The Goldfinch (25 page)

“How are things uptown?” said Hobie. “You can’t imagine the stir your visit has caused. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of coming uptown to see you myself. The only reason I didn’t was that I hated to leave Pippa since she’s going away so soon. This has all happened very fast, you see. The business with Margaret. She’s like their father, old Mr. Blackwell—she gets something in her head and off she goes, it’s done.”

“Is he going to Texas too? Cosmo?”

“Oh no—he’ll be fine here. He’s lived here in this house since he was twelve weeks old.”

“Won’t he be unhappy?”

“I hope not. Well—quite honestly—he’ll miss her. Cosmo and I get on fairly well, though he’s been in a terrible slump since Welty died. He was Welty’s dog really, he’s only taken up with Pippa quite recently. These little terriers like Welty always had aren’t always so crazy about children, you understand—Cosmo’s mother Chessie was a holy terror.”

“But why does Pippa have to move down there?”

“Well,” he said, rubbing his eye, “it’s really the only thing that makes sense. Margaret is the technical nearest of kin. Though Margaret and Welty scarcely spoke while Welty was alive—not in recent years, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Well—” I could tell he didn’t want to explain it. “It’s all very complicated. Margaret was quite against Pippa’s mother, you see.”

Just as he said this, a tall, sharp-nosed, capable-looking woman walked
into the room, the age of a young-ish grandmother, with a thin, patrician-harpy face and iron-rust hair going gray. Her suit and shoes reminded me of Mrs. Barbour, only they were a color that Mrs. Barbour would never have worn: lime green.

She looked at me; she looked at Hobie. “What is this?” she said coldly.

Hobie exhaled audibly; he looked exasperated. “Never mind, Margaret. This is the boy who was with Welty when he died.”

She peered over her half-glasses at me—and then laughed sharply, a high self-conscious laugh.

“But hello,” she said—all charm all of a sudden, holding out to me her thin red hands covered with diamonds. “I’m Margaret Blackwell Pierce. Welty’s sister.
Half
sister,” she corrected herself, with a glance over my shoulder at Hobie, when she saw my eyebrows go down. “Welty and I had the same father, you see. My mother was Susie Delafield.”

She said the name as if it ought to mean something. I looked at Hobie to see what he thought about it. She saw me doing it, and glanced at him sharply before she returned her attention—all sparkle—to me.

“And what an adorable little boy you are,” she said to me. Her long nose was slightly pink at the end. “I’m awfully glad to meet you. James and Pippa have been telling me all about your visit—
the
most extraordinary thing. We’ve all been abuzz about it. Also—” she clasped my hand—“I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart for returning my grandfather’s ring to me. It means an awful lot to me.”

Her
ring? Again, in confusion, I looked at Hobie.

“It would have meant a lot to my father, as well.” There was a deliberate, practiced quality to her friendliness (“buckets of charm,” as Mr. Barbour would have said); and yet her coppery tang of resemblance to Mr. Blackwell, and Pippa, drew me in despite myself. “You know how it was lost before, don’t you?”

The kettle whistled. “Would you like some tea, Margaret?” said Hobie.

“Yes please,” she replied briskly. “Lemon and honey. A tiny bit of scotch in it.” To me, in a more friendly voice, she said: “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid we have some grown-up business to attend to. We’re to meet with the lawyer shortly. As soon as Pippa’s nurse arrives.”

Hobie cleared his throat. “I don’t see any harm if—”

“May I go in and see her?” I said, too impatient for him to finish the sentence.

“Of course,” said Hobie quickly, before Aunt Margaret could intervene—turning expertly away to evade her annoyed expression. “You remember the way, don’t you? Just through there.”

viii.

T
HE FIRST THING SHE
said to me was: “Will you please turn off the light?” She was propped in bed with the earbuds to her iPod in, looking blinded and disoriented in the light from the overhead bulb.

I switched it off. The room was emptier, cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. A thin spring rain was hitting at the windowpanes; outside, in the dark courtyard, the foamy white blossoms of a flowering pear were pale against wet brick.

“Hello,” she said, folding her hands a little tighter on the coverlet.

“Hi,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound quite so awkward.

“I knew it was you! I heard you talking in the kitchen.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d you know it was me?”

“I’m a musician! I have very sharp ears.”

Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dim, I saw that she seemed less frail than she had on my previous visit. Her hair had grown back in a bit and the staples were out, though the puckered line of the wound was still visible.

“How do you feel?” I said.

She smiled. “Sleepy.” The sleep was in her voice, rough and sweet at the edges. “Do you mind sharing?”

“Sharing what?”

She turned her head to the side and removed one of the earbuds, and handed it to me. “Listen.”

I sat down by her on the bed, and put it in my ear: aethereal harmonies, impersonal, piercing, like a radio signal from Paradise.

We looked at each other. “What is it?” I said.

“Umm—” she looked at the iPod—“Palestrina.”

“Oh.” But I didn’t care what it was. The only reason I was even hearing
it was because of the rainy light, the white tree at the window, the thunder, her.

The silence between us was happy and strange, connected by the cord and the icy voices thinly echoing. “You don’t have to talk,” she said. “If you don’t feel like it.” Her eyelids were heavy and her voice was drowsy and like a secret. “People always want to talk but I like being quiet.”

“Have you been crying?” I said, looking at her a bit more closely.

“No. Well—a little.”

We sat there, not saying anything, and it didn’t feel clumsy or weird.

“I have to leave,” she said presently. “Did you know?”

“I know. He told me.”

“It’s awful. I don’t want to go.” She smelled like salt, and medicine, and something else, like the chamomile tea my mother bought at Grace’s, grassy and sweet.

“She seems nice,” I said, cautiously. “I guess.”

“I guess,” she echoed gloomily, trailing a fingertip along the border of the coverlet. “She said something about a swimming pool. And horses.”

“That should be fun.”

She blinked, in confusion. “Maybe.”

“Do you ride?”

“No.”

“Me neither. My mother did though. She loved horses. She always stopped to talk to the carriage horses on Central Park South. Like—” I didn’t know how to say it—“it was almost like they’d talk to
her.
Like, they’d try to turn their heads, even with their blinkers on, to where she was walking.”

“Is your mother dead too?” she said timidly.

“Yes.”

“My mother’s been dead for—” she stopped and thought—“I can’t remember. She died after my spring holidays from school one year, so I had spring holidays off and the week after spring holidays too. And there was a field trip we were supposed to go on, to the Botanical Gardens, and I didn’t get to go. I miss her.”

“What’d she die of?”

“She got sick. Was your mother sick too?”

“No. It was an accident.” And then—not wanting to venture more
upon this subject: “Anyway, she loved horses a lot, my mother. When she was growing up she had a horse she said got lonely sometimes? and he liked to come right up to the house and put his head in at the window to see what was going on.”

“What was his name?”

“Paintbox.” I’d loved it when my mother told me about the stables back in Kansas: owls and bats in the rafters, horses nickering and blowing. I knew the names of all her childhood horses and dogs.

“Paintbox! Was he all different colors?”

“He was spotted, sort of. I’ve seen pictures of him. Sometimes—in the summer—he’d come and look in on her while she was having her afternoon nap. She could hear him breathing, you know, just inside the curtains.”

“That’s so nice! I like horses. It’s just—”

“What?”

“I’d rather stay here!” All at once she seemed close to tears. “I don’t know why I have to go.”

“You should tell them you want to stay.” When did our hands start touching? Why was her hand so hot?

“I did tell them! Except everyone thinks it’ll be better there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said fretfully. “Quieter, they said. But I don’t like the quiet, I like it when there’s lots of stuff to hear.”

“They’re going to make me leave, too.”

She pushed up on her elbow. “No!” she said, looking alarmed. “When?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I guess. I have to go live with my grandparents.”

“Oh,” she said longingly, falling back on the pillow. “I don’t have any grandparents.”

I threaded my fingers through hers. “Mine aren’t very nice.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I said, in as normal a voice as I could, though my heart was pounding so hard that I could feel my pulse jumping in my finger-tips. Her hand, in mine, was velvety and fever-hot, just the slightest bit sticky.

“Don’t you have any other family?” Her eyes were so dark in the wan light from the window that they looked black.

“No. Well—” Did my father count? “No.”

There followed a long silence. We were still connected by the earbuds: one in her ear, one in mine. Seashells singing. Angel choirs and pearls. Things had gotten way too slow all of a sudden; it was as if I’d forgotten how to breathe properly; over and over I found myself holding my breath, then exhaling raggedly and too loud.

“What did you say this music was?” I asked, just for something to say.

She smiled sleepily, and reached for a pointed, unappetizing-looking lollipop that lay atop a foil wrapper on her nightstand.

“Palestrina,” she said, around the stick in her mouth. “High mass. Or something. They’re all a lot alike.”

“Do you like her?” I said. “Your aunt?”

She looked at me for several long beats. Then she put the lollipop carefully back on the wrapper and said: “She seems nice. I guess. Only I don’t really know her. It’s weird.”

“Why do you? Have to go?”

“It’s about money. Hobie can’t do anything—he isn’t my real uncle. My pretend uncle, she calls him.”

“I wish he was your real uncle,” I said. “I want you to stay.”

Suddenly she sat up, and put her arms around me, and kissed me; and all the blood rushed from my head, a long sweep, like I was falling off a cliff.

“I—” Terror struck me. In a daze, by reflex, I reached to wipe the kiss away—only this wasn’t soggy, or gross, I could feel a trace of it glowing all along the back of my hand.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to, either.”

“Do you remember seeing me?”

“When?”

“Right before.”

“No.”

“I remember you,” I said. Somehow my hand had found its way to her cheek, and clumsily I pulled it back and forced it to my side, making a fist, practically sitting on it. “I was there.” It was then I realized that Hobie was in the door.

“Hello, old love.” And though the warmth in the voice was mostly for her, I could tell a little was for me. “I told you he’d be back.”

“You did!” she said, pushing herself up. “He’s here.”

“Well, will you listen to me next time?”

“I was
listening
to you. I just didn’t
believe
you.”

The hem of a sheer curtain brushed a windowsill. Faintly, I heard traffic singing on the street. Sitting there on the edge of her bed, it felt like the waking-up moment between dream and daylight where everything merged and mingled just as it was about to change, all in the same, fluid, euphoric slide: rainy light, Pippa sitting up with Hobie in the doorway, and her kiss (with the peculiar flavor of what I now believe to have been a morphine lollipop) still sticky on my lips. Yet I’m not sure that even morphine would account for how lightheaded I felt at that moment, how smilingly wrapped-up in happiness and beauty. Half-dazed, we said our goodbyes (there were no promises to write; it seemed she was too ill for that) and then I was in the hallway, with the nurse there, Aunt Margaret talking loud and bewilderingly and Hobie’s reassuring hand on my shoulder, a strong, comforting pressure, like an anchor letting me know that everything was okay. I hadn’t felt a touch like that since my mother died—friendly, steadying in the midst of confusing events—and, like a stray dog hungry for affection, I felt some profound shift in allegiance, blood-deep, a sudden, humiliating, eyewatering conviction of
this place is good, this person is safe, I can trust him, nobody will hurt me here.

“Ah,” cried Aunt Margaret, “are you crying? Do you see that?” she said to the young nurse (nodding, smiling, eager to please, clearly under her spell). “How sweet he is! You’ll miss her, won’t you?” Her smile was wide and assured of itself, of its own rightness. “You’ll have to come down and visit,
absolutely
you will. I’m always happy to have guests. My parents… they had one of the biggest Tudor houses in Texas…”