The Goldfinch

“And what an adorable little boy you are,” she said to me. Her long nose was slightly pink at the end. “I’m awfully glad to meet you. James and Pippa have been telling me all about your visit—the most extraordinary thing. We’ve all been abuzz about it. Also—” she clasped my hand—“I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart for returning my grandfather’s ring to me. It means an awful lot to me.”

Her ring? Again, in confusion, I looked at Hobie.

“It would have meant a lot to my father, as well.” There was a deliberate, practiced quality to her friendliness (“buckets of charm,” as Mr. Barbour would have said); and yet her coppery tang of resemblance to Mr. Blackwell, and Pippa, drew me in despite myself. “You know how it was lost before, don’t you?”

The kettle whistled. “Would you like some tea, Margaret?” said Hobie.

“Yes please,” she replied briskly. “Lemon and honey. A tiny bit of scotch in it.” To me, in a more friendly voice, she said: “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid we have some grown-up business to attend to. We’re to meet with the lawyer shortly. As soon as Pippa’s nurse arrives.”

Hobie cleared his throat. “I don’t see any harm if—”

“May I go in and see her?” I said, too impatient for him to finish the sentence.

“Of course,” said Hobie quickly, before Aunt Margaret could intervene—turning expertly away to evade her a

viii.

THE FIRST THING SHE said to me was: “Will you please turn off the light?” She was propped in bed with the earbuds to her iPod in, looking blinded and disoriented in the light from the overhead bulb.

I switched it off. The room was emptier, cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. A thin spring rain was hitting at the windowpanes; outside, in the dark courtyard, the foamy white blossoms of a flowering pear were pale against wet brick.

“Hello,” she said, folding her hands a little tighter on the coverlet.

“Hi,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound quite so awkward.

“I knew it was you! I heard you talking in the kitchen.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d you know it was me?”

“I’m a musician! I have very sharp ears.”

Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dim, I saw that she seemed less frail than she had on my previous visit. Her hair had grown back in a bit and the staples were out, though the puckered line of the wound was still visible.

“How do you feel?” I said.

She smiled. “Sleepy.” The sleep was in her voice, rough and sweet at the edges. “Do you mind sharing?”

“Sharing what?”

She turned her head to the side and removed one of the earbuds, and handed it to me. “Listen.”

I sat down by her on the bed, and put it in my ear: aethereal harmonies, impersonal, piercing, like a radio signal from Paradise.

We looked at each other. “What is it?” I said.

“Umm—” she looked at the iPod—“Palestrina.”

“Oh.” But I didn’t care what it was. The only reason I was even hearing it was because of the rainy light, the white tree at the window, the thunder, her.

The silence between us was happy and strange, co

“Have you been crying?” I said, looking at her a bit more closely.

“No. Well—a little.”

We sat there, not saying anything, and it didn’t feel clumsy or weird.

“I have to leave,” she said presently. “Did you know?”

“I know. He told me.”

“It’s awful. I don’t want to go.” She smelled like salt, and medicine, and something else, like the chamomile tea my mother bought at Grace’s, grassy and sweet.

“She seems nice,” I said, cautiously. “I guess.”

“I guess,” she echoed gloomily, trailing a fingertip along the border of the coverlet. “She said something about a swimming pool. And horses.”

“That should be fun.”

She blinked, in confusion. “Maybe.”

“Do you ride?”

“No.”

“Me neither. My mother did though. She loved horses. She always stopped to talk to the carriage horses on Central Park South. Like—” I didn’t know how to say it—“it was almost like they’d talk to her. Like, they’d try to turn their heads, even with their blinkers on, to where she was walking.”

“Is your mother dead too?” she said timidly.

“Yes.”

“My mother’s been dead for—” she stopped and thought—“I can’t remember. She died after my spring holidays from school one year, so I had spring holidays off and the week after spring holidays too. And there was a field trip we were supposed to go on, to the Botanical Gardens, and I didn’t get to go. I miss her.”

“What’d she die of?”

“She got sick. Was your mother sick too?”

“No. It was an accident.” And then—not wanting to venture more upon this subject: “Anyway, she loved horses a lot, my mother. When she was growing up she had a horse she said got lonely sometimes? and he liked to come right up to the house and put his head in at the window to see what was going on.”

“What was his name?”

“Paintbox.” I’d loved it when my mother told me about the stables back in Kansas: owls and bats in the rafters, horses nickering and blowing. I knew the names of all her childhood horses and dogs.

“Paintbox! Was he all different colors?”

“He was spotted, sort of. I’ve seen pictures of him. Sometimes—in the summer—he’d come and look in on her while she was having her afternoon nap. She could hear him breathing, you know, just inside the curtains.”

“That’s so nice! I like horses. It’s just—”

“What?”

“I’d rather stay here!” All at once she seemed close to tears. “I don’t know why I have to go.”

“You should tell them you want to stay.” When did our hands start touching? Why was her hand so hot?

“I did tell them! Except everyone thinks it’ll be better there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said fretfully. “Quieter, they said. But I don’t like the quiet, I like it when there’s lots of stuff to hear.”

“They’re going to make me leave, too.”

She pushed up on her elbow. “No!” she said, looking alarmed. “When?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I guess. I have to go live with my grandparents.”

“Oh,” she said longingly, falling back on the pillow. “I don’t have any grandparents.”

I threaded my fingers through hers. “Mine aren’t very nice.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I said, in as normal a voice as I could, though my heart was pounding so hard that I could feel my pulse jumping in my finger-tips. Her hand, in mine, was velvety and fever-hot, just the slightest bit sticky.

“Don’t you have any other family?” Her eyes were so dark in the wan light from the window that they looked black.

“No. Well—” Did my father count? “No.”

There followed a long silence. We were still co

“What did you say this music was?” I asked, just for something to say.

She smiled sleepily, and reached for a pointed, unappetizing-looking lollipop that lay atop a foil wrapper on her nightstand.

“Palestrina,” she said, around the stick in her mouth. “High mass. Or something. They’re all a lot alike.”

“Do you like her?” I said. “Your aunt?”

She looked at me for several long beats. Then she put the lollipop carefully back on the wrapper and said: “She seems nice. I guess. Only I don’t really know her. It’s weird.”