The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,60
finishing their Cream of Wheat with Araceli. Keenan drifted over to the Room of a Thousand Wonders and began assembling a three-level spacecraft with Danish plastic mini-bricks, while Brandon climbed onto the couch in the living room and lost himself in the fourth volume of a detective-fantasy thriller for “middle readers” that involved teams of elves capable of time-bending magic. So gripping was the escape of the boy-detective protagonist from yet another band of machine-gun-toting criminals, that Brandon failed to notice that the coffee table was missing.
After the usual and easy post-breakfast cleanup in the kitchen, Araceli wandered about the house picking up dirty laundry, starting with the pajamas in the boys’ room, and then moving to the nursery. She was preoccupied, once again, with Felipe, because after putting away the saucepan she had used to prepare the Cream of Wheat, she had a sudden premonition that he would call her today—perhaps it was some sort of psychic displacement produced by having witnessed the fight between Scott and Maureen the night before. In the presence of violent disagreement, a germ of happiness might take root. Hoy el gordito me va a llamar. Araceli was daydream-dancing with her “little fat man” when she entered the nursery and noticed the comforter on the floor and quickly surmised that Maureen had slept there. A few minutes later the conclusion was confirmed when Araceli entered the master bedroom and found the bed exactly as she had left it yesterday afternoon. Clearly, el señor Scott had not slept here either; he had probably bedded down with the big television set, and indeed, on her final stop on the laundry search Araceli found a sleeping bag and pillow tossed on the floor there. Well, of course they didn’t make up before going to bed, that was no surprise. Araceli made her way to the laundry room, got the first load of Maureen’s clothes into the washer after checking for and failing to see any blood: It appears they did not kill themselves. Finally, she circled back to the kitchen, unsurprised that in her wanderings through the house her path did not cross with that of la señora Maureen. It was a big house and on many days Maureen wandered in and out, unannounced, quite often.
At 12:15 p.m. the boys came back to the kitchen table for lunch, and it was only after they had devoured the last of the chicken tenders Araceli had prepared that Keenan, who was always slightly more attuned to any change in his surroundings than his older brother, finally asked Araceli casually, “Where’s my mom?”
Araceli turned from the sink, where she had a saucepan soaking in lightly soaped water, and faced Keenan.
“¿No está en la casa?”
“No, she’s not here.”
“That is strange,” Araceli said. It occurred to Araceli, for a second, that she should utter something to disimular, one of those verbal misdirections that Mexicans are especially good at, a fiction such as, Oh, now I remember, she went to the market, that would lift the look of mild concern that had suddenly affixed itself to Keenan’s hazel eyes. Instead she said nothing and thought how on any other day Maureen exiting the house unannounced without the two boys for an hour or two or three wouldn’t cause her any concern, but after the events of the night before …? Given the swirling cloud of disorder and emotional collapse gathering around this household, anything was possible. One day a crew of men hacking the garden with machetes, the next her patrones wrestling in the living room. What next? Maybe my crazy jefa left the baby with me too and didn’t tell me. In the time it took to scrub the saucepan the idea morphed from preposterous to credible. The baby is wandering somewhere alone in the house! I have to find the baby! Araceli bolted from the kitchen, her hands dripping with dishwater, leaving Keenan’s unanswered “What’s wrong?” in her wake as she moved in big, loping strides to the living room, and to the nursery and through the hallways, into the walk-in closet, calling out, “Samanta! Samanta!” eating the “th” in much the same way the baby herself would in six months’ time when she tried, for the first time, to pronounce her own name. Finally, Araceli sprinted out of the house and into the backyard, across the lawn, and toward the cool, still blue plane of the swimming pool. No, please, no, not here, aquí no, in the name of Nuestra