The Goldfinch

Andy pulled a face. “The stage,” he said derisively.

Mr. Barbour turned to look at him. “Yes, the stage. Do you find the term amusing?”

“Pompous is a lot more like it.”

“Well, I’m afraid I fail to see what you find so pompous about it. Certainly it’s the very word your great-grandmother would have used.” (Mr. Barbour’s grandfather had been dropped from the Social Register for marrying Olga Osgood, a minor movie actress.)

“My point exactly.”

“Then what would you have me call it?”

“Actually, Daddy, what I would really like to know is the last time you saw nautical flags showcased in any theatrical production.”

“South Pacific,” said Mr. Barbour swiftly.

“Besides South Pacific.”

“I rest my case.”

“I don’t believe you and Mother even saw South Pacific.”

“For God’s sake, Andy.”

“Well, even if you did. One example doesn’t sufficiently establish your case.”

“I refuse to continue this absurd conversation. Come along, Theo.”

vii.

FROM THIS POINT ON, I began trying especially hard to be a good guest: to make my bed in the mornings; to always say thank you and please, and to do everything I knew my mother would want me to do. Unfortunately the Barbours didn’t exactly have the kind of household where you could show your appreciation by babysitting the younger siblings or pitching in with the dishes. Between the woman who came to look after the plants—a depressing job, since there was so little light in the apartment the plants mostly died—and Mrs. Barbour’s assistant, whose main job seemed to be rearranging the closets and the china collection—they had somewhere in the neighborhood of eight people working for them. (When I’d asked Mrs. Barbour where the washing machine was, she’d looked at me as if I’d asked for lye and lard to boil up for soap.)

But though nothing was required of me, still the effort to blend into their polished and complicated household was an immense strain. I was desperate to vanish into the background—to slip invisibly among the Chinoiserie patterns like a fish in a coral reef—and yet it seemed I drew unwanted attention to myself hundreds of times a day: by having to ask for every little item, whether a wash cloth or the Band-Aids or the pencil sharpener; by not having a key, always having to ring when I came and went—even by my well-intentioned efforts to make my own bed in the morning (it was better just to let Irenka or Esperenza do it, Mrs. Barbour explained, as they were used to doing it and did a better job with the corners). I broke off a finial on an antique coat stand by throwing open a door; twice managed to set off the burglar alarm by mistake; and even blundered into Mr. and Mrs. Barbour’s room one night when I was looking for the bathroom.

Luckily, Andy’s parents were around so little that my presence didn’t seem to inconvenience them very much. Unless Mrs. Barbour was entertaining, she was out of the apartment from about eleven a.m.—popping in for a couple of hours before di

By far the biggest issue I faced was Andy’s siblings. Though Platt, luckily, was off terrorizing younger children at Groton, still Kitsey and the youngest brother, Toddy, who was only seven, clearly resented having me around to usurp what minor attention they got from their parents. There were a lot of tantrums and pouting, a lot of eye rolling and hostile giggling on Kitsey’s part, as well as a baffling (to me) upset—never fully resolved—where she complained to her friends and the housekeepers and anyone who would listen that I’d been going in her room and messing around with the piggy-bank collection on the shelf above her desk. As for Toddy, he grew more and more disturbed as the weeks went by and still I was there; at breakfast, he gaped at me unashamed and frequently asked questions that made his mother reach under the table and pinch him. Where did I live? How much longer was I going to stay with them? Did I have a dad? Then where was he?

“Good question,” I said, provoking horrified laughter from Kitsey, who was popular at school and—at nine—as pretty in her white-blonde way as Andy was plain.

viii.

PROFESSIONAL MOVERS WERE COMING, at some point, to pack my mother’s things and put them in storage. Before they came, I was to go to the apartment and pick out anything I wanted or needed. I was aware of the painting in a nagging but vague way which was entirely out of proportion to its actual importance, as if it were a school project I’d left unfinished. At some point I was going to have to get it back to the museum, though I still hadn’t quite figured out how I was going to do that without causing a huge fuss.

Already I had missed one chance to give it back—when Mrs. Barbour had turned away some investigators who had shown up at the apartment looking for me. That is: I understood they were investigators or even police from what Kellyn, the Welsh girl who looked after the younger children, told me. She had been bringing Toddy home from day care when the strangers showed up asking for me. “Suits, you know?” she said, raising a significant eyebrow. She was a heavy, fast-talking girl with cheeks so flushed she always looked like she’d been standing next to a fire. “They had that look.”

I was too afraid to ask what she meant by that look; and when I went in, cautiously, to see what Mrs. Barbour had to say about it, she was busy. “I’m sorry,” she said, without quite looking at me, “but can we please talk about this later?” Guests were arriving in half an hour, among them a well-known architect and a famous dancer with the New York City Ballet; she was fretting over the loose catch to her necklace and upset because the air conditioner wasn’t working properly.

“Am I in trouble?”

It slipped out before I knew what I was saying. Mrs. Barbour stopped. “Theo, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “They were perfectly nice, very considerate, it’s just that I can’t have them sitting around just now. Turning up, without telephoning. Anyway, I told them it wasn’t the best time, which of course they could see for themselves.” She gestured at the caterers darting back and forth, the building engineer on a ladder, examining inside the air-conditioning vent with a flashlight. “Now run along. Where’s Andy?”

“He’ll be home in an hour. His astronomy class went to the planetarium.”

“Well, there’s food in the kitchen. I don’t have a lot of the miniature tarts to spare, but you can have all the finger sandwiches you want. And after the cake’s cut, you’re welcome to have some of that too.”

Her ma

“We just want to talk to you, is that okay?” said the older guy as we walked down to the dreaded conference room where I was to have had the meeting with Mr. Beeman and my mother on the day she died. “Don’t be scared.” He was a dark-ski