The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,143

for God knows what purpose.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Maureen thought of the daily vigilance necessary to keep domestic order and to stay true to her values and raise children who would be good citizens and thinkers. It was all a private, selfless act, and now she was being mocked as precisely the opposite. Araceli was responsible for this chorus of snarky and misspelled voices against her.

“How could she not believe we were coming back? That doesn’t make sense to me. She doesn’t even leave a note. That woman was always off. And why take them into Los Angeles, of all places?”

“She was wrong to do that.”

“She placed them in danger.”

Stephanie Goldman-Arbegast kept silent and gave her friend a weak nod of solidarity. She sensed that Maureen would eventually add her voice to those seeking to punish Araceli, and she did not approve. I will not hold this against my friend. Here before her was a good woman in an impossible situation. She lived for her children. Her children were her art. And now the city belittled her as a bad mother. Would I act any different? If my jaw tightens in anger when my New York in-laws criticize my parenting, how would I act if an entire city were sitting in judgment? Stephanie watched as her friend bit her lip and turned to look at her sleeping baby girl.

“This rocker is too small for Samantha, isn’t it?” Maureen said finally, as if she had stepped out of a fog and found her daughter, unexpectedly. “I can’t put her in this thing anymore. She’s all squeezed into it. What was I thinking?”

In the space Araceli knew as the Room of a Thousand Wonders, Brandon and Keenan huddled with their friends, Max and Riley Goldman-Arbegast. For once they had not drifted immediately to the pleasures of interlocking plastic blocks arranged as imaginary parapets, forts, and bunkers, or the distractions of handheld electronic games. Instead, they talked about their recent adventures: the Goldman-Arbegasts’ trip to Europe, and the train journey that Brandon and Keenan had taken out of their home and into another world in the center of Los Angeles.

“We saw the Parthenon in Athens,” Max said.

“Is that where Zeus lived?” Keenan asked.

“No, that’s Mount Olympus,” Brandon corrected. Both he and Max, the older of the Goldman-Arbegast brothers, were great fans of Greek mythology.

“And then later we went to London and saw the marbles the English took from the Greeks.”

“The Greeks played with marbles?” Keenan asked.

“No. They’re these big flat pictures carved out of marble,” Max said. “And we saw the Rosetta Stone.”

“When we went to L.A., everybody spoke in Spanish, mostly,” Keenan said. “We saw el cuatro de julio.”

“I learned how to say ‘thanks’ in Italian,” Riley countered. “It’s ‘grazie.’ “

“And we saw you and Keenan on television,” Max said.

“Yeah,” Brandon said flatly. “We were on lots of TV stations.”

“Lots and lots. Like every one, I think,” Riley said.

“Were you scared when that lady kidnapped you?” Max asked, rushing in the question, as if he had been waiting to ask.

“Nah, I don’t think she kidnapped us,” Brandon said. “We were looking for our grandfather. But we got all mixed up. We saw some cool things, though.”

“We saw the Colosseum,” Riley said.

“Were there gladiators?” Keenan asked.

“Nah,” Max said. “It’s all ruins now.”

“Parts of L.A. are ruins too,” Brandon said. He began to share a few more details of his journey to Los Angeles, and his encounters with war refugees and lynch mobs, though this time with less gusto than before. He had already tried telling the story to his parents, only to be interrupted by so many of his mother’s questions that the story didn’t sound like his anymore. Why is it, he wondered later, that stories begin to turn old the first time you tell them? Why won’t a story allow itself to be told over and over?

“I think L.A. sounds cooler than Europe,” Max pronounced once Brandon had finished.

“I guess,” Brandon said. “I really wanna go to Greece, though. And Rome too.”

The four slumping boys remained sitting in a circle; the older boys felt their bodies slip into an unease, a too-bigness that hinted at their coming adolescence. Finally, Brandon noticed a book sticking out of Max’s back pocket.

“Whatcha reading?”

“It’s an old book I found on my grandpa’s bookshelf when we stopped to visit him in New York,” Max said. “He said I probably should be older to read it. Because there’s stuff in it I shouldn’t read ‘cause I’m only twelve. But