The day after the New York Times article is the worst. The biggest crowds ever are waiting at the side exit to the hospital—they’ve discovered my trick—and at the entrance to my condo. I finally reach the safety of my apartment, double lock the door, and lean against it in relief. I have half a bottle of red wine left over from John’s last visit. I pour a small amount in a water glass and open the large sliding doors onto my wraparound balcony. I had especially wanted this end unit for the views of both the hills and the city. John had loved it, too. Especially the mature palm trees that edge the street on this part of the property, leftover from an old-style 1930s apartment block that had been torn down to make way for the condo complex. I settle into a deck chair with my wine when I smell smoke. Cigarette smoke. It seems to be coming from the balcony next door, which is odd because I haven’t been troubled by that in the three years since I’d moved in. Our condominium association’s bylaws forbid smoking outside the walls of the individual apartments, especially on balconies, where secondhand smoke can drift into other units. Through the plants I’d deliberately placed upon the stucco divider for privacy between my balcony and the next, I can see a young woman sitting with her feet up. As I watch, she releases a lungful of smoke into what is essentially my face, given the direction of the breeze. Rather than simply call out, I decide to be civilized and knock on her front door.
After thirty seconds, the door opens. The young woman stands there, cigarette in hand.
Feeling awkward, I introduce myself as her neighbor. I don’t mind being authoritative in places where I have actual authority, but this is a gray area. I can hardly tell her not to smoke in her own condo, and it seems petty to begrudge her the use of her own balcony. But before I can begin she says, “come on in,” without asking what I want. Afraid of being thought rude, I step inside although I would have preferred to have the conversation in the more neutral territory of the hall.
“Excuse me,” she says, and fumbles with her phone, then puts it in her pocket. Holding her cigarette in her left hand, she sticks out her right hand to shake. “Beth,” she says.
“Helen,” I say in return. There is an uncomfortable silence, then I gesture toward her cigarette. “If you don’t mind not smoking on the balcony,” I say. I hesitate a moment before adding, “It comes right into my living room.”
A strange look comes over the young woman’s face. Almost satisfaction. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I hadn’t thought of that.” She doesn’t make any promise to stop, though. Instead, she takes another long drag on her cigarette and releases the smoke off to the side. “Can I get you something to drink? Some wine?” I resign myself to the interruption, thinking of the importance of unpolluted balcony time. I calculate that it’s worthwhile to have a short drink.
She doesn’t wait for my reply, but disappears briefly into the kitchen. The condo is the mirror image of my own, only furnished in a modern style, with uncomfortable-looking leather furniture and bright primary colors. She emerges with two glasses of red wine. She’s finally abandoned her cigarette.
“You’re a doctor, right?” she asks, handing me one of the glasses. She gestures me into a bright red sofa.
“Yes,” I say. Then, after sitting down on the cold slippery surface, “How did you know?” Bruised as I am by the day’s events, I’m suspicious and alert.
“I’ve seen you leave the condo,” she says. But that doesn’t make sense, because I don’t put on my lab coat until I get to the office. In the morning, I resemble any urban professional. When I mention this—probably sounding a bit paranoid—she laughs and says she must have seen my name on medical magazines in the lobby. Given the large numbers of journals I subscribe to, I think that plausible.
“How’s Mr. Helen?” she asks, casually. When I look askance, she adds, “your husband. What’s his name? I’ve seen him in the hall, but we’ve never introduced ourselves.”
“John,” I say, and decide not to explain that John is no more. And really, once I think of it, he had never actually existed. Not the man, not the life I thought I had.
We both sip our wine in silence for a few minutes. Casting my mind about for something to talk about, I ask, “So what do you do, Beth?”
“Typist,” she says. As if anxious to shut down that line of inquiry, she quickly adds, “How long have you been married?”
“Six months,” I say, thinking this wasn’t too hard. Not telling lies, but omitting the truth.
I take another sip from my glass, and realize to my surprise that it’s nearly empty. “Let me fill that,” she says, and goes back to the kitchen, returning this time with the bottle. She tops both our glasses.
“So you’re still newlyweds,” she says rather than asks.
“You could say that,” I say, and find myself mimicking what’s being written about us. “Just getting to know each other. Still mostly strangers, but in an exciting way.”
I don’t recognize the person uttering these inanities, which is good because I want no connection with this woman, nothing to make me feel guilty about spinning falsehoods. I briefly wonder how a typist can afford a condo in this building, but shrug it off. She must have a well-off partner.
Another protracted silence before she attempts to speak again. “Aren’t you the doctor who’s been in the news lately?” She asks this casually, looking at her wineglass.
I shrink back and she quickly says, “I’m sorry. I heard some of the other residents talking in the elevator. You know. All the reporters hanging out at the front door.” I must cringe even more because she adds, in a warmly sympathetic voice, “It must feel terrible, to be talked about. On top of the actual betrayal, I mean.”
“Yes, pretty damn terrible,” I say. I find my glass has been filled again. I’ve spent my life running under people’s radar, only emerging to surprise them with my test scores, or my skills, or my insights. Now I’ll forever be known as that woman who was married to the guy with three wives. I contemplate where I might go to escape. New York? Chicago? Houston? I could easily find another teaching hospital, another clinical appointment. But even so, I would never escape, not fully. I know better than anyone how eagerly medical interns Google their teachers and prospective teachers—virtually stalking them to find what research grants they’ve been awarded, what publications they’ve achieved, how often they speak at medical seminars, plus any nugget about their personal lives. No, no point moving. The stain is there. It will never be erased. “I’m done for,” I say aloud, and the woman eagerly pounces. “Done for, how?”
I just shake my head without explaining. Why should I? I’m ashamed of my previous pride—my pride at living what in many ways was an austere life. Now my armor has a hole in it, and anger is leaking out.
“From what I’ve heard, you were duped,” says the young woman. She leans forward, her wine apparently forgotten, is fiddling again with her phone.
Through the fog of several glasses of wine, I hear her talking on.
“I would want to kill him,” she says.
“Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind,” I say. Then I correct myself. “He was already dead by the time I discovered the truth.” I retreat onto safer ground. “I never had the chance to confront him, to ask why, to find out why me.” The girl nods, as if I’ve said something especially clever.
“You must have wondered why he picked you of all the women he met every day. Given his profession, I mean. He must have met tons of women.”
I dismiss her suggestion. “John didn’t do cosmetic surgery. Only his partners did. He never would have fallen for someone who came to his clinic for that. If anything, it would have turned him off.”
“And he died of what . . . a heart attack? In a way, don’t you think that’s appropriate? For a man with three wives?” asks the girl. “His heart overloaded? Stressed to the limit?”
“Perhaps,” I say. “That indispensable motor, broken.” And mine, in sympathy, aching. Occupying such a tender position in my chest. I had an Egyptian prof
essor during my cardiology internship. He said that in his home country it was sometimes said of the dead that their hearts had departed, and that it was the heart that was weighed against the feather of truth in the hall of Ma’at during the divine judgment of the deceased. A heart unburdened with the weight of sin and corruption would balance with the feather and its possessor would enjoy the eternal afterlife. But I know my heart is not light as a feather. The afterlife I am fated for is not one that will be enjoyed.
I often encourage my patients to describe their symptoms using metaphors. They are incredibly illuminating. Once a child said, “I’m being pecked by a tiny bird with a very sharp beak. His beak must be bloody.” I looked, and sure enough, there were the telltale petechiae, the flat pinpoint dark-red spots under the skin that are one of the signs of childhood leukemia.
What are my metaphors? All clichés. Heavy heart. Burdened heart. Gandhi, my hero, saying, It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. What about neither words nor heart? I have nothing more to say. And it’s this that saves me. Because suddenly it becomes clear, this young woman’s constant fiddling with her phone, her probing questions, even her so-called profession. “You’re a reporter,” I say. She only hesitates a moment before nodding. “The Star,” she says. “They promised me fifty grand for an exclusive. I bribed your neighbor to go out for the evening.”
“You lured me over here with the cigarette smoke?” I ask, incredulous. Then I start laughing at her ingenuousness.
“I can’t stand to smoke myself,” the young woman says, “but it works nearly every time here on the West Coast. People who would be suspicious of a knock on the door are incredibly protective of their turf when it comes to secondhand smoke.”
I point to the cell phone she’s holding. “Have you been recording this?” and she nods.
“You gave me some good stuff, but not enough for you to feel embarrassed,” she says. “You’ll come across as heartbroken but dignified.” Heartbroken. Metaphors again.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I could persuade you to respect my privacy?” I ask. She shakes her head. But I seem to detect some true regret in the gesture.
“I don’t like my job very much sometimes, but I’d like unemployment worse,” she says. “But, like I said, it wasn’t too bad. You didn’t spill your sex secrets.”
“That’s because I don’t have any,” I say. And for a moment that seems true, that I have lived my life out in the open, with nothing to hide and few regrets. Then I remember, and am quiet.
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know,” says the girl. I must look startled because she says, “Macbeth. I studied English literature in college.” I don’t think I’m imagining that she appears slightly ashamed. “We all end up in places we didn’t expect,” she says.
“That we do,” I say, and somehow find the door and leave.
15
Helen
I CAN’T HELP THINKING FOR once that it’s a good thing my parents are out of this. My mother. She would have fought with editors and written letters in rebuttal, fiercely protecting me, her only surviving child. But she’s now locked in a memory unit in Indianapolis and no longer knows what a fork is used for, much less that she has a daughter. My father, on a good day, would have gathered me to his chest and wept with me. His tears a potent balm. On a bad day, he would have slapped my face and told me to get a grip. Still, I would have had to restrain him from tracking down those reporters and crippling them. Toward the end of his life, heavily medicated, he wept less. On the rare occasion when he felt the urge to break a piece of furniture, or hurt another living being, he simply took a special pill and went to bed for the rest of the day. He’d rise the next morning changed from Mr. Hyde back to Dr. Jekyll. We know now that Stevenson’s antihero could have done with a prescription for lithium or valproate. How much of our great literature has modern psychiatry rendered quaint and obsolete? Someday they’ll have a diagnosis and a pill for someone like John, something to render him less charming and beguiling, less of a risk to the women of the world. And there will be a pill for me, too. Something to keep my guard up. The world will be a healthier place. But even so, despite all that’s happened, I think it will be a far less interesting one.
16
San Francisco Chronicle
Coroner Returns Verdict of Murder in Much-Married Doctor’s Death
June 1, 2013
PALO ALTO, CA—The death of the Stanford doctor who had three concurrent wives was classified as a wrongful death by person or persons unknown by the Santa Clara County Coroner yesterday. Reasons given for the suspicions of foul play in the death of Dr. John Taylor were bruises on the body as well as a needle puncture in the back. Sources say that the police suspect Dr. Taylor was injected with potassium, which then brought about a heart attack. The police have questioned numerous witnesses, including the three women he had married, two of them illegally. Other persons of interest are also being brought in for questioning, sources say. A large funeral took place at Stanford Memorial Church, complete with closed coffin, but the body was never present, due to the suspicious circumstances of the death. “It was all for show,” said one funeral attendee, who asked for anonymity.
17
Samantha
SO. THE VERDICT OF THE inquest was what Jake had predicted. Wrongful death by person or persons unknown.
The next step is establishing the time of death. Always done so effortlessly on television, but in actuality extraordinarily difficult to do with any degree of accuracy—as I’m learning. According to the pathologist at the inquest, John Taylor could have died anytime between 2 PM and 10 PM on that Friday.
However, we know he checked in to the room at 2:30 PM, and was alive and well. There was the fact that he ordered room service at 6:35: a steak, medium rare, roast potatoes, and a glass of white wine. Chocolate fondue for dessert. The young woman who had taken the order remembers it well because of their discussion about the chocolate fondue. “I told him it would take at least fifty minutes, and asked if he wanted his meal first, and for us to bring up the fondue when it was ready,” she said. “He was very clear that he wanted everything at the same time.” It wasn’t until 7:50 that the room service waiter knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, and again. No one came to the door. “It happens,” the girl said. At least that bookends the time we know he was alive (6:35 PM), and a time he was likely not alive any longer (7:50 PM).
I tell Peter at dinner. Mussels, so he must have paid another visit to Cook’s Seafood and decided to buy the makings for a meal while he was there. Don’t get me wrong, I love his cooking, but he should be working on his dissertation. I tell him that Taylor’s bruised upper arm and neck coupled with the needle puncture and high levels of potassium were sufficient for the coroner to demand an investigation.
“But even if you have this wrongful death verdict, isn’t there something called motive?” Peter asks. He pries a mussel out of its shell with his fork, places it delicately in his mouth. He is as fastidious as a young child when he eats, tastes everything as though he is prepared to throw it onto the floor in a tantrum. But the truth is, he is quite the epicure, and a terrific cook. The mussels are plump, fresh, tasting of garlic and white wine. Peter definitely didn’t get much work done this afternoon. “I’ve watched my share of crime dramas,” he says. “Motive is always the showstopper.”
“A man with three wives?” I ask. I find I’m speaking more impatiently than I want, so I calm my voice down. “Enough was happening in this guy’s life. Every place we poke around we find motive.” Without thinking I swallow the mussel in my mouth whole. I have to gulp some wine to get it down.
“How do you figure?” Peter asks when I’ve recovered.
“Anger. Jealousy. Payback time,” I say. “All the stuff that accumulates in romantic relationships, but times three.”
“But the only wife who knew the situation was the original one,” he reminds me. “And she a
ccepted it. More than accepted it. She ran the show, right?”
“Right,” I say, but again impatience creeps into my voice. I’m tired. I take a deep breath and tell myself to enjoy the moment. The food, Peter’s presence—it’s been more than a week since we’ve had a meal together—the relief of having the inquest over. I try to relax my shoulders, move my head from side to side to get the knots out of my neck. My body just tenses up again. This used to be enough, us together at night, over simple but good food. Though it has been growing less satisfactory. Something left wanting. Something about the John Taylor case and its web of love and deceit is souring what used to sustain me.
Peter is still intent on the discussion. Possibly because he hasn’t noticed my shift in mood. Or possibly because he has. He’s hard to read sometimes, that Peter.
“Who do you put your bet on?” he asks as he breaks off another piece of garlic bread. Mounds of fresh-chopped garlic spill off the toasted loaf. I calculate the time he must have spent chopping it. This annoys me further. I put my fork down and take another gulp of wine. “When do you defend your dissertation?” I ask.
Peter waves the bread in the air. “End of fall quarter,” he says. “Plenty of time.”
A Circle of Wives Page 7