Eric Puchner: Model Home

But Lyle did hate people. Hating people was one of her biggest hobbies. Just last night, in fact, she’d started a list of things she despised:

People who call old women “cute”

People who talk about dead relatives as if they’re happier now

Anyone who refers to herself as a “chocoholic”

DBCs (Dumbshits in Baseball Caps)

The adjective “hot” for anything except weather

People who use the term “110 %”

Song titles with numbers in place of words

People who own Smiths records and don’t know the lead singer is gay

Volleyball

Convertibles

Bob Marley

Anyone who uses the word “ganja”

Dogs small enough that they shiver when they take a dump

People who look at you funny when you use the word “ingratiate”

People who order in Spanish at Mexican restaurants (Mom)

People who say “Decisions, decisions” when looking at a menu

Bathroom graffiti that rhymes (“Wine me, dine me, 69 me”)

The Beach Boys

People who check their car for scratches before getting in

People who refer to little boys as “boss” or “chief”

Anyone who says the sentence: “And WHO do we have here?”

Volleyball (x2)

CALIFORNIA

This last one she’d written in big letters and retraced again and again until the letters engraved several pages of her journal, fading gradually like a wound. She detested it, this land of Jeeps and joggers. The Golden State. What kind of stupid nickname was that? Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to describe the place itself so much as a fascist condition. If you weren’t golden, you had no right to exist. Lyle used to go to the beach when they first moved here, hoping she might get a tan like the Audras and Stephanies in her class, her skin turning brown and luscious. She lay in a deserted corner of the beach, sweating and miserable, terrified someone from school would see her and notice how pale she was. A circus freak: the Whitest Girl in California. She was determined to stay until she looked like the other girls, the ones with butterflies of sand stuck to their asses, running into the waves and twirling around with a squeal. Instead she burned herself so miserably she couldn’t sleep. Her skin blistered and peeled off like Saran Wrap, leaving her whiter than before. After a month of suffering, she realized it was hopeless and gave up completely.

She’d been bored in Wisconsin, bored living on the same puny lake her whole life, but at least she hadn’t felt like a freak of nature. She hadn’t cried herself to sleep because some DBC had called her Vampira at school.

On their way out of Herradura Estates, Lyle’s mother pulled up to the guardhouse and its red-striped gate, which lifted magically as they approached. She brought the car to a stop in order to say hello to Hector, the new gatekeeper. Lyle waited with mounting dread as her mother rolled down the window. Please don’t speak Spanish, she thought. Please don’t please don’t please don’t please don’t please don’t.

“Hola,” her mother said in a cheerful voice. “Cómo estas?”

“Bien, bien,” Hector said, smiling through his mustache. He looked vaguely amused, as though doing his best to conceal the fact that he spoke perfect English. “Y usted?”

“ Nosotros estamos yendo a la shopping mall.” Her mother actually said “shopping mall” in a Spanish accent.

Hector cupped his ear. “A donde?”

“The mall,” Lyle’s mother said. “The Perfect Scoop. For my daughter’s job . Ella vende helado. ”

Hector ducked down and smiled at Lyle in the passenger seat, as though she were six years old. She felt like flashing him her tits. “Que bueno.”

“ Le gustan los libros. Siempre. How do you say it? A worm.”

Lyle’s mother stuck her finger out the window and began to wiggle it around. Hector squinted at it from the guardhouse.

“She still goes to work?” he said finally, looking concerned.

“Claro que si!” her mother said, smiling.

She said good-bye and Hector relaxed back into his chair, believing no doubt that Lyle had worms. Lyle wanted to murder her mother. She would strangle her slowly and then dump her out of the car and drive to New York, where she’d never have to wear shorts and where it was okay — sophisticated even — not to be tan. She’d never actually been to New York, but she was sure that paleness was a sign of cachet. Certainly there was no volleyball. If you tried to play volleyball in New York, people would throw things at you from the street. They would stone you with cigarettes and umbrellas.

At the mall, Lyle’s mother dropped her off at The Perfect Scoop Ice Cream Parlor and then drove off to commit more random acts of Spanish. Lyle was surprised to find Shannon Jarrell already inside the store, sitting with her legs crossed by the tower of plastic tables and reading a People magazine. Shannon’s being there on time was a miracle of Newtonian physics, but she lifted her eyes casually, as if it were an everyday occurrence. “Hey.”

“How did you get in?” Lyle asked.

Shannon looked back at her magazine. “Jared. He gave me the keys.”

Jared was the manager, who had a crush on Shannon and was always staring at her ass. Today she was wearing cutoff jeans to show off her tan, a direct violation of the company dress code. Her legs were long and slender and glowed like hot dogs. She’d rolled the sleeves of her Perfect Scoop T-shirt over her shoulders, which had the same Oscar Mayer tan. A flip-flop dangled insolently from one foot.

“Did you cash in the register?” Lyle asked.

“No. I was waiting for you.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “You always do it.”

Lyle swore under her breath and went into the back to get the cash drawer. She had to do everything. If the tubs were empty, Shannon would just tell the customers they were out of chocolate or vanilla chip or pralines-and-cream rather than get a new tub from the freezer. Not that Lyle gave two shits about the people who came in — but she couldn’t afford to slack off like Shannon, because nothing would get done. And whose well-concealed ass would Jared fire?

She spun through the combination on the safe and retrieved the drawer of money. The back room was small and cozy, a home away from home, stocked for some reason with a shelf of cheap liqueurs. On slow afternoons, when she was working by herself, Lyle would sit back here with her feet up and sip Kahlúa from a mug, lost in whatever novel she was reading, so wrapped up in the vicissitudes of beauty and despair that she wouldn’t notice the bee-bong of the door as a customer walked in. Hello? the customer would yell into the void. Are you alive back there? Not exactly, Lyle would yell back. Sometimes, if it was a good enough book, she’d put it down in a daze and wobble out to the front, greeted by a world — faces, movement, squares of sunlight on the floor — that seemed less real than the one she’d been reading about. It was as if God had decided to phone it in.

Locking the safe again, Lyle glanced at the corner of the room and noticed a sleeping bag rolled into a strudel, propped beside a pillow. A flash of proprietary anger went through her. She carried the cash drawer out to the register.

“Christ. You didn’t sleep here.”

Shannon smirked. “Me and Charlie.”

“Your boyfriend?”

Shannon nodded, pleased with herself.

“Why?”

“We were playing Yahtzee.” She laughed. “What do you think? His parents are cool, but not that cool.”

So that’s why she’d enticed Jared into giving her the key. Lyle started to refill the syrup dispensers, watching from the corner of her eye as Shannon unstacked the tables and dragged them to their places. How did she make screwing on the floor of an ice cream shop seem glamorous? If Lyle had done the same thing, it would have swept PV High that she was a miserable slut. It wasn’t fair or just or randomly kind. Lyle watched the boys who came in for ice cream, how their faces changed when they saw Shannon: a wide-eyed slackening, as though they’d been conked in the head. It made Lyle want to tip them over like a row of bikes.