“You want something to drink?” the Schwa asked.
“No.”
“He says no.”
“Is your friend staying for dinner?”
“Yeah,” I said, then whispered to the Schwa, “I thought you told him I was coming.”
“I did,” said the Schwa. “Twice.”
It turns out the Schwa’s father was terminally absentminded. There were little notes everywhere to remind him of things. The refrigerator was so full of yellow Post-it notes, it looked like Big Bird. The notes were all written by the Schwa. Half day at school on Wednesday, one said. Back-to-School night on Friday, said another, FRIEND COMING OVER FOR DINNER TONIGHT, said one in big bold letters.
“Was he always like that, or was it, like, from breathing paint fumes?” I asked after Mr. Schwa went back to playing guitar.
“He fell off a ladder a few years ago, and suffered head trauma. He’s okay now, but he’s like a little kid in some ways.”
“Wow,” I said. “So who takes care of who?”
“Exactly,” says the Schwa. “But it’s not so bad. And my aunt Peggy comes over a few times a week to help out.”
Apparently this wasn’t one of Aunt Peggy’s nights. There was a raw chicken in a big pan on top of the oven. I poked the chicken. It was room temperature. Who knew how long it had been sitting out.
“Maybe we should call in for pizza.”
“Naah,” said the Schwa, turning on the oven to preheat. “Cooking it should kill any deadly bacteria.”
The Schwa took me on the grand tour. The walls of the house were white, except one wall in each room was painted a different color. The effect was actually pretty cool. There was one forest green wall in the living room, a red wall in the kitchen, a blue wall in the dining room. The colored wall in the Schwa’s room was beige. I wasn’t surprised.
“So,” I asked about as delicately as I could, “how long have you and your father been ... on your own?”
“Since I was five,” he said. “You wanna see my paper-clip collection?”
I replayed in my mind what he had said, certain I had somehow heard it wrong. “You’re ... kidding me, right?”
Then he reached under his bed and pulled out a box. Inside were little plastic zipper bags—at least a hundred of them— and in each one there was . . . yes, you guessed it, a paper clip.
Little ones, big ones, those fat black ones that hold whole stacks of paper together.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
I just stared, dumbfounded. “Exactly when did they release you from the nuthouse, Schwa?”
He reached into the box and pulled out a little baggie that held a silver clip. “This clip held together pages of the Nuclear Arms Treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachew.”
“No way.”
I looked at it closely. It looked just like an ordinary paper clip.
He pulled out another one. It was tarnished bronze. “This one held together the original lyric sheets of ’Hey Jude.’” He pulled out another one with a blue plastic coating. “This one was clipped to a mission manual for the space shuttle.”
“You mean it’s been in space?”
The Schwa nodded.
“Wow!”
He showed me clip after clip, each one more exciting than the the last.
“Where did you get them?”
“I wrote to famous people, asking them for a paper clip from something important. You’d be amazed how many of them wrote back.”
It was genius! Most of the time people are looking for the letters and documents and people that make history, but no one thinks about the little things that hold history together. Leave it to the Schwa to think of such a thing. It was, at the same time, the dullest and most interesting collection I had ever seen in my life.
Dinner wasn’t ready until after nine, and it was the second worst chicken I’d ever tasted, beaten only by a dish at a friend’s birthday party that tasted more like it was made from the pinata. Even so, I was glad I had dinner with the Schwa and his father, who continued to play guitar during the meal, greasy chicken fingers and all.
“It’s like he doesn’t have a care in the world,” I commented to the Schwa while his dad did the dishes.
“Yeah, brain damage’ll do that to you,” the Schwa said as he went to rewash the dishes his father didn’t quite get clean. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”
The next night I ended up alone with my own father for dinner. Mom was off shopping with Christina, and Frankie was off with his friends, doing whatever it was honor students did on their higher plane of existence. I couldn’t help but think about the Schwa, and how he came home every day to a father who might or might not feed him. That wasn’t my dad. I might go unnoticed, but never unfed. And I never had to be the one taking care of him.
Dad secretly loved when Mom wasn’t around for dinner, because he got the kitchen all to himself—and although none of us kids would admit it out loud, Dad was the better cook. Tonight Dad whipped up Fettucine al Bonano—his own special dish that magically transformed whatever leftovers were in the fridge into a killer pasta dish. The problem today wasn’t in the cooking, it was in the eating. Dad and I never have problems talking to each other when there are other people around, but when it’s just the two of us, it’s like we’re together on a stage and we’ve forgotten our lines.
“Did you break Manny yet?” he asked after a few silent minutes into the meal.
I shrugged, fettucine dangling down to my chin. “I’m not sure. His body survived detonation, but his head is missing. It could be in orbit for all we know.”
“If he really turns out to be unbreakable, your old man gets a raise and a promotion.”
I nodded and sucked in some more fettucine. The silence returned. I like being with my dad, but sitting across from him with nothing but food between us makes me uncomfortable. I guess I’m so used to being semivisible at home I don’t know how to handle being the only available focus of attention. And now as I sat with Dad, avoiding eye contact, it hit me that maybe he felt the same way.
“They won’t do both,” I told him.
“What?”
“They give you a promotion so they don’t have to give you a raise. They give you a raise just so they don’t have to give you a promotion. They don’t do both.”
He looked at me, grinning and nodding like I just quoted Shakespeare. “You’re right,” he said. “How do you know that?”
I shrugged and thought about what the Schwa had once said about me having business savvy. “I don’t know. It just makes sense.” And then I added, “I probably heard it on TV or something.”
We chowed down more food, barely looking at each other.
“Mom tells me you’re walking dogs for that old guy who owns Crawley’s.”
“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m being a good Philistine.”
“Samaritan,” he said. “I didn’t even know you liked dogs.”
“Neither did I.”
I toyed with telling him about Old Man Crawley’s threat to get him fired if I didn’t walk the dogs . . . but didn’t. Crawley and his dogs were my problem.
I finished up my fettucine and began thinking about what the Schwa’s dinner was like tonight. Did he have to cook it himself? Did he cook for himself and his dad? Or was this one of the lucky nights when the Schwa could relax and Aunt Peggy did the cooking? Then I wondered if Aunt Peggy ever forgot to set a plate for him, like his dad.
“Listen, I was thinking about having a friend over for dinner.”
“Someone new, or the usual suspects?”
“New.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No such luck.”
“Who?”
“They call him the Schwa.”
My dad piled some more fettucine onto his plate. “What’s wrong with him?”