Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

“That’s okay.”

Silence. Her eyes on mine. But unlike Kitsey—who was always at least partly somewhere else, who loathed serious talk, who at a similar turn would be looking around for the waitress or making whatever light and/or comic remark she could think of to keep the moment from getting too intense—she was listening, she was right with me, and I could see only too well how saddened she was at my condition, a sadness only worsened by the fact she truly liked me: we had a lot in common, a mental connection and an emotional one too, she enjoyed my company, she trusted me, she wished me well, she wanted above all to be my friend; and whereas some women might have preened themselves and taken pleasure at my misery, it was not amusing to her to see how torn-up I was over her.

xxix.

THE NEXT DAY—WHICH was the day of the engagement party—all the closeness of the previous evening was gone; and all that remained (at breakfast; in our quick hellos in the hallway) was the frustration of knowing I would not have her to myself again; we were awkward with each other, bumping into each other coming and going, talking a little too loudly and cheerfully, and I was reminded (all too sadly) of her visit the previous summer, four months before she’d shown up with “Everett,” and the rich passionate talk we’d had out on the stoop, just the two of us, as it was getting dark: huddled side by side (“like a pair of old tramps”), my knee to her knee, my arm touching hers, and the two of us looking out at the people on the street and talking about all sorts of things: childhood, playdates in Central Park and skating at Wollman Rink (had we ever seen each other in the old days? Brushed past each other on the ice?), about The Misfits, which we’d just watched on TV with Hobie, about Marilyn Monroe, whom we both loved (“a little springtime ghost”) and about poor ruined Montgomery Clift walking around with handfuls of loose pills in his pockets (a detail I hadn’t known, and didn’t comment upon) and about the death of Clark Gable and how horribly guilty Marilyn had felt for it, how responsible—which somehow, oddly, spiraled into talk of Fate, and the occult, and fortune-telling: did birthdays have anything to do with luck, or lack of it? Bad transits; stars in unfortunate alignment? What would a palm reader say? Have you ever had your palm read? No—you? Maybe we should walk over to the Psychic Healer storefront on Sixth Avenue with the purple lights and the crystal balls, it looks like it’s open twenty four hours a day—oh right, you mean the lava-lamp place where the crazy Romanian woman stands in the door belching? talking until it was so dark we could hardly see each other, whispering though there was no reason to: do you want to go in? no, not yet, and the fat summer moon shining white and pure overhead, and my love for her was really just that pure, as simple and steady as the moon. But then finally we had to go inside and almost the instant we did the spell was broken, and in the brightness of the hallway we were embarrassed and stiff with each other, almost as if the house lights had been turned up at the end of a play, and all our closeness exposed for what it was: make-believe. For months I had been desperate to recapture that moment; and—in the bar, for an hour or two—I had. But it was all unreal again, we were back right where we started, and I tried to tell myself it was enough, just to have had her all to myself for a few hours. Only it wasn’t.

xxx.

ANNE DE LARMESSIN—KITSEY’S godmother—was hosting our party at a private club which even Hobie had never set foot in, but knew all about: its history (venerable), its architects (illustrious), and its membership (stellar, running the gamut from Aaron Burr to the Whartons). “Supposed to be one of the best early Greek Revival interiors in New York State,” he’d informed us with earnest delight. “The staircases—the mantels—I wonder if we’ll be allowed in the reading room? The plasterwork’s original, I’m told, really something to see.”

“How many people will be there?” Pippa asked. She’d been forced to walk down to Morgane Le Fay and buy a dress since she hadn’t packed for the party.

“Couple hundred.” Of that number, maybe fifteen of the guests (including Pippa and Hobie, Mr. Bracegirdle and Mrs. DeFrees) were mine; a hundred were Kitsey’s, and the remainder were people whom even Kitsey claimed not to know.

“Including,” said Hobie, “the mayor. And both senators. And Prince Albert of Monaco, isn’t that right?”

“They invited Prince Albert. I seriously doubt he’s coming.”

“Oh, just an intimate thing then. For the family.”

“Look, I’m just showing up and doing what they tell me.” It was Anne de Larmessin who had seized high command of the wedding in the “crisis” (her word) of Mrs. Barbour’s indifference. It was Anne de Larmessin who was negotiating for the right church, the right minister; it was Anne de Larmessin who would work out the guest lists (dazzling) and the seating charts (unbelievably tricky) and who, in the end, it seemed, would have final say about everything from the ringbearer’s cushion to the cake. It was Anne de Larmessin who had managed to get hold of just the designer for the dress, and who’d offered her estate in St. Barth’s for the honeymoon; whom Kitsey phoned whenever a question arose (which it did, multiple times per day); and who had (in Toddy’s phrase) firmly installed herself as Wedding Obergruppenführer. What made all this so comical and perverse was that Anne de Larmessin was so disturbed by me she could hardly stand to look at me. I was worlds from the match she had hoped for her god-daughter. Even my name was too vulgar to be spoken. “And what does the groom think?” “Will the groom be providing me with his guest list any time soon?” Clearly a marriage to someone like me (a furniture dealer!) was a fate akin—more or less—to death; hence the pomp and spectacle of the arrangements, the grim sense of ceremony, as if Kitsey were some lost princess of Ur to be feasted and decked in finery and—attended by tambourine players and handmaidens—paraded down in splendor to the Underworld.

xxxi.

SINCE I DIDN’T SEE any particular reason I needed my wits about me for the party, I made sure to get good and looped before I left, with an emergency OC tucked into the pocket of my best Turnbull and Asser just in case.

The club was so beautiful that I resented the press of guests, which made it difficult to see the architectural details, the portraits hung frame to frame—some of them very fine—and the rare books on the shelves. Red velvet swags, garlands of Christmas balsam—were those real candles on the tree? I stood in a daze at the top of the stairs, not wanting to greet or talk to people, not wanting to be there at all—

Hand on my sleeve. “What’s the matter?” said Pippa.

“What?” I couldn’t meet her eye.

“You look so sad.”

“I am,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard or not, I almost didn’t hear myself saying it, because at exactly the same moment Hobie—sensing we’d fallen behind—had doubled back to find us in the crowd, shouting: “Ah, there you are…”

“Go, attend to your guests,” he said, giving me a friendly parental nudge, “everyone’s asking for you!” Among the strangers, he and Pippa were two of the only really unique or interesting-looking people there: she, like a fairy in her gauzy-sleeved, diaphanous green; he, elegant and endearing in his midnight blue double-breasted, his beautiful old shoes from Peal and Co.