The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,65

them on the floor, along with a pillow.

“Aquí voy a dormir. Aquí voy a estar.”

“Okay.”

Araceli, for the first time in her life, bedded down in her filipina.

Araceli awoke before dawn with the children asleep, the chorus of morning birds yet to begin outside the windows, and walked through the empty house as if in a trance. There seemed to Araceli a slight chance that either Scott or Maureen had returned during the night, but each flick of a light switch revealed only a stark tableau of dust-free furniture: the comforter was still taut on the bed in the master bedroom, there were no blankets on the floor to indicate anyone had slept in Scott’s game and television room, and the kitchen showed no signs of anyone having been there since Araceli gave the last wipe to the counters as the boys prepared for bed the night before. She circled back to the master bathroom, the space Araceli most strongly associated with Maureen’s physical presence, and surveyed the objects as if one of them might tell her when la señora would return. ¿Dónde estás, mi jefa? A paddle brush resting in a wicker basket on the marble slab of the sink drew Araceli’s eye. This inelegant piece of black plastic did the daily hard work of Maureen’s morning and bedtime grooming, and a thick weave of Maureen’s russet hair had built up between the nylon bristles, and for an instant Araceli imagined the strands rising from the brush and taking form, and then Maureen herself emerging magically underneath, calming her children with her motherly exhortations.

There’s nothing I can do but wait. It occurred to Araceli, momentarily, that she had been spoiled by life with these people, that she had been conditioned to a crisis-free life, above all by Maureen’s relentless attention to daily routines, and the comfort of schedules assiduously kept. Over the last four years the two women had built many wordless understandings between them, so that, among other things, towels and dirty clothes circulated through the house as efficiently as the traffic on the empty streets of the Laguna Rancho Estates, from wet bodies to hampers to washing machines to shelves, touching the hands of both women in their circuit. Disposable diapers moved from plastic packages on store shelves to babies’ bottoms to special trash cans with deodorizers, and finally to the master trash cans in the back of the house, only briefly tainting the aroma of a country retreat that emanated from the pine and oak furniture, and from a handful of strategically placed bowls of potpourri and lavender.

Maureen was the center of gravity of this home, and with each hour her unexplained absence became harder to fathom. Why would she leave, where is she? If there were an explanation it might be easier to cope, and Araceli decided that she would call Scott and demand one: What did you do to la señora? Did you hurt her?

It was 8:30 a.m. and the boys were still asleep when Araceli marched to the refrigerator and called the second number on the list: Scott, cell. In four years of working for the Torres-Thompson family, Araceli had not once called Scott. This morning she would call him and simply demand to know why she had been left alone with two boys when since the beginning it had been made clear she was not to be a babysitter. After a night of being forced to be a mother and father to two boys, after sleeping on the floor in her clothes, Araceli was beyond politeness or deference. ¿Dónde estás? she would ask, in the familiar “tú” instead of the formal “usted,” in violation of ingrained Mexican class conventions, as if she were the boss and he were the employee, though of course the monolingual Scott would never pick up on her sassiness.

The phone rang once and moved to voice mail. She called again, with the same response.

Scott’s phone was in Charlotte Harris-Hayasaki’s apartment, which was on the second floor and inside one of those signal shadows that bedevil cell-phone engineers. He was sleeping, after staying up late into the night telling Charlotte about his fight with Maureen, and then falling asleep on her couch. By the time he awoke, just before noon, his phone would be dead because in the harried flight from his home he had neglected to pack the charger.

Araceli called a half dozen times in succession, the final attempt coming as Keenan came into the kitchen and demanded, “I’m