The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,63

distress, no nosy neighbor to take note of the anomaly of a servant in her filipina waiting impatiently for her bosses to arrive, gritting her teeth at the darkening street. Araceli began to contemplate various scenarios that might explain this new and strangest turn of events. Perhaps the violent encounter in the living room had been followed by others, with Maureen finally deciding to leave her husband for good. Or maybe she was in the hospital, while Scott had taken flight lest he be arrested. Or he might have killed her and buried her in the backyard. One saw these news reports about American couples bringing the narrative of their relationships to a demented end with kitchen knives and shovels: Araceli had expanded her knowledge of U.S. geography from the maps in Univision stories that showed the places where North American men murdered their pregnant wives and fiancées, places with names like Nebraska, Utah, and New Hampshire.

Araceli would like to leave too, but she could not, thanks to the chain that ran back to the house and those two boys anchoring her to this piece of California real estate. She could not run away, or stray too far, because there were children in the home and to leave them alone would be an abdication of responsibility, even if they had been left in Araceli’s care against her will. ¿Qué diría mi querida madre? Subconsciously, Araceli began to pace the sidewalk, reaching the boundaries of the next property and turning back, because anything might happen to those boys, unsupervised: they might even start a fire. She could not therefore simply continue walking down the hill, and this realization caused her to stamp her foot into the concrete like a child forced back inside for supper.

Araceli was still outside, about twenty-five yards beyond the closed front door, when the phone rang inside the Torres-Thompson home. She did not hear it. Anticipating that the person calling was his mother, Keenan interrupted his game play at the second ring and ran from the living room to the kitchen, stood on his tiptoes, and grabbed the dangling cord of the receiver from its perch five feet off the ground on the kitchen wall on the fourth ring.

“Hello? Mommy?”

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Mommy, where are you?”

“I’m just taking a little break.”

“A break?”

“Yes, honey. A little vacation.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m angry with your father.” “Oh.”

The pause that followed lasted long enough for even young Keenan to feel the need to fill it, though he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Mommy loves you,” Maureen said finally. She was in a hotel room with musty old Navajo rugs and sage burning on an incense tray, watching her baby girl devour a banana. The squeaky tones of her younger son’s voice evoked images of domestic routine: Araceli must have the situation in hand, Maureen thought; she is helping Scott, and Maureen felt her concerns about the boys and home she had left behind lift quickly. “Mommy’s just a little angry with your father.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Soon, honey. Soon.”

These words comforted Keenan sufficiently that he started thinking about getting back to his game. It had been ages since he’d played it as long as he had today.

“What have you been doing today?”

“We’re playing on our Game Boys,” he said. “I got to the top of Cookie Mountain. Brandon showed me how to do it. It was really cool.”

Maureen winced. Scott gets home and the first thing he does is let them play those mindless games.

“Did you eat?”

Keenan looked across the kitchen and noticed the dishes Araceli had left on the counter. “We’re having spaghetti and meatballs,” he said. Maureen heard the “we” and assumed it included Scott. Satisfied that her boys were being taken care of by Araceli, and that Scott was hovering nearby, she said goodbye to her son and hung up the phone quickly, the better to avoid any awkward conversations with her husband.

Years of being married and raising children had brought Scott’s and Maureen’s parental clocks into sync. Thus, a minute or so after Keenan had replaced the phone in its cradle, the phone rang again. Keenan had returned to the living room and turned his Game Boy back on, and now he circled back to the kitchen, picking up the phone on the eighth ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Keenan?”

“Dad?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Where are you?” Keenan said. Scott was sufficiently distracted by his surroundings and the circumstances under which he was making the call—he was standing in the patch of grass by the street outside Charlotte