by Héctor Tobar
Scott could see his wife would now approach the task of divesting herself and her home of these superfluous objects with the same vigor she had applied to their accumulation. The household was her domain, and he and all the children would live according to whatever principles she embraced: baroque beauty and excess, or simplicity and moderation. What do they call it when women run everything? Matriarchy? Feminoc-racy? He imagined a leaner household, smaller credit-card bills, and a less imposing flat-screen television. Or perhaps no television at all. Hadn’t it been that way once, in some other time, in the prehistory of his American family, a time his Mainer great-grandfather would remember? He allowed himself to imagine living in that emptier household with children, perhaps with a vegetable garden in the back instead of cacti or semitropical plants—and then he remembered the nagging matters of the present.
“We need to talk about some things.”
Maureen heard him but chose not to respond, because if she did she would lose the momentum that was carrying her through the domestic juggling act of her day. If she stopped she would curl up like a ball on the bed with a bowl of ice cream and the television turned on to faux courtrooms and talk-show hosts who filled the day with common sense and scolding rants delivered to knucklehead moms. Better to sort through this bookcase, separating out the old Dr. Seuss and other very early reader books Samantha might still enjoy. If she could leave the boys’ room looking less cluttered, the sense of minor accomplishment would stay with her and lift her through the preparation of lunch. Afterward, she would strap up Samantha for a walk through the neighborhood to see if she might fall asleep, because the baby was starting to skip her naps, which transformed her into a moody afternoon screamer. The visit of the representative of the district attorney’s office had thrown Maureen off, set her back, but now the sight of these books had her back on track again. Each book had a little of their past and their hope attached to it, and it would be hard to part with the brightly colored pages of trucks, trains, and spaceships, many with dates of purchase and a name written inside: Brandon’s favorite, Age 3. There was a poetic order, she could now see, in the seemingly haphazard collection of topics and images in these books. Here a slice of ancient Egypt brought to life with meticulous drawings, there a child’s primer on human evolution. Australopithecus, Homo habilis. They had purchased these books to transform their 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 of information that appeared to “tilt the scales of believability” in favor of the Mexican defendant: “the sighting of Mrs. Thompson, without her husband, at a desert spa during the alleged kidnapping,” and “numerous statements by a city council member of Huntington Park, who we choose to believe,” the host said sardonically, “even though he has a Mexican last name.” The case against Araceli was falling apart very publicly and very quickly—or so it seemed on one cable network. Against this latest and predictably skeptical report, there was the steady flow of letters, emails, and television commentary for his office to continue its aggressive prosecution of Araceli N. Ramirez, especially now that she had been unexpectedly set free on bail. Ian Goller had countered the flow of opinion favorable to the defense with a series of incriminating leaks, including selected passages from the transcript of Brandon’s description of his days in the mystery-land of Los Angeles. Ian Goller had fed these bits of info to three different reporters at a Santa Ana Denny’s, and had felt oddly spent and empty afterward. Media warfare was tedious and base, but he was forced to wage it: the alternative was to allow the district attorney’s office to look ridiculous, and to permit the idea that the DA was pursuing a “racially motivated prosecution” to taint the institution. The subsequent news accounts of Brandon’s tales of “war,” “slavery,” and “bombs” had done the trick, fostering the expected reactions of suspicion and revulsion—one talk radio host asked, “Wher
e did that animal take those boys?” The clamor would not yet die, in some venues it was growing stronger, and for this reason Goller was optimistic. His own view of the case was that a misdemeanor child-endangerment conviction was entirely fair, because of the mental suffering, albeit of a passing nature, that Araceli’s actions had inflicted on the two children. He would almost certainly get a misdemeanor plea if he won at the preliminary hearing and the judge ordered her to stand trial on the felony charge—and there were several recent reforms to criminal procedures in California that aided him in that goal. Most important was an initiative recently approved by crime-weary voters that allowed police officers to give hearsay evidence at preliminary hearings, sparing the alleged victims the trauma of doing so. This new law would keep Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson and their sons out of the courtroom, which was especially fortuitous because it was clear that, despite her strong performance in her television interview, Maureen would likely fold on the stand. His lead deputy on the case, Arnold Chang, had returned from his one and only session at the couple’s home shaking his head.
“Our witnesses are a bit mixed up.”
“They often are,” Goller said. “Such is the nature of human memory.”
“No, this is worse.”
“I figured it might be.”
“It’s bad.”
“They’re traumatized parents.”
“No, this is worse. They don’t want to go forward. They don’t want us to charge this woman with anything.”
“Did you tell them that the case belongs to the People now?”
“Yes.”
Goller nodded that he understood. “Well, it doesn’t matter really.”
“Boss,” his deputy said, “I’m not sure this will fly.”
Assistant District Attorney Goller considered this assessment for a few moments and said, “Lucky for us, our case involves a deportable alien. So it only has to fly a little.”
“How little?”
“If you toss a chicken in the air and it flaps its wings for two seconds or so, you can call that flying. Right?”
“At least, Señor Octavio, allow me the pleasure of making a salad.” Araceli was cutting lettuce, slicing tomatoes in the living room, while in the kitchen Octavio Covarrubias toiled at another meal in her honor, this one to celebrate her rerelease from jail. In a bid to top his previous efforts on her behalf, and to communicate his ever-elevated respect for her immigrant martyrdom, Octavio had decided to prepare the most difficult dish he and his wife could make, the jewel of Mexican cuisine, a sauce so elaborate that he had called in his elderly aunt from the San Fernando Valley to help him prepare it. Mole, the chocolate nectar the Aztecs served their emperor and his court, spread over tender chicken breasts. “We spent four hours tracking down the Oaxaqueño with the best mole in Orange County,” Octavio said. “These people are harder to find than drug dealers.”
They sat for the meal, with Octavio looking expectantly at Araceli as she ate the first bite very slowly. Finally, she pronounced, “Espectacular. Like honey.” Octavio smiled broadly, as did his wife, though the aunt did not—she seemed confused as to why her nephew and his wife were infatuated with a tall indocumentada who lorded over the table and spoke as if everyone were obliged to listen.
“They are probably going to deport me, one way or the other,” Araceli said casually in Spanish, between bites. “That’s how my lawyer explained it to me, más o menos. They will probably offer me a deal, where they forget about the more serious and ridiculous accusation against me and just give me a traffic ticket—like when you go through a red light. A traffic ticket for taking the boys to a dangerous place. But if I sign the paper accepting this ticket, then they will take me away. Para el otro lado. If I don’t take the deal, I might go to el bote here in California for a couple of years before they send me to Mexico—that’s if we lose the case. And if I win, they might still come and get me. Probably here at this house, or wherever they find me.” She looked around the table to judge their reactions—Octavio lowered his thick eyebrows and gave a defiant squint, while his wife opened her eyes theatrically wide with worry.
“Can’t you just run away? Just leave right now?”
“No. Because I made a promise to the people who paid my bail. That I would go to court.”
“So what are you going to do?” Octavio asked.
“It seems that getting the ticket is the best deal,” his wife said.
“Well, a lot of people want to see me fight it,” Araceli said.
“Just to show them that our people won’t be intimidated,” Octavio said.
“A fin de cuentas, se trata de la dignidad de uno,” she said, and had time to think that it been a very long time since she had used that abstract word—dignidad—in reference to her person. “But sometimes you have to be practical. Why suffer in those cells, where any loca can hit you on the head, just to prove a point? There isn’t much dignidad in those American jails.”
After the meal, Araceli was sitting alone on the porch steps, thinking about the choices she had made and how quiet the block seemed. Perhaps the neighbors had gone into hiding at the news of her return. She took in the summer stillness, the heat that was dissolving into the fiery twilight sky, the sparrows that were flittering about the jacaranda and maple trees. Just a few days earlier she had stood on the narrow cement walkway that cut through this lawn, facing the police sergeant who had come to arrest her. She was free again, at this same spot, but there was no one to photograph and memorialize her moment of liberated boredom. An ice cream vendor pushed past on the sidewalk, glancing up at Araceli and waving. A moment later, a big red pickup truck turned and pulled onto the street and parked in front of the Covarrubias home. The driver inside looked vaguely familiar.
“¡Gordito!” she called out, but quickly realized she didn’t know him well enough to address him that way. “Felipe!”
Felipe looked both taller and wider than she remembered, and his black curls longer. He waddled up the path in white pants splattered with yellow and peach paint stains, and gave her the expectant and nervous look of an autograph seeker. He thinks I’m a celebrity too. How funny! He reached the porch and stood before her with his hands tucked deep into his pockets. “They told me you stayed here, on this block, but I didn’t know which house. So I was going to park my truck and knock on the doors and ask around. But then I saw you sitting here.”
“¿Qué pasó? I was waiting for you to call me. And then everything happened with the boys.”
“I was going to call you, and then my uncle got us a job up in San Francisco for a week. When I got back, you were all over the television. No lo podía creer. I called that number you gave me three times, but they hung up.”
He sat on the porch steps next to her, putting a pair of large hands on his knees and releasing a big man’s exhale. An hour passed by as they talked about her arrest, and all the different television and radio shows in which her case had been covered and discussed, and what Mexico was like and how it would be for Araceli to go back there if she were forced to do so. Not having lived in Mexico since he was eight years old, Felipe had a benign vision of the place as a land where uncles and grandparents lived on ranchos amid cows, horses, and poultry, though he knew Mexico City was another world. “I’ve never been to El De Efe, but I remember Sonora as a beautiful place in the desert.” Felipe had gone to school in the United States for the most part, Araceli now learned, and he spoke both English and Spanish impeccably. She prodded him to say something in English, and when he did she gave a mock shiver and said, “¡Ay! Qué sexy eres when you speak English.” He was one of those people who moved easily back and forth between English- and Spanish-speaking orbits without being fully appreciated in either. With each minute they talked, Araceli heard more she liked. The sky began to surrender its glow, the lights turned on in the houses around them, and still they talked, stopping only when Luz Covarrubias stepped outside and gave them two glasses of agua de tamarindo and said, “Qu
é bonito to see a young man and a young woman talking so much on my porch.”
Out of the awkward quiet that followed, the noise of an engine emerged, and soon Araceli and Felipe were watching as a blue van with a satellite dish turned the corner and parked behind Felipe’s pickup.
“Oooh. La prensa,” Araceli said. “Vámonos.”
They rose to their feet, turned, and headed for the safety of the front door, but before they could escape Araceli heard a strangely familiar voice call out with the brio and accent of Mexico City’s upper classes: “¡Araceli! ¡No te me vas a escapar! ¡No te lo permito!”
They turned simultaneously to face a man in a midnight-blue suit and yellow tie who was sitting in the van’s passenger seat, with one leg hanging outside the open door. “Where have I seen that guy before?” Felipe said, though he was instantly recognizable to Araceli. He had a Mediterranean complexion and black-brown hair that was lightly moussed, and presented a sartorial package of male refinement so striking that Araceli could already imagine the cloud of sweet musk enveloping him, even though he was still on the other side of the lawn. Then his name came to her, and she spoke it out loud, the last of the nine Spanish and French syllables coming with the rising inflection of a question.
“¿Carlos Francisco Batres Goulet?”
“¡El mismo!” he said.
He was the second-most-famous man on Mexican television, the host of a morning news-talk show produced by a network with a near-monopoly on the Mexican airwaves. He walked up the path with an outstretched hand, and Araceli straightened her spine as if to greet royalty, remembering the television set her mother had had going in the kitchen every workday, this man on the screen sitting on a studio couch engaging in casual repartee with rock stars, rebel leaders, and cabinet ministers, or in the field with the weeping families outside a mine disaster in Sonora, or wearing a yellow parka while awaiting a hurricane before the turquoise waters of the Yucatán. Carlos Francisco Batres Goulet was only a few years past thirty, but he was already a kind of walking history book, and as he reached over to shake Araceli’s hand in greeting it was with the bearing of a benevolent, outgoing prince of the people.