The Schwa Was Here

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 1 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_tme 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."

16 A Late-Night Trip to the Land of Beef That Could Turn a Person into a Vegetarian

The Schwa was fading, no question about it, and it I 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.