The Goldfinch

Grinding out my cigarette. No form, no sense, no meaning. Kitsey disliked it when I smoked in her bedroom but when she found the cigarette butt smashed out in the Limoges box on her dresser I doubted she was going to have anything to say about it. To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole; but ever since the painting had vanished from under me I’d felt drowned and extinguished by vastness—not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm’s reach of each other, and with a swell of vertigo I thought of all the places I’d been and all the places I hadn’t, a world lost and vast and unknowable, dingy maze of cities and alleyways, far-drifting ash and hostile immensities, co

xxiv.

SINCE I COULDN’T GET back to sleep I left without waking Kitsey, in the icy black hour before sun-up, shivering as I dressed in the dark; one of the roommates had come in and was ru

By the time I got off the F train, the sky was turning pale. Dragging home in the bitter cold—depressed, dead tired, letting myself in at the side door, trudging up to my room, smudged-up glasses, reeking of smoke and sex and curry and Kitsey’s Chanel No. 19, stopping to greet Popchik, who had bundled down the hall and was looping-the-loop with unusual excitement at my feet, pulling my rolled necktie out of my pocket so I could hang it on the rack on the back of the door—my blood almost froze when I heard a voice from the kitchen: “Theo? Is that you?”

Red head, poking around the corner. It was her, coffee cup in hand.

“Sorry, did I scare you? I didn’t mean to.” I stood transfixed, dumbfounded, as she put out her arms to me with sort of a happy crooning noise, Popchik whining and capering in excitement at our feet. She was still wearing the things she’d slept in, candy striped pyjama bottoms and a long sleeved T-shirt with an old sweater of Hobie’s over it, and she still smelled like tossed bedsheets and bed: oh God, I thought, closing my eyes and pressing my face into her shoulder with a rush of happiness and fear, swift draft from Heaven, oh God.

“Lovely to see you!” There she was. Her hair—her eyes. Her. Bitten-down nails like Boris’s and a pout to her lower lip like a child who’d sucked her thumb too much, red tousled head like a dahlia. “How are you? I’ve missed you!”

“I—” All my resolutions gone in a second. “What are you doing here?”

“I was flying to Montreal!” Harsh laugh of a much younger girl, a hoarse playground laugh. “Stopping over to see my friend Sam for a few days and then going to meet Everett in California.” (Sam? I thought.) “Anyway my plane got re-routed—” she took a gulp of her coffee, wordlessly offered the cup to me, want some? no? another gulp—“and I was stuck at Newark, and I thought, why not, I’ll take the rain check and come into the city and see you guys.”

“Huh. That’s great.” You guys. I was included in that, too.

“Thought it might be fun to pop in, since I won’t be here for Christmas. Also since your party’s tomorrow. Married! Congratulations!” She had her fingertips on my arm and when she stretched up on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek I felt her kiss go all through me. “When do I get to meet her? Hobie says she’s a dreamboat. Are you excited?”

“I—” I was so stu

“It’s good to see you. You’re looking well.”

She didn’t appear to notice how dumbstruck, how dizzy, how completely gobsmacked I was at the sight of her. Or maybe she did notice and didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

“Where’s Hobie?” I said. I wasn’t asking because I cared, but because it was a little too good to be true to be alone in the house with her, and a little frightening too.

“Oh—” she rolled her eyes—“he insisted on going to the bakery. I told him not to bother but you know how he is. He likes to get me those blueberry biscuits that Mama and Welty used to buy me when I was little. Can’t believe they even make them any more—they don’t have them every day, he says. Sure you don’t want some coffee?” moving to the stove, just the trace of a limp in her walk.

It was extraordinary—I could hardly hear a word she was saying. It was always like this when I was in the room with her, she overrode everything: her skin, her eyes, her rusty voice, flame-colored hair and a tilt to her head that sometimes gave her a look like she was humming to herself; and the light in the kitchen was all mixed up with the light of her presence, with color and freshness and beauty.

“I have some CDs I’ve burned for you!” Turning to look at me over her shoulder. “Wish I’d thought to bring them. Didn’t know I’d be stopping though. I’ll be sure and pop them in the mail when I get back home.”

“And I have some CDs for you.” There was a whole stack of them in my room, things I’d bought because they reminded me of her, so many I’d felt fu

“Books? Oh, that’s great. I finished my book on the plane, I need something else. We can swap.”

“Sure.” Bare feet. Blush-pink ears. The pearl white skin at the scoop neck of her T-shirt.

“Rings of Saturn. Everett said he thought you might like it. He says hi, by the way.”

“Oh right, hi.” I hated this pretense of hers, that Everett and I were friends. “I’m, er—”

“What?”

“Actually—” My hands were shaking and I wasn’t even hung over. I could only hope she didn’t see. “Actually I’m just going to duck in my room for a second, all right?”

She looked startled, touched her fingertips to her forehead: silly me. “Oh, right, sorry! I’ll just be in here.”

I didn’t start to breathe again until I was in my room with the door shut. My suit was okay, for yesterday’s, but my hair was dirty and I needed a shower. Should I shave? Change my shirt? Or would she notice? Would it look weird that I’d run in and tried to clean up for her? Could I get in the bathroom and brush my teeth without her noticing? But then suddenly I had a rush of counter-panic that I was sitting in my room with the door closed, wasting valuable moments with her.

I got up again and opened the door. “Hey,” I yelled down the hall.

Her head appeared again. “Hey.”

“Want to go to the movies with me tonight?”

Slight beat of surprise. “Well sure. What?”

“Documentary about Gle

“Sounds fantastic. What time?”

“Sevenish. I’ll check.”

xxv.