Eric Puchner: Model Home

She walked back into the living room, where Jonas was playing his video game. There was a stillness in his face that frightened her. She saw it at times like this, when he didn’t know she was watching: something like sorrow, a mortal wound. Camille watched him from the doorway. For so long, well before Dustin’s accident, she’d been dissatisfied with who she was. She’d wanted to surprise people, to be the person who wasn’t afraid of doing the wrong thing. A different kind of mother. Well, just look at how she’d succeeded.

She bent down and kissed Jonas’s head, hoping he’d look up from his game. She knew he wouldn’t, but her heart waited nonetheless. Dustin called from the kitchen that lunch was ready. She told Jonas to switch off his game and he did, jumping up like any other kid, shocking her with his gawky height. He’s going to be fine, Camille thought — and then said it again to herself before leaving the room.

After lunch, they all drove out to Herradura Estates to see the new house that had been built where their old one had been. Jonas thought it was strange that this would interest his family, since the place was no longer theirs, though in his experience grown-ups were often interested in things that no longer existed. Not just coins: old things that had happened to them. It was like a disease. He hoped there was a way to avoid getting it, but figured it must be something inevitable like hemorrhoids.

It had been Dustin’s idea to go look at the house, but now it looked like maybe he was having second thoughts, his leg jerking up and down as they drove up Crenshaw toward the gate. Jonas wondered if they’d still be making the trip if he’d actually blown up the house. He doubted it. Since they’d found out it was Hec tor’s fault, his family had been doing a constant sort of egg-and-spoon walk in which he was the egg. They were always hugging him out of the blue or offering to fix him his favorite dinner or buying him something no one else at school had. His mom, especially. It was like living with Santa Claus. If he told her that he wanted a torpedo, right that second, she’d probably stop the car and drive them all to Submarines-R-Us.

Still, there was something missing. Would they be buying him all this stuff, showering him with hugs, even if he had blown up the house? That was the question that nagged him while he brushed his teeth or waited for a Pop-Tart to pop. Would they have loved him anyway? Probably it was one of those things you could never know.

They had no trouble getting past the gate, Jonas’s mom being old pals with Herman the guard, who put a finger to his lips before waving them through. The new house looked nothing like their old one. It was much bigger, for starters. Plus it had two stories and a little castle wall like the teeth of a jack-o’-lantern sticking over the top and a giant arch where the front door was supposed to be. Heaped in the muddy yard was a pile of scrap, materials enough for another house. Jonas’s mom parked at the curb since the driveway was mud. They stayed there in the car looking at the house. A girl on a horse stared at them as she rode by, stiff as a pole, her head turning slowly as if she were one of those mechanical dolls at Disneyland.

“Our mailbox is gone,” Lyle said.

“Maybe they’ve moved in,” Jonas’s mom said.

“Unlikely,” his father said. “There aren’t any windows.” He turned to the backseat. “Well? Should we head back?”

“No,” Dustin said. “I want to check it out.”

He climbed out of the Volvo and tromped up the muddy slope toward the house, leaning into each step, as if he were walking into a wind. Jonas’s parents waited until he’d gone into the house and then got out of the car and then Jonas and Lyle did, too, following Dustin through the giant archway into the doorless vestibule curtained with plastic. Inside there were no walls, only wood studs like bones marking where they’d go. Pipes snaked up to the ceiling or jutted toward invisible sinks. The skeleton of a staircase, tall and banisterless, rose up to a hole in the second floor.

Jonas followed his family through the half-built house, watch ing for nails and leaving scattered footprints in the sawdust. Dustin was nowhere to be found. They wandered from room to room, stepping through the walls like ghosts.

“This must have been where the sports closet was,” Jonas’s dad said. He was standing in the middle of a large room, next to a tall pile of Sheetrock.

“How do you know?” his mom asked.

He shrugged. “It’s in my head. Like a map.”

“Where am I?” Lyle asked.

“In the laundry room. In front of the dryer.”

They called Dustin’s name, but no one answered. In the corner of the next room, beside a wall stuffed with pink insulation, Jonas found a party-sized bag of M&M’s sitting in a hardhat. He and Lyle sat down on the unfinished floor, feasting on M&M’s. The orange ones embarrassed Jonas and he didn’t eat them.

“Was this the kitchen?”

Jonas’s dad nodded. He sat down with them, slow as an old man, and then his mom did, too, the four of them passing the hat around. The room smelled like pee.

“I hope Dustin’s all right,” Lyle said.

“Probably he just wants to be by himself,” Jonas’s mother said.

“Remember when Mr. Leonard ate all those espresso beans?”

“God. Right. He didn’t sleep for days.”

Jonas’s dad shook his head, his mouth stuffed with M&M’s. “I wish he could be here with us.”

“ Here? ” Lyle said. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say?”

There was a noise behind the wall, a doglike rustle. The rustling grew louder, moving in their direction. Jonas’s mom grabbed his father’s arm. A peacock emerged from the wall, a wisp of insulation sticking from its beak like cotton candy.

“Our famous garbage eater,” his mom said, dropping her hand. “You can tell by the crest.”

While his family finished the M&M’s, Jonas went upstairs to look around. There was no ceiling, only a tunnel of triangles holding up the roof. He peered behind a stack of Sheetrock and found his brother sitting by himself on an Igloo cooler. He looked carefully at Jonas, his leg still bouncing up and down. He was holding an X-Acto knife. Jonas had the eerie impression that he’d been sitting there for months.

“Want to write something?” Dustin asked.

Jonas looked at the stud in front of his brother’s face. He’d carved something into the wood, in mismatched letters. THE ZILLERS WERE HERE. It would be inside the walls forever. Jonas took the knife but couldn’t think of anything to add.

Eventually they all went out to look at the backyard, where the people moving in were building a swimming pool. Jonas walked up to the edge. He’d always wanted a swimming pool but didn’t like seeing a big muddy pit where he’d once practiced his fencing moves. A brown puddle of rain moldered in the deep end. Aside from some pipes sticking out here and there, a steel fence holding up the taller walls, the thing was pretty much indistinguishable from a ditch. For some reason, it filled him with a cold and spooky feeling, as though he were peering into a humongous grave.

He told himself it was just a hole, a big fat ditch, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.

Jonas glanced behind him. His mom and dad, Lyle and Dustin — they were staring at something on the other side of the yard, bunched together and talking as a family. They seemed to have forgotten about him. In a second he felt his trust suck away. What happened next, whether it was an accident or not, Jonas couldn’t say. What he remembered was stepping right to the muddy lip of the hole, the feeling of presto! as the mud collapsed under his feet. A scuffle of shouts. His dad dropping next to him in the shallow end, splashing up mud, flushed with concern though he’d only fallen a few feet. Dustin and Lyle and his mother gathered at the edge.