The Goldfinch

“You didn’t see anybody on your way out,” said Morris encouragingly, repeating what I’d already told them.

I shook my head.

“Nothing you remember at all?”

“Well, I mean—bodies covered up. Equipment lying around.”

“Nobody coming in or out of the area of the explosion.”

“I didn’t see anybody,” I repeated doggedly. We had been over this.

“So you never saw firemen or rescue perso

“No.”

“I suppose we can establish, then, that they’d been ordered out of the building by the time you came to. So we’re talking about a time lapse of forty minutes to an hour and a half after the initial explosion. Is that a safe assumption?”

I shrugged, limply.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Staring at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, and the silence that followed was so long and uncomfortable I thought I might break down crying.

“Do you recall hearing the second blast?”

“Pardon me for asking,” said Mr. Beeman, “but is this really necessary?”

Ray, my questioner, turned. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not sure I see the purpose of putting him through this.”

With careful neutrality, Morris said: “We’re investigating a crime scene. It’s our job to find out what happened in there.”

“Yes, but surely you must have other means of doing so for such routine matters. I would think they had all ma

“Sure they do,” said Ray, rather sharply. “Except cameras can’t see through dust and smoke. Or if they’re blown up to face the ceiling. Now,” he said, settling back in his chair with a sigh. “You mentioned smoke. Did you smell it or see it?”

I nodded.

“Which one? Saw or smelled?”

“Both.”

“What direction do you think it was coming from?”

I was about to say I didn’t know again, but Mr. Beeman had not finished making his point. “Forgive me, but I entirely fail to see the purpose in security cameras if they don’t operate in an emergency,” he said, to the room in general. “With technology today, and all that artwork—”

Ray turned his head as if to say something angry, but Morris, standing in the corner, raised his hand and spoke up.

“The boy’s an important witness. The surveillance system isn’t designed to withstand an event like this. Now, I’m sorry, but if you can’t stop it with the comments we’ll have to ask you to leave, sir.”

“I’m here as this child’s advocate. I’ve the right to ask questions.”

“Not unless they pertain directly to the child’s welfare.”

“Oddly enough, I was under the impression that they did.”

At this Ray, in the chair in front of me, turned around. “Sir? If you continue to obstruct the proceedings?” he said. “You will have to leave the room.”

“I have no intention of obstructing you,” said Mr. Beeman in the tense silence that followed. “Nothing could be further from my mind, I assure you. Go on, please continue,” he said, with an irritated flick of the hand. “Far be it from me to stop you.”

On the questioning dragged. What direction had the smoke come from? What color was the flash? Who went in and out of the area in the moments prior? Had I noticed anything unusual, anything at all, before or after? I looked at the pictures they showed me—i

“I don’t remember.” I kept on saying it: partly because I really wasn’t sure, partly because I was frightened and anxious for the interview to come to a close, but also because there was an air of restlessness and distinct impatience in the room; the other adults seemed already to have agreed silently among themselves that I didn’t know anything, and should be left alone.

And then, before I knew it, it was over. “Theo,” said Ray, standing up and placing a meaty hand on my shoulder, “I want to thank you, buddy, for doing what you could for us.”

“That’s okay,” I said, jarred by how abruptly it had all come to an end.

“I know exactly how hard this was for you. Nobody but nobody wants to relive this type of stuff. It’s like—” he made a picture frame with his hands—“we’re putting together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, trying to figure out what went on in there, and you’ve maybe got some pieces of the puzzle that nobody else has got. You really helped us a lot by letting us talk to you.”

“If you remember anything else,” said Morris, leaning in to give me a card (which Mrs. Barbour quickly intercepted and tucked in her purse), “you’ll call us, won’t you? You’ll remind him, won’t you, miss,” he said to Mrs. Barbour, “to phone us if he has anything else to say? The office number’s right on that card but—” he took a pen from his pocket—“you don’t mind, can I have it back for a second, please?”

Without a word, Mrs. Barbour opened her bag and handed the card back to him.

“Right, right.” He clicked the pen out and scribbled a number on the back. “That’s my cell phone there. You can always leave a message at my office, but if you can’t reach me there, phone me on my cell, all right?”

As everyone was milling around the entrance, Mrs. Swanson floated up and put her arm around me, in the cozy way she had. “Hi there,” she said, confidentially, as if she were my tightest friend in the world. “How’s it going?”

I looked away, made an okay, I guess face.

She stroked my arm like I was her favorite cat. “Good for you. I know that must have been tough. Would you like to go to my office for a few minutes?”

With dismay, I noticed Dave the psychiatrist hovering in the background, and behind him Enrique, hands on hips, with an expectant half-smile on his face.

“Please,” I said, and my desperation must have been audible in my voice, “I want to get back to class.”

She squeezed my arm, and—I noticed—threw a glance at Dave and Enrique. “Sure,” she said. “Where are you this period? I’ll walk you down.”

ix.

BY THEN IT WAS English—last class of the day. We were studying the poetry of Walt Whitman:

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again

Vacant faces. The classroom was hot and drowsy in the late afternoon, windows open, traffic noises floating up from West End Avenue. Kids leaned on their elbows and drew pictures in the margins of their spiral notebooks.

I stared out the window, out at the grimy water tank on the roof opposite. The interrogation (as I thought of it) had disturbed me greatly, kicking up a wall of the disjointed sensations that crashed over me at unexpected moments: a choking burn of chemicals and smoke, sparks and wires, the blanched chill of emergency lights, overpowering enough to blank me out. It happened at random times, at school or out on the street—frozen in mid-step as it washed over me again, the girl’s eyes locked on mine in the queer, skewed instant before the world blew apart. Sometimes I’d come to, uncertain what had just been said to me, to find my lab partner in biology staring at me, or the guy whose way I was blocking in front of the cold-drinks case at the Korean market saying look kid, move it, I aint got all day.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

They had shown me no photographs I recognized of the girl—or of the old man either. Quietly, I put my left hand in my jacket pocket and felt around for the ring. On our vocabulary list a few days before we’d had the word consanguinity: joined in blood. The old man’s face had been so torn up and ruined I couldn’t even say exactly what he’d looked like, and yet I remembered all too well the warm slick feel of his blood on my hands—especially since in some way the blood was still there, I could still smell it and taste it in my mouth, and it made me understand why people talked about blood brothers and how blood bound people together. My English class had read Macbeth in the fall, but only now was it starting to make sense why Lady Macbeth could never scrub the blood off her hands, why it was still there after she washed it away.