Нил Шустерман - The Schwa Was Here

In the end, he found no spiritual vortexes, although he did detect three leaks in the supermarket’s plumbing.

We gave the supernatural angle a rest, but returned the next day and asked to speak to the manager, who said he had worked there for twelve years.

“We’re doing a report,” I told him, “on the history of Wald­baum’s.”

He was thrilled to discuss it with us, telling us how Izzy Waldbaum had come over penniless from Russia a hundred years ago and opened a small bread-and-butter store on DeKalb Avenue. I’m sure it was all fascinating to someone who cared.

“We’re not interested in the whole grocery-store chain,” Lexie told him. “We just want to know about this store.”

Before he could launch into a presentation about the opening-day ribbon-cutting ceremony, I said, “We’re looking for newsworthy events that have happened since you’ve worked here.”

Suddenly he got a caged look on his face, like corporate exec­utives get in a 60 Minutes interview. “Why?” he asked. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing specific,” Lexie said, trying not to tip him off about the real reason for our visit. If he knew we were actually per­forming an investigation, he’d probably tell us to talk to their lawyers, and that would be the kiss of death. “Has the store had any robberies?”

He laughed. “Yeah, like every second Tuesday. That’s not news.”

“How about murders?” I asked.

“Not since I’ve been here.”

“What about kidnappings?” Lexie said.

“Or unexplained disappearances?” I added.

“No,” he said, then thought for a minute. “A kid got aban­doned here once, though.”

Bingo. “Abandoned?” I said, trying to stay calm. “What hap­pened?”

“I was working produce then. From my recollection, the mother just left him in the shopping cart. Jeez—I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“Did they ever find the mother?” Lexie asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Eventually the father showed up for him.”

“How about the security video?” I asked. “Did it show her leaving the store?”

“Half the cameras in the store were broken, including the one at the front door.” According to the manager, the camera in the meat section worked, but it was permanently stuck in the wrong position, monitoring a sign that detailed the proper han­dling of pork instead of the meat counter. The only thing the police were ever able to determine was that the pork sign had not been stolen.

“Come to think of it, they fired the manager over the broken video cameras. That’s when I got bumped up to assistant man­ager, and then manager a couple of years later.” He smiled, re­living the memory.

“So, theoretically,” I said, “she may never have left the store.”

He laughed. “Yeah, who knows? Maybe she ended up as hamburger.” Then his eyes got all darty and nervous again. “You’re not gonna quote me on that, are you?”

Even though it was hard to keep the Schwa in my mind, our investigations kept me thinking about his parents a lot. What was it that made a mother disappear between the lines of her shopping list? And what made a father remove every trace of her from the house? I would look at my own father and won­der if there were moments when he forgot I existed, too. I would look at my mom and wonder about her trips to the market.

At least now we had confirmation that something did actu­ally happen to the Schwa’s mom, although there was still no telling what. When I got home later that afternoon, just Mom and Christina were there. Mom was cooking something called coq au vin in a big frying pan. It was French, and smelled really good. She claimed it had no ingredients we wouldn’t eat by themselves, and she had me taste a spoonful of the sauce. It got my mouth watering. As I watched her cook, I thought about the Schwa’s mother, a woman so unnoticed she could walk into a supermarket, not walk out again, and no one would notice. My mom was anything but invisible, but maybe she didn’t know it.

“If you’re gonna stand there, then make yourself useful.” She handed me a strainer and poured some boiling string beans through it.

“Mom, I just want you to know ... that I know how hard you work.”

She looked at me like I might have a fever. “Thank you, Anthony. It’s good to hear that from you.”

“Just promise me you’re never gonna disappear, okay?”

She chuckled. “Okay, sure. I’ll stay far away from David Copperfield.”

She returned to her food, and I put the string beans in a serving bowl.

“So, you like the cooking class?”

“Love it.”

“And you’re not mad at Dad anymore?”

She stirred her simmering sauce a bit. “I wasn’t really mad at him.” She added chicken pieces to the pan—enough to feed the whole family. “I always knew your father was a better cook than me. But this kitchen was my place. I know it’s old-fashioned, but I chose it. Your aunt Mona, I don’t think she ever cooked a meal in her life. She wanted a career. Good for her—I’ve got no problem with that. But sometimes you get a career and then you suddenly realize you don’t have a life. Or if you stay at home with your family, you suddenly realize that your life is ac­tually everyone else’s life, not your own. Either way, when you got all your eggs in one basket, the basket gets heavy. Maybe the eggs start to break.”

“So get yourself a few more baskets,” I said. “Spread ’em out.” And then I realized that’s exactly what she was doing. That’s why she was taking classes. That’s why she was getting a job. It was all about spreading out those eggs. She had to feel she had a place in her own life, or else maybe she thought she’d disap­pear somehow, too. Maybe not all at once like the Schwa’s mom, but a little bit every day.

The changes she was making scared me a little, though. I guess because I knew she’d be meeting new people, and I won­dered if maybe those new people might be more interesting than the Vice-Vice-President of Product Development for Pisher Plastics.

“So how about the first basket?” I asked. “You think that first basket that held the eggs will be okay? I mean, you wouldn’t throw it away, right?”

She chuckled again. “When have you ever known me to throw anything away?”

I hugged her. It had been such a long time since I had really hugged her, it felt weird. Used to be I would disappear into her when she hugged me; now it was almost the other way around.

“You’re a good boy, Anthony,” she told me. “No matter what anybody says.”

The Schwa was fading, no question about it, and it started to hit me that maybe he was right. Maybe he would sift deeper and deeper through everyone’s mind until he just dropped right out the bottom and vanished completely. I noticed him less and less in class, and when it did occur to me to look for him, I always freaked out until I located him in the classroom. It kept getting harder to remind myself to remember him. It’s like my mind was a sieve, and not its usual sieve, be­cause there were some things I was very good at remembering, like faces, or names, or sports stats. But the Schwa, he was like history. He was like trying to remember Lewis and Clark, and Manifest Destiny—both of which I had to do oral reports on, and if you’ve ever had to do an oral report, you probably know how they make you dress up like whoever you’re doing the report on, but how was I supposed to dress up like Manifest Destiny? I got marked down because I wore jeans and a T-shirt—even though I argued that Levi Strauss was making jeans during the westward expansion, and that’s why they call them Levi’s—but what was I talking about? Oh, right. So now I had to wonder whether some kind of destiny was manifesting itself on the Schwa.