Eric Puchner - Model Home

“They’re lucky I didn’t kick their asses,” Dustin said.

“Yeah, right.” Kira put her arm around him. “Like you could ever hurt a fly.”

Dawn. Warren lay in bed, listening to the cries of wild peacocks echoing in the canyon. After three years, he still hadn’t gotten used to their eerie feline racket. He’d been up since four o’clock, waiting for the world to materialize again. It had been a long and eventful two hours. There had been fear, self-pity, vertiginous despair. There had been thoughts of deserting his family. There had been fury and remorse. Warren had lain there in the dark, wondering if the sun would ever come up.

Now, the light from the window bathed the room in a bluish glow. Everything was just as they’d left it last night: the bowfront dresser, the bowl of potpourri perched on the TV set, even The Joy of Sex stationed in the middle of the bookcase, its spine covered with masking tape. (This clever bit of subterfuge was Camille’s, who thought the kids would be uninterested in a conspicuously large book whose title they couldn’t read.) And still there, too, was the painting named “Pac-Man in Heaven,” one of the pieces she’d brought home after Mandy Rogers disappeared. Not a painting, actually, but a furry, king-sized Pac-Man cut out of brown shag carpet and then glued to a background of Crayola clouds. What had possessed Camille to buy it he could only imagine. It was not only hideous but disturbing. Who, no matter how “disabled,” would identify with Pac-Man enough to imagine his afterlife?

Warren stared at the furry brown circle, its mouth permanently ajar, as though its hunger had survived the grave.

He sat up in bed, careful not to disturb Camille. She was fast asleep beside him, facing the wall so he couldn’t see her face. From the back, the first streaks of gray in her hair concealed by the blue light of dawn, she looked like the girl he’d fallen in love with. Warren watched her from above, admiring the delicate rise and fall of her back. He used to admire her this way that winter before they were married, when she was still finishing up college and he was at the University of Chicago for law school. On the weekends, Camille would take the train down from Madison to see him and they’d walk the bitter streets together, huddled against the wind, the skyscrapers twinkling in the sun like swords. They were hopelessly, helplessly in love. He remembered sitting with her in the Amtrak station one Sunday afternoon, miserable at the thought of parting again even for a week, Camille crying into his parka as if she were leaving him forever. There was no question about her getting back: she had an exam the next day and would fail the class if she didn’t take it. The train to Madison came into the station but she didn’t move from the bench, didn’t look up, gripping Warren’s hand until it hurt. The train pulled away and they looked at each other for the first time, Camille’s face ragged with relief. The joy was like nothing he’d ever felt. They bought a bottle of cheap champagne and spent the rest of the day in bed, giddy at the thrill of what she’d done, as if the world — its trains and exams and scheduled intrusions — were merely a nuisance to their love.

They had lost this feeling, the way you might lose a favorite gift you were no longer attached to. It had not seemed an important loss at the time: Dustin was born, and if anything a deeper, more devout-seeming love took its place. Once, while they were bathing Dustin together in the sink of their apartment, washing his scabbed-up belly button and tiny, heartbreaking penis, Camille had turned to Warren with a look of such stunning affection that he had actually lost his breath. I will never be happier than I am now, Warren had thought. Seventeen years later, he realized how sadly prescient this was. He did not know how he and Camille had ended up like this, so stranded in their own lives that they could barely wish each other good night, but it was one of the several ways in which love — so persuasive in its innocence — had betrayed him.

Warren climbed out of bed and sifted through his dresser, placed strategically on the left side of the room. He always slept on the left half of the bed, Camille on the right. It was one of those agreements they’d reached years ago without ever discussing it. Once, when Camille was out of town, he’d tried sleeping on her side and found himself inching back to his own spot, a homesick traveler. It occurred to him they would sleep this way until they died.

He got dressed quietly and walked down the hall. Stopping at Dustin’s room, Warren cracked the door and was confronted once again with his son’s naked back. He was lying on his stomach, covers kicked into a tangle at the foot of his bed. There was something alarming in the way he slept: limbs thrown out, like the victim of a crash. Once, when Dustin was a toddler, he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the airport, spread-eagled on the floor as though he’d dropped from the ceiling.

Dustin’s headphones had slipped from his ears and lay upright on the pillow, perched atop his head like a halo. Warren had tried his best to support him, to give him everything he needed — this kid who was more interested in the Circle Jerks than speaking to him. Really, Warren had done it all for him. He’d dropped out of law school after Camille got pregnant, gone to work for her father in Milwaukee so they wouldn’t have to eat moose meat. He’d dreamed of being a judge, using his degree to rise up the ranks, but ended up getting into real estate because Camille’s father had a connection. And he’d done well with it, developing condos and resort homes on the same lakes he’d fished as a kid. If there’d been any regrets or second thoughts, those first years, they’d vanished as soon as Warren got home from the office, as soon as he saw Dustin’s face go brainsick with delight. They used to dance around the living room together, Dustin clutching his shirt in his tiny fists. He’d never expected his ambition — his dreams of greatness — could be so easily trounced by a baby’s grin.

It was his single accomplishment, providing for these beautiful, snot-faced creatures that Camille had brought into the world. He’d moved them to California and bought a larger house than they needed, seduced by the idea of giving them even more. How proud he’d been showing them the big lawn and persimmon tree, the famously expensive views of L.A. He’d filled the extra space with overpriced furniture, leasing it until he had the money to buy it outright. He wasn’t worried — in a year or two they’d be as rich as his neighbors. Now it was all disappearing: this room, this house, this life he’d built from scratch.

Creeping closer, Warren lifted the headphones gingerly from Dustin’s head and bent down to listen. He longed to hear some thing, to catch the soundtrack of his son’s dreams. But there was nothing. Silence.

After walking Mr. Leonard, Warren went into the kitchen and poured himself some Grape-Nuts, searching the Frigidaire for blueberries before remembering what Camille had said yesterday about their being five dollars a carton at the grocery store. “They think we’re the Shackneys” were her exact words. Warren wondered if she was on to him. He was still looking into the fridge when the scuff of slippers surprised him from behind.

“You’re up early,” Camille said. She was wearing pink pajamas, thin enough to show the lovely shadow of her breasts. Warren found he could not look at his wife without being reminded of his failure.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, pouring milk into his Grape-Nuts.

“Did you take a pill?”

He ignored this eminently practical question. On the counter was their long-distance bill from last month. He took it to the table with his cereal. “You called Nora Lundy eight times last month.”