Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

“And you?” I said, straightening up from the dog, unshouldering my new overcoat and draping it over a kitchen chair. “ Anything going on?”

“Not much.” Not looking at me.

“Merry Christmas! Well—a little late. How was Christmas?”

“Fine. Yours?” he inquired stiffly a few moments later.

“Actually, not so bad. I was in Amsterdam, “ I added, when he didn’t say anything.

“Oh really? That must have been nice.” Distracted, unfocused.

“How’d your lunch go?” I asked after a cautious pause.

“Oh, very well. We had a bit of sleet but otherwise it was a good gathering.” He was trying to collapse the kitchen ladder and having a bit of a problem with it. “Few presents for you still under the tree in there, if you feel like opening them.”

“Thanks. I’ll open them tonight. I’m pretty beat. Can I help you with that?” I said, stepping forward.

“No, no. No thanks.” Whatever was wrong was in his voice. “I’ve got it.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned his gift: a child’s needlework sampler, vine-curled alphabet and numerals, stylized farm animals worked in crewel, Marry Sturtevant Her Sample-r Aged 11 1779. Hadn’t he opened it? I’d unearthed it in a box of polyester granny pants at the flea market—not cheap for the flea market, four hundred bucks, but I’d seen comparable pieces sell at Americana auctions for ten times as much. In silence I watched him pottering around the kitchen on autopilot—wandering in circles a bit, opening the refrigerator door, closing it without getting anything out, filling the kettle for tea, and all the time wrapped in his cocoon and refusing to look at me.

“Hobie, what’s going on?” I said at last.

“Nothing.” He was looking for a spoon but he’d opened the wrong drawer.

“What, you don’t want to tell me?”

He turned to look at me, flash of uncertainty in his eyes, before he turned to the stove again and blurted: “It was really inappropriate for you to give Pippa that necklace.”

“What?” I said, taken aback. “Was she upset?”

“I—” Staring at the floor, he shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said. “I don’t know what to think any more. Look, I don’t want to be censorious,” he said, when I sat motionless. “Really I don’t. In fact I’d rather not talk about it at all. But—” He seemed to search for words. “Do you not see that it’s distressing and unsuitable? To give Pippa a thirty thousand dollar necklace? On the night of your engagement party? Just leave it in her shoe? Outside her door?”

“I didn’t pay thirty thousand for it.”

“No, I dare say you would have paid seventy-five if you’d bought it at retail. And also, for another thing—” Very suddenly he pulled out a chair and sat down. “Oh, I don’t know what to do,” he said miserably. “I’ve no idea how to begin.”

“Sorry?”

“Please tell me all this other business has nothing to do with you.”

“Business?” I said cautiously.

“Well.” Morning classical on the kitchen transistor, meditative piano sonata. “Two days before Christmas, I had a fairly extraordinary visit from your friend Lucius Reeve.”

The sense of fall was immediate, the swiftness and depth of it.

“Who had some fairly startling accusations to make. Above and beyond the expected.” Hobie pinched his eyes shut between thumb and forefinger, and sat for a moment. “Let’s leave aside the other matter for a moment. No, no,” he said, waving my words away when I tried to speak. “First things first. About the furniture.”

There rolled between us an unbearable silence.

“I understand that I haven’t made it exactly easy for you to come to me. And I understand too, that I’m the very one who put you in this position. But—” he looked around—“two million dollars, Theo!”

“Listen, let me say something—”

“I should have made notes—he had photocopies, bills of shipping, pieces we never sold and never had to sell, pieces at the Important Americana level, nonexistent, I couldn’t add it all in my head, at some point I just stopped counting. Dozens! I had no idea the extent of it. And you lied to me about the planting. That’s not what he wants at all.”

“Hobie? Hobie, listen.” He was looking at me without quite looking at me. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, I was hoping I could straighten it up first but—it’s taken care of, okay? I can buy it all back now, every stick.”

But instead of seeming relieved, he only shook his head. “This is terrible, Theo. How could I let this happen?”

If I’d been a little less shaken, I would have pointed out that he’d committed only the sin of trusting me and believing what I told him, but he seemed so genuinely bewildered that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all.

“How did it go so far? How can I not have known? He had—” Hobie looked away, shook his head again quickly in disbelief—“Your handwriting, Theo. Your signature. Duncan Phyfe table… Sheraton dining chairs… Sheraton sofa out to California… I made that very sofa, Theo, with my own two hands, you saw me make it, it’s no more Sheraton than that shopping bag from Gristede’s over there. All new frame. Even the arm supports are new. Only two of the legs are original, you stood there and watched me reeding the new ones—”

“I’m sorry Hobie—the IRS was phoning every day—I didn’t know what to do—”

“I know you didn’t,” he said, though there seemed to be a question in his eyes even as he said this. “It was the Children’s Crusade down there. Only—” he pushed back in his chair, rolled his eyes at the ceiling—“why didn’t you stop? Why’d you keep on with it? We’ve been spending money we don’t have! You’ve dug us halfway to China! It’s been going on for years! Even if we could cover it all, which we absolutely can’t and you know it—”

“Hobie, first of all, I can cover it and second—” I needed coffee, I wasn’t awake, but there wasn’t any on the stove and it really wasn’t the moment to get up and make it—“second, well, I don’t want to say it’s okay, because, absolutely it’s not, I was only trying to tide us over and get some debts settled, I don’t know how I let it get so far out of hand. But—no, no, listen,” I said urgently; I could see him drifting away, fogging over, as my mother had been apt to do when being forced to sit still and suffer through some complicated and improbable lie of my dad’s. “Whatever he said to you, and I don’t know, I’ve got the money now. It’s all fine. Okay?”

“I suppose I don’t dare ask where you got it.” Then, sadly, leaning back in his chair: “Where were you really? If you don’t mind my asking?”

I crossed and re-crossed my legs, smeared my hands over my face. “Amsterdam.”

“Why Amsterdam?” Then, as I fumbled over my answer: “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“Hobie—” afire with shame; I’d always worked so hard to screen my double-dealing self from him, to show him only the improved-and-polished version, never the shameful threadbare self I was so desperate to hide, deceiver and coward, liar and cheat—

“Why did you come back?” He was speaking fast, and miserably, as if all he wanted was to get the words out of his mouth; and in his agitation he got up and began to walk around, his heel-less shoes slapping on the floor. “I thought we’d seen the last of you. All last night—the last few nights—lying awake trying to think what to do. Shipwreck. Catastrophe. All over the news about these stolen paintings. Some Christmas. And you—nowhere to be found. Not answering your phone—no one knew where you were—”