The Goldfinch

“It’s me,” I said quickly. I was afraid he was going to shut the door in my face. “Theodore Decker. Remember?”

Quickly, Pippa looked up at him—clearly she recognized my name, even if she didn’t recognize me—and the friendly surprise on their faces was such an astonishment that I began to cry.

“Theo.” His hug was strong and parental, and so fierce that it made me cry even harder. Then his hand was on my shoulder, heavy anchoring hand that was security and authority itself; he was leading me in, into the workshop, dim gilt and rich wood smells I’d dreamed of, up the stairs into the long-lost parlor, with its velvets and urns and bronzes. “It’s wonderful to see you,” he was saying; and “you look knackered” and “When did you get back?” and “Are you hungry?” and “My goodness, you’ve grown!” and “that hair! Like Mowgli the Jungle Boy!” and (worried now)—“does it seem close in here to you? should I open a window?”—and, when Popper stuck his head out of the bag: “And ha! who is this?”

Pippa—laughing—lifted him up and cuddled him in her arms. I felt light-headed with fever—glowing red and radiant, like the bars in an electric heater, and so unmoored that I didn’t even feel embarrassed for crying. I was conscious of nothing but the relief of being there, and my aching and over-full heart.

Back in the kitchen there was mushroom soup, which I wasn’t hungry for, but it was warm, and I was freezing to death—and as I ate (Pippa cross-legged on the floor, playing with Popchik, dangling the pom-pom from her gra

“You need to call her,” he said. “Your father’s wife.”

“But she’s not his wife! She’s just his girlfriend! She doesn’t care anything about me.”

Firmly, he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You have to ring her up and tell her that you’re all right. Yes, yes you do,” he said, speaking over me as I tried to object. “No buts. Right now. This instant. Pips—” there was an old-fashioned wall phone in the kitchen—“come along and let’s clear out of here for a minute.”

Though Xandra was just about the last person in the world I wanted to talk to—especially after I’d ransacked her bedroom and stolen her tip money—I was so relieved to be there that I would have done anything he asked. Dialing the number, I tried to tell myself she probably wouldn’t pick up (so many solicitors and bill collectors phoned us, all the time, that she seldom took calls from numbers she didn’t recognize). Hence I was surprised when she answered on the first ring.

“You left the door open,” she said almost immediately, in an accusing voice.

“What?”

“You let the dog out. He’s run off—I can’t find him anywhere. He probably got hit by a car or something.”

“No.” I was gazing fixedly at the blackness of the brick courtyard. It was raining, drops pounding hard on the windowpanes, the first real rain I’d seen in almost two years. “He’s with me.”

“Oh.” She sounded relieved. Then, more sharply: “Where are you? With Boris somewhere?”

“No.”

“I spoke to him—wired out of his mind, it sounded like. He wouldn’t tell me where you were. I know he knows.” Though it was still early out there, her voice was gravelly like she’d been drinking, or crying. “I ought to call the cops on you, Theo. I know it was you two who stole that money and stuff.”

“Yeah, just like you stole my mom’s earrings.”

“What—”

“Those emerald ones. They belonged to my grandmother.”

“I didn’t steal them.” She was angry now. “How dare you. Larry gave those to me, he gave them to me after—”

“Yeah. After he stole them from my mother.”

“Um, excuse me, but your mom’s dead.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t when he stole them. That was like a year before she died. She contacted the insurance company,” I said, raising my voice over hers. “And filed a police report.” I didn’t know if the police part was true, but it might as well have been.

“Um, I guess you’ve never heard of a little something called marital property.”

“Right. And I guess you never heard of something called a family heirloom. You and my dad weren’t even married. He had no right to give those to you.”

Silence. I could hear the click of her cigarette lighter on the other end, a weary inhale. “Look, kid. Can I say something? Not about the money, honest. Or the blow. Although, I can tell you for damn sure, I wasn’t doing anything like that when I was your age. You think you’re pretty smart and all, and I guess you are, but you’re headed down a bad road, you and whats-his-name too. Yeah, yeah,” she said, raising her voice over mine, “I like him too, but he’s bad news, that kid.”

“You should know.”

She laughed, bleakly. “Well, kid, guess what? I’ve been around the track a few times—I do know. He’s going to end up in jail by the time he’s eighteen, that one, and dollars to doughnuts you’ll be right there with him. I mean, I can’t blame you,” she said, raising her voice again, “I loved your dad, but he sure wasn’t worth much, and from what he told me, your mother wasn’t worth much either.”

“Okay. That’s it. Fuck you.” I was so mad I was trembling. “I’m hanging up now.”

“No—wait. Wait. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about your mother. That’s not why I wanted to talk to you. Please. Will you wait a second?”

“I’m waiting.”

“First off—assuming you care—I’m having your dad cremated. That all right with you?”

“Do what you want.”

“You never did have much use for him, did you?”

“Is that it?”

“One more thing. I don’t care where you are, quite frankly. But I need an address where I can get in touch with you.”

“And why is that?”

“Don’t be a wise ass. At some point somebody’s going to call from your school or something—”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“—and I’m going to need, I don’t know, some kind of explanation of where you are. Unless you want the cops to put you on the side of a milk carton or something.”

“I think that’s fairly unlikely.”

“Fairly unlikely,” she repeated, in a cruel, drawling imitation of my voice. “Well, may be. But give it to me, all the same, and we’ll call it even. I mean,” she said, when I didn’t answer, “let me make it plain, it makes no difference to me where you are. I just don’t want to be left holding the bag out here in case there’s some problem and I need to get in touch with you.”

“There’s a lawyer in New York. His name’s Bracegirdle. George Bracegirdle.”

“Do you have a number?”

“Look it up,” I said. Pippa had come into the room to get the dog a bowl of water, and, awkwardly, so I wouldn’t have to look at her, I turned to face the wall.

“Brace Girdle?” Xandra was saying. “Is that the way it sounds? What the hell kind of name is that?”

“Look, I’m sure you’ll be able to find him.”

There was a silence. Then Xandra said: “You know what?”

“What?”

“That was your father that died. Your own father. And you act like it was, I don’t know, I’d say the dog, but not even the dog. Because I know you’d care if it was the dog got hit by a car, at least I think you would.”

“Let’s say I cared about him exactly as much as he did about me.”

“Well, let me tell you something. You and your dad are a whole lot more alike than you might think. You’re his kid, all right, through and through.”

“Well, you’re full of shit,” I said, after a brief, contemptuous pause—a retort that seemed, to me, to sum up the situation pretty nicely. But—long after I’d hung up the phone, when I sat sneezing and shivering in a hot bath, and in the bright fog after (swallowing the aspirins Hobie gave me, following him down the hall to the musty spare room, you look packed in, extra blankets in the trunk, no, no more talking, I’ll leave you to it now) her parting shot rang again and again in my mind, as I turned my face into the heavy, foreign-smelling pillow. It wasn’t true—no more than what she’d said about my mother was true. Even her raspy dry voice coming through the line, the memory of it, made me feel dirty. Fuck her, I thought sleepily. Forget about it. She was a million miles away. But though I was dead tired—more than dead tired—and the rickety brass bed was the softest bed I’d ever slept in, her words were an ugly thread ru