The Goldfinch

Unhappily she blinked; and, not knowing what to do, I reached out and put my hand on top of hers and we sat for an uncomfortably long time.

In the end, it was she who spoke first. “At any rate.” Resolutely she dashed a tear from her eye while I flailed about for something to say. “He had mentioned you not three days before he died. He was engaged to be married. To a Japanese girl.”

“No kidding. Really?” Sad as I was, I couldn’t help smiling, a little: Andy had chosen Japanese as his second language precisely because he had such a thing for fanservice miko and slutty manga girls in sailor uniform. “Japanese from Japan?”

“Indeed. Tiny little thing with a squeaky voice and a pocketbook shaped like a stuffed animal. Oh yes, I met her,” she said with a raised eyebrow. “Andy translating over tea sandwiches at the Pierre. She was at the funeral, of course—the girl—her name was Miyako—well. Different cultures and all that, but it’s true what they say about the Japanese being undemonstrative.”

The little dog, Clementine, had crawled up to curl around Mrs. Barbour’s shoulder like a fur collar. “I have to admit, I’m thinking of getting a third,” she said, reaching over to stroke her. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said, disconcerted. It was extremely unlike Mrs. Barbour to solicit opinions from anyone at all on any subject, certainly not from me.

“I must say, they’ve been an enormous comfort, the pair of them. My old friend Maria Mercedes de la Pereyra turned up with them a week after the funeral, quite unexpected, two pups in a basket with ribbons on, and I have to say I wasn’t sure at first, but actually I don’t think I’ve ever received a more thoughtful gift. We could never have dogs before because of Andy. He was so terribly allergic. You remember.”

“I do.”

Platt—still in his tweed gamekeeper’s jacket, with big sagged-out pockets for dead birds and shotgun shells—had come back in. He pulled up a chair. “So, Mommy,” he said, biting his lower lip.

“So, Platypus.” A formal silence. “Good day at work?”

“Great.” He nodded, as if trying to reassure himself of the fact. “Yeah. Really really busy.”

“I’m so glad to hear it.”

“New books. One on the Congress of Vie

“Another one?” She turned to me. “And you, Theo?”

“Sorry?” I’d been looking at the scrimshaw (a whaling ship) set in the lid of her sewing basket, and thinking of poor Andy: black water, salt in his throat, nausea and flailing. The horror and cruelty of dying in his most hated element. The problem essentially is that I despise boats.

“Tell me. What are you doing with yourself these days?”

“Um, dealing antiques. American furniture, mostly.”

“No!” She was rapturous. “But how perfect!”

“Yes—down in the Village. I run the shop and manage the sales end. My partner—” it was still so new I wasn’t used to saying it—“my partner in the business, James Hobart, he’s the craftsman, takes care of restorations. You should come down and visit sometime.”

“Oh, delicious. Antiques!” She sighed. “Well—you know how I love old things. I wish my children had shown an interest. I’d always hoped at least one of them would.”

“Well, there’s always Kitsey,” said Platt.

“It’s curious,” Mrs. Barbour continued, as if she hadn’t heard this. “Not one of my children had an artistic bone in their bodies. Isn’t that extraordinary? Little philistines, all four of them.”

“Oh, please,” I said, in as playful a tone as I could manage. “I remember Toddy and Kitsey with all those piano lessons. Andy with his Suzuki violin.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, you know what I mean. None of my children have any visual sense. No appreciation whatever for painting or interiors or any of that. Now—” again she took my hand—“when you were a child, I used to catch you in the hallway studying my paintings. You’d always go straight to the very best ones. The Frederic Church landscape, my Fitz Henry Lane and my Raphaelle Peale, or the John Singleton Copley—you know, the oval portrait, the tiny one, girl in the bo

“That was a Copley?”

“Indeed. And I saw you with the little Rembrandt just now.”

“So it is Rembrandt, then?”

“Yes. Only the one, the washing-of-the-feet. The rest are all school-of. My own children have lived with those drawings their whole lives and never displayed the slightest particle of interest, isn’t that right, Platt?”

“I like to think that some of us have excelled at other things.”

I cleared my throat. “You know, I really did just stop in to say hello,” I said. “It’s wonderful to see you—to see you both—” turning to include Platt in this. “I wish it were under happier circumstances.”

“Will you stay and have di

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling cornered. “I can’t, not tonight. But I did want to run up for a minute and see you.”

“Then will you come back for di

“Di

She held up her cheek for a kiss, as she had never done when I was a child, not even with her own children.

“How lovely to have you here again!” she said, catching my hand and pressing it to her face. “Like old times.”

iv.

ON MY WAY OUT the door, Platt threw out some kind of weird handshake—part gang member, part fraternity boy, part International Sign Language—that I wasn’t sure how to return. In confusion I withdrew my hand and—not knowing what else to do—bumped fists with him, feeling stupid.

“So, hey. Glad we ran into each other,” I said, in the awkward silence. “Give me a call.”

“About di

“Tom Cable?” I laughed, incredulously, although it wasn’t much of a laugh; the bad old memory of how we’d been suspended from school together and how he’d blown me off when my mother died still made me uneasy. “You’re in touch with him?” I said, when Platt didn’t respond. “I haven’t thought of Tom in years.”

Platt smirked. “I have to admit, back in the day, I thought it was weird that any friend of that kid’s would put up with a drip like Andy,” he said quietly, slouching against the door frame. “Not that I minded. God knows Andy needed somebody to take him out and get him stoned or something.”

Andrip. Android. One-nut. Pimple Face. Sponge Bob Shit Pants.

“No?” said Platt casually, misreading my blank stare. “I thought you were into that. Cable was certainly quite the little pothead in his day.”

“That must have been after I left.”

“Well, maybe.” Platt looked at me, in a way I wasn’t sure I liked. “Mommy certainly thought butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, but I knew you were pals with Cable. And Cable was a little thief.” Sharply—in a way that brought the old, unpleasant Platt ringing back—he laughed. “I told Kitsey and Toddy to keep their rooms locked when you were here so you wouldn’t steal anything.”

“That’s what all that was about?” I had not thought of the piggy-bank incident in years.

“Well, I mean, Cable”—he glanced at the ceiling. “See, I used to date Tom’s sister Joey, holy Hell, she was a piece of work too.”

“Right.” I remembered all too well Joey Cable—sixteen, and stacked—brushing by twelve-year-old me in the hallway of the Hamptons house in tiny T-shirt and black thong panties.

“Sloppy Jo! What an ass she had on her. Remember how she used to parade around naked by the hot tub out there? Anyway, Cable. Out in the Hamptons at Daddy’s club he got caught rifling lockers in the men’s changing rooms, couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. That was after you left, eh?”