The Goldfinch (24 page)

“You guess?”

“No, I’m fine. Things are good.”

“Oh yeah?” Dave leaned back in his chair, Converse sneaker bobbing. “That’s great.” Then: “Why don’t you bring me up to speed a little bit on what’s been going on?”

“Oh—” I scratched my eyebrow, looked away—“Spanish is still pretty difficult—I have another make-up test, I’ll probably take that Monday. But I got an A on my Stalingrad paper. So it looks like that’ll bring my B minus in history up to a B.”

He was quiet so long, looking at me, that I began to feel cornered and started casting around for something else to say. Then: “Anything else?”

“Well—” I looked at my thumbs.

“How has your anxiety been?”

“Not so bad,” I said, thinking how uneasy it made me that I didn’t know a thing about Dave. He was one of those guys who wore a wedding ring that didn’t really look like a wedding ring—or maybe it wasn’t a wedding ring at all and he was just super-proud of his Celtic heritage. If I’d had to guess, I would have said he was newly married, with a baby—he gave off a glazed vibe of exhausted young fatherhood, like he might have to get up and change diapers in the night—but who knew?

“And your medication? What about the side effects?”

“Uh—” I scratched my nose—“better I guess.” I hadn’t even been taking my pills, which made me so tired and headachey I’d started spitting them down the plughole of the bathroom sink.

Dave was quiet for a moment. “So—would it be out of line to say that you’re feeling better generally?”

“I guess not,” I said, after a silence, staring at the wall hanging behind his head. It looked like a lopsided abacus made of clay beads and knotted rope, and I had spent what felt like a massive portion of my recent life staring at it.

Dave smiled. “You say that like it’s something to be ashamed of. But feeling better doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten about your mother. Or that you loved her any less.”

Resenting this supposition, which had never occurred to me, I looked away from him and out the window, at his depressing view of the white brick building across the street.

“Do you have any idea why you might be feeling better?”

“No, not really,” I said curtly.
Better
wasn’t even the word for how I felt. There wasn’t a word for it. It was more that things too small to mention—laughter in the hall at school, a live gecko scurrying in a tank in the science lab—made me feel happy one moment and the next like crying. Sometimes, in the evenings, a damp, gritty wind blew in the windows from Park Avenue, just as the rush hour traffic was thinning and the city was emptying for the night; it was rainy, trees leafing out, spring deepening into summer; and the forlorn cry of horns on the street, the dank smell of the wet pavement had an electricity about it, a sense of crowds and static, lonely secretaries and fat guys with bags of carry-out, everywhere the ungainly sadness of creatures pushing and struggling to live. For weeks, I’d been frozen, sealed-off; now, in the shower, I would turn up the water as hard as it would go and howl, silently. Everything
was raw and painful and confusing and wrong and yet it was as if I’d been dragged from freezing water through a break in the ice, into sun and blazing cold.

“Where did you go just now?” said Dave, attempting to catch my eye.

“Sorry?”

“What were you just thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh yeah? Pretty hard to think about absolutely nothing.”

I shrugged. Aside from Andy, I’d told no one about going down on the bus to Pippa’s house, and the secret colored everything, like the afterglow of a dream: tissue-paper poppies, dim light from a guttering candle, the sticky heat of her hand in mine. But though it was the most resonant and real-seeming thing that had happened in a long time, I didn’t want to spoil it by talking about it, especially not with him.

We sat there for another long moment or two. Then Dave leaned forward with a concerned expression and said: “You know, when I ask you where you go during these silences, Theo, I’m not trying to be a jerk or put you on the spot or anything.”

“Oh, sure! I know,” I said uneasily, picking at the tweed upholstery on the arm of the sofa.

“I’m here to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Or—” creak of wood as he shifted in his chair—“we don’t have to talk at all! Only I wonder if you have something on your mind.”

“Well,” I said, after another never-ending pause, resisting the temptation to peek sideways at my watch. “I mean I just”—how many more minutes did we have?
Forty?

“Because I hear, from some of the other adults in your life, that you’ve had a noticeable upswing of late. You’ve been participating in class more,” he said, when I didn’t answer. “Engaging socially. Eating normal meals again.” In the stillness, an ambulance siren floated up faintly from the street. “So I guess I’m wondering if you could help me understand what’s changed.”

I shrugged, scratched the side of my face. How were you supposed to explain this kind of thing? It seemed stupid to try. Even the memory was starting to seem vague and starry with unreality, like a dream where the details get fainter the harder you try to grasp them. What mattered more was the feeling, a rich sweet undertow so commanding that in class, on
the school bus, lying in bed trying to think of something safe or pleasant, some environment or configuration where my chest wasn’t tight with anxiety, all I had to do was sink into the blood-warm current and let myself spin away to the secret place where everything was all right. Cinnamon-colored walls, rain on the windowpanes, vast quiet and a sense of depth and distance, like the varnish over the background of a nineteenth-century painting. Rugs worn to threads, painted Japanese fans and antique valentines flickering in candlelight, Pierrots and doves and flower-garlanded hearts. Pippa’s face pale in the dark.

vi.

“L
ISTEN
,” I
SAID TO
Andy several days later, as we were coming out of Starbucks after school, “can you cover for me this afternoon?”

“Certainly,” said Andy, taking a greedy swallow of his coffee. “How long?”

“Don’t know.” Depending on how long it took me to change trains at Fourteenth Street, it might take forty-five minutes to get downtown; the bus, on a weekday, would be even longer. “Three hours?”

He made a face; if his mother was at home, she would ask questions. “What shall I tell her?”

“Tell her I had to stay late at school or something.”

“She’ll think you’re in trouble.”

“Who cares?”

“Yes, but I don’t want her to phone school to check on you.”

“Tell her I went to a movie.”

“Then she’ll ask why I didn’t go too. Why don’t I say you’re at the library.”

“That’s so lame.”

“All right, then. Why don’t we tell her that you have a terribly pressing engagement with your parole officer. Or that you stopped in to have a couple of Old Fashioneds at the bar of the Four Seasons.”

He was imitating his father; the impression was so dead-on, I laughed. “
Fabelhaft,
” I replied, in Mr. Barbour’s voice. “Very funny.”

He shrugged. “The main branch is open tonight until seven,” he said, in his own bland and faint-ish voice. “But I don’t have to know which branch you went to, if you forget to tell me.”

vii.

T
HE DOOR OPENED QUICKER
than I’d expected, while I was staring down the street and thinking of something else. This time, he was clean-shaven, smelling of soap, with his long gray hair neatly combed back and tucked behind his ears; and he was just as impressively dressed as Mr. Blackwell had been when I’d seen him.

His eyebrows came up; clearly he was surprised to see me. “Hello!”

“Have I come at a bad time?” I said, eyeing the snowy cuff of his shirt, which was embroidered with a tiny cypher in Chinese red, block letters so small and stylized they were nearly invisible.

“Not at all. As a matter of fact I was hoping you’d stop by.” He was wearing a red tie with a pale yellow figure; black oxford brogues; a beautifully tailored navy suit. “Come in! Please.”

“Are you going somewhere?” I said, regarding him timidly. The suit made him seem a different person, less melancholy and distracted, more capable—unlike the Hobie of my first visit, with his bedraggled aspect of an elegant but mistreated polar bear.

“Well—yes. But not now. Quite frankly, we’re in a bit of a tip. But no matter.”

What did that mean? I followed him inside—through the forest of the workshop, table legs and unsprung chairs—and up through the gloomy parlor into the kitchen, where Cosmo the terrier was pacing fretfully back and forth and whimpering, his toenails clicking on the slate. When we came in, he took a few steps backwards and glared up at us aggressively.

“Why’s he in here?” I asked, kneeling to stroke his head, and then pulling my hand back when he shied away.

“Hmn?” said Hobie. He seemed preoccupied.

“Cosmo. Doesn’t he like to be with her?”

“Oh. Her aunt. She doesn’t want him in there.” He was filling the teakettle at the sink; and—I noticed—the kettle shook in his hands as he did it.

“Aunt?”

“Yes,” he said, putting the kettle on to boil, then stooping to scratch the dog’s chin. “Poor little toad, you don’t know what to make of it, do you? Margaret’s got very strong opinions on the subject of dogs in the sickroom.
No doubt she’s right. And here
you
are,” he said, glancing over his shoulder with an odd bright look. “Washing up on the strand again. Pippa’s been talking of you ever since you were here.”

“Really?” I said, delighted.

“ ‘Where’s that boy.’ ‘There was a boy here.’ She told me yesterday that you were coming back and
presto,
” he said, with a warm and young-sounding laugh, “here you are.” He stood, knees creaking, and wiped the back of his wrist against his knobbly white brow. “If you wait a bit, you can go in and see her.”

“How is she doing?”

“
Much
better,” he said, crisply, without looking at me. “Lots of goings-on. Her aunt is taking her to Texas.”

“Texas?” I said, after a stunned pause.

“Afraid so.”

“When?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“No!”

He grimaced—a twinge that vanished the moment I saw it. “Yes, I’ve been packing her up to go,” he said, in a cheerful voice that did not match the flash of unhappiness that he’d let slip. “People have been in and out. Friends from school—in fact, this is the first quiet moment we’ve had in a while. It’s been quite a busy week.”

“When is she coming back?”

“Well—not for a while, actually. Margaret’s taking her down there to live.”

“Forever?”

“Oh no! Not
forever,
” he said, in a voice that made me realize that
forever
was exactly what he meant. “It’s not as if anyone’s leaving the planet,” he added, when he saw my face. “Certainly I’ll be going down to see her. And certainly she’ll be back for visits.”

“But—” I felt like the ceiling had collapsed on top of me. “I thought she lived here. With you.”

“Well, she did. Until now. Although I’m sure she’ll be much better off down there,” he added, without conviction. “It’s a big change for us all, but in the long run I’m sure it’s all for the best.”

I could tell he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. “But why can’t she stay here?”

He sighed. “Margaret is Welty’s half sister,” he said. “His
other
half sister. Pippa’s nearest relative. Blood, in any case, which I am not. She thinks that Pippa will be better off in Texas, now that she’s well enough to move.”

“I wouldn’t want to live in Texas,” I said, taken aback. “It’s too hot.”

“I don’t think the doctors are as good there either,” said Hobie, dusting his hands off. “Although Margaret and I disagree about that.”

He sat down, and looked at me. “Your glasses,” he said. “I like them.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t want to talk about my new eyeglasses, an unwelcome development, although they did actually help me to see better. Mrs. Barbour had picked out the frames for me at E. B. Meyrowitz after I’d failed an eye test with the school nurse. They were round tortoiseshell, a little too grown-up and expensive-looking, and adults had been going a little too far out of their way to assure me how great they looked.