The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,137

sheriff department’s PIO was just out there fifteen minutes ago. The public information officer, I mean. And he gave a statement, saying they were releasing your employee, and not charging her with anything. He said this was all a, quote, ‘misunderstanding.’ “

“Right,” Scott said quickly.

“But when they pressed him for details, he got off his script,” Goller continued. “He started saying some things that weren’t on the release. He said some things that our friend Detective Blake told him, apparently. He said your employee was trying to, quote, ‘rescue’ your children because you had, quote, ‘abandoned’ them.”

“Fuck,” Scott said, which earned him a pointed look from his wife.

“That’s what he said. ‘Rescue.’ Which, of course, implies that you two placed your children in danger.”

“Jesus,” Scott said.

“Why would he say that?” Maureen asked. “Why would anyone care? We got our boys back.”

“He said that because he needed to explain how it was that a sheriff, an American sheriff, could simply release an illegal immigrant onto the streets, especially one that was just a suspect in a child abduction case.”

“Child abduction?” Scott said. “But is that really—”

“The PIO had to give them something,” Goller continued. “So he gave them you, in so many words.”

“Us?” Maureen said.

“And as soon as he made that suggestion, well, it got the reporters excited. They started throwing around phrases like ‘irresponsible’ and ‘negligence’ and asking if we’re going to ‘press charges.’ Being reporters, they don’t really understand what those words mean. But when they start asking those kinds of questions, Child Protective Services will eventually get their noses in the case.” Goller quickly explained the competing bureaucratic imperatives that would soon envelope Maureen, Scott, and their children, and how it was that two good parents could easily end up before a skeptical judge in family court. It shouldn’t be that a mother and father who called the police in search of their boys ended up under the scrutiny of Child Protective Services, that crude, cheaply staffed machinery, as Goller saw it, where parents were studied under a lens of maximum disbelief. But it happened all the time.

“So what do we do?” Maureen asked finally.

“Number one, you go out there and speak very calmly and show these people who you are,” Goller said. “You’re the very picture of a happy California family. Just you standing up there will do a lot to calm the waters, so to speak. You don’t answer any questions. But you do say that you’re thankful to the sheriff’s department and the Huntington Park police and the media—it’s important that you remember the media—that you’re thankful to all of them for helping to find your two sons. If they shout any questions, you don’t answer. You just say thanks and walk away. Okay?”

Scott digested this information as he walked down the lawn, Maureen following after him with Samantha over her shoulder, having left the boys inside their room with the assistant district attorney. Like a family condemned to the guillotine, they walked with heads bowed toward the spot where the lawn dropped off and sloped downward. A cluster of microphones attached to two poles stood waiting there, their steel silhouettes glinting against a cloud of white light from the television lamps. Scott felt the heat of the lights on his skin, and a kind of nakedness he had not felt since he was an adolescent. Here we stand before you, my American family and I: have pity on me, their bumbling provider and protector, and on them, because they aren’t to blame. He approached the microphone to speak, though before he could open his mouth someone yelled out, “Is that Torres with an s or with a z?”

“An s,” he said, and smiled, because the question calmed him and brought him to the moment.

“I, we, my wife and I … we just want to say thank you to everybody,” Scott began. “To the sheriff’s department, to the Child Protective Services people, to everyone. And to the media too, for getting the word out. Brandon and Keenan are home safe now. They’re going to be okay.” In ten seconds, he had reached the end of all he could say.

“Were they kidnapped?” a male voice asked in a tone that suggested irony and disbelief. “Was there a note?”

Scott could see the wisdom of Ian Goller’s advice: unwrapping the full and complicated truth for this assembled rabble of news-gatherers would be an act of suicide. “And we’re glad this is over,” he continued, ignoring the question. “Thanks