The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,102
has taken Araceli with him, which would be the sensible thing to do, and Araceli cleaned before they left, because Araceli is like me and cannot step away from a disorderly home. But what about Scott’s car? Had they left on foot, on an expedition to the park, almost a mile away? Or a picnic in the meadows?
Maureen decided she would wait for them to return, and made lunch for her daughter, leaving the pan and dirty dishes in the sink for Araceli to clean. When they had finished, she said: “Come on, Sam, let’s go find your brothers … and your father.” They were probably walking back from the park. “Let’s go rescue them, because that’s a long walk uphill. Wonder if poor Araceli can make it.”
Five minutes later Maureen and Samantha had pulled up to the same park where she had deposited Araceli and the boys in a fit of pique two weeks earlier, but it was empty, all the maids who usually gathered there absent because it was the Fourth of July. She accelerated away quickly, drove back toward the Estates, and stopped at the bus stop, and from the front seat of the car she looked into the knee-high grass of the meadow, which had been bleached golden-green by the sun, remembering that she actually picnicked there with Scott and the boys a few years back, to take in the unobstructed view of the ocean. They would have returned, but for the cow chips that littered the field and ruined the taste of her sandwiches and of the Pinot Noir. Now she searched the shifting surface of the windblown grass for her husband, or her children, or the tall, thick shape of her Mexican employee.
“Where are they, Samantha?”
Wherever they are, they have to pass by here. On foot, or in a car, they have to enter through this gate. She had turned off the engine, wondering how long she would have to wait, when she saw a figure emerge on the horizon, a man walking where the meadow dropped steeply, struggling to keep his footing, as if working against an unseen tide.
Araceli unlatched the front gate, followed a straight path through a crabgrass lawn, climbed up to a porch, and rang the doorbell. Her long journey to reach this address was rewarded, delightfully, by the sudden appearance at the door of a ruggedly handsome man in his forties who greeted her with a chivalrous “Buenos días” and the same pencil-thin mustache and jaunty smile that had broken hearts when he left Mexico City two decades earlier. Salomón Luján was expecting Araceli and her charges, because an hour earlier he had half listened to his niece’s explanation of the Torres-Thompson family saga, while simultaneously watching two work crews install a canopy tent and trampoline in his backyard for the big Luján family Fourth of July fiesta.
Now Mr. Luján stood at his door and heard Araceli tell the story of the absent parents herself. “Estás haciendo lo que debes hacer, y tus jefes te lo van a agradecer,” he said. Once a common laborer, Salomón Luján believed that being loyal to your gringo employers was the secret to mexicano success on this side of the border, his barrel-chested exertions on behalf of various warehouse owners and construction contractors having lifted him through many layers of North American achievement, including the purchase of this home, his triumphant entry into the water-heater business, and his oath-taking as an American citizen and his recent election to the Huntington Park City Council. He sized up Araceli and decided she too was destined for something better, and, judging from the free-flowing hair styles and leather-sandaled feet of her charges, she was the one who kept order in the hippie household where she worked.
“Stay with us today and tonight if you like, and tomorrow I will find the grandfather,” he said, switching to English for the benefit of the two boys. “Today is impossible, because it’s the Fourth of July and all the city offices are closed. But first thing in the morning I’ll call the city clerk and check voter registration and we’ll find him. For the moment, come to the backyard. Our party is just getting started.”
He led Araceli and the boys through his living room, which was decorated in a style Salomon’s smart-aleck Ivy League daughter called “Zacatecas Soap Opera Chic,” with an oil painting of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on one wall. The Knight-Errant of La Mancha stood for