The Goldfinch(73)
“Shield back. Although, I’ll tell you, the nicest detail on that one is the tasselled splats. You may not realize it,” he said, before I could ask what a splat was, “but it’s an education in itself seeing that furniture of hers every day—seeing it in different lights, able to run your hand along it when you like.” He fogged his glasses with his breath, wiped them with a corner of his apron. “Do you need to head back uptown?”
“Not really,” I said, though it was getting late.
“Come along then,” he said. “Let’s put you to work. I could use a hand with this little chair down here.”
“The goat foot?”
“Yes, the goat’s foot. There’s another apron on the peg—I know, it’s too big, but I just coated this thing with linseed oil and I don’t want you to spoil your clothes.”
xii.
DAVE THE SHRINK HAD mentioned more than once that he wished I would develop a hobby—advice I resented, as the hobbies he suggested (racquetball, table tennis, bowling) all seemed incredibly lame. If he thought a game or two of table tennis was going to help me get over my mother, he was completely out to lunch. But—as evidenced by the blank journal I’d been given by Mr. Neuspeil, my English teacher; Mrs. Swanson’s suggestion that I start attending art classes after school; Enrique’s offer to take me down to watch basketball at the courts on Sixth Avenue; and even Mr. Barbour’s sporadic attempts to interest me in chart markers and nautical flags—a lot of adults had the same idea.
“But what do you like to do in your spare time?” Mrs. Swanson had asked me in her spooky, pale gray office that smelled like herb tea and sagebrush, issues of Seventeen and Teen People stacked high on the reading table and some kind of silvery Asian chime music floating in the background.
“I don’t know. I like to read. Watch movies. Play Age of Conquest II and Age of Conquest: Platinum Edition. I don’t know,” I said again, when she kept on looking at me.
“Well, all those things are fine, Theo,” she said, looking concerned. “But it would be nice if we could find some group activity for you. Something with teamwork, something you could do with other kids. Have you ever thought about taking up a sport?”
“No.”
“I practice a martial art called Aikido. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s a way of using the opponent’s own movements as a form of self-defense.”
I looked away from her and at the weathered-looking panel board of Our Lady of Guadalupe hanging behind her head.
“Or perhaps photography.” She folded her turquoise-ringed hands on her desk. “If you’re not interested in art classes. Although I have to say, Mrs. Sheinkopf showed me some of the drawings you did last year—that series of rooftops, you know, water towers, the views from the studio window? Very observant—I know that view and you caught some really interesting line and energy, I think kinetic was the word she used, really nice quickness about it, all those intersecting planes and the angle of the fire escapes. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not so much what you do—I just wish that we could find a way for you to be more connected.”
“Connected to what?” I said, in a voice that came out sounding far too nasty.
She looked nonplussed. “To other people! And—” she gestured at the window—“the world around you! Listen,” she said, in her gentlest, most hypnotically-soothing voice, “I know that you and your mother had an incredibly close bond. I spoke to her. I saw the two of you together. And I know exactly how much you must miss her.”
No you don’t, I thought, staring her insolently in the eye.
She gave me an odd look. “You’d be surprised, Theo,” she said, leaning back in her shawl-draped chair, “what small, everyday things can lift us out of despair. But nobody can do it for you. You’re the one who has to watch for the open door.”
Though I knew she meant well, I’d left her office head down, tears of anger stinging my eyes. What the hell did she know about it, the old bat? Mrs. Swanson had a gigantic family—about ten kids and thirty grandkids, to judge from the photos on her wall; Mrs. Swanson had a huge apartment on Central Park West and a house in Connecticut and zero idea what it was like for a plank to snap so it was all gone in a minute. Easy enough for her to sit back comfortably in her hippie armchair and ramble about extracurricular activities and open doors.
And yet, unexpectedly, a door had opened, and in a most unlikely quarter: Hobie’s workshop. “Helping” with the chair (which had basically involved me standing by while Hobie ripped the seat up to show me the worm damage, slapdash repairs, and other hidden horrors under the upholstery) had rapidly turned into two or three oddly absorbing afternoons a week, after school: labeling jars, mixing rabbit-skin glue, sorting through boxes of drawer fittings (“the fiddly bits”) or sometimes just watching him turn chair legs on the lathe. Though the upstairs shop stayed dark, with the metal gates down, still, in the shop-behind-the-shop, the tall-case clocks ticked, the mahogany glowed, the light filtered in a golden pool on the dining room tables, the life of the downstairs menagerie went on.