“Madame Durant!” the voice came again.
And, as if in a dream, he lifted his own head free, revealing Corbin Lesterio, his rosy face and that lustrous forelock, raking his fingers through it as teenage boys have done throughout time, spurring the deep, low-down sighs of all admirers in sight.
“Madame Durant,” he said, then whirled himself into an impromptu pirouette. “It was better, right? It was good? I was good today? Un gentil prince.”
As she moved closer, the sounds of his breath, the breathlessness of beautiful young boys—it made her forget, just for a second—an exquisite, piercing second—the low hum of death in her ear.
Here was this young and perfect thing, and the way he looked at her, his eyes bright with awe and desire—what could ever go wrong? What could ever be ruined or die? Everything is as it should be forever, no snakes in the garden, no temptation, no loss.
That’s what it does, their mother always told them. Ballet. It stops death.
* * *
*
She walked Corbin to his father’s car, the rush of the boy’s words spilling into her hands.
“I’ve never been so excited,” he was telling her, his breath a silver cloud. “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Dara smiled and waved to Mr. Lesterio, seated snugly in his overheated Plymouth.
“I guess I better enjoy it,” he said, moving to the passenger door, his face falling so fast. “Like you always tell me, there’s only one first. You never get it back.”
Dara looked at him, struck.
She didn’t remember saying that. She didn’t remember saying that at all.
* * *
*
Bailey!” The voice tight and humming like a violin string. “Are you here, Bailey?”
Dara turned and saw a figure shimmering through the cascade of white lights, the enormous Christmas wreaths hanging from the lobby windows.
“Madame Durant! I’m late. Did I miss her?”
The princess coat, seal gray, the dark glasses, the shining bob. The careless mother. The contractor’s former client. He has something he wants. He’ll hold it close until he’s ready.
It was Mrs. Bloom, the elusive Mrs. Bloom, looking for her daughter, and Dara would not let her get away this time.
YOU WOMEN
Mrs. Bloom didn’t want to talk in the lobby, or her car, or a nearby diner.
She didn’t want to talk at all, but Dara was insistent.
“It’s very important,” she said. “About your daughter.”
Finally, she said Dara could follow her home. They could speak there, in private.
It was four miles away, a large brick house with the gleaming white columns of a wedding cake.
There wasn’t much time. But Bailey would be at least an hour with Marie.
Marie, Dara thought. Marie. Suddenly, she had this memory of her sister, age three or four, her music box open, reaching for the pirouetting ballerina, the net of her miniature tutu. And then snapping the ballerina loose. Staring at it in her dimpled hand.
* * *
*
They sat in the Bloom living room, cream-colored and feminine with candles everywhere and the smell of crushed flowers.
They both held thick-banded glasses clinking with vodka and ice from the bar cart.
It burned Dara’s throat, reminded her of the Fire Eater. Everything did lately. Those ladies, Dara had thought the first time they’d seen the Fire Eater, the Sword Swallower, they’re not afraid at all.
“Tell me about Bailey,” Mrs. Bloom asked, leaning back on her sofa, her eyes glassy and her head bobbing slightly. “I must admit, I haven’t been as attentive as usual. I’ve been dealing with some personal issues.”
“She’s coming into her own. She’s going to be a very fine Clara.”
“She will be, won’t she?” she said softly, a sip from the rattling glass. “But that isn’t why you’re here.”
“No.”
Mrs. Bloom set her glass down on the sofa arm, a ring forming immediately, and spreading.
“You came about him,” she said.
“Yes.”
She took a breath. “I heard what happened to him. Bailey told me. Then I read it in the paper . . .”
“That time I saw you at his truck,” Dara said abruptly, “you had an envelope you left there.”
“I owed him some money,” she said coolly. “But I don’t see how that’s your—”
“Why didn’t you mail it?”
Mrs. Bloom shook her head wearily and reached for her glass again.
“Because Derek didn’t operate like that,” she said, her voice looser, her shoulders slumping. “He didn’t want checks sent to his house. He wanted cash in hand. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
“Why were you still giving him money?”
She took a long sip. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Was he blackmailing you?”
First, Mrs. Bloom smirked a little. Then she sat very still, setting her highball glass on her knee, a new water ring forming on her wool pants.
“I’m so ashamed,” she said at last, nearly a whisper, even though they appeared to be alone in the house. “So ashamed.”
Dara felt pinpricks on her neck, her wrists, her hips. Something was happening.
“Did you know about the wife?”
Mrs. Bloom looked up.
“That,” she said slowly, carefully, “was the hardest part.”
“Because he didn’t tell you.”
“No, because I knew her first.”
* * *
*
It had begun nearly two years ago. She’d been having these migraines ever since Bailey was born. So bad she’d vomit, so bad she couldn’t open her eyes for days. A friend recommended acupuncture. She found a woman she liked at a medical spa, a little place inside that big glass building by the highway.
“And this was her?” Dara said. “His wife?”
Mrs. Bloom nodded. “She understood my body so well. By the end of the first session, my body felt like liquid. My head felt clear and strong. Then she told me about this special bathtub that would help. Her husband could install it. I’d been thinking of a renovation anyway, so I hired him.”
Mrs. Bloom took a long sip from that rattling glass, leaning back, her lipstick slightly smudged.
“But then, one day, weeks into the renovation, she shows up at my front door. In her scrubs. She looked like she’d been crying for hours. She’d found some things on his phone . . . some texts, some . . . photos. Things he promised me he wouldn’t keep.”
There it was. There it was. Mrs. Bloom and Derek, the furtive sex, the bleached hair, the ensnarement, the money, the manipulation, the trap.
“What did you say to her? The wife?”
“I denied it. But it was all there.” Mrs. Bloom’s face reddened, even at the memory. “But then she just started begging me. Telling me how she needed him. They were deep in debt, about to lose their house. She had to hide her car in a coworker’s garage so they wouldn’t repossess it. And then she started talking about the children.”
“Children?” Dara felt the cold of her glass in her hand. She took another sip, feeling the fire again. There was always something new now. Something new and incredible.
“Four. One with some kind of . . . problem. It was all so terrible. I needed her to leave. I ended up writing her a check.”
“Why?”
“I would have given her anything,” Mrs. Bloom said. “Anything.”
“That’s when you ended it?”
Mrs. Bloom looked at her like Dara hadn’t been listening at all.
* * *
*
They were moving soundlessly up the carpeted stairs.
“You need to see it,” Mrs. Bloom kept murmuring as Dara hurried behind her, up the stairs and down a long hallway, “to understand.”
The pocket door slid open soundlessly. Inside, the walls, the carpet, the towels, were all dark pink and strongly scented, such that it was like stepping into the center of a blooming rose.
“I never come in here anymore,” she whispered. “I can’t.”