children into little cosmopolitan princes. But all this was too much. She considered a collection of art-history primers, which her sons never cracked open. Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel were gathering dust, because her sons were unmoved by the hand of God touching Man.
“The child services people called this morning,” Scott said behind her.
“Uh-huh.”
Scott lowered Samantha to the floor and allowed her to begin walking through the room, thinking perhaps that would get his wife’s attention away from the books she was sorting. There was something remarkable, and also very predictable, Scott thought, about this moment: he and his wife had been thrust into a public crisis, suffered embarrassment on television, in the newspapers, and on the Internet, and yet the essential dynamic in their marriage remained unchanged. I’m trying to help us avoid disaster and she is still not listening.
“Maureen, we need to focus,” he insisted. “Child Protective Services got set off by the stuff about the spa. About you being at the spa alone. Apparently there’s another, quote, unquote, ‘wave of anger’ building against us. The media found out about MindWare, and me being a software millionaire, supposedly, and how much our house is worth. Peter Goldman said they’re calling us ‘symbols of excess.’ “
“Peter told you that?” Maureen asked, finally turning to face him. “You talked to him?”
“Yes. This morning. I called him after I talked to the child services people and that nut Ian Goller. Goller called just before his guy came out here. He said we should go to the courthouse when Araceli’s hearing starts. And this time we should take the boys.”
“But he said last week we didn’t have to.”
“Not to the trial. To a rally outside. On the same day.”
“A rally? A rally against the immigrants? What for?”
“Because of the kids. Goller says it’ll keep pressure on child services to leave us alone. That’s why I told that guy I wanted to drop the case. Because this whole thing is getting too crazy and weird. But now I don’t know. What happens if I tell the child services people the same thing I told the DA guy? That it was our fault. What do we say?”
Instead of responding, Maureen took a deep breath to gather herself, then walked over to the room’s large closet and opened it. She allowed the quiet to linger, and then focused her eyes and attention on the next challenge before her: a half dozen plastic containers filled with toys. The only solution here was to order the boys to go through everything and decide what they wanted to keep and send the rest to Goodwill. Responsibility: they are just the right age to learn a lesson about managing their living space.
“Maureen,” Scott insisted. “Please! We have to talk about this.”
She turned to face him and spoke in a calm but determined voice. “Don’t you understand? I’m trying to take control of our lives too.” She stretched out her arms and held her palms upward and gestured around the room filled with the artifacts of their frenetic overcollecting, the stuffed shelves of make-believe objects, and the overflowing plastic, paper, and fabric inside the closet. “What we need to focus on to keep our family in one piece is in here. In these rooms. Not out there.”
“I saw this woman and those two boys crossing the street on Broadway. And it was two days before they show up on the TV ‘kidnapped.’ I’m certain of it,” Judge Adalian told the cable host from the network’s Burbank studios. “I told this to the district attorney’s office in very clear terms. First on the phone, and then in writing. So what do they do? They ignore me. There is no follow-up. So I insist. I’m a judge and I’m used to getting my way, I guess. They still haven’t called back. I find this a bit irritating. So I called up the public defender’s office and told the very nice young deputy they have working on this case. And she was very happy to hear that a municipal judge is making a statement that corroborates the defendant’s version of events.”
Ian Goller listened to the news in his quiet office on a Sunday afternoon and rubbed his temples and tried not to think about the Angels’ pitching rotation instead, or the endangered state park at San Onofre, or any other of his usual topics of procrastination. He kept his focus on the news host as she went on to point out other tidbits