The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,38

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.

Was I? I was wide awake, and yet part of me was so glassed-off and numb I was practically in a coma.

“If you’d rather have company? Perhaps if I build a fire in the other room? Tell me what you want.”

At this question, I felt a sharp rush of despair—for as bad as I felt there was nothing he could do for me, and from his face, I realized he knew that, too.

“We’re only in the next room if you need us—that is to say, I’ll be leaving soon for work but someone will be here.…” His pale gaze darted around the room, and then returned to me. “Perhaps it’s incorrect of me, but in the circumstances I wouldn’t see the harm in pouring you what my father used to call a minor nip. If you should happen to want such a thing. Which of course you don’t,” he added hastily, noting my confusion. “Quite unsuitable. Never mind.”

He stepped closer, and for an uncomfortable moment I thought he might touch me, or hug me. But instead he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “In any case. We’re perfectly happy to have you and I hope you’ll make yourself as comfortable as you can. You’ll speak right up if you need anything, won’t you?”

He had hardly stepped out when there was whispering outside the door. Then a knock. “Someone here to see you,” Mrs. Barbour said, and withdrew.

And in plodded Andy: blinking, fumbling with his glasses. It was clear that they had woken him up and hauled him out of bed. With a noisy creak of bedsprings, he sat beside me on the edge of Platt’s bed, looking not at me but at the wall opposite.

He cleared his throat, pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. There followed a long silence. Urgently the radiator clanked and hissed. Both his parents had gotten out of there so fast it was like they’d heard the fire alarm.

“Wow,” he said, after some moments, in his eerie flat voice. “Disturbing.”

“Yeah,” I said. And together we sat in silence, side by side, staring at the dark green walls of Platt’s room and the taped squares