The Goldfinch

The question threw me for a loop. “No,” I said, “with some friends in the Village.”

“Well, splendid. Just so long as you’re comfortable. At any rate, I’m afraid I have to dash now. What do you say we continue this discussion in my office? I’ll put you back through to Patsy so she can schedule an appointment.”

“Great,” I said, “thank you,” but when I got off the phone, I felt sick—like someone had just reached a hand in my chest and wrenched loose a lot of ugly wet stuff around my heart.

“Everything okay?” said Hobie—crossing through the kitchen, stopping suddenly to see the look on my face.

“Sure.” But it was a long walk down the hall to my room—and once I closed the door and climbed back in bed I began to cry, or half-cry, ugly dry wheezes with my face pressed in the pillow, while Popchik pawed at my shirt and snuffled anxiously against the back of my neck.

v.

BEFORE THIS, I’D BEEN feeling better, but somehow it was like this news made me ill all over again. As the day wore on and my fever climbed to its former dizzying wobble, I could think of nothing but my dad: I have to call him, I thought, starting again and again from bed just as I was drifting off; it was as if his death weren’t real but only a rehearsal, a trial run; the real death (the permanent one) was yet to happen and there was time to stop it if only I found him, if only he was answering his cell phone, if Xandra could reach him from work, I have to get hold of him, I have to let him know. Then, later—the day was over, it was dark—I had fallen into a troubled half dream where my dad was excoriating me for screwing up some air travel reservations when I became aware of lights in the hallway, a tiny backlit shadow—Pippa, coming suddenly into the room with stumbling step almost like someone had pushed her, looking doubtfully behind her, saying: “Should I wake him?”

“Wait,” I said—half to her and half to my dad, who was falling back rapidly into the darkness, some violent stadium crowd on the other side of a tall, arched gate. When I got my glasses on, I saw she had her coat on like she was going out.

“Sorry?” I said, arm over my eyes, confused in the glare from the lamp.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just—I mean—” pushing a strand of hair out of her face—“I’m leaving and I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?”

“Oh.” Her pale brows drew together; she looked in the doorway to Hobie (who had vanished) and back to me. “Right. Well.” Her voice seemed slightly panicked. “I’m going back. Tonight. Anyway, it was nice to see you. I hope everything works out for you okay.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah, I’m flying out now. She has me in boarding school?” she said when I continued to goggle at her. “I’m here for Thanksgiving? Here to see the doctor? Remember?”

“Oh. Right.” I was staring at her very hard and hoping that I was still asleep. Boarding school rang a vague bell but I thought it was something I’d dreamed.

“Yeah—” she seemed uneasy too—“too bad you didn’t get here earlier, it was fun. Hobie cooked—we had tons of people over. Anyway I was lucky I got to come at all—I had to get permission from Dr. Camenzind. We don’t have Thanksgiving off at my school.”

“What do they do?”

“They don’t celebrate it. Well—I think maybe they make turkey or something for the people who do.”

“What school is this?”

When she told me the name—with a half-humorous quirk of her mouth—I was shocked. Institut Mont-Haefeli was a school in Switzerland—barely accredited, according to Andy—where only the very dumbest and most disturbed girls went.

“Mont-Haefeli? Really? I thought it was very”—the word psychiatric was wrong—“wow.”

“Well. Aunt Margaret says I’ll get used to it.” She was fooling around with the origami frog on the nightstand, trying to make it jump, only it was bent and tipping to one side. “And the view is like the mountain on the Caran d’Ache box. Snowcaps and flower meadow and all that. Otherwise it’s like one of those dull Euro horror movies where nothing much happens.”

“But—” I felt like I was missing something, or maybe still asleep. The only person I’d ever known who went to Mont-Haefeli was James Villiers’s sister, Dorit Villiers, and the story was she’d been sent there because she stabbed her boyfriend in the hand with a knife.

“Yeah, it’s a weird place,” she said, bored eyes flickering around the room. “A school for loonies. Not many places I could get in with my head injury though. They have a clinic attached,” she said, shrugging. “Doctors on staff. Bigger deal than you’d think. I mean, I have problems since I got hit on the head, but it’s not like I’m nuts or a shoplifter.”

“Yeah, but—” I was still trying to get horror movie out of my mind—“Switzerland? That’s pretty cool.”

“If you say so.”

“I knew this girl Lallie Foulkes who went to Le Rosey. She said they had a chocolate break every morning.”

“Well, we don’t even get jam on our toast.” Her hand was speckled and pale against the black of her coat. “Only the eating-disorder girls get it. If you want sugar in your tea you have to steal the packets from the nurses’ station.”

“Um—” Worse and worse. “Do you know a girl named Dorit Villiers?”

“No. She was there but then they sent her someplace else. I think she tried to scratch somebody in the face. They had her in lock-up for a while.”

“What?”

“That’s not what they call it,” she said, rubbing her nose. “It’s a farm-looking building they call La Grange—you know, all milkmaid and fake rustic. Nicer than the residence houses. But the doors are alarmed and they have guards and stuff.”

“Well, I mean—” I thought of Dorit Villiers—frizzy gold hair; blank blue eyes like a loopy Christmas tree angel—and didn’t know what to say.

“That’s only where they put the really crazy girls. La Grange. I’m in Bessonet, with a bunch of French-speaking girls. It’s supposed to be so I learn French better but all it means is nobody talks to me.”

“You should tell her you don’t like it! Your aunt.”

She grimaced. “I do. But then she starts telling me how much it costs. Or else says I’m hurting her feelings. Anyway,” she said, uneasily, in an I’ve got to go voice, looking over her shoulder.

“Huh,” I said, at last, after a woozy pause. Day and night, my delirium had been colored with an awareness of her in the house, recurring energy-surges of happiness at the sound of her voice in the hallway, her footsteps: we were going to make a blanket tent, she would be waiting for me at the ice rink, bright hum of excitement at all the things we were going to do when I got better—in fact it seemed we had been doing things, such as stringing necklaces of rainbow-colored candy while the radio played Belle and Sebastian and then, later on, wandering through a non-existent casino arcade in Washington Square.

Hobie, I noticed, was standing discreetly in the hall. “Sorry,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch. “I really hate to rush you—”

“Sure,” she said. To me she said: “Goodbye then. Hope you feel better.”

“Wait!”

“What?” she said, half turning.

“You’ll be back for Christmas, right?”

“Nope, Aunt Margaret’s.”

“When are you coming back, then?”

“Well—” one-shouldered shrug. “Du

“Pips—” said Hobie, though he was really speaking to me instead of her.

“Right,” she said, brushing her hair from her eyes.

I waited until I heard the front door shut. Then I got out of bed and pulled aside the curtain. Through the dusty glass, I watched them going together down the front steps, Pippa in her pink scarf and hat hurrying slightly alongside Hobie’s large, well-dressed form.

For a while after they turned the corner, I stood at the window looking out at the empty street. Then, feeling light-headed and forlorn, I trudged to her bedroom and—unable to resist—cracked the door a sliver.