The Goldfinch

Back in New York, when I was eleven or so, my mother had signed me up for a Kids in the Kitchen class at my day camp, where I’d learned to cook a few simple meals: hamburgers, grilled cheese (which I’d sometimes made for my mother on nights she worked late), and what Boris called “egg and toasts.” Boris, who sat on the countertop kicking the cabinets with his heels and talking to me while I cooked, did the washing-up. In the Ukraine, he told me, he’d sometimes picked pockets for money to eat. “Got chased, once or twice,” he said. “Never caught, though.”

“Maybe we should go down to the Strip sometime,” I said. We were standing at the kitchen counter at my house with knives and forks, eating our steaks straight from the frying pan. “If we were going to do it, that’d be the place. I never saw so many drunk people and they’re all from out of town.”

He stopped chewing; he looked shocked. “And why should we? When so easy to steal here, from so big stores!”

“Just saying.” My money from the doormen—which Boris and I spent a few dollars at a time, in vending machines and at the 7-Eleven near school that Boris called “the magazine”—would hold out a while, but not forever.

“Ha! And what will I do if you are arrested, Potter?” he said, dropping a fat piece of steak down to the dog, whom he had taught to dance on his hind legs. “Who will cook the di

“Seriously, Boris,” I said, pushing the hair from my eyes (I was badly in need of a haircut, but didn’t want to spend the money), “I don’t see much difference in stealing wallets and stealing steaks.”

“Big difference, Potter.” He held his hands apart to show me just how big. “Stealing from working person? And stealing from big rich company that robs the people?”

“Costco doesn’t rob the people. It’s a discount supermarket.”

“Fine then. Steal essentials of life from private citizen. This is your so-smart plan. Hush,” he said to the dog, who’d barked sharply for more steak.

“I wouldn’t steal from some poor working person,” I said, tossing Popper a piece of steak myself. “There are plenty of sleazy people walking around Vegas with wads of cash.”

“Sleazy?”

“Dodgy. Dishonest.”

“Ah.” The pointed dark eyebrow went up. “Fair enough. But if you steal money from sleazy person, like gangster, they are likely to hurt you, nie?”

“You weren’t scared of getting hurt in Ukraine?”

He shrugged. “Beaten up, maybe. Not shot.”

“Shot?”

“Yes, shot. Don’t look surprised. This cowboy country, who knows? Everyone has guns.”

“I’m not saying a cop. I’m saying drunk tourists. The place is crawling with them Saturday night.”

“Ha!” He put the pan down on the floor for the dog to finish off. “Likely you will end up in jail, Potter. Loose morals, slave to the economy. Very bad citizen, you.”

xiii.

BY THIS TIME—OCTOBER or so—we were eating together almost every night. Boris, who’d often had three or four beers before di

“Don’t go!” said Boris, one night at his house when I stood up toward the end of The Magnificent Seven—the final gunfight, Yul Bry

“Yeah, but it’s almost eleven.”

Boris—lying on the floor—raised himself on an elbow. Long-haired, narrow-chested, weedy and thin, he was Yul Bry

“Call Xandra to come collect you,” he said with a yawn. “What time does she get off work?”

“Xandra? Forget it.”

Again Boris yawned, eyes heavy-lidded with vodka. “Sleep here, then,” he said, rolling over and scrubbing his face with one hand. “Will they miss you?”

Were they even coming home? Some nights they didn’t. “Doubtful,” I said.

“Hush,” said Boris—reaching for his cigarettes, sitting up. “Watch now. Here come the bad guys.”

“You saw this movie before?”

“Dubbed into Russian, if you can believe it. But very weak Russian. Sissy. Is sissy the word I want? More like schoolteachers than gunfighters, is what I’m trying to say.”

xiv.

THOUGH I’D BEEN MISERABLE with grief at the Barbours’, I now thought longingly of the apartment on Park Avenue as a lost Eden. And though I had access to email on the computer at school, Andy wasn’t much of a writer, and the messages I got in reply were frustratingly impersonal. (Hi, Theo. Hope you enjoyed your summer. Daddy got a new boat [the Absalom]. Mother will not set foot upon it but unfortunately I was compelled. Japanese II is giving me some headaches but everything else is fine.) Mrs. Barbour dutifully answered the paper letters I sent—a line or two on her monogrammed correspondence cards from Dempsey and Carroll—but there was never anything personal. She always asked how are you? and closed with thinking about you, but there was never any we miss you or we wish we could see you.

I wrote to Pippa, in Texas, though she was too ill to answer—which was just as well, since most of the letters I never sent.

Dear Pippa,

How are you? How do you like Texas? I’ve thought about you a lot. Have you been riding that horse you like? Things are great here. I wonder if it’s hot there, since it’s so hot here.

That was boring; I threw it away, and started again.

Dear Pippa,

How are you? I’ve been thinking about you and hoping you are okay. I hope that things are going okay wonderful for you in Texas. I have to say, I sort of hate it here, but I’ve made some friends and am getting used to it a bit, I guess.

I wonder if you get homesick? I do. I miss New York a lot. I wish we lived closer together. How is your head now? Better, I hope. I’m sorry that

“Is that your girlfriend?” said Boris—crunching an apple, reading over my shoulder.

“Shove off.”

“What happened to her?” he said and then, when I didn’t reply: “Did you hit her?”

“What?” I said, only half listening.

“Her head? That’s why you’re apologizing? You hit her or something?”

“Yeah, right,” I said—and then, from his earnest, intent expression, realized he was perfectly serious.

“You think I beat girls up?” I said.

He shrugged. “She might have deserved it.”

“Um, we don’t hit women in America.”

He scowled, and spit out an apple seed. “No. Americans just persecute smaller countries that believe different from them.”

“Boris, shut up and leave me alone.”

But he had rattled me with his comment and rather than start a new letter to Pippa, I began one to Hobie.