The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,151

there were on fire that day. So when we got them back, I swear they smelled like smoke.”

“Uh-huh,” the interviewer said, and Maureen knew she had answered poorly.

“But we did find some strange things in her room.”

“What things?”

“Strange art. Trash that she had played with. It’s strange. Because this is someone we thought of as part of our family. She lived with us. We trusted her implicitly. And then I realized I didn’t even know who she was.”

“Now, tell us about this,” the interviewer continued. “There’s this clip I want to play for you. It’s become sort of famous now.” On a small monitor at the interviewer’s feet, her twelve-second rant played again, and she cringed at the way her nostrils flared and her jaw tightened as she shot back at the reporter, as if she were a suburban mother bear snapping at the camera-toting naturalist threatening her cubs, an effect heightened by the way she searched behind the cameras for the man who had insulted her.

“Really, why were you so angry?”

“I had just been reunited with my sons, and I hadn’t slept for two days. I was just incredibly stressed out. I mean, to go through all that: first, the worry of not knowing where the boys were, if they were okay. And then, you know, the joy of having them with us again. I was completely wiped out. Plus, I couldn’t even see this guy, because he was standing near the back. And here I am, the mom of these two kids who’ve been taken away, and he’s accusing me. But I shouldn’t have yelled like that. Like I said, I was just incredibly exhausted.”

“Of course,” the interviewer said. “We can only imagine.”

They wrapped up and when the four-minute, twenty-five second segment aired later that evening near the top of the 8:00 p.m. cablecast, Janet Bryson turned on her TiVo and watched it three times.

In Santa Ana, Octavio Covarrubias missed the interview because he was preparing and serving a marinated carne de res barbecue in Araceli’s honor. An hour or so later, with the main course served to the small party of family and neighbors, he slipped into the empty living room for a moment to feed his news fix, and caught a few seconds of Maureen’s interview when it was replayed on the cable news station as an introduction to the show hosted by a very conservative man who Octavio Covarrubias watched, occasionally, with the same sense of stealthy intent that Janet Bryson felt when she studied the Mexicans in her neighborhood. Octavio needed to get back to the party, and told himself he shouldn’t watch this man tonight, but he allowed himself to listen as the man began to talk about “the illegal who was set free.” This television man was always well dressed, Octavio noted, and tonight he was wearing a black suit with rather bright white stripes, and Octavio thought that, if he ever bought a suit, it would be one like that, because it had a certain big-city, old-time gangster movie look to it, though the way he moved in his chair and talked to his guests suggested to Octavio a policeman: a man who runs his small fiefdom with aggressive self-assurance, who intimidates with a crackling diction and an unflagging faith in his right to do so.

“Do we really want to entrust our children to these people from this essentially backward society?” the man was saying. He was in New York, but was talking, via satellite link, to the reporter who had sat down with Maureen Thompson. “Isn’t it a sign of weakness in our social fabric that we do this? It’s the most important job we have. It’s the foundation of our civilization, for chrissakes. Motherhood. Why should we sell it off, to the most desperate and least educated people, as if we were hiring a day laborer to dig a ditch? I’m telling ya, and I know a lot of people aren’t going to agree with me, but it just sounds to me like an essentially stupid thing to do.”

Luz Covarrubias entered, with Araceli trailing behind her.

“Octavio!” Luz snapped reprovingly. “¿Por qué estás mirando a ese hombre feo, ese hombre que nos odia?” his wife asked, not for the first time.

“Porque hay que saber lo que piensa el enemigo,” he said.

“Basta,” his wife said, and she grabbed the remote control from the front table and punched the mute button, because she knew from prior experience that he wouldn’t let her