The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,112
I guess they can’t stone us. I predict they’ll start throwing those bottles and cans. Unless the police get here first. In a situation like this, it helps if the police show up. They call that ‘restoring order.’ “
A minute later two police cruisers slowly wheeled up to the block, each painted white with slanted steel-blue letters proclaiming POLICE, and progressively smaller letters declaring HUNTINGTON PARK, and the department’s wordy motto: DEDICATED TO SERVICE THROUGH EXCELLENCE IN PERFORMANCE. Police Chief Mike Mueller emerged from one of the vehicles, standing tall and thick and midwestern in navy wool, and strode into the space between the contending parties, raising his hands like an announcer in a boxing ring. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to remind all of you, once again, that we have a whole new city ordinance related to so-called political gatherings on residential streets.”
He kept his arms raised and turned his beef-fed torso 360 degrees, his preferred method for ending these “Mexican standoffs.” “Okay, all right, everyone go home now.” The crowd in the street obeyed, as did the members of the Luján family on the porch, until Lucía stood alone on the front steps and started a chant directed at the retreating lynch mob.
“¡Re-for-ma! ¡Re-for-ma! ¡Re-for-ma!”
Brandon soon joined the chant too, his voice squeaking as he tried to match Lucía’s. “Ray-for-mah! Ray-for-mah!”
Keenan stood on tiptoe and joined them too, trying to mimic the Spanish sounds, as his brother was. When the last of the lynch mob was gone and the chanting had stopped, Keenan turned to his big brother and asked, “Who’s Ray Forma?”
“No sé,” the boy answered.
Maureen and Scott stood in the kitchen looking at each other, studying the main work area of their servant, the unwashed plastic tumbler and bowl in the sink the only objects out of place: the leopard skin of the marble countertops gleamed, spotless, even the windows suggested they might squeak if you put a cloth to them. The perfect kitchen and the disturbing art were both the work of the same Mexican woman, and Maureen felt blind and ignorant in the face of this newly revealed proof of human complexity: I took her for granted, allowed her to seep into the white noise around me. It was not immediately obvious what Maureen and Scott should do next, and they wandered about the house, hoping that the ring of the phone or chime of the front door would liberate them from waiting for something to happen. For the moment, it seemed likely, or at least probable, that their two sons and their employee might appear at the door at any moment. It was Maureen and Scott’s experience as parents that all crises eventually ended and their home returned to its placid normality. Fevers dropped, cuts were stitched up, X-rays were taken, and doctors pronounced the children resilient and fated to healthy lives, and when it was all over the home’s routine comforts—the hum of television sets, the salty smell of cheese and prepared meats cooking in the kitchen—confirmed their faith that good parenting values and vigilance would protect them.
But very quickly the passing time and the empty home and all its objects and boyless silence became an excruciating judgment on their own actions, a slow ticking punishment. “Where could they be?” Maureen asked as she wandered into the boys’ bedroom and studied the modular plastic boxes that contained their toys. “Where did she take them?” Maureen repeated the questions out loud several times as she moved from the boys’ room to the media room and the kitchen, carrying Samantha through the house on her shoulder, trying to get her baby girl to take the noon nap that was now two hours overdue. The time is all wrong for her to go to sleep now. She will be awake late into the evening. She can sense something is wrong; she can sense her parents are panicked.
Maureen ran through her mind what she knew about Araceli, wondering if she could summon a fact or name that might provide an answer or clue to the question of where she had taken the boys. The mother who had given Maureen Araceli’s name was in South America as of three years ago, having become an expatriate for a U.S. company in São Paolo, Brazil, and Maureen had no number for her. Araceli was from Mexico City, if Maureen remembered correctly. It took some effort of memory to produce Araceli’s last name: Ramirez, a name confirmed moments