The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,135

He stopped when he reached an aerial news shot of a structure on a dead-end circle that looked familiar. When he saw the graphic that read MISSING CHILDREN FOUND he knew it was his home, and he considered the size of the crescent-shaped backyard, and how much of it was filled by the desert garden. From the air, and in the fading illumination of dusk, the garden looked liked a herd of small spiked animals escorted by tall cacti shepherds. He thought that it all made for an aesthetically pleasing composition of circles and lines when you saw it from the sky, before the little commentator in his head finally woke up and he realized, Holy shit, there’s a helicopter floating above my house.

Before he could rise to his feet to go to the window to look for the helicopter, the television switched to a video clip shot from the ground, footage that showed Scott himself talking with a sheriff’s deputy at his door several hours earlier, a few minutes after Scott had received that phone call from Brandon. The deputy was smiling and patting him on the back, and Scott guessed that this image was supposed to convey the idea that the drama had been resolved happily, and sure enough seconds later there was a shot of his two sons walking up the driveway, escorted very quickly by a deputy to the front door. The television cut to a studio shot, of a woman with flaring nostrils and stiff blond hair that sprayed forth, fountainlike, from her head, and a band of gold coins around her neck, and she was speaking to a camera with a kind of vehemence that Scott found unappealing, until she stopped suddenly and just stared at the camera for several seconds and began nodding. This caused Scott to reach for the volume and turn it up. The woman on the television was listening to a caller with an accent that Scott recognized as upper New England.

“… and I just look at those two precious little boys, Nancy, and I wonder, what did that Mexican lady want with them? What was she thinking she was gonna do with them? I just wonder.”

“That’s what we’re all thinking,” the blond host said, which led Scott to change the channel, inadvertently causing Araceli to appear on the screen. She was being escorted to the police car, earlier in the day, with her wrists clasped together with plastic strings. Oh, my God, Scott thought. What have we done to this poor Mexican woman? The screen cut to another shot tagged LIVE: ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, which showed his $250-per-week housemaid emerging from a police station, winding her way through concrete obstacles meant to fend off terrorist attacks. “Araceli Noemi Ramirez, kidnapping suspect, has now been set free, with investigators saying …” Araceli was walking away from the cameras, studying the news-gatherers filming her from a distance with the same quizzical and annoyed look she gave Scott when he asked for catsup to apply to her turkey sandwiches. Now she stopped, to listen to a shouted question, apparently, and the camera zoomed and shook, with his large domestic employee bouncing at the center of the frame as she turned and walked away with long and loping strides, an image that reminded Scott of that footage of Bigfoot supposedly walking through a clearing in a California forest, a video moment halfway between the real and the simulated, like those shots of turban man and binocular lady Elysian Systems sold to the government.

Scott was changing the channel again when Maureen appeared at the door behind him.

“Scott. The police say the reporters outside won’t leave,” she said, and there was something startling in hearing her address him. “They say they’re going to wait until we make a statement.” She had not slept in two days and she was fading quickly, her voice dreamy and faraway.

“I’ll go out there and talk to them.”

“No, I have to go with you. You can’t be out there alone.”

“Why?”

“Because they need to see both of us. We both need to be there. To defend ourselves.”

“What?”

“People are talking about our family. All over the city. Didn’t you know? Stephanie Goldman-Arbegast just called. They were driving in from the airport and heard people talking about us on the radio. About the boys and Araceli and me and you. For an entire hour. People are saying we’re bad parents. We have to show ourselves. Because people are saying things about us. Didn’t