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and housed under glass in the county museum. Any mercury that was there had dispersed long ago to poison the river and its tributaries.
    The house will always be his; no one can take it from him. He has dreamed of this house since he was a small child, after seeing a similar one during the brief time they lived in Maine. On one of the few vacations he remembers taking as a family they drove down from the remote northeastern corner of the state where they were living, less than four miles from the Canadian border, to the southern seacoast. For a week they stayed in a motel on Highway 1, and every morning drove fifteen minutes to a beach where they sat in silence until lunch, trudged to a hotdog stand, ate in silence, and trudged back to the beach for the afternoon. At four they would walk to a different concession stand for ice cream, and then at precisely six-fifteen climb back in the roasting car and drive to a lobster shack for dinner. At the end of the week they went to a barbecue at the summer home of one of his father’s superiors. Before then Paul had not believed that ordinary people lived in houses with more than one story. There was a maid, a black woman, who kept bringing around a wooden tray filled with glasses of lemonade and a silver tray with punch that was only offered to adults. Perhaps it was because they had been staying in such a dismal motel room, but having seen the house just that once, the form stuck in his vision, grew distorted, and became something different but related to the original, a house of three stories, composed of gables and wings, symmetry and light. It was a house he had to have for himself.
    Some time ago—he can no longer remember how many weeks—his house sold in a foreclosure auction on the steps of the county courthouse. Rain was beginning to fall as Paul hovered near the small crowd gathered to seize what was his. When he heard the final sale price he stumbled to a trashcan and vomited. It was a fraction of what the house had cost to build, not to mention all the money that went into decorating and furnishing it, never mind what the bunker itself had cost. In addition to all that, he still owes his father-in-law hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that will now never be forgiven. He can no longer count what he owes to the banks. On the steps of the courthouse the crowd stared at him as if he were a vagrant or a drunk.
    “Food poisoning,” he mumbled, to himself as much as to anyone else. A woman nodded, and then an older man, as crumpled and mud-footed as Paul, came forward from the bushes to offer him a handkerchief.
    “Hey brother, wipe your face,” the man said. “Stand up straight. Let’s go get some soup.”
    By that time the house was already empty. When at last it was clear there was no way to stop the foreclosure, Paul had held an estate sale, keeping only those small items that could be pushed through the man-sized hole at the back of the pantry leading into the bunker. In the end there was little to sell since Amanda had taken most of the furniture. “I’ll leave you the appliances,” she said when she moved out, “I’m not heartless. But I’m taking the antiques and beds. After all, it was my father’s money that paid for them. You can get yourself a cot until you figure out what you’re going to do. If you have any sense you’ll come with me. We can start over, Paul. This isn’t really about you, what I’m doing, it’s about the choices you’ve made.”
    It was stupid not to protest then, foolish and weak not to fight for his sons, but he was in such a profound state of shock he could only shake his head.
    “What I’m saying is, I want you to understand that moving out would definitely not be my first choice, Paul, but I don’t feel like you’ve given me another one. I’m doing this because you refuse to be reasonable. I have to think about the boys. And I’m thinking of my own future too.” As she spoke to him, her shaking hands