On a lovely Sunday in August, Henry and June Bloom dressed in their Sunday finest; so did their daughters Molly, Mary, Margaret and Catherine. Together, they walked several blocks to the Church of Nothing, where they arranged themselves on the front steps for a portrait: left to right, Mary, Molly, Mr. Bloom, Mrs. Bloom, Margaret, Catherine, Mr. Fuzzums.
A helpful fellow congregant agreed to snap the picture. Cheese!
Henry Bloom beamed. Henry is an advertising man, head of Bloom and Company. (The "and Company" part is fiction; Henry's agency is a one-man show). Born and raised in Beauneville, Henry knows just about everyone in town. There's not a lot of advertising business, but Wickett's Bazaar, Witherspoon Electric and Beaune Valve are good accounts and they keep him busy enough. In his spare time, Henry collects erotic art and performs practical jokes and stunts.
June Bloom smiled nervously. June is the homemaker par excellence; her practice of the culinary art is finely developed (though somewhat specialized). She likes to think of herself as "messy, but not dirty", and indeed a tour of the Bloom domicile reveals a home in the state of controlled chaos -- books and papers scattered hither and thither, but the kitchen and bathrooms are scrupulously clean.
Henry and June met as students in Paris, where they made it their business to engage in torrid sex in as many places as possible: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Opera, the Louvre, and on each subway line, among other places.
Molly Bloom rarely wears a dress, and she looks slightly uncomfortable, but smiles nevertheless. Ordinarily, she wears a shirt, pants and nothing else; she is sleek, gorgeous and completely blond, as every art student knows. She is passionate about Beethoven and little else other than karate, in which she is a black belt. At sixteen, Molly is totally focused, and shy. Roderick is her longtime friend and soulmate -- they were born two weeks apart, have attended school together from Kindergarten, and they communicate almost wordlessly. Are they more than friends, or will they ever be more than friends? Time will tell.
Mary, smiling and outgoing, is the good daughter. Kind to children, the elderly and small animals, Mary likes to help her mother around the house. She goes to great lengths to proclaim her commitment to morality and "abstinence only". Recently, she signed a pledge to maintain her virginity until marriage, and collected a $100 prize from the National Virginity Society. However, since her recent deflowering in the back of a minivan owned by a good-looking but nameless young man from Stapleton, Mary has developed a taste for secret and slightly dangerous sex -- dangerous for her partners, that is, since Mary is just shy of fifteen.
Some people might consider Mary a hypocrite. In Beauneville, though, there's a name for hypocrisy: it's called "manners".
Margaret does not smile for the camera. She is twelve years old, and she is the quiet daughter. Rarely speaking to anyone outside the family, Margaret is a brilliant logician, solver of crossword puzzles and black belt sodoku expert. Her teachers think that she will either invent cold fusion in a test tube or go insane.
Catherine waves to the camera, and so does Mr. Fuzzums. Catherine is ten years old, the youngest, and always get whatever she wants. Ordinarily, what she wants is quality time with Mr. Fuzzums, with whom she is totally BFF.
The Bloom girls have one thing in common: they all have straight blonde hair, which they wear long.
Click!
The picture taken, Mr. Bloom thanked the photographer, and they all walked to the Red Trolley Diner for Sunday brunch. They sat in a big booth and chatted while they waited for their food.
Molly couldn't wait to get out of the Sunday clothes and get back to the Bosendorfer.
Mary wondered if Mrs. Peacock was okay, and shivered slightly as she thought about what she did last night in the back seat of a 1954 DeSoto parked near the Mill Pond.
Margaret thought about Touchard's approach to the menage problem in mathematics.
Catherine hugged Mr. Fuzzums.
