The Goldfinch

“As good as cash,” Boris said swiftly, spitting a bitten-off thumbnail on the floor.

“Right. Except you can’t cash them in the casino if you’re under eighteen.”

Boris chortled. “Come on. We figure out something, if we have to. We dress you up in that poncy school jacket with the coat of arms, send you to the window, ‘Excuse me, miss—’ ”

I rolled over and punched him hard, in the arm. “Fuck you,” I said, stung by his drawling, snobbish rendering of my voice.

“Can’t be talking like that, Potter,” said Boris gleefully, rubbing his arm. “They won’t give you a fucking cent. All I’m saying is, I know where my dad’s checkbook is, and if there’s an emergency—” he held out his open palms—“right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, if I have to write bad check, I write bad check,” said Boris philosophically. “Good to know I can. I’m not saying, break in their room and go through their things, but still, good idea to keep your eye open, yes?”

xviii.

BORIS AND HIS FATHER didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and Xandra and my dad had reservations for a Romantic Holiday Extravaganza at a French restaurant in the MGM Grand. “Do you want to come?” said my father when he saw me looking at the brochure on the kitchen counter: hearts and fireworks, tricolor bunting over a plate of roast turkey. “Or do you have something of your own to do?”

“No thanks.” He was being nice, but the thought of being with Dad and Xandra on their Romantic Holiday Whatever made me uneasy. “I’ve got plans.”

“What are you doing then?”

“I’m having Thanksgiving with somebody else.”

“Who with?” said my dad, in a rare burst of parental solicitude. “A friend?”

“Let me guess,” said Xandra—barefoot, in the Miami Dolphins jersey she slept in, staring into the fridge. “The same person who keeps eating these oranges and apples I bring home.”

“Oh, come on,” said my dad sleepily, coming up behind her and putting his arms around her, “you like the little Russki—what’s his name—Boris.”

“Sure I like him. Which is good, I guess, since he’s here pretty much all the time. Shit,” she said—twisting away from him, slapping her bare thigh—“who let this mosquito inside? Theo, I don’t know why you can’t remember to keep that door to the pool shut. I’ve told you and told you.”

“Well, you know, I could always have Thanksgiving with you guys, if you’d rather,” I said blandly, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “Why don’t I.”

I had intended this to a

“Well, I’m sure they can work something out.”

“We’ll need to call ahead.”

“Fine then, call,” said my dad, giving her a slightly stoned pat on the back and ambling on in to the living room to check on his football scores.

Xandra and I stood looking at each other for a moment, and then she looked away, as if into some bleak and untenable vision of the future. “I need coffee,” she said listlessly.

“It wasn’t me who left that door open.”

“I don’t know who keeps doing it. All I know is, those weird Amway-selling people over there didn’t drain their fountain before they moved and now there’s a jillion mosquitoes everywhere I look—I mean, there goes another one, shit.”

“Look, don’t be mad. I don’t have to come with you guys.”

She put down the box of coffee filters. “So, what are you saying?” she said. “Should I change the reservation or not?”

“What are you two going on about?” called my father faintly from the next room, from his nest of beringed coasters, old cigarette packs, and marked-up baccarat sheets.

“Nothing,” called Xandra. Then, a few minutes later, as the coffee maker began to hiss and pop, she rubbed her eye and said in a sleep-roughened voice: “I never said I didn’t want you to come.”

“I know. I never said you did.” Then: “Also, just so you know, it’s not me that leaves the door open. It’s Dad, when he goes out there to talk on the phone.”

Xandra—reaching in the cabinet for her Planet Hollywood coffee mug—looked back at me over her shoulder. “You’re not really having di

“Nah. We’ll just be here watching television.”

“Do you want me to bring you something?”

“Boris likes those cocktail sausages you bring home. And I like the wings. The hot ones.”

“Anything else? What about those mini taquito things? You like those too, don’t you?”

“That would be great.”

“Fine. I’ll hook you guys up. Just stay out of my cigarettes, that’s all I ask. I don’t care if you smoke,” she said, raising a hand to hush me, “it’s not like I’m busting you, but somebody’s been stealing packs out of the carton in here and it’s costing me like twenty-five bucks a week.”

xix.

EVER SINCE BORIS HAD shown up with the bruised eye, I had built Boris’s father up in my mind to be some thick-necked Soviet with pig eyes and a buzz haircut. In fact—as I was surprised to see, when I did finally meet him—he was as thin and pale as a starved poet. Chlorotic, with a sunken chest, he smoked incessantly, wore cheap shirts that had grayed in the wash, drank endless cups of sugary tea. But when you looked him in the eye you realized that his frailty was deceptive. He was wiry, intense, bad temper shimmering off him—small-boned and sharp-faced, like Boris, but with an evil red-rimmed gaze and tiny, brownish sawteeth. He made me think of a rabid fox.

Though I’d glimpsed him in passing, and heard him (or a person I presumed was him) bumping around Boris’s house at night, I didn’t actually meet him face-to-face until a few days before Thanksgiving. Then we walked into Boris’s house one day after school, laughing and talking, to find him hunched at the kitchen table with a bottle and a glass. Despite his shabby clothes, he was wearing expensive shoes and lots of gold jewelry; and when he looked up at us with reddened eyes we shut up talking immediately. Though he was a small, slightly built man, there was something in his face that made you not want to get too close to him.

“Hi,” I said tentatively.

“Hello,” he said—stony-faced, in a much thicker accent than Boris—and then turned to Boris and said something in Ukrainian. A brief conversation followed, which I observed with interest. It was interesting to see the change that came over Boris when he was speaking another language—a sort of livening, or alertness, a sense of a different and more efficient person occupying his body.

Then—unexpectedly—Mr. Pavlikovsky held out both hands to me. “Thank you,” he said thickly.

Though I was afraid to approach him—it felt like approaching a wild animal—I stepped forward anyway and held out both my hands, awkwardly. He took them in his own, which were hard-ski

“You are good person,” he said. His gaze was bloodshot and way too intense. I wanted to look away, and was ashamed of myself.

“God be with you and bless you always,” he said. “You are like a son to me. For letting my son come into your family.”

My family? In confusion, I glanced over at Boris.

Mr. Pavlikovsky’s eyes went to him. “You told him what I said?”

“He said you are part of our family here,” said Boris, in a bored voice, “and if there is anything ever he can do for you…”

To my great surprise, Mr. Pavlikovsky pulled me close and caught me in a solid embrace, while I closed my eyes and tried hard to ignore his smell: hair cream, body odor, alcohol, and some sort of sharp, disagreeably pungent cologne.

“What was that about?” I said quietly when we were up in Boris’s room with the door shut.