The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,161
truth set in. It was a cruel thing to watch, but it was as it should be, Goller thought. Soon, inevitably, his defendant and her problems would pass through the door that led to Mexico.
As he contemplated the quarter-inch-thin newborn baby of paperwork called The People of the State of California v. Araceli N. Ramirez, Ian Goller could already see its final fate on that day when, as an inch-thick folder, it would be rolled away into that mausoleum called Archives.
For the first few days without Araceli, the disorder at the home on Paseo Linda Bonita began to gather momentum at first light with the unmade beds, whose comforters and sheets endured in the shape of lumpy cotton corpses until late in the afternoon. Only Maureen tackled that essential household task, until she finally scolded Scott into action: “If you could make our bed, at least, before you leave in the morning.” He grumbled and complied, but left it all uneven. Was it that he didn’t care that the comforter was drooping on her side of the bed, or was it some kind of eye condition that prevented him from seeing it? She was going to have to teach the boys to make their own beds, and give them some incentive to do so, perhaps an allowance. They’re old enough to do chores now. I swept floors and folded clothes when I was a girl. Then there was the kitchen, whose crowded sink soon evoked the dishwashing station of a cheap diner, with sticky pots and pans beginning to climb upward and over the edge of the sink by 10:00 a.m., their leftover contents becoming encrusted as noon approached. All three bedrooms, the hallways, and the living room were littered with the sweaty fabric of shirts, socks, and underwear of every size but her own. She found Samantha’s soiled socks hiding under the couch, and pajama tops in the backyard, and children’s picture books on the floor underneath the dining room table. And then there was Samantha herself. Though the smallest member of the family, she tossed more objects into the splatter of disarray than everyone else put together. No one could tell her to pick up her hand puppets, her dolls, her stuffed lions, her rubber blocks, her Tinker Bell wand. Apparently, Araceli had spent a good amount of her day picking up after Samantha, who required a pair of eyes on her at all times and thus subtracted from Maureen’s ability to be in all the corners of the home where she needed to be. Samantha, you came to this world to make your mother’s life more beautiful, and feminine, but you’ve also made it infinitely more complicated.
The only solution was to spur gadget-man into action.
“Scott. The dishes. Could you, please?”
He studied the spread of steel bowls and plastic plates across the kitchen’s marble counters, three complete sets associated with the preparation and serving of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “Why didn’t you use the dishwasher?”
Maureen didn’t answer this question, and allowed the aggression in her silence to linger until she heard the water start to run in the sink.
When the school year began and Maureen started volunteering three days a week at the boys’ school it was going to be very difficult. She was going to have to find day care for Samantha because they could never again hire a stranger to work in their home.
The consequences of their years of comfort, their pampering by Mexican hands, were there to live with. Voices of judgment continued to occupy the space beyond the pine, glass, and tile cocoon of Paseo Linda Bonita, and she sensed they were growing in volume and meanness. The need to escape that noise gave a greater focus and purpose to her cooking, scrubbing, folding, and other domestic pursuits, as if each muscle exercised in domesticity were building walls that sealed her off from those profane outsiders. But how long could you transform your home into a monastery, with all the televisions and radios permanently off, and the phone off the hook, before you went crazy? She tried calling Stephanie Goldman-Arbegast, but the awkward silence and transparent excuses that followed her invitation for Max and Riley to come and play in the backyard and swim in the pool dissuaded her from calling again. What have I done for my friend to treat my family with the frigid distance the uninfected have for the diseased? For the rest of that day, Maureen understood that she had