The Goldfinch (61 page)
Without meaning to—I’d been staring into space—I’d made accidental eye contact with a man on a bench across from me. Quickly I looked away but it was too late; he was standing up, walking over.
“Cute mutt,” he said, stooping to pat Popper, and then, when I didn’t answer: “What’s your name? Mind if I sit down?” He was a wiry guy, small but strong-looking; and he smelled. I got up, avoiding his eyes, but as I turned to leave he shot his arm out and caught me by the wrist.
“What’s the matter,” he said, in an ugly voice, “don’t you like me?”
I twisted free and ran—Popper running after me, out to the street, too fast, he wasn’t used to city traffic, cars were coming—I grabbed him
up just in time, and ran across Fifth Avenue, over to the Pierre. My pursuer—trapped on the other side by the changed light—was attracting some glances from pedestrians but when I looked back again, safe in the circle of light pouring from the warm, well-lighted entrance of the hotel—well-dressed couples; doormen hailing cabs—I saw that he had faded back into the park.
The streets were much louder than I remembered—smellier, too. Standing on the corner by A La Vieille Russie I found myself overpowered with the familiar old Midtown stench: carriage horses, bus exhaust, perfume, and urine. For so long I’d thought of Vegas as something temporary—my real life was New York—but was it?
Not any more,
I thought, dismally, surveying the thinned-out trickle of pedestrians hurrying past Bergdorf’s.
Though I was aching and chilled with fever again, I walked for ten blocks or so, still trying to work the hum and lightness out of my legs, the pervasive vibration of the bus. But at last the cold was too much for me, and I hailed a cab; it would have been an easy bus ride, half an hour maybe, straight shot down Fifth to the Village, only after three solid days on the bus I couldn’t bear the thought of jolting around on another bus for even a minute more.
I wasn’t that comfortable at the notion of turning up at Hobie’s house cold—not comfortable about it at all, since we hadn’t been in touch for a while, my fault, not his; at some point, I’d just stopped writing back. On one level, it was the natural course of things; on another Boris’s casual speculation (“old poofter?”) had put me off him, subtly, and his last two or three letters had gone unanswered.
I felt bad; I felt awful. Even though it was a short ride I must have nodded off in the back seat because when the cabbie stopped and said: “This all right?” I came to with a jolt, and for a moment sat stunned, fighting to remember where I was.
The shop—I noticed, as the cabbie drove away—was closed-up and dark, as if it had never been opened again in all my time away from New York. The windows were furred with grime and—looking inside—I saw that some of the furniture was draped with sheets. Nothing else had changed at all, except that all the old books and bric-a-brac—the marble cockatoos, the obelisks—were covered with an additional layer of dust.
My heart sank. I stood on the street for a long minute or two before I
worked up my nerve to ring the bell. It seemed that I stood for ages listening to the faraway echo, though it was probably no time at all; I’d almost talked myself into believing that no one was at home (and what would I do? Hike back to Times Square, try to find a cheap hotel somewhere or turn myself in to the runaway cops?) when the door opened very suddenly and I found myself looking not at Hobie, but a girl my own age.
It was her—Pippa. Still tiny (I’d grown much taller than her) and thin, though much healthier-looking than the last time I’d seen her, fuller in the face; lots of freckles; different hair too, it seemed to have grown back in with a different color and texture, not red-blonde but a darker, rust color and a bit straggly, like her aunt Margaret’s. She was dressed like a boy, in sock feet and old corduroys, a too-big sweater, only with a crazy pink-and-orange striped scarf that a daffy grandmother would wear. Brow furrowed, polite but reticent, she looked at me blankly with the golden-brown eyes: a stranger. “Can I help you?” she said.
She’s forgotten me,
I thought, dismayed. How could I have expected her to remember? It had been a long time; I knew I looked different too. It was like seeing somebody I’d thought was dead.
And then—thumping down the stairs, coming up behind her, in paint-stained chinos and an out-at-elbows cardigan—was Hobie.
He’s cut his hair,
was my first thought; it was close to his head and much whiter than I remembered. His expression was slightly irritated; for a heartsinking moment I thought he didn’t recognize me either, and then: “Dear God,” he said, stepping back suddenly.
“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 granny scarf in his face, Popper/Pippa, how had I never noticed the kinship in their names?) I told him, a little, in a garbled way, about my father’s death and what had happened. Hobie, as he listened, arms folded, had an extremely worried look on his face, his mulish brow furrowing deeper as I talked.
“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 running all night long through my dreams.
