The Goldfinch Read Free Page B

and threes. A harried, lawyerly father brushed past us, towing his small son by the wrist. “No, Braden,” I heard him say to the boy, who trotted to keep up, “you shouldn’t think that way, it’s more important to have a job you
like
—”
    We stepped aside to avoid the soapsuds that a janitor was dumping from a pail on the sidewalk in front of his building.
    “Tell me,” said my mother—fingertips at her temple—“was it just me, or was that cab
unbelievably
—”
    “Nasty? Hawaiian Tropic and baby poo?”
    “Honestly—” fanning the air in front of her face—“it would have been okay if not for all the stopping and starting. I was perfectly fine and then it just hit me.”
    “Why don’t you ever just ask if you can sit in the front seat?”
    “You sound just like your father.”
    I looked away, embarrassed—for I’d heard it too, a hint of his annoying know-it-all tone. “Let’s walk over to Madison and find some place for you to sit down,” I said. I was starving to death and there was a diner over there I liked.
    But—with a shudder almost, a visible wave of nausea—she shook her head. “Air.” Dashing mascara smudges from under her eyes. “The air feels good.”
    “Sure,” I said, a bit too quickly, anxious to be accommodating. “Whatever.”
    I was trying hard to be agreeable but my mother—fitful and woozy—had picked up on my tone; she looked at me closely, trying to figure out what I was thinking. (This was another bad habit we’d fallen into, thanks to years of life with my father: trying to read each other’s minds.)
    “What?” she said. “Is there someplace you want to go?”
    “Um, no, not really,” I said, taking a step backwards and looking around in my consternation; even though I was hungry, I felt in no position to insist on anything.
    “I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute.”
    “Maybe—” blinking and agitated, what did she want, what would please her?—“how about we go sit in the park?”
    To my relief, she nodded. “All right then,” she said, in what I thought of as her Mary Poppins voice, “but just till I catch my breath,” and we started down toward the crosswalk at Seventy-Ninth Street: past topiaries in baroque planters, ponderous doors laced with ironwork. The light had faded to an industrial gray, and the breeze was as heavy as teakettle steam. Across the street by the park, artists were setting up their stalls, unrolling their canvases, pinning up their watercolor reproductions of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Brooklyn Bridge.
    We walked along in silence. My mind was whirring busily on my own troubles (had Tom’s parents got a call? Why hadn’t I thought to ask him?) as well as what I was going to order for breakfast as soon as I could get her to the diner (Western omelet with home fries, side of bacon; she would have what she always had, rye toast with poached eggs and a cup of black coffee) and I was hardly paying attention where we were going when I realized she had just said something. She wasn’t looking at me but out over the park; and her expression made me think of a famous French movie I didn’t know the name of, where distracted people walked down windblown streets and talked a lot but didn’t actually seem to be talking to each other.
    “What did you say?” I asked, after a few confused beats, walking faster to catch up with her. “Try more—?”
    She looked startled, as if she’d forgotten I was there. The white coat—flapping in the wind—added to her long-legged ibis quality, as if she were about to unfurl her wings and sail away over the park.
    “Try more what?”
    “Oh.” Her face went blank and then she shook her head and laughed quickly in the sharp, childlike way she had. “No. I said
time warp.
”
    Even though it was a strange thing to say I knew what she meant, or thought I did—that shiver of disconnection, the missing seconds on the sidewalk like a hiccup of lost time, or a few frames snipped out