The Goldfinch(33)

“They’re expecting you,” he said to the social workers. “Go on up.”



ii.



IT WAS MR. BARBOUR who opened the door: first a crack, then all the way. “Morning, morning,” he said, stepping back. Mr. Barbour was a tiny bit strange-looking, with something pale and silvery about him, as if his treatments in the Connecticut “ding farm” (as he called it) had rendered him incandescent; his eyes were a queer unstable gray and his hair was pure white, which made him seem older than he was until you noticed that his face was young and pink—boyish, even. His ruddy cheeks and his long, old-fashioned nose, in combination with the prematurely white hair, gave him the amiable look of a lesser founding father, some minor member of the Continental Congress teleported to the twenty-first century. He was wearing what appeared to be yesterday’s office clothes: a rumpled dress shirt and expensive-looking suit trousers that looked like he had just grabbed them off the bedroom floor.

“Come on in,” he said briskly, rubbing his eyes with his fist. “Hello there, dear,” he said to me—the dear startling, from him, even in my disoriented state.

Barefoot, he padded ahead of us, through the marble foyer. Beyond, in the richly decorated living room (all glazed chintz and Chinese jars) it felt less like morning than midnight: silk-shaded lamps burning low, big dark paintings of naval battles and drapes drawn against the sun. There—by the baby grand, and a flower arrangement the size of a packing case—stood Mrs. Barbour in a floor-sweeping housecoat, pouring coffee into cups on a silver tray.

As she turned to greet us, I could feel the social workers taking in the apartment, and her. Mrs. Barbour was from a society family with an old Dutch name, so cool and blonde and monotone that sometimes she seemed partially drained of blood. She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty—a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room. Like a fashion drawing come to life, she turned heads wherever she went, gliding along obliviously without appearing to notice the turbulence she created in her wake; her eyes were spaced far apart, her ears were small, high-set, and very close to her head, and her body was long-waisted and thin, like an elegant weasel’s. (Andy had these features as well, but in ungainly proportions, without her slinky ermine grace.)

In the past, her reserve (or coldness, depending how you saw it) had sometimes made me uncomfortable, but that morning I was grateful for her sang froid. “Hi there. We’ll be putting you in the room with Andy,” she said to me without beating around the bush. “I’m afraid he’s not up for school yet, though. If you’d like to lie down for a while, you’re perfectly welcome to go to Platt’s room.” Platt was Andy’s older brother, away at school. “You know where it is, of course?”

I said that I did.

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Well, then. Tell us what we can do for you.”

I was aware of them all looking at me. My headache was bigger than anything else in the room. In the bull’s-eye mirror above Mrs. Barbour’s head, I could see the whole scene replicated in freakish miniature: Chinese jars, coffee tray, awkward-looking social workers and all.

In the end, it was Mr. Barbour who broke the spell. “Come along, then, let’s get you squared away,” he said, clapping his hand on my shoulder and firmly steering me out of the room. “No—back here, this way—aft, aft. Right back here.”

The only time I’d ever set foot in Platt’s room, several years before, Platt—who was a champion lacrosse player and a bit of a psychopath—had threatened to beat the everliving crap out of Andy and me. When he’d lived at home, he’d stayed in there all the time with the door locked (and, Andy told me, smoked pot). Now all his posters were gone and the room was very clean and empty-looking, since he was away at Groton. There were free weights, stacks of old National Geographics, an empty aquarium. Mr. Barbour, opening and closing drawers, was babbling a bit. “Let’s see what’s in here, shall we? Bedsheets. And… more bedsheets. I’m afraid I never come in here, I do hope you’ll forgive me—ah. Swimming trunks! Won’t be needing those this morning, will we?” Scrabbling around in yet a third drawer, he finally produced some new pyjamas with the tags still on, ugly as hell, reindeer on electric blue flannel, no mystery why they’d never been worn.

“Well then,” he said, running a hand through his hair and cutting his eyes anxiously towards the door. “I’ll leave you now. Hell of a thing that’s happened, good Lord. You must be feeling awfully rough. A good solid sleep will be the best thing in the world for you. Are you tired?” he said, looking at me closely.