Eric Puchner - Model Home

Lyle knocked on Dustin’s door, wondering if he could hear anything over the sounds of mayhem rumbling from inside. Adding to the general tide of depressingness was the fact that he watched TV in his bedroom. It was one of the things on Lyle’s list of THINGS YOU SHOULD AVOID DOING BEFORE YOU’RE FIFTY, right after Go speed-walking with little arm weights. Whenever she thought of her brother like this, holed up in his room all day watching movies, she felt forlorn and useless. She hesitated before turning the doorknob, dismayed to see that her hand was trembling.

“It’s the best part,” Dustin said, pointing at the screen. He was lying in bed, focused on Sylvester Stallone’s shirtless body slumped in a helicopter. He liked movies with explosions in them: it wasn’t ironic so much as a fuck-you to fate. “When Rambo hides the bazooka under his seat.”

“Is that before or after he writes A Season in Hell ?”

Dustin scowled, looking at her for the first time. It was always a shock to see him: the face not quite his, blotchy and discolored on one side, his cheek smudged into a purplish, rumpled bark. They’d rebuilt his eyelid, but it was still droopy and half-closed like a boxer’s. It was supposed to gradually correct itself, but Lyle was having doubts. The lower lid had begun to sag, too, from the scars contracting on his cheek — you could see the inside of the lid, a dewy pocket of pink. Just a sliver, but it was enough to turn his eye from an ordinary thing into an eyeball. She went over and stopped the VCR just as Rambo was letting his bazooka loose on some astonished commies.

“Hey,” Dustin said angrily, scratching at his elastic Jobst shirt. They’d measured him for the shirt at the hospital: it was meant to reduce scarring, though like the eye surgery it seemed a bit unambitious. Hard to believe a skintight shirt could do anything but make him feel more miserable. Along with the glove on his right hand, he was supposed to wear it twenty-three hours a day — his “second skin,” the burn therapist had called it, though in reality it looked more like a scuba suit.

“Get your shoes on,” Lyle said. “We’re going to lunch.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You can wear your, um, mask if you’d like.”

She’d meant to be sensitive but realized by his face that she’d said the wrong thing. He raised his gloved hand off the bed. For dexterity, the fingers of the glove had been cut off at the tips. Lyle didn’t know what was happening at first: she saw the fingers uncurling slowly, all together, Dustin grimacing in pain. Then the middle one inching higher, slow as a drawbridge. Less than thirty minutes she’d been home, and two people had flipped her off.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Lyle said.

“I’ve been practicing.”

Dustin insisted on going to Taco Bell, even though they had to drive an extra ten miles through Lancaster to get there, but Lyle was relieved she’d been able to coax him out of his room. It was like charming an animal out of its hole. He did not wear his mask, though he’d bought some mirrored sunglasses, huge and sparkling as a sheriff’s, to cover up his eye. Lyle was surprised by how much better he looked. Still, when it was Dustin’s turn to order, the cashier at Taco Bell turned to Lyle and asked in a quiet voice, “And what would your friend like?”

“I can’t believe she asked me your order,” Lyle said when they’d sat down. She was furious.

Dustin shrugged.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“At least she didn’t point.”

“People point?” she said quietly.

“Are you kidding? I’ve seen people back up their cars in the middle of the parking lot, just to get a better look.” He took a bite of his Burrito Supreme, clutching it with his good hand. “Sometimes it’s funny. The Three Stooges. The other day I was at the movies, buying a ticket, and a guy walked into a pole.”

The air-conditioning was cranked so high that she was actually cold, her sweat-soaked T-shirt icy against her back. Dustin looked cold, too, even though he was wearing a sweater over his Jobst shirt. Lyle started to unwrap her taco and he flinched; she was always forgetting not to crinkle things.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t apologize. It makes it worse.”

She wanted to ask him how he could watch explosions all day long, then get mad at her for unwrapping a taco, but of course nothing about his accident made sense. At the next booth, a toddler in a pink dress had twisted around in her seat and was staring at Dustin with her fingers in her mouth. The toddler was nearly bald but had a giant bow stuck mysteriously to her head. Dustin was too absorbed in his burrito to notice.

“You never used to like Taco Bell,” Lyle said. “Remember? You called it Taco Smell.”

“That was you,” he said.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I always liked it.”

“You hated it! We bought some tacos once and ended up giving them to Mr. Leonard.”

Dustin looked up impatiently. “They have the Burrito Supreme now.”

He sounded like Jonas. Lyle picked the tobacco-like shreds of lettuce from her taco, wishing she’d never come home. The excuses she’d been giving for not visiting every weekend were just that: excuses. She’d been avoiding Dustin’s misery. Lyle watched him eat, succumbing to the silence until she couldn’t bear it any longer.

“How’s Toxic Shock Syndrome?”

He shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”

“Aren’t you still writing songs?”

“I sold my guitar.”

“Dustin,” she said. “You didn’t.”

He lifted his gloved hand, as though it belonged to somebody else. “What the fuck do you want me to do? Play with my teeth?”

“The OT said it might take a year. She wants you to practice.”

“My amp’s shot anyway. Smoke damage. Do you know how much a new one costs?”

“Mom and Dad would have helped you out, if you needed money.”

He looked out the window. “Grow up, L. Dad’s selling knives, for Christ’s sake.”

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she wanted to say. But how could she? She didn’t feel cold all the time, her face wasn’t purple on one side, she hadn’t been forced to give up college and work in a video store in the middle of nowhere. Lyle glanced at the next booth. The little bald girl with the bow was still staring, chewing on her fingers like a moron. Why the hell didn’t her mother do something?

“What’s up with Mom and Dad anyway?” she asked, changing the subject.

Dustin shoved his tray away. “Actually, they don’t yell as much. Now that they’ve stopped sleeping in the same room.”

“I saw the futon.”

“They only talk to each other when they have to pay bills.”

“Jesus.”

“Anyway, she’s never home. Dad does all the cooking.”

“I can’t believe she drives all that way to work. It took me an hour and a half, and it wasn’t even rush hour.”

Dustin frowned. “I never thought I’d miss Polynesian pork. Hector was over on Wednesday night, and Dad served us fried eggs for dinner.”

“It’s too weird,” Lyle said, watching her reflection in his glasses. “You guys being friends.”

“He’s into pets. Makes perfect sense.” Dustin laughed. “Anyway, he’s the only person who doesn’t pretend nothing’s happened.”

“What about Biesty?”

“ Mark, you mean. He’s in college now and too mature for nicknames. He’s like a Moonie or something, always smiling at me and telling me how ‘awesome’ I look. Anyway, he’s got his UCLA friends now.”

Lyle watched her brother slurp the dregs from his Coke, wondering if there was an emotion besides bitterness lurking somewhere in his heart. Even though she’d returned none of Hector’s letters, he’d driven out here to see Lyle in person and had ended up talking to Dustin in the kitchen for an hour. This was after she’d moved in with Bethany. For whatever reason, the two of them had hit it off. Maybe Dustin was right: there was something petlike about him that appealed to Hector. With his crankiness, his precarious health issues, he was not unlike an exotic lizard. Like a lizard, too, he barely moved from his bed.