by Grand, David
Isabella now ignored Bloom as he had ignored her. When the bath was prepared, she continued to read until the very moment Bloom snatched the book from her hands and cast it aside. It was only when Bloom felt himself grow serious, when he felt the urge to explain what it was he was going to do, the Isabella of the past, the strong and curious, the impetuous Isabella, who played at seduction with quiet misdirection, returned, and said, No, let’s not speak of it. Let’s never speak of it.
Yes, said Bloom, let’s not. Bloom helped her up, carried her across the room, and set her down to stand before the full-length mirror, where Bloom—with shaking hands—unzipped the back of her dress. He reached to the cuffs of its sleeves and eased them down until the neck folded over her small breasts; and down farther he pulled until she was able to step out of it. She raised her arms as Bloom set the dress aside and when he returned to his place behind her, he lifted her slip, turning it inside out over her head.
Isabella now stood before him with her chest bare and her bloomers hugging her waist and covering her midriff. As eager as he was to tear them away, Bloom, with great care, set her slip on top of her dress, and this time when he returned to stand behind her, he discovered Isabella stroking her arms as Manuel described Miranda—up and down, caressing one, then the other, her head lolling back with pleasure; and as she continued to do this, he slipped his fingers inside the waistband of her bloomers, feeling with their tips the smoothness of her flesh, and from behind, he pushed down, ran his knuckles over the generous curve of her ass, down the backs of her thighs and calves, until he had pulled them to the floor. She stepped out, and as he had done with her other items of clothing, he set her bloomers aside.
Bloom wanted nothing more than to lay his hands on her hips and feel the weight of her body against his, to kneel before her, as if in prayer, and press his nose into places it didn’t belong, but he had cast himself in the role of her servant, and was determined to attend to her, to abide by her desires, and heal her. He stood on the threshold and watched as indifferently as he knew how. He watched her step through the rose petals, watched her ease her body into the water, at which point she shut her eyes and disappeared under cover of bloodred petals.
* * *
For a week, Bloom waited. For a month, he waited. For two and then three and then four months, he waited. He waited for Isabella to recover. He moved her belongings from the cottage into the gallery, and for four months she didn’t leave this room. For four months, she ate, and read, and slept. For four months, Isabella became Bloom’s sole occupation. For four months, there existed nothing else but her. Every morning and every night, he clipped roses from the garden and drew Isabella her baths and undressed her and attended to her. In small increments of time, he could see changes take place in her spirit and body. In his company she grew more round in her belly and her breasts; her arms thickened and her cheeks grew more full, and soon enough, the fog that had settled into her eyes began to clear and her countenance was reconstituted into the mysterious and arresting object onto which Bloom could once again project his wonder. No longer the deeply wounded creature that had returned to him, she stopped asking for books written for children, but rather requested from the library lengthy tomes by Henry James and George Eliot, Trollope and Thackeray, books full of serious contemplation and social intrigues. And she grew fascinated with Jacob Rosenbloom’s back issues of Modern Astronomer, in which she followed the Great Debate between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis on the subject of island universes. When she saw the first photographs of spiral clusters taken at the Solar Observatory, and saw the magnificence of the billions of stars magnified by the telescope’s hundred-inch mirror, she speculated along with Shapley and Curtis whether the spirals were gaseous nebulae or distant galaxies or universes separate from our own. Her newfound strength grew from the attention Bloom lavished upon her. And, no doubt, it grew, as well, because—like Miranda with regard to her most caring servant—she granted Bloom more and more liberty to attend to the pleasures of her body. Sometime into her second month of convalescence, after having soaked herself long enough in the oils and tonics and perfume of her bath to spiral the flesh on the tips of her toes, she one day lifted a leg onto the lip of the tub and asked Bloom to soap and massage her feet. For several weeks this became their customary morning. She would bathe, and Bloom would attend to her wrinkled feet. First to the heel, then to the curve of her arch, and then—as if each was its own separate appendage—to her toes. When this therapy alone no longer satisfied her, she asked him to shampoo her hair. And so, every morning thereafter, Bloom washed and massaged her feet and caressingly dug his soapy fingers into her hair, and when he rinsed it clean, he slicked back behind her ears her dark mane to reveal the fullness of her face. As his father had once attended to the leafy statuaries of his mother in his gardens—with such meticulous and calculated care—Bloom attended to Isabella. To her every whim. And soon during her bathing ritual—sometime at the start of her fourth month in the gallery—Isabella began to resemble more and more Manuel’s depiction of Miranda at her most indulgent and vital. One morning after he had shampooed her hair, she rose up from the bath with rose petals clinging to her skin and stood before him with her thickening figure, and asked that he now soap her shoulders and arms and hands. He dutifully stood before her and soaped her shoulders and arms and hands and each of her fingers as he had so attentively cared for each of her toes. When he had finished, and Isabella didn’t return to the water, he asked if she desired anything else. My neck, she said as she lifted her chin. And so Bloom moved inward along the line of her collarbone, pressing with his thumbs and forefingers, until his hands met at the base of her throat. He then pushed upward over the ridges of her airway to the bottom of her chin, and traced the line of her jaw. And while his hands gripped the circumference of her throat and neck, and as his eyes focused downward onto the water dripping off her pubis, she said to him very mildly, And the rest, please, Joseph. Bloom now worked his hands down the middle of her wet chest, and with one hand followed by the other he passed through the rise of her breasts, around which he playfully circled suds with his fingers until their tips swelled and hardened. Her breathing, he noticed, began to brush the bubbles across the backs of his hands. All of the rest, she now said. He lathered down to her midriff and spread his hands and fingers over her hips and washed upward to the narrow folds under her arms, and then down again to converge on her pubic bone, which she reflexively pressed against the pressure of his palms. All of me, she repeated. But Bloom didn’t allow his hands to descend beyond this point, but rather he fanned his fingers out to the tops of her thighs. He knelt before her to lather first the left leg and then the right, which was when Isabella said to him, You’re being cruel now. And without warning, she turned and bent forward and unfairly presented to Bloom her ass. Touch me there, she said. When Bloom hesitated, she now ordered in a commanding voice, Touch me there. So Bloom touched her there. His throat swelled as he touched her there, as he slipped his finger through the line of her ass and ran it along the rim of her anus. Again, she said. But Bloom moved on to soap her inner legs and dimple the springy flesh of her rump. Again, she said, more insistently this time. Bloom slowly dipped his finger into the soapy starburst, as she—with one hand against the lip of the tub and with the other hand between her legs—began to touch herself. Blow on me there, she said. And so holding her open, Bloom blew on her there. Bite me there, she said. When Bloom hesitated, she said it again, Bite me there. Pushing her open wider now, he pressed his face into her and nibbled on her there. He could feel the rhythmic motion of her touch on his lips, and excited by this, he now had no control over his desire. He dug his tongue in there. Forced his nose in there. Nuzzled his chin there. He nibbled and pressed and tickled there with his teeth and his tongue, until he felt her quiver in his mouth, the innermost part of her body convulse and clench and release. And as the convulsions eased, he lifted himself up and cleansed her heaving back. Very gently, he rubbed in
synchronicity with her breath, and he waited for her to slip down the wall of the tub and wither into the pool of petals. When she did this, Bloom returned to the threshold, and fully alert, smelling and tasting the perfume and oils on and in his mouth, he kept a watchful eye on Isabella as she briefly nodded off in the warm fragrant water.
* * *
The day Bloom walked Isabella out of the gallery for the first time in four months, the first thing she noticed on their stroll around the grounds was the state of the rose garden: all of their bushes had been denuded. She insisted Bloom take her for a closer look, and there she found among all the cross-hatched branches the one remaining rose he had intentionally left untouched to remind her that the concentric rings of the garden would once again brim with color. But seeing the dreary circle of land with all its lattices filled with skeletal remains, seeing what result her pain had wreaked on such a thing of beauty, she looked at the one remaining bloom with some distress, and with fatalistic dread in her voice said, If I ever ravaged you as I’ve ravaged this garden, Joseph …
Bloom’s response to these words came readily and sincerely: You can pull up every inch of my roots. It will change nothing.
But, Joseph, she said, pausing to extend her arms to the naked branches all around them, look at what I’ve done.
Bloom reminded her that it was he who did it.
That, she said, disturbs me most of all. Isabella’s eyes began to mist over. She walked away from Bloom now, out of the garden toward the grove.
You’re overcome, said Bloom as he trailed after her. Let’s walk. Let’s take a long walk.
You don’t understand, she said. She turned around and, with her fists clenched, started bridging the short distance between them. Something’s happened to me! Her voice was angry. She drew her nose to his, and said, I feel! I feel, I need, I deeply need … Her eyes picked up the vast blue of the sky as she searched for the right words. I’ve become insatiable. Ravenous. Like a swarm of locusts.
You’re alive, Bloom said gently. He reached out to her and ran a finger under her nostrils where a tear dangled on her nose’s bulb. And you’re healthy. He touched the back of her neck and then took hold of her under her arms. And you’re here, with me, and there’s nothing you can do to me to make me feel any worse than I felt when I thought I’d lost you … Blind me. Maim me. Kill me, if that’s what you want. I don’t care.
Oh, Joseph, she laughed softly through her crying, don’t say such things.
Honestly, said Bloom. I’m your servant. I’m your slave.
She took hold of his face and held his head steady, and looking into him with a strength and resolve he recognized as the fortified young woman he once knew, she said, Ask me to marry you. Ask me to sit still with you on this mountain to make a quiet and easy life.
The idea of this both confused and delighted Bloom in equal measure.
I’m ready to be at peace, she said. I’m ready to feel at home. All you need is ask.
Even though Bloom could clearly see in the pressed shape of Isabella’s mouth that she didn’t believe a word of what she was saying, and that her desire to be caged by the limits of such a covenant ran contrary to the words she had spoken not more than a few seconds earlier, Bloom asked Isabella if she would be his wife. And she said, Yes.
* * *
They married some months later at the foot of the reflecting pool. A justice of the peace wearing a dusty suit and smelling of tequila officiated, and Gottlieb, Meralda, Gus, and Simon bore witness. They sat in the courtyard afterward and were served by Meralda. Once drunk, Gottlieb toasted Bloom’s father—Wherever he may be!—and the memory of Dr. Straight—Who I had not nearly enough time to know!—and the newlyweds—May you reflect in each other all the beauty there is to discover in this world! And after they had filled themselves with food and wine, the wedding party walked Joseph and Isabella to the master bedroom, and wished them happiness and a fruitful sleep.
For several months, Bloom and Isabella continued to live with the same intensity of spirit they enjoyed during Isabella’s convalescence, but in the months after these, when the rose garden had replenished itself with blooms, Bloom began to recognize a Manichaean disquiet in Isabella’s presence and he could see quite clearly how the sizable plot of land on which they lived and the union in which they were bound had in her mind become the fortress Bloom feared it might become. Something had awakened in Isabella in the brief time they had been married; some force of will deep within her, the same force that sometimes at night still caused her to gnash her teeth, had emerged into daylight, and although Bloom didn’t think she was aware of what was taking hold of her, he knew. He knew it to be the same animalistic force he felt inside her when they made love, the same insatiable hunger she attempted to describe to him on the day they were engaged, and Bloom knew he alone was incapable of putting this force to rest. He knew of nothing he could do to make her feel content within the microcosm he had fashioned for himself since the time he was a child. There wasn’t enough sex and kindness and love to snuff it out. He could, therefore, only watch this creeping vine work its way into her, into them, with the frosty indifference with which one greets an unwelcome guest into his home.
Bloom encouraged her to search out a man named George Ritchie, an optician who had designed the enormous parabolic mirror at the Solar Observatory. He lived only a few hours away by car. She drove off one afternoon to meet with Dr. Ritchie, and when she returned, she reported to Bloom what she had found when she arrived, an aged and pathetic creature who complained of headaches and insomnia, of maelstroms in his head that plagued him so often he had named them. Whirligus, he called them. As fascinating as Isabella found the observatory and his diverse collection of mirrors and the designs he had made for an even larger telescope that had the potential to unveil that much more of the sun’s surface and the unseen sky, she couldn’t bear the disappointment she felt for the man himself, and after only a few visits she decided her fascination for the man’s work wasn’t great enough to tolerate his company. She soon searched out others whose discipline was closer to the work done by Dr. Straight, but in each instance reported a similar story to the one Bloom had heard when she returned from visiting Dr. Ritchie. Not one of the men whose work she admired, and would have enjoyed furthering, lived up to her expectations, not one equaled her memory of Dr. Straight, and finding all lacking in one way or another, after these few brief meetings, too disillusioned to search anymore, she no longer pursued what had until then been integral to her life.
Perhaps Bloom shouldn’t have been surprised to see Isabella appear relieved to be free of the past, free from the tether of memory attaching her to Dr. Straight, from the diligence and discipline she had practiced throughout her youth. Perhaps he should have more readily understood when one afternoon she packed away the part of his father’s collection yet to be recorded, and placed it back on the shelf to which it belonged. No more, she said to Bloom, I am done. And as soon as she had put away the elder Rosenbloom’s artifacts, she said to Bloom, I want to become part of the world. I’m tired of being separate from it, observing it as if I were somehow less animal than the rest. And with this simple declaration, Isabella was Dr. Straight’s protégée no more. Nor, it seems, was she content any longer with their quiet life on the top of Mount Terminus.
She had come to understand what Bloom already knew on that day he asked her to marry him. That the union of their commonality, their shared curiosities, had been undermined by all the bodily humors she had witnessed expelled from men, the horrors she had smelled and wretched on. He could hold her. He could ease her suffering. He could provide her pleasure and escape. Invite her into the world of his imagination. But Bloom didn’t have it in him to thrill her, to provoke her, to charge her with the sort of electrical current she required to feel fully alive. When Bloom implied such things in the quiet of Mount Terminus’s solitude, Isabella claimed this wasn’t the case. Not at all. She had, by now, become better acquainted with Gottlieb
and Simon; she had grown accustomed to their company, and they to hers, enough so Bloom’s collaborator and his brother began to speak freely in front of her about her husband, about how it had been far too long for Bloom to have let his gifts lie fallow. And Isabella agreed.
So she would not be a hindrance, she began to take short excursions into town in Bloom’s car, where, one afternoon while eating lunch at the Pico House Hotel, she recognized at the table beside hers, Nora Duncan, the actress who played the fountain nymph in Mephisto’s Affinity. The two women had a pleasant chat, Isabella told Bloom in the parlor that same evening, and she made plans to meet with her at the theater the following night. The two regularly met thereafter for lunch, and, in small gradations Bloom hardly noticed at first, Isabella started to transform into a woman he hardly recognized. She opened accounts at the fashion houses downtown and spent a great deal of time shopping with Nora. She took up smoking and afternoon cocktails, and—Bloom would learn only after the fact—found a more than willing companion in her new brother-in-law, whom she would come to see much more frequently than Bloom did. Bloom probably shouldn’t have encouraged it, but when he learned she and Simon were now circulating at the same dinner parties and nightclubs, Bloom insisted his brother do what he could to keep her entertained, to escort her to his premieres, to introduce her to his wide circle of friends and associates, to help her mingle with the new crop of motion picture colonists migrating here by the day. Simon didn’t think it the best idea. He encouraged Bloom to join them. He would arrange for his tailor to visit the estate, to measure Bloom for a suit. He would send Murray Abrams to the estate to civilize Bloom in the ways of society, to practice him in the art of meaningless conversation. They could attend a few parties together, Simon suggested, and after an outing or two, who knew, perhaps Bloom would come to welcome the occasional night out on the town; perhaps he would even take a liking to someone outside his immediate circle. You should make the effort, said Simon. For her, you should make every effort. You do know, don’t you, that she’s not a woman you can take for granted?