to get Mom into it, too, turning it into a combination Italian-French place. They named it Paris, capisce? and so far, so good.

There are schwas drawn in the restaurant’s bathrooms that I didn’t put there.

In fact, there are schwas everywhere now. I got a call from Ira during spring break. He was on vacation in Hawaii, and he called to tell me he saw one scribbled across a DANGER, HOT LAVA sign. They’ve got them clear across the country—maybe clear around the world. There’s got to be hundreds of people doing it. No one knows who draws them, or why, but now they’re a they’re a permanent part of the landscape. Howie has a theory that involves aliens and cosmic string theory, but trust me, you don’t want to hear it.

The Schwa Was Here. Just a few of us know what it really means, and nobody believes me when I tell them that I started it. But that’s okay. I can handle being anonymous.

As for the Schwa himself, I never saw him again—but I did get a letter. It came in August, more than six months after he pulled his disappearing act.

Dear Antsy,

I guess you thought I vanished into thin air, huh? Did you freak? You’re smart, though, you probably figured out where I went—and guess what? I found her! My mom was in Florida after all. I got to Key West just as she was getting ready to move on. I told her she owed me big, and she agreed, so she took me along with her. She’s not what I expected. She knows lots of stuff. She even taught me to scuba dive—and I can get really close to the fish because—get this— they don’t notice I’m there.

Say hello to everyone for me. I won’t forget you if you promise not to forget me!

Your friend, Calvin

Clipped to the letter was a photo of the Schwa and his mom on a tropical beach. She didn’t look like the unhappy woman the

Night Butcher had described. The Schwa almost had a tan in the picture, if you can believe that, and he had a smile on his face as wide as the one on his billboard.