The Goldfinch

Chapter 4 | Part 17

I RODE UPTOWN ON the bus, slightly drowsy, swaying comfortably back and forth and watching the wet Saturday streets flash by. When I stepped inside the apartment—chilled from walking home in the rain—Kitsey ran into the foyer to stare at me, wild-eyed and fascinated, as if I were an ostrich who had wandered into the apartment. Then, after a few blank seconds, she darted off into the living room, sandals clattering on the parquet floor, crying: "Mum? He's here!"
Mrs. Barbour appeared. "Hello, Theo," she said. She was perfectly composed but there was something constrained in her manner, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it. "Come in here. I've got a surprise for you."
I followed her into Mr. Barbour's study, gloomy in the overcast afternoon, where the framed nautical charts and the rain streaming down the

gray windowpanes were like a theatrical set of a ship's cabin on a storm- tossed sea. Across the room, a figure rose from a leather club chair. "Hi, buddy," he said. "Long time no see."
I stood frozen in the doorway. The voice was unmistakable: my father.
He stepped forward into the weak light from the window. It was him, all right, though he'd changed since I'd seen him: he was heavier, tanned, puffy in the face, with a new suit and a haircut that made him look like a downtown bartender. In my dismay, I glanced back to Mrs. Barbour, and she gave me a bright but helpless smile as if to say: I know, but what can I do?
While I still stood speechless with shock, another figure rose and elbowed forward, in front of my father. "Hi, I'm Xandra," said a throaty voice.
I found myself confronted by a strange woman, tan and very fit- looking: flat gray eyes, lined coppery skin, and teeth that went in, with a split between them. Although she was older than my mother, or at any rate older-looking, she was dressed like someone younger: red platform sandals; low-slung jeans; wide belt; lots of gold jewelry. Her hair, the color of caramel straw, was very straight and tattered at the ends; she was chewing gum and a strong smell of Juicy Fruit was coming off her.
"It's Xandra with an X," she said in a gravelly undertone. Her eyes were clear and colorless, with spikes of dark mascara around them, and her gaze was powerful, confident, unwavering. "Not Sandra. And, God knows, not Sandy. I get that one a lot, and it drives me up the wall."
As she spoke, my astonishment was growing by the moment. I couldn't quite take her in: her whiskey voice, her muscular arms; the Chinese character tattooed on her big toe; her long square fingernails with the white tips painted on; her earrings shaped like starfish.
"Um, we just got into LaGuardia about two hours ago," said my dad, clearing his throat, as if this explained everything.
Was this who my dad had left us for? In stupefaction, I looked back to Mrs. Barbour again—only to see that she had vanished.
"Theo, I'm out in Las Vegas now," my father said, looking at the wall somewhere over my head. He still had the controlled, assertive voice of his actorly training but though he sounded as authoritative as ever, I could see

that he wasn't any more comfortable than I was. "I guess I should have called, but I thought it would be easier if we just came on out to get you."
"Get me?" I said, after a long pause.
"Tell him, Larry," said Xandra, and then, to me: "You should be proud of your Pops. He's on the wagon. How many days' sobriety now? Fifty- one? Did it all on his own too—didn't even check himself into the joint— detoxed on the sofa with a basket of Easter candy and a bottle of Valium."
Because I was too embarrassed to look at her, or my father, I looked back at the doorway again—and saw Kitsey Barbour standing in the hall listening to all this with big round eyes.
"Because, I mean, I just couldn't put up with it," said Xandra, in a tone suggesting that my mother had condoned, and encouraged, my dad's alcoholism. "I mean—my Moms was the kind of lush who would throw up in her glass of Canadian Club and then drink it anyway. And one night I said to him: Larry, I'm not going to say to you 'never drink again,' and frankly I think that AA is way too much for the level of problem you have —"
My father cleared his throat and turned to me with a genial face he usually reserved for strangers. Maybe he had stopped drinking; but still he had a bloated, shiny, slightly stunned look, as if he'd been living for the past eight months off rum drinks and Hawaiian party platters.
"Um, son," he said, "we're right off the plane, and we came over because—we wanted to see you right away, of course..."
I waited.
"... we need the key to the apartment."
This was all moving a little too fast for me. "The key?" I said.
"We can't get in over there," said Xandra bluntly. "We tried already." "The thing is, Theo," my dad said, his tone clear and cordial, running a
businesslike hand over his hair, "I need to get in over at Sutton Place and see what's what. I'm sure things are a mess over there, and somebody needs to get in and start taking care of stuff."
If you didn't leave things such a goddamned mess... These were words I'd heard my father scream at my mother when—about two weeks before he vanished—they'd had the biggest fight I ever heard them have, when the diamond-and-emerald earrings that belonged to her mother vanished from the dish on her bedside table. My father (red in the face, mocking her in a

sarcastic falsetto) had said it was her fault, Cinzia had probably taken them or who the hell knew, it wasn't a good idea to leave jewelry lying out like that, and maybe this would teach her to look after her things better. But my mother—ash-white with anger—had pointed out in a cold still voice that she'd taken the earrings off on Friday night, and that Cinzia hadn't been in to work since.
What the hell are you trying to say? bellowed my father.
Silence.
So I'm a thief now, is that it? You're accusing your own husband of
stealing jewelry from you? What the hell kind of sick irrational thing is that? You need help, you know that? You really need professional help—
Only it wasn't just the earrings that had vanished. After he vanished himself, it turned out that some other things including cash and some antique coins belonging to her father had vanished as well; and my mother had changed the locks and warned Cinzia and the doormen not to let him in if he showed up when she was at work. And of course now everything was different, and there was nothing to stop him from going in the apartment and going through her belongings and doing with them what he liked; but as I stood looking at him and trying to think what the hell to say, half a dozen things were running through my mind and chief among them was the painting. Every day, for weeks, I'd told myself that I would go over and take care of it, figure it out somehow, but I'd kept putting it off and putting it off and now here he was.
My dad was still smiling at me fixedly. "Okay, buddy? Think you might want to help us out?" Maybe he wasn't drinking any more, but all the old late afternoon wanting-a-drink edge was still there, scratchy as sandpaper.
"I don't have the key," I said.
"That's okay," my dad returned swiftly. "We can call a locksmith. Xandra, give me the phone."
I thought fast. I didn't want them to go in the apartment without me. "Jose or Goldie might let us in," I said. "If I go over there with you."
"Fine then," said my dad, "let's go." From his tone, I suspected he knew I was lying about the key (safely hidden, in Andy's room). I knew too he didn't like the sound of involving the doormen, as most of the guys who worked in the building didn't care that much for my father, having seen him

the worse for drink a few too many times. But I met his eye as blankly as I could until he shrugged and turned away.