The Goldfinch

My “opes” as Jerome called them were in an old tobacco tin. On the marble top of the dresser I crushed one of my hoarded old-style Oxycontins, cut it and drew it into lines with my Christie’s card and—rolling the crispest bill in my wallet—leaned to the table, eyes damp with anticipation: ground zero, bam, bitter taste in the back of the throat and then the gust of relief, falling backward on the bed as the sweet old punch hit me square in the heart: pure pleasure, aching and bright, far from the tin-can clatter of misery.

vii.

THE NIGHT OF MY di

When I emerged, Lexington Avenue was deserted, raindrops dancing and prickling on the sidewalks, a smashing rain that seemed to amplify all the noise on the streets. Taxis lashed by in loud sprays of water. A few doors from the station I ducked into a market to buy flowers—lilies, three bunches since one was too puny; in the tiny, overheated shop their fragrance hit me exactly the wrong way and only at the cash register did I realize why: their scent was the same sick, unwholesome sweetness of my mother’s memorial service. As I ducked out again and ran the flooded sidewalk to Park Avenue—socks squelching, cold rain pelting in my face—I regretted I’d bought them at all and came close to tossing them in a trash can, only the squalls of rain were so fierce I couldn’t bring myself to slow down, for even a moment, and ran on.

As I stood in the vestibule—my hair plastered to my head, my supposedly waterproof raincoat sopping like I’d soaked it in the bathtub—the door opened quite suddenly to a large, open-faced college kid that it took me a pulse or two to recognize as Toddy. Before I could apologize for the water streaming off me, he embraced me solidly with a clap on the back.

“Oh my God,” he was saying as he led me into the living room. “Let me take your coat—and these, Mum will love them. Awesome to see you! How long has it been?” He was larger and more robust than Platt, with un-Barbour like hair of a darker, cardboard-colored blond and a very un-Barbour like smile on him as well—eager and bright with no irony about it.

“Well—” His warmth, which seemed to presume upon some happy old intimacy we did not share, had thrown me into awkwardness. “It’s been a long time. You must be in college now, right?”

“Yes—Georgetown—up for the weekend. I’m studying political science but really I’m hoping to go into nonprofit management maybe, something to do with young people?” With his ready, student-government smile, he had clearly grown up to be the high achiever that, at one time, Platt had promised to be. “And, I mean, I hope it’s not too weird of me to say but I have you in part to thank for it.”

“Sorry?”

“Well, I mean. Wanting to work with disadvantaged young people. You made quite an impression on me, you know, back when you were staying with us all those years ago. It was a real eye-opener, your situation. Because, even back in third grade or whatever, you made me think—that this was what I wanted to do someday, you know, something to do with helping kids.”

“Wow,” I said, still stuck on the disadvantaged part. “Huh. That’s great.”

“And, I mean, it’s really exciting, because there are so many ways to give back to youth out there in need. I mean, I don’t know how familiar you are with DC, but there are lots of under-served neighborhoods, I’m involved in a service project tutoring at-risk kids in reading and math, and this summer, I’m going to Haiti with Habitat for Humanity—”

“Is that him?” Decorous click of shoes on the parquet, light fingertips on my sleeve, and the next thing I knew Kitsey had her arms around me and I was smiling down into her white-blonde hair.

“Oh, you’re completely soaked,” she was saying, holding me out at arm’s length. “Look at you. How on earth did you get here? Did you swim?” She had Mr. Barbour’s long fine nose and his bright, almost goofy clarity of gaze—much the same as when she was a straggle-haired nine year old in school uniform, flushed and struggling with her backpack—only now, when she looked at me, I went blank to see how coldly, impersonally beautiful she’d grown.

“I—” To hide my confusion, I looked back at Toddy, busy with raincoat and flowers. “Sorry, this is just so weird. I mean—you especially” (to Toddy). “How old were you the last time I saw you? Seven? Eight?”

“I know,” said Kitsey, “the little rat, he’s so exactly like a person now, isn’t he? Platt—” Platt had ambled into the living room, poorly shaven, in tweeds and rough Donegal sweater, like some gloomy fisherman in a Synge play—“where does she want us?”

“Mm—” he seemed embarrassed, rubbing his stubbled cheek—“in her quarters, actually. You don’t mind, do you?” he said to me. “Etta’s set up a table back there.”

Kitsey wrinkled her brow. “Oh, rats. Well, it’s okay, I guess. Why don’t you put the dogs in the kitchen? Come on—” seizing me by the hand and dragging me down the hall with a sort of madcap, fluttery, forward-leaning quality—“we have to get you a drink, you’ll need one.” There was something of Andy in her fixity of gaze, also her breathlessness—his asthmatic gape reconfigured, delightfully, into parted lips and a sort of whispery starlet quality. “I was hoping she’d have us in the dining room or at least the kitchen, it’s so gruesome back in her lair—what are you drinking?” she said, turning into the bar off the pantry where glasses and a bucket of ice were set out.

“Some of that Stolichnaya would be great. On the rocks please.”

“Really? Are you sure it’s all right? We none of us drink it—Daddy always ordered this kind”—hoisting Stoli bottle—“because he liked the label… very Cold War… how do you say it again.…”

“Stolichnaya.”

“Very authentic-sounding. Won’t even try. You know,” she said, turning the gooseberry-gray eyes to me, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“It’s not that bad out.”

“Yes but—” blink blink—“I thought you hated us.”

“Hated you? No.”

“No?” When she laughed, it was fascinating to see Andy’s leukemic wa

“I didn’t care.”

“Good.” After a too-long pause, she turned back to the drinks. “We were horrible to you,” she said flatly. “Todd and me.”

“Come on. You two were just little.”

“Yes but—” she bit her lower lip—“we knew better. Especially after what had happened to you. And now… I mean with Daddy and Andy…”

I waited, as it seemed she was trying to formulate a thought, but instead she only took a sip of her wine (white; Pippa drank red) then touched me on the back of the wrist. “Mum’s waiting to see you,” she said. “She’s been so excited all day. Shall we go in?”

“Certainly.” Lightly, lightly, I put my hand at her elbow, as I had seen Mr. Barbour do with guests “of the female persuasion,” and steered her into the hall.

viii.

THE NIGHT WAS A dreamlike mangle of past and present: a childhood world miraculously intact in some respects, grievously altered in others, as if the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had joined to host the evening. But despite the continual, ugly scrape of Andy’s absence (Andy and I…? remember when Andy…?) and everything else so strange and shrunken (pot pies at a folding table in Mrs. Barbour’s room?) the oddest part of the evening was my blood-deep, unreasoning sense of returning home. Even Etta, when I’d gone back to the kitchen to say hi, had untied her apron and rushed to hug me: I had the night off but I wanted to stay, I wanted to see you.