The Goldfinch

Chapter 4 | Part 9

I HATED TO THINK of her leaving. I couldn't stand thinking of it. On the day she was going, I woke feeling heartsick. Looking at the sky over Park Avenue, blue-black and threatening, a roiling sky straight from a painting of Calvary, I imagined her looking out at the same dark sky from her airplane window; and—as Andy and I walked to the bus stop, the downcast eyes and the sober mood on the street seemed to reflect and magnify my sadness at her departure.
"Well, Texas is boring, all right," said Andy, between sneezes; his eyes were pink and streaming from pollen so he looked even more like a lab rat than usual.
"You went there?"
"Yes—Dallas. Uncle Harry and Aunt Tess lived there for a while. There's nothing to do but go to the movies and you can't walk anywhere, people have to drive you. Also they have rattlesnakes, and the death penalty, which I think is primitive and unethical in ninety-eight per cent of cases. But it'll probably be better for her there."
"Why?"
"The climate, primarily," said Andy, swiping his nose with one of the pressed cotton handkerchiefs he plucked every morning from the stack in his drawer. "Convalescents do better in warm weather. That's why my grandpa Van der Pleyn moved to Palm Beach."
I was silent. Andy, I knew, was loyal; I trusted him, I valued his opinion, and yet his conversation sometimes made me feel as though I was

talking to one of those computer programs that mimic human response.
"If she's in Dallas she should definitely go to the Nature and Science Museum. Although I think she'll find it small and somewhat dated. The IMAX I saw there wasn't even 3-D. Also they ask for extra money to get into the planetarium, which is ridiculous considering how inferior it is to
Hayden."
"Huh." Sometimes I wondered exactly what it might take to break
Andy out of his math-nerd turret: a tidal wave? Decepticon invasion? Godzilla tromping down Fifth Avenue? He was a planet without an atmosphere.