Eric Puchner - Model Home

“Mom, you’re still wearing your oven mitts.”

“Just once,” Warren said, “I’d like to have a normal dinner. One time in the history of this family. Is that too much to ask, just to sit down and talk about our day for once?” They were all looking at him. Perhaps he was shouting. He lowered his voice. “I mean, something could happen to us.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Warren mumbled.

Camille glared at him, close to tears again. “Yes. Why don’t you tell us.”

“We could get crushed by an earthquake.”

“Our whole bodies?” Jonas asked. “Or just, like, our limbs?”

“If there’s an earthquake, can we live in a hotel?” Lyle said.

Camille snorted. “Your father would like that.”

“How about a nuclear winter?” Jonas said excitedly. “We might freeze to death and get eaten by rats.”

“Dad, are you all right?” Lyle asked. “That’s, like, your third glass of water.”

Warren dropped his fork. Mr. Leonard jerked upright, sitting on two legs like a gopher. “I just want to have one normal conversation! Please! ” Warren’s family stared at him, mouths stuffed with food. The clock in the kitchen caroled like a rose-breasted grosbeak. He turned to Lyle. “How was school today?”

“It’s summer, Dad. Vacation.”

Dustin waved his hand near Warren’s face. “Traditionally falling in the months between May and September?”

Warren knew it was summer. It was simply that the words “summer” and “vacation” had momentarily uncoupled in his brain. The stress was making him senile. He reached up to loosen his collar before remembering that he’d already unbuttoned his shirt. He’d vowed not to involve his family in Auburn Fields, it was the one promise to himself he hadn’t broken, but he saw now that this was a luxury he couldn’t afford and pulled out the wad of business cards he kept in his suit pocket. AUBURN FIELDS, they said, then below it: LIVE WELL… FEEL INSPIRED. He rolled off the rubber band and handed a stack of cards to each of his children.

“What are we supposed to do with these?” Dustin asked.

“Since it’s summer and everything, I thought you might like to help me out. With work.”

“Help you out?”

“For instance, Lyle, if you see anyone at the ice cream parlor. You know, who looks old enough to retire.” Warren frowned. “Or Dustin. When you’re at the beach.”

“You’re building a retirement community?”

“No. I mean, it could be. Like Palm Springs, but for unrich people.”

His children studied the cards skeptically, as though this was further proof of his craziness. Perhaps it was. If he was crazy, he would no longer be responsible for his behavior.

After dinner, they all gathered on the rug in the living room for a screening of Camille’s new movie, crowding onto the faint, coffin-shaped shadow where the couch used to be. Jonas was in the film, his first role, and for a moment — watching his children joke about agents and paparazzi — Warren almost forgot his troubles. Lyle brought out the popcorn and a moldering box of Milk Duds. It was a family tradition, to watch Camille’s latest opus before it went out to schools across the county. Historically, the children were a receptive audience, hissing at the sight of a joint in Drugs: Get Lost! or cheering when Peggy, the criminally shy misfit in Square Peg, got a date. It was rowdy and affectionate, and made Camille happy. Now, crowded around the TV, the cozy nest of children reminded Warren of happier times. The days of warmth and furniture. Camille used to sit between his legs, feeding him popcorn over her head.

He reached out to touch Camille’s hand on the floor, but she flinched and scooted away from him. He recalled, vaguely, that she’d had some trouble with the movie — something to do with the advisory committee, maybe — but to be honest he didn’t remember what it was she’d told him. Nor had he remembered the title: Earth to My Body: What’s Happening? Like all Camille’s movies, it was a frantic pastiche of styles. There was a brief scene from Rebel Without a Cause, which cut to a still of Bugs Bunny dressed up in drag, which cut to an animated illustration of a young girl’s breasts growing larger, shown in stages like a balloon. The voiceover proclaimed, “The areola enlarges and becomes darker.”

“Nice buds,” Lyle said.

“Hubba hubba,” Dustin said. He frowned. “I’m just joking.”

Eventually — after a caption titled “Where’s the Stork?”—the narrator began to speak of bolder subjects, such as the man inserting his penis into the vagina. Jonas appeared on-screen with some other kids. Dustin and Lyle cheered and stamped their feet, throwing popcorn at the TV. The kids were all wearing same-colored shirts, standing in front of some goalposts. It seemed to be some sort of soccer team. Could they really be named The Sperm ? As the narrator intoned about “the long journey to fertilization,” the soccer players began to run toward the camera, perhaps responding to a goal kick. The camera pulled back and Warren could see a second team as well: a group of girls with THE EGG printed on the back of their T-shirts, clasping hands in a circle. It wasn’t soccer at all. It was a coed game of rugby. The Sperm’s offense battered the Egg, trying to get at the ball. Jonas fought his way inside the circle while some kids from a third team — the Electrical Signal — began to beat up on Jonas’s teammates. One of the boys fell to the ground, clutching his shin. The sequence ended, mystically, with the winning team holding up a victory banner on which someone had stenciled the words THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.

The room was uncharacteristically silent. Jonas, the star of the sequence, seemed as nonplussed as everyone. Warren glanced at his wife, who seemed to be waiting for some kind of affirmation.

“Where did you learn to play rugby?” he asked.

“Rugby?”

“It was football, right, Mom?” Lyle said. “That’s why they were in a huddle.”

Camille turned red. “Those were the egg!”

“I get it,” Dustin said. “Like they were trying to protect it from getting smashed.”

“ Trying to,” Jonas said proudly. Dustin held up his hand, and they high-fived.

“You didn’t smash anything,” Camille whispered.

“The football was the egg?” Warren suggested, trying to help out.

“It’s metaphorical! Weren’t you listening to the voiceover?”

“I was confused by the Cervical Mucus,” Lyle said.

“I like that he actually had mucus,” Dustin said. “Nasal, I mean.”

Camille stood up. Her face was strange and ugly, lips tucked in as though she were trying to whistle through her teeth. “It would have made perfect sense, but you were too busy fucking cheering.”

She stomped out of the room. Warren sat there, unable to speak. He looked at his kids: they were speechless as well, Lyle’s hand clamped over her mouth as though she were the one who’d said a bad word.

Warren got up and followed his wife down the hall. He found her in the bedroom, standing by the window so he couldn’t see her face. There was something erotic about her that he couldn’t place. He looked closer and realized — to his astonishment — that she was smoking a cigarette. He’d only seen her smoke once before, on the day of their wedding. She’d disappeared in the middle of the reception and he’d found her outside near the Dumpster, dragging on a cigarette and watching a plane blink slowly across the sky, a look of inscrutable sadness on her face. Then, too, he’d been bitten with lust. He’d asked her what was wrong and she’d thrown her arms around him before he could see her face — overcome, she’d told him later, by the force of her love.