* * *
*
At some point, Mrs. Bloom had stopped talking. Or maybe Dara just couldn’t hear her anymore over the water, see her anymore through the steam.
Closing her eyes, listening to the hissing radiant heat, she was thinking of things, her brain soft and dreamy and strange. She was thinking of the Nutcracker Prince costume at yesterday’s final fitting with Svetlanka, their tailor since their mother’s day. They’d spent countless hours over the years watching her sew tutus, her tarnished thimble ring, her painted nails. Yesterday, running those nails across Corbin Lesterio’s chest, the deep-red waistcoat. Corbin distracted, his slender fingers stroking the gold trim, the epaulet fringe, reminding her of all the past Princes, back to Charlie even, all in the same costume, its velvet still bright and spry, sliding one finger beneath its tight, high collar, his blushing throat. There were so many of them, from their mother’s hands to hers, their bodies still unbroken, still growing, waiting, begging to be shaped, smoothed, perfected. Corbin looking down at Svetlanka’s silver-black hair, kneeling at his feet, needle in her mouth as she bid him to shush, shush, it’ll all be over soon. . . .
And then, Now show Madame Durant how handsome you look. Show her her Prince.
Corbin looking at her, face flushed.
* * *
*
I wanted him here all the time,” Mrs. Bloom was saying, her turtleneck hooked in her finger, her mouth still gasping for air. Just like Marie, Dara thought. I need him here all the time, Dara.
“It didn’t matter how slow the renovation was going,” she continued. “I wanted to feel him here. Don’t you see?”
Dara did not see. She would never see. It was just like Marie. Worse. This woman had a husband, a house. A daughter.
“When I think of it now,” Mrs. Bloom was saying. “The things I did for him. The things he made me want to do. I humiliated my husband. I humiliated myself.”
Dara’s eyes, the lids slick and wet, opened again.
The room was so hot, so hot like the steam bath their mother used to take them to at the Y. How can she stand it, Dara thought, looking at Mrs. Bloom in her wool trousers, her fuzzy turtleneck.
For a second, Dara thought she might faint. She reached for the bath tap, which came loose in her hand. It was so light, the gold peeling off in her hand.
That was when she saw the crack at the bottom of the tub. A long spiny crack like a spider leg, crooked.
She could feel Mrs. Bloom watching her.
Mrs. Bloom, her face red as a blister, looked so different, all her polish peeled off too. Her hair thicker, heavy, her hands closed into tight red balls.
“The drain leaks into the subfloor,” Mrs. Bloom said. “The toilet seal leaks. The first day, two tiles came off in my hands.”
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Dara said. Her head felt tight, cramped. “I don’t understand why I’m here.”
She stepped out of the tub, her legs trembling, the heat from the floor rising up. She felt herself keeling like a ship in a storm. Holding on to the wall.
“And the floors are starting to warp,” Mrs. Bloom was saying.
Dara nodded drunkenly, scrambling for the dials, shutting off the radiant heat, the radiant everything.
“Once you turn it on,” Mrs. Bloom said, “it’s hard to get it to stop.”
Dara nodded again, her eyes shut.
“I wish I could burn it down,” Mrs. Bloom said. “I wish I could burn the whole place down.”
* * *
*
Panting over the kitchen sink, downing tall tumblers of icy water. Dara’s feet pulsing and damp in her boots.
“It kept happening,” Mrs. Bloom said. “He’d install a floor and the heat would crack it. There were leaks, a flood. It never stopped. Before I knew it, the bills were running into six digits and my husband started asking questions.”
Dara nodded and nodded, closing her eyes again, fingers on her temples.
“And Derek, he was getting more . . . demanding. He wanted things.”
“Like the truck?” Dara said. “You bought him that.”
“I wish it were only the truck,” Mrs. Bloom said, her face still so pink and wet from the bathroom, her makeup smeary. “How about all the money orders I gave him to help his mother, who had to move into a nursing home, the six thousand dollars I gave him for his marina fees for a boat I never saw that was going to launch his new business?”
“But you could have fired him. You could have ended things. That’s what I don’t get about you women—”