A Circle of Wives

by Alice LaPlante

  I am so lost in thought that I realize I have inadvertently locked eyes with the woman in the gold skirt. I am dismayed to see her bearing down on me. She might have mistaken me for someone who needs rescuing. Perhaps she hopes I am another social outcast looking to commiserate. She stumbles as she approaches. I assume she’s had a bit too much to drink—an accurate assumption, as it turns out.

  She opens just as I would have predicted. “I don’t really know anyone here,” she confesses, obviously expecting me to say something similar. Her voice, despite her nervousness, has a pleasant slow twang to it. Ain-ee-wun hee-ahh. Not a California native. I shrug, not wanting to encourage her. Sloppiness. It always repels me.

  “So how do you know . . . the people here?” she asks. Hee-ahh again. She doesn’t wait for an answer. Her eyes and mouth both open wide. I can hear her breathing through her mouth. Distasteful.

  Then I feel a hand at my elbow. It is cold and damp. I turn. It’s Deborah herself, who has apparently finished administering to the rug. The gold-skirt woman is staring at her, her mouth still open, clearly flummoxed. “So you two found each other,” Deborah says, gesturing at me, then at the woman. “Why am I not surprised.”

  I am at a loss for words. Finally, I inanely stick out my hand. “Helen R—”

  “Richter,” says Deborah. “Yes, I know. Helen Richter, meet MJ Taylor. I’m assuming you both know who I am.”

  “Taylor?” I ask the woman in gold. “Are you related to John?”

  “Related?” the woman begins to laugh. She’s most definitely had too much to drink. “I guess you could say so.”

  “But not by blood,” suggests Deborah. She is smiling.

  “No, not like that,” the woman says, then falls silent.

  There’s an awkward pause as Deborah briefly accepts the goodbyes of a couple of guests, then gives us her attention again. “You two have more in common than you realize,” Deborah says. She appears as composed as ever. “In fact, we all three share something quite . . . intimate.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, but a drum has started pounding in my chest. I can feel blood rushing in my ears. I realize I haven’t eaten anything for nearly forty-eight hours.

  “Excuse me,” I say, and stumble over to the nearest empty chair. I put my head between my knees. The dizziness passes.

  I stay there for a moment, then gradually sit up, hoping to be left alone. But no. Both Deborah Taylor and MJ Taylor are standing next to me. MJ looks genuinely concerned and is holding out a glass of water. Deborah simply observes me.

  “I think you’re beginning to get it,” says Deborah. She smiles. It strikes me that she doesn’t have a very nice face.

  MJ still looks bewildered, she glances from me to Deborah and back again. “What’s going on?” she asks. Goin aw-an. Definitely southern roots.

  “What’s going on is the inaugural meeting of John Taylor’s spouses,” says Deborah. “Would we qualify as a coven? A harem? What is the term for a group of wives?”

  “Circle,” I say. “We are a circle of wives.” Then I close my eyes and this time don’t fight the dizziness.

  6

  MJ

  I SOMEHOW GET HOME AFTER that disastrous reception. How I did it without ending up with a DUI I don’t know. I’m not a drinker. It only takes a couple glasses of wine on an empty stomach to put me way under, and the wine coupled with the stress, and then the shock unhinged me completely. Three wives! And of course it had been me who jogged that woman’s elbow so she spilled her red wine all over Deborah’s apparently very valuable carpet. Well, despite knowing everything else, she didn’t seem to know that. Be grateful for small victories, I tell you. Or “Yee-haw” as my mother would say sarcastically when underwhelmed by an event.

  How do I feel? Humiliated. I’ve clearly been outsmarted and outgunned at every point. Those fantasies I’d had of starting a quiet conversation with Deborah in which I calmly informed her of the situation now seem borderline hallucinogenic. Not since I dropped acid in my twenties have I felt so displaced from reality as standing in Deborah’s living room with her and that other “wife.” What was her name, Helga? Heidi? Something that begins with an “H.” She managed to hold on to her wits and, more importantly, her dignity. Even at my best I only muddle through life, grateful for the goodwill most people bear toward dumb creatures. At least Deborah doesn’t seem inclined to strip me of my assets, meaning, this house. “We’ll have that talk later,” she said to me before I left. Of course, only to me, as this . . . Henrietta? Haley? . . . clearly isn’t as concerned as I am about finances. I can’t help wondering what her circumstances are. Thank God I never quit my job. John had told me I could quit anytime, but I just hadn’t been able to imagine what I would do with myself all day. Come to think of it, John might have had similar worries, probably thought I’d be more likely to pry into matters if I didn’t spend eight-plus hours at the office every day. Besides, I don’t mind my job. I rather enjoy it. Bookkeeping for a software company in Silicon Valley distracts me—and affords me a certain level of respect. The sanity of numbers, the rationality of ratios, percentages. Accounting has always kept me grounded during rough patches in my life; I can only pray it will this time, too.

  Since Deborah was constantly being interrupted by departing guests offering their final condolences, we didn’t discuss the details of our situation. Deborah had said, “Of course there’s no need for anyone else to know,” at which point I felt a certain amount of relief, but even so I’m unclear how it will work out. Will I claim John as dead? Will I take the death certificate to a lawyer to make sure the house is truly, officially, mine? That other wife, she’d nodded calmly, took it all in stride. The indignity of not being the final wife! It confirms that I lack something, that I hadn’t given John what he wanted, what he really needed. Not that Deborah seemed to feel anything of the sort. At least she was left twice. Not that I was actually left. (I have to keep reminding myself of that.) He could have done so. He could have asked me for a divorce when he met this third wife, this whoever. He could have just abandoned me. That he didn’t means something, it’s something to hold on to.

  In the meantime what will I tell people? I suppose I can say that my husband suddenly died of a heart attack. That’s what the newspapers reported anyway. As Deborah said, “no one needs to know.” But this is all for another day when I can bear it. I am still a little tipsy and not exactly thinking clearly. I begin to get ready for bed when my house phone begins to ring.

  I usually ignore numbers I don’t recognize from the caller ID, but this is a local call, which makes me curious, as does the fact that no one who knows me ever calls the landline. Everyone who needs to reach me knows my cell number. But this caller is extremely persistent, really, aggressive is a better word: The phone keeps ringing, and I let the call go to voicemail five times before I finally answer. “This is MJ.”

  The caller turns out to be a reporter from the Chronicle. She got an anonymous tip. No, she doesn’t know from whom—it was anonymous. Duh, she practically says. Then, “Is it true that you were married to Dr. John Taylor? And that he had two other wives?” she asks.

  I am floored. Who could have told her? How many people know? Deborah, or perhaps that other wife, although she hadn’t seemed the type to give much away. That type can surprise. This . . . Helen—that’s right, that’s her name—might have looked as though she had everything under wraps, with her elegant black sheath and those cheekbones and collarbone, but I’ve seen some truly spectacular meltdowns from her kind. My own tightly buttoned-up mother was a master of self-restraint, but when she broke, she broke big.

  This reporter, she hits me with the facts. So smoothly! No hint of judgment or shock in her voice. She fools me, she makes it sound like no big deal.

  “And you had no idea about your husband’s other wives?” she asks, and her voice is so . . . understanding . . . that I lose my head. The booze coupled with the confusion. I spew words, many words, before hanging u
p the phone and collapsing.

  7

  San Francisco Chronicle

  Deceased Stanford Doctor

  Had Three Wives

  May 15, 2013

  PALO ALTO, CA—Dr. John Taylor was a prominent plastic surgeon, an associate clinical professor at Stanford, and director of the Taylor Institute, a thriving private clinic that specialized in facial reconstructions. It wasn’t until Taylor passed away last week, at age 62, of a presumed heart attack, that he was discovered to have had three concurrent wives in different households in Palo Alto, Los Gatos, and Los Angeles.

  “My world has just fallen apart,” said MJ Taylor (née Johnston) of Los Gatos, who hadn’t known that her husband was married with three children. In fact, he had never divorced his wife Deborah Taylor (55) of Palo Alto. MJ Taylor (49) had married Dr. John Taylor in a quiet ceremony on the beach in Santa Cruz five years ago. At that point, Dr. John Taylor had been married to Deborah Taylor for nearly thirty years. Then, six months ago, Dr. Taylor married again, this time to fellow physician Helen Richter (36) who lives and works in Los Angeles, where Dr. Taylor was a visiting professor at the UCLA medical school. Dr. Richter kept her own surname after the ceremony. MJ Taylor, a financial analyst at WebSys Corp., in Santa Clara, also claimed to have no knowledge of this later marriage. “Until the funeral reception, I had no idea. Not a clue,” she said, adding, “She does seem like a nice woman.”

  Dr. Helen Richter and Deborah Taylor were unavailable for comment.

  In the United States, the Model Penal Code (section 230.1) defines bigamy as a misdemeanor. In the state of California, if a married person marries an unmarried person the penalty is a one-year prison term or a ten-thousand-dollar fine. If an unmarried person knowingly marries another person’s husband or wife, then the penalty is five thousand dollars or a one-year prison term. Samantha Adams, a detective with the Palo Alto Police Department said the state was unlikely to pursue charges against MJ Taylor or Dr. Richter, as they appeared ignorant of Taylor’s original marriage.

  8

  Samantha

  “SO YOU’VE CAUGHT A LIVE ONE.” That’s my boss, Chief Elliot, although everyone calls her Susan. Officers visiting our station house from other cities are appalled at the informality. But despite the fact that we’re on a first-name basis, she doesn’t stand for nonsense. A tall woman in her midfifties, she’s been running the Palo Alto police department for almost twenty years. She was the one to tap my shoulder and ask if I wanted to take the detective exam, the one who put the idea into my head. I wouldn’t exactly call her a mentor, although others in the department hint that I’m a favorite. She’s a remote sort of person, not overly warm, and despite the first-name thing, not terribly approachable. Once I bought her a Diet Coke from the machine, having noticed that she swills them down in a constant flow all day. The look I got still sends chills through me. But I’ve witnessed her in action enough to note that she has vast excesses of patience and, I’ve always thought, wisdom. She has a nickname that people are careful to use only out of her hearing, Suicide Suzie, due to a famous incident where she talked a guy down from jumping off the Sand Hill 280 overpass. The mayor gave her a plaque for an act of valor that someone had to rescue from the garbage can after the award ceremony. To Susan’s chagrin, it now hangs above the entrance to the station house. I have enormous respect for her. She doesn’t seek glory for its own sake, but values a job well done.

  Susan sits at her desk, fiddling with a pen, then leans back in her chair. She is large, with massive shoulders and a double chin, the type of woman that unenlightened persons probably wouldn’t take seriously, given her size and indifference to fashion. Strangers might mock her for her weight, might see it as evidence of laziness or lack of control. Yet I’ve never known anyone so disciplined. No matter how early you get to the station, Susan is already there. The station house is a spotless engine of efficiency. She computerized all the records a full decade before other police departments in the state. Of course, a lot of that has to do with Palo Alto money. But also Susan’s vision. She’s married to the head of Palo Alto’s firefighting division, himself no Skinny Minnie. People like to joke that one of the reasons Palo Alto is such a placid community is that the two of them hate having their dinner interrupted.

  “I’m mostly talking to myself here,” she says. “I’m wondering if this case shouldn’t go to a more seasoned officer. Someone used to handling those ghouls in the media. After that Chronicle nastiness, the media is calling for an official statement. You’d have to write one today and present it tonight or tomorrow morning. You up for that? Or do you want me to pass it on to Grady.” Grady being our only big-city cop, having retired from the Detroit police force before moving west and signing on in Palo Alto as a detective at the ripe old age of fifty. Easy money, he calls it. You can see him trying to stifle a smile when anyone complains about having a bad day. I Googled him once, way back. He was put on administrative leave twice in Detroit for having killed while on duty. The words excessive use of force were used throughout the various newspaper reports. Scary stuff. I tend to tiptoe around Grady.

  Part of me wants to say, sure, why not, throw it to Grady, and let this case go. That’s the quitter in me. Though I’m also kind of hooked.

  “I can handle that,” I say. I try to exude the air of someone competent, yet not foolishly overconfident. Mostly this involves standing up to my 5'4" height and brushing my bangs out of my face.

  “But we know nothing yet,” I say. “Jake sent the body to the pathologist for an autopsy, and he said we won’t have the results for days.”

  “Then tell them that. Keep it short and sweet,” Susan says.

  “Do I mention the bruising? The needle puncture?”

  “Absolutely not,” says Susan. “You speculate about nothing. They’ll press you to say more. They’ll try to get you to say this is murder, whatever. Just stick to the facts, Sam.”

  The facts, I think, not unhappily, are doozies. Although I’m not unmindful of the fact that a man is dead—a man with responsibilities and a family who is grieving—I’m excited to be doing something other than processing theft reports that will come to nothing or investigating break-ins fumbled by pot-smoking sixteen-year-olds. They’re not the cleverest criminal minds. The last one I’d been assigned to, the perp had two of his friends on bicycles acting as lookouts. A couple of kids riding in perpetual circles in front of the target’s home naturally aroused the attention of the neighbors. When we arrived, the perp was trying to get away on his bike with a MacBook in his backpack and two iPhones in his pocket, but not before he’d paused to make a phone call from one of his ill-gotten phones. Like I said, not the brightest criminals in the world.

  “I’d like you to stay on the case,” says Susan, with an air of having made up her mind, “For now, you’re our homicide department, Sam. Use Grady or Mollie as backup. I want daily briefings.”

  “Oh, and Sam,” she calls after me, as I’m walking away, “Find out who tipped the newspaper off about the three marriages. Talk about a shocker! It must have been one of the wives. I’d like to know which one thought it would be advantageous for us to know about the bigamy—I mean, multiple marriages.”

  “The trigamy,” I quip, and get a smile out of Susan. It makes my day.

  9

  Excerpt from Transcript

  Police interview with

  MJ Taylor, May 18, 2013

  [Preliminary introductions, explanations of processes and procedures]

  Samantha Adams: When did you realize your husband had two other . . . relationships?

  MJ Taylor: Not until I read the news of his death. And actually, I only found out about his first wife from the paper. The other wife I learned about at the funeral reception. No one accepts that, though. No one can believe I didn’t suspect something, anything.

  Samantha Adams: Well, didn’t you?

  MJ Taylor: Not at all.

  Samantha Adams: How could that be?

 
MJ Taylor: I have to tell you, John simply inspired confidence. That large, imposing physique. His soothing authoritative voice. And don’t forget I was in love. I felt like a bride even after five years of marriage. I had no idea I was married to a Bluebeard. And unlike Bluebeard’s bride, when he told me there were places I couldn’t go, questions I couldn’t ask, I obeyed. Unlike her, I absolutely obeyed.

  Samantha Adams: Do you think others suspected? His secretary? His colleagues?

  MJ Taylor: I never called his office; he forbid me to, said it would disrupt his work. I was only allowed to contact him via email, or through his cell phone. I didn’t call the hotels he stayed at when he was out of town, I never showed up unannounced at any of his award dinners honoring him, any of the celebrations of his professional success. He wanted to keep his professional and personal lives separate, he told me, and I obeyed.

  Samantha Adams: Didn’t any of this strike you as strange?

  MJ Taylor: Not at the time. Or rather, John was strange. It was one of his charms, his eccentricity. He danced naked in the garden after dark. He kept caramel candies in his bedside table, popped them in his mouth during his frequent awakenings in the night, sucked them until he fell back asleep. Like a two-year-old, he suffered from night terrors, needed sweets as pacifiers.

  And I was—am—a little strange myself. The hippy accountant. Fish out of water almost everywhere. Except when I’m with my brother, of course. I’m nothing if not a good big sister. But other than that, an oddball. Until John. I was truly known to him. Do you understand what I mean by that? That was John’s particular magic. My friends said this, too, you felt he saw you, really saw you. Such a man was worth waiting for. Even worth compromising for.