The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,11
us your ears!”
“How cute,” the early guests called out. “Little Romans!”
When the second and third guests arrived at precisely the appointed hour, the boys were off playing with the children of the first guests, while Maureen and Scott were busy in the back, which left Araceli to open the door for the invitados.
“We’re here for Keenan’s party?” An American woman with vaguely Asian features and a child and husband in tow tried to look past Araceli into the interior of the house, her expression suggesting she expected to see wondrous and magical things there.
“Sí, adelante.” What Araceli really wanted to say was, Why do you people insist on treating an informal social gathering as if it were the launching of a rocket ship? Why do you arrive with a clock ticking in your head? How am I supposed to finish these sopes la señora Maureen wants if you keep ringing the doorbell? In Mexico it was understood that when you invited people to a party at one o’clock, that meant the host would be almost ready at one, and therefore the guests should arrive at their leisure at least an hour later. Here they do things differently. The punctual guests walked past her, oohing and aahing at the decorations in the living room, at the Roman-lettered cardboard signs declaring happy birthday keenan and viii on either side of the Chesterfield sofa, and the Doric Styrofoam columns topped with plastic replica helmets. Araceli recognized this couple, and the other guests that followed, from parties past. They were people she saw frequently back in the days when she first started with the Torres-Thompsons, when el señor Scott had his own company. They arrived dressed in the assertively casual attire Southern Californians wore at their weekend parties: in cotton shorts and leather sandals, in jeans faded to the whitish blue of the Orange County sky in summer, and in T-shirts that had gone through the washer a few times too often. Her jefa wanted everything “just right,” and now these early arrivers in their unironed natural fabrics were preventing Araceli from finishing her appointed task. The way some of these people dressed was the flip side of their punctuality: they were like children who cling to a favorite blanket or shirt, they valued comfort over presentation, they were unaware or unconcerned about the spectacle they inflicted upon the eyes of the overworked mexicana who must greet them. How disappointing to work so hard preparing a home for an elegant event, only to have such unkempt guests.
“Hello, I brought some cookies for the party,” the next early arriver said. “Can I leave them with you?”
The woman with the chocolate chip cookies was Carla Wallace-Zuberi, chief publicist of the defunct MindWare Digital Solutions. She was a roundish white woman of Eastern European stock with box-shaped sunglasses and a matriarchal air, and she lingered near the doorway as her husband advanced into the Torres-Thompson home with their daughter, Carla’s gaze settling on Araceli as the Mexican woman took a few impertinent moments to assess the cookies. Carla Wallace-Zuberi prided herself on having an eye for strong personalities and here was one that clearly could fill a room, and not just because she was a tad larger than most other Mexican servants. Araceli wore her hair pulled tightly and gathered in two fist-sized nubs just over her ears, an absurd style that suggested a disoriented German peasant. The only thing this Mexican woman accomplishes by pulling her hair back is to establish a look of severity: maybe that’s the point. A small spray of hair, just a few bangs, jutted forth from Araceli’s forehead like the curled plume of a quail, a halfhearted concession to femininity. On this as on all other workdays, Araceli wore the boxy, nurselike uniform called a filipina that was standard for domestics in Mexico City. Araceli had five such uniforms and today she wore the pale yellow one because it was the newest. She took the cookies from the publicist with a frown that said: since you insist on giving these to me … The publicist suppressed a surprised chuckle. This is one tough woman, a no-nonsense mom. Look at those hips: this woman has given birth. Of course she is irritated, because she is separated from her child, or children. Carla Wallace-Zuberi was a self-described “progressive,” and a few days before this party she had spent twenty minutes in her neighborhood bookstore perusing the back cover, jacket flap material, and opening