The Goldfinch

“But what are you going to do with me?” I asked for the second time, pushing back in my chair, a crackle of panic rising in my voice. It had all seemed very informal when I’d turned off the television and left the apartment with them, for a bite to eat as they’d said. Nobody had said a word about removing me from my home.

Enrique glanced down at his clipboard. “Well, Theo—” he kept pronouncing it Teo, they both did, which was wrong—“you’re a minor child in need of immediate care. We’re going to need to place you in some kind of emergency custody.”

“Custody?” The word made my stomach crawl; it suggested courtrooms, locked dormitories, basketball courts ringed with barbed-wire fence.

“Well, let’s say care then. And only until your grandpa and grandma—”

“Wait,” I said—overwhelmed at exactly how fast things were spi

“We’ll just need to make some temporary arrangements until we reach them,” said the Korean lady, leaning close. Her breath smelled minty but also had the slightest underbite of garlic. “We know how sad you must be, but there’s nothing to worry about. Our job is just to keep you safe until we reach the people who love you and care about you, okay?”

It was too awful to be real. I stared at the two strange faces across the booth, sallow in the artificial lights. Even the proposition that Grandpa Decker and Dorothy were people who cared about me was absurd.

“But what’s going to happen to me?” I said.

“The main concern,” said Enrique, “is that you’re in a capable foster situation for the time being. With someone that’ll work hand in hand with Social Services to implement your care plan.”

Their combined efforts to soothe me—their calm voices and sympathetic, reasonable expressions—made me increasingly frantic. “Stop it!” I said, jerking away from the Korean lady, who had reached over the table and was attempting to clasp my hand in a caring way.

“Look, Teo. Let me explain something. Nobody’s talking about detention or a juvenile facility—”

“Then what?”

“Temporary custody. All that means, is that we take you to a safe place with people who will act as guardians for the state—”

“What if I don’t want to go?” I said, so loudly that people turned to stare.

“Listen,” Enrique said, leaning back and signalling for more coffee. “The city has certified crisis homes for youth in need. Fine places. And right now, that’s just one option we’re looking at. Because in a lot of cases like yours—”

“I don’t want to go to a foster home!”

“Kid, you sure don’t,” the pink-haired club girl said audibly at the next table. Recently, the New York Post had been full of Johntay and Keshawn Divens, the eleven-year-old twins who had been raped by their foster father and starved nearly to death, up around Morningside Heights.

Enrique pretended not to hear this. “Look, we’re here to help,” he said, refolding his hands on the tabletop. “And we’ll also consider other alternatives if they keep you safe and address your needs.”

“You never told me I couldn’t go back to the apartment!”

“Well, city agencies are overburdened—sí, gracias,” he said to the waiter who’d come to refill his cup. “But sometimes other arrangements can be made if we get provisional approval, especially in a situation like yours.”

“What he’s saying?” The Korean lady tapped her fingernail on the Formica to get my attention. “It’s not set in stone you go into the system if there’s somebody who can come stay with you for a little while. Or vice versa.”

“A little while?” I repeated. It was the only part of the sentence that had sunk in.

“Like maybe there’s somebody else we could call, that you might be comfortable staying with for a day or two? Like a teacher, maybe? Or a family friend?”

Off the top of my head, I gave them the telephone number of my old friend Andy Barbour—the first number that came to me, maybe because it was the first phone number besides my own I’d learned by heart. Though Andy and I had been good friends in elementary school (movies, sleepovers, summer classes in Central Park in map and compass skills), I’m still not quite sure why his name was the first to fall out of my mouth, since we weren’t such good friends any more. We’d drifted apart at the start of junior high; I’d hardly seen him in months.

“Barbour with a u,” said Enrique as he wrote the name down. “Who are these people? Friends?”

Yes, I replied, I’d known them all my life, practically. The Barbours lived on Park Avenue. Andy had been my best friend since third grade. “His dad has a big job on Wall Street,” I said—and then I shut up. It had just occurred to me that Andy’s dad had spent some unknown amount of time in a Co

“What about the mother?”

“She and my mom are good friends.” (Almost true, but not quite; though they were on perfectly friendly terms, my mother wasn’t nearly rich or co

“No, I mean, what does she do for a living?”

“Charity work,” I said, after a disoriented pause. “Like the Antiques Show at the Armory?”

“So she’s a stay-at-home mom?”

I nodded, glad she’d supplied the phrase so handily, which though technically true was not how anyone who knew Mrs. Barbour would ever think to describe her.

Enrique signed his name with a flourish. “We’ll look into it. Can’t promise anything,” he said, clicking his pen and sticking it back in his pocket. “We can certainly drop you over with these folks for the next few hours, though, if they’re who you want to be with.”

He slid out of the booth and walked outside. Through the front window, I could see him walking back and forth on the sidewalk, talking on the phone with a finger in one ear. Then he dialed another number, for a much shorter call. There was a quick stop at the apartment—less than five minutes, just long enough for me to grab my school bag and a few impulsive and ill-considered articles of clothing—and then, in their car again (“Are you buckled up back there?”) I leaned with my cheek to the cold glass and watched the lights go green all up the empty dawn canyon of Park Avenue.

Andy lived in the upper Sixties, in one of the great old white-glove buildings on Park where the lobby was straight from a Dick Powell movie and the doormen were still mostly Irish. They’d all been there forever, and as it happened I remembered the guy who met us at the door: Ke

“They’re expecting you,” he said to the social workers. “Go on up.”

ii.

IT WAS MR. BARBOUR who opened the door: first a crack, then all the way. “Morning, morning,” he said, stepping back. Mr. Barbour was a tiny bit strange-looking, with something pale and silvery about him, as if his treatments in the Co