“The woman—your mother. She would come here all the time. Those were the days that I worked the swing shift usually. Four to midnight. Busy time. Always busy time. People rushing home from work. Dinners to make. So I always come early. Help out the day butcher. Half an hour, maybe an hour early. Your mother—I remember she came. I don’t remember her face. Isn’t that strange? I can’t remember her face.”
I looked to the Schwa to see how he would react. He didn’t flinch.
“I do remember that she was not a happy woman,” Gunther continued. “No joy in her eyes, or in her voice. The way she would reach for meat. It was as if just the reaching was a burden. As if to lift her arm took all the strength of her soul. I see many people like this, but few as unhappy as her.”
“Does this sound right, Calvin?” Lexie asked.
The Schwa shrugged. “I guess.”
“Go on,” I said. “Tell us about that day.”
“Ya, the day.” Gunther glanced at the door, to make sure no one would come in to disturb us. “The other butcher who worked here during the day—Oscar was his name—he hated his job. He was a third-generation butcher. In three generations the blood can thin. No passion. No love for the work.”
“He couldn’t stand the daily grind,” said Lexie. I snickered, but quickly shut myself up.
“I never trusted him,” Gunther continued. “He was unpredictable. How do you say . . . impulsive. He would say such things! He said he would someday slam a cleaver in the manager’s desk, and walk out. Or he would threaten to cut the meat into strange, unnatural shapes, just to confuse the customers. I would have to talk him out of such things. He spoke to me of travels he never took to places he wished to go. Alaska, the Florida Keys. Visit the Hopi Indians, kayak the Colorado River. All talk. He never went. Oscar spent his vacations at home alone, and the pressure, it would just build. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I knew it was only a matter of time until he snapped. Maybe, I thought, the cleaver would wind up in the manager’s head instead of his desk. Or maybe ... maybe something worse.”
“What does this have to do with my mother?” the Schwa asked impatiently.
“Very much to do with your mother,” Gunther said. “Because your mother was there when he finally snapped.” Gunther leaned forward, looking directly at the Schwa. It was like me and Lexie were no longer in the room.
“Actually,” Gunther said, “it was your mother who snapped first. I was right here in the back room when I heard it. This woman crying. Crying like someone had died. Crying like the world had come to an end. I don’t do well with crying women. I stayed back. Oscar was the emotional butcher—he was best with the emotional customers, so I let him talk to her.
“First he talked to her over the counter, trying to calm her down. Then he took her behind the counter and sat her down. I had to take over special orders while they talked. I could hear some of what they said. She felt like she was watching her own life from the outside, as if through a spyglass. So did he. Many times she thought she might end it all. So did he. But she never did ... because more than anything, she was afraid that no one would notice that she was gone.”
I could almost see the blood draining from the Schwa’s face. He was so pale now I thought he might pass out.
“I go back to fill a special order for lamb shanks. It was the Passover, you know. Never enough lamb shanks at the Passover. When I come back, Oscar has taken off his apron, and he hands it to me. ‛I’m going,’ he says. ‛But Oscar, still you have half an hour of duty,’ I tell him. ‛Busiest time. And the Passover!’ But he doesn’t care. ‛Tell the manager the beef stops here,’ he says. Then he takes your mother’s hand, pulls her out of the chair—maybe that same chair you sit in now. He pulls her up, and now she’s laughing instead of crying, and then they run out the back way, like two cuckoos in love. That’s the last anyone has ever seen of them.”
The Schwa stared at him, slack-jawed.
“There you have it,” Gunther said, crossing his legs in satisfaction. “Do you want me to tell it again?”
The Schwa’s head began to shake, but not in the normal controlled way. It kind of moved like one of those bobble-head dolls. “My mother ran away with the butcher?”
“It is more correct to say that he ran away with her . . . but yes, this is what happened.”
His head kept on hobbling. “My mother ran away with the BUTCHER?”
Gunther looked at me, as if I should explain why the Schwa kept repeating the question.
The Schwa was borderline ballistic. “What kind of sick person runs off with a butcher, and leaves her five-year-old kid in the frozen-food section?”
“These are questions I cannot answer,” Gunther said.
“The important thing,” I told him, “is that she didn’t disappear.”
“THIS IS WORSE!” he screamed so suddenly it made Gunther jump. “THIS IS WAY WORSE! THE BUTCHER?’
He stood up and his chair flew out behind him, hitting a stainless-steel table that rang out like a bell. “I hate her! I hate her guts! I hate her hate her hate her!”
Gunther stood and backed away. “Maybe I go finish cleaning.” Since emotional customers weren’t his thing, he disappeared into the meat locker to hide.
Now it wasn’t just the Schwa’s head that was shaking, it was his whole body. His fists were clenched and quivering, turning white as his face turned red.
“She left me there, and I thought ... I thought it was my fault.”
“Calvin, it’s all right!” said Lexie.
“No, it’s not! It’s never going to be all right! How could it ever be? How could you even say that?”
And suddenly I began to wonder if maybe knowing the truth was the worst thing for him. Maybe I had made the mother of all mistakes, letting him find out. Which is worse, the friend who keeps the truth secret, or the friend that spills the beans? As Gunther would say, “These are questions I cannot answer.” Anyway, I didn’t want to think about those questions just then. I knew I’d think about them after I got home, and stay up all night thinking about what a moron I was, and maybe I oughta be made of Pisher Plastic myself, for all the sense I have.
Lexie clasped the Schwa’s hands, trying to comfort him, and he just broke down like the five-year-old he once was in that shopping cart. “I hate her,” he wailed, but his wails were growing softer. “I hate her ...”
I put my hand on his shoulder, and squeezed until I felt his shaking begin to fade. “Welcome to the visible world,” I told him, gently. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
We barely spoke once we got back into the car, and although the silence was miserable and uncomfortable, breaking it was harder than you might think. We had the driver drop the Schwa off first, then Lexie, then me, leaving me lots of quality time with myself in the backseat to feel lousy about the whole thing. How could I live with myself if I totally ruined the Schwa’s life? What kind of person did that make me? Why did I have to put myself smack in the middle of all of this?
My parents, whose favorite line whenever I showed up late was, “We were about to call the police,” had called the police. When Lexie’s driver pulled up to my house, there was an NYPD cruiser out front, its lights spinning, sending kaleidoscope flashes around the street, where neighbors all peered out from behind their blinds. Great, I thought. The perfect way to end this night. I thanked the driver, then took a deep breath and strode into the house, hoping to come up with something clever to say. But no brilliance introduced itself at the time, so I just walked in, playing clueless, and said, “What’s going on?”