Eric Puchner - Model Home

“What did you buy?” Lyle said when they got back to the car. His dad had lost the smile and was breathing again like his normal self.

“Stuff for Jonas. We thought he might be hungry.”

“I hope the police fed him something,” his mother said.

“This isn’t ‘something,’” Dustin said. He reached into the bag in his lap and pulled out the snacks they’d bought, displaying them one at a time. Rainbow Sprinkle Pop-Tarts. Cool Ranch Doritos. Abba-Zaba. “We tried to find some Ring Dings, but they didn’t have any.”

“You couldn’t have bought him anything nutritious?” This sounded so much like his old mom that Dustin checked for her cigarettes on the dash.

“We got him some Raisin Bran,” his father said. “Show her, Dust.”

Dustin pulled out the tiny box of Raisin Bran and showed it to his mother. Lyle took the box from Dustin’s hand and opened it before he could stop her, reaching in with her fingers.

“What are you doing?”

“Picking out the raisins for him,” Lyle said. “As long as we’re stuck in traffic.”

There was nowhere to put them. Dustin held out his hand, and she placed them one by one in the palm of his glove.

“Remember when we got that croquet set for Christmas,” Lyle said, “and Jonas insisted on wearing his bike helmet? He thought we might hit him in the head with a mallet by mistake. Probably he’s the only person in the history of the sport to wear a helmet.”

“What made you think of that?” Camille asked.

“I don’t know.” Lyle closed up the cereal box. “Just that image of him in his helmet.”

“He used to wear one when we went sledding, too,” Warren said. “In Wisconsin. Plus he refused to go straight downhill. He’d turn the thing back and forth so that he was barely moving.” Warren began to swerve the car, to demonstrate.

“Learn to drive, asshole!” someone shouted from a Civic in the next lane. The man’s face was contorted with fury. He glanced at Dustin and his face changed, eyes shifting back to the road.

“You’re not wearing your sunglasses,” Lyle said, looking at Dustin.

He touched his face. It was true; he’d left them in the mini-mart. He hadn’t even noticed. He rolled up his window, catching only the murky shadow of a reflection.

Jonas waited in the police station, sitting by himself in the corner and listening to the noisy smacks of a policeman sucking on a cough drop at his desk. Earlier the guy had shown Jonas his gun. It was the third one he’d been asked to admire that day. “Wow,” Jonas had said, because the man so clearly wanted him to say this. He’d asked the guy if he was ever tempted to turn the gun on himself, since police officers had the third-highest suicide rate of any profession. The policeman frowned and moved to the other side of the office, where he’d remained for the past hour in a suicidal funk.

“Want a croissandwich?” the man’s partner said now, hoisting a greasy bag in one hand. He was less suicidal and even seemed to enjoy his job. You could tell they were partners because one was black and the other white.

“What’s a croissandwich?” Jonas asked.

“It’s a croissant and a sandwich combined. They eat them in France.”

“Okay,” Jonas said. He took the croissandwich from the policeman’s hand. “Is my dad still coming?”

“Probably stuck in traffic.”

“He might have decided not to come.”

The policeman looked at him carefully. “Believe me, he’s coming. I talked to him myself. Bet your family hasn’t slept in a week.”

“Actually, they sort of wish I was dead.”

The two policemen glanced at each other. The happier one checked his watch, a cloud of worry spreading over his face. Jonas wiped his fingers on his embroidered jeans. He was sure, now that he’d run away and stolen a baby, that his family hated him even more than they used to. He wondered if the policemen were hiding something from him. Perhaps they knew about the fake tickets, or the coins, or his tricking that poor old woman into searching for his puppy. He thought he was too young to be put in jail, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

Either way his dad would be furious. Jonas imagined him showing up at the police station, too mad to speak, his eyes narrowed into slits.

After what seemed like forever, Jonas having long since finished his dinner and given up hope of anyone’s taking him home — after the reality of his future had sunk in, a life of hunger and scabby feet and crack houses with no plumbing — there was a call from the reception area. His father was here. Jonas’s heart stopped. One of his feet was asleep, and he found himself limping down the hall to greet his punishment. When he rounded the corner to the reception area, still limping, he was surprised to see his entire family waiting for him, a group of disheveled people with greasy hair. His dad in sweatpants. His freckled, exhausted-looking mom, a pack of cigarettes bulging from her pocket. His newly pretty sister and now-ugly brother, lopsided without sunglasses, like a snowman just beginning to melt. They were lined up beside a plastic fern, as if posing for a picture. Beneath his joy at seeing them, his relief and pride and wonderment, Jonas felt obscurely disappointed that they were only themselves.

Jonas’s mother rushed over and hugged him, holding him so tightly he thought he might suffocate. She was crying. When she was done, his dad approached without smiling but then hugged him, too, smooshing Jonas’s face into his belly. It smelled like rotten leaves. His dad’s hands unflexed but seemed to have trouble letting go.

While his father talked to the police, signing papers, the rest of them sat on a bench next to the plastic fern. A fly crawled up the window and then daredeviled down again, like a skier. Dustin and Lyle started pulling things out of a plastic bag, Pop-Tarts and Doritos and candy bars, shoving them in Jonas’s direction.

“You’re not starving?” Lyle asked.

“I had a croissandwich.”

Dustin opened his hand, revealing a sweet-smelling mush. “So I can get rid of these raisins?”

By the time they got back on the road, it was nearly dark. There were still patches of traffic, but Warren did not nudge his way into a faster lane. He was not in a rush to get home. Partly he was happy to have the family together: he couldn’t remember the last time they’d all been in the car at the same time. Even with everything that had happened, there was this absurd and stubborn joy. Perhaps, in the end, it was all you could hope for: to get your family together in one car, once or twice a year now that they were older — now that you were going gray yourself — and feel the precious weight of their presence.

He tried not to think of Hector, worried about what it might do to his heart.

Warren glanced in the rearview mirror at Jonas. He was sandwiched between his brother and sister, staring into a bag of Doritos. Warren blamed his spaciness on everything that had happened. And what had happened? As far as the cops could tell, there were no indications of abuse or maltreatment. When Warren had tried to find out the details, probing Jonas at the police station, he’d ignored the question completely, fiddling with the gum in his hair.

“Are you feeling up to it now?” Warren asked, glancing backward.

Jonas seemed startled. “Up to what?”

“Filling us in. On your adventures.”

Jonas handed the bag of Doritos to Lyle.

“We’d just like to know that no one hurt you,” Camille said.

“A deaf woman took care of me. Griselda. She drove me to her house and let me sleep in her bed. Sometimes she took me around in her van. She was a magician. We helped an old lady find her dog.”