The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,147

Mace in her purse back then, and put a steel lock over the steering wheel of her parked, single-girl Honda Civic with its Show-Me State license plates. Quickly she had found a way to escape southward. That’s why I’m living here, on this hillside overlooking the ocean, instead of in some condo off La Cienega, or in Brentwood. Here I have found a purer version of California.

“There are people who believe that this change in our hometown is a natural and inevitable thing,” Goller continued. He watched as Maureen stepped forward and picked up the newspaper on the table, and saw the indignation that filled her eyes when she saw the headline. “It’s in their interest to treat this Mexican woman as the victim, and you as her victimizers. And that’s the way everyone will see it, unless you tell them differently.”

Maureen looked at him with equal measures of skepticism and curiosity. He was a strange, elegant little man; it was not every day you met someone who could make a harsh and angry line of argument sound gentle and reasonable. “I don’t quite get what you’re telling us,” Maureen said. “We’re supposed to start talking about immigration and the undocumented, or the illegals, or whatever, and that’s going to get the media off our backs? Isn’t that just going to get us deeper in a mess?”

“No. You don’t talk about those things. Definitely not. Your part is very simple. You just tell your story to someone with a sympathetic ear. You tell them your story, and you erase the idea that you’re just this crazy family.” He had them now, Scott especially: he was daydream-listening, processing truths. “There’s a reporter I know. He’s actually the local guy for one of the cable news networks. He’ll guide you through an interview, I believe, without compromising you on anything.”

Stephanie Goldman-Arbegast watched Maureen take a piece of paper with two phone numbers from Goller and give the faintest nod of assent. No, Maureen, don’t. In a short while, Stephanie would politely round up her husband and children and they would leave, and not return. Maureen was going to link her fate to the kidnapping story circulating among the nativists and rightists on talk radio, when instead she should be telling the story of the broken coffee table. That’s how Stephanie saw things. People would understand a woman’s desire to escape an angry husband. But Maureen had too much pride to do such a thing. Maureen wanted, with the stoic resolve of a British monarch, to protect the family image: she did not want the world to think of her sprawled helpless on her back.

For a moment, Stephanie felt more connected to the Mexican woman who had worked in this house, the hardworking oddball and perfectionist who had been Maureen’s shadow since Stephanie had first come for a playdate. The sad thing is that Araceli and Maureen are really so much alike.

Goller shook everyone’s hand and left. Stephanie followed her husband to the window, where he studied Goller walking down the path and to his car.

“He’s got a surfboard on top of his car,” Peter Goldman said, laughing at the incongruity as Stephanie looked at his parked BMW and saw it was true. “Look, he’s starting to take off his jacket. He’s like Batman or something.”

About a mile down the coast, there was a surf break called Cotton’s that was one of the best-kept secrets on the coast this summer. A little slice of Orange County goodness, known only to the locals, a place where, after a terrain-shifting winter storm, long walls of water now moved left over sand and rocks, large and steady at middle tide. Ian Goller thought that he might, with a little luck, have it to himself late on a quiet weekday afternoon like this one.

19

In his small kitchen-dining room in Santa Ana, Octavio Covarrubias made Araceli a breakfast of eggs with chorizo, fresh-squeezed juice from oranges plucked from the tree in the backyard, and a side dish of fried nopals, from the petals of an enormous cactus plant that grew in a vacant lot down the street. With every serving he raised the eyebrow that was hovering between his Jupiter eye and his moles Io and Europa, and asked if she wanted more coffee. Araceli grinned widely at the sight of this unshaven family patriarch of about fifty-five, a semiretired truck driver dressed in faded green work pants, holding a pan and making breakfast for her when, to