A Circle of Wives

by Alice LaPlante

  That changed when he was twelve, when he started going to the rectory with the other altar boys. It was when the mood swings (for lack of a better word) began. Then the woods became a place of unease (no, worse, terror) for him. I’d ask him to come play there with me or even go for a walk. He’d refuse. He never explained why, but I noticed that he started sleeping with his curtains drawn over the window that faced the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which ran up to our property. Then, right around that same time, there was my own . . . experience . . . that rendered the woods inhospitable to me as well.

  “What is this movie?” I ask.

  “Three kids go off into the woods to shoot a film,” he says. “And bad things, terrible things, happen.” He shudders as he says this. “It was frigging hard, but I watched the whole thing last night. Jesus, it brought up a lot.” He didn’t have to say whether what it brought up was good or bad.

  “I was always scared shitless out there alone,” Thomas says, after a pause. I decide not to say anything, but to see what comes next. Better late than never, these revelations. “And sometimes frightened even more when other kids were there, given that my friends were such fuck-ups. I always thought it would make me stronger, able to deal with the real things that were going down.” He didn’t tell me about the real things until it was too late.

  I stand up and walk over to where he is pacing, and still him by putting my arms around him, rest my cheek against his. Both of us damaged goods, needing to take care of each other. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I say. “Absolutely nothing. I’m here, and always will be for you.”

  31

  Helen

  I JUST LEFT THE OBSTETRICIAN. Funny, after an illness-free life, all these doctors’ appointments, all these blood tests and checking of blood pressure, and now, today, the ultrasound. I didn’t sense that wonder at seeing the shape of the child—perhaps I’m too inured from my residency in OB-GYN. Besides, I feel her already. I know it’s a girl, and will know for certain in a month when I have my amnio. I debated whether to have one—there are certain risks—but have discovered a deep well of worry that shouldn’t have surprised me, given my line of work. There’s so much that can go wrong, too many toxins in the air and water, and too much hazard in our DNA. I’m already protective of this child, determined to do this right. As if sheer willpower will bring forth the perfect physical specimen from my womb.

  I’ve added four hundred more calories per day to my diet. More reds. More greens. More yellows. I can almost taste the colors. I’m filling out, and my pants won’t fasten around my waist. My scrubs have gone from extra small to small.

  I return to my office and see child after sick child. At three months I am barely showing, but on my thin frame it’s enough for many of these balding and listless children to comment on it, pat my belly and ask if I have a baby in there. Yes, I reply, there’s a baby in there. Do you want to feel her kick? I ask even though it’s way too early for that. And I let their little hands rest on my belly.

  I’m finding it difficult for the first time to do my job; my dread grows from the minute I step through the hospital door. And there is guilt, too—not an emotion I am overly familiar with. Because I know that if John had lived, this child would not have. It was in our agreement: no children. How can you weigh one life against another? Yet that is what I have done. And decided.

  32

  Samantha

  “I CAN’T HELP BUT THINK that people are laughing at me, and I resent that,” I tell Peter. It’s after dinner and we’re lounging in our living room. That’s a grand name for the ten-by-ten-foot box that barely holds our sofa and CD collections. “I want to be taken seriously for the first time in my life, and it just ain’t happening.”

  “For starters, lose the pigtails,” Peter says. “People will naturally disrespect you if you don’t act a little less like an ingénue.”

  I try not to show how stung I am by his remark. I really need to be less thin-skinned. Certainly in my job there’s no room for hurt feelings. Then I have an idea.

  “You be Deborah,” I say. “I’m interviewing her tomorrow, and I’m a bit weirded out by the prospect. Let’s do some role-playing.” I move to a chair that is facing Peter as he sits on the couch. “Go on,” I say. “Hit me with the worst you’ve got.”

  Peter thinks for a moment. Then he dramatically arches an eyebrow. “Child, how dare you step on my precious carpet!”

  “Seriously, dude,” I say. “I’m asking for your help here.”

  “Okay, okay,” says Peter. He pauses, obviously considering what I’ve told him about the case.

  “Why question me again?” he barks.

  I’m startled, but I try to come back fast. “Because I have more questions,” I say.

  “These sound like the same questions to me,” he says. “Doesn’t the Palo Alto police force have a more . . . mature . . . officer they could send?”

  He manages to say this with the exact right mixture of scorn and anger to rile me.

  “I’m it, baby,” I say. “Get used to it.”

  Peter frowns. “Not professional. Try again.”

  His curtness is getting to me, but I comply. “I am the detective assigned to this case,” I say.

  “Most detectives would have collected all the information they needed in the first interview,” Peter says next. “Why do you keep calling me in? It’s sheer incompetence. Or laziness. Or lack of purpose.”

  He spits out those words, putting special emphasis on the last phrase. Lack of purpose. It hits me in the gut.

  “I’m doing the best job I can,” I say, and immediately regret it. I sound weak, almost pleading.

  “‘I’m doing the best job I can, ’” Peter mimics. I’m uncomfortably aware of how accurately he has captured my pathetic facial expression, my tone. “Well, your best isn’t good enough,” he says.

  “Answer my questions or . . . or . . .” I say. I can’t think of what to threaten him with, my arsenal is so poor.

  “Or you’ll quit?” asks Peter. “That would be pretty much par for the course. We’d get to close another chapter of Sam Adams’s not-so-young-anymore life.”

  Silence. I find I can hardly breathe. Peter is sitting back with a smile on his face. He knows he’s scored.

  “Peter?” I ask finally. “Where’s all this coming from?”

  “What?” he says, opening his eyes wide. “I’m Deborah. Being a bitch. Like you wanted me to.” He is still smiling.

  “No, you were being Peter. And I had no idea you were this angry.” I am genuinely shaken.

  “Deborah’s the angry one,” he says. He won’t look at me.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “And the scariest part isn’t that you meant what you said, but that you were enjoying yourself. That hurt, dude. Seriously.”

  Peter doesn’t say anything. We are both exhausted and ashamed. Bad idea on my end, to open the door to honesty. Destructive stuff. Such behavior, such words, even if said in jest or role-playing, have the potential to poison.

  33

  Samantha

  THE WALKWAY FROM THE SIDEWALK to Deborah’s house is constructed of perfectly positioned stones that fit into each other like puzzle pieces. That, as well as everything else I see when she opens the door, screams money. From the beautifully buffed wood floors, probably something exotic and doomed from the rain forest, to the scent of fresh roses in profusion arranged in a crystal vase on a small table in the hallway, I see a world that will always be out of my reach. I am suddenly furious. I don’t really understand why. I’m not a covetous person. But some of Peter’s bile from last night seems to have left its mark on me.

  The Oriental carpets must be genuine and quite valuable, but to my untrained eye they’re more or less the same as the machine-made ones Peter and I bought secondhand at a yard sale. Same colors, same patterns. Although when I examine them more closely I can see the delicacy of the woven flowers, the subtlety of the colors. I hope to find
the obviously pricey furniture uncomfortable out of pure spite, but I sink into an armchair that I would happily trade for our lumpy bed. Money very well spent. Oil paintings on the walls, mostly portraits of peculiar-looking men and women, but they must be by artists worth collecting. Nothing else would do, for this house.

  Deborah is dressed in a simple blue sheath, and even though the July day promises to be a hot one for the Northern California summer, she is wearing stockings. And despite the fact that I would have pegged this as a shoes-off-at-the-door house, she’s wearing shiny black pumps with modest one-inch heels. Our shoes are always left in a jumble at the front door, not because, as in this house, the floor or carpets need protecting, but because both Peter and I hate shoes and take them off as soon as possible. Bare feet in the house, always. We even divide up the people we know into shoe-wearers and barefoot-goers. Deborah is clearly a shoe-wearer of the extreme kind. She probably puts them on straight out of the shower.

  Deborah offers me an iced tea, which I accept because I’m thirsty, and then instantly regret it when I see her triumphant air as she carries the glass into the room. It is complete with a fresh lemon slice and long-stemmed iced-tea spoon—who keeps special iced-tea spoons on hand but the super privileged? Of course she brings nothing for herself to drink. Somehow she has seized advantage by going to the trouble of serving me. Not that she didn’t have it already. I am in her territory, after all. I am her plaything. I take the glass, but look around, unsure if I can put it down on the exquisitely polished oak coffee table. She sees me searching, but makes me ask.

  “Do you have a coaster?” I finally say when the silence goes on too long. “Indeed,” she says immediately, and pulls one out of a drawer in the table and puts it in front of me. Power games. Bitch.

  “Now, what can I do for you?” Deborah asks me. She crosses her hands in her lap, seemingly quite at ease.

  “You’re sure about not wanting your attorney here?” I ask as I turn on my recorder.

  “Quite sure,” she says. I don’t urge her to reconsider. This chick knows what she’s doing.

  “For the purposes of the record, I need you to state where you were the night of Dr. Taylor’s death,” I say. “Especially between the hours of 6:47 PM and 7:50 PM.”

  “That’s easy,” Deborah says and smiles. “I was at my Women’s Auxiliary meeting in Menlo Park. We met at the vice chair’s house. Usually we convene here but I had asked to move locations as I wasn’t feeling well, and I was worried I might have to cancel the meeting entirely. If it were at Gail’s house it could go on without me.”

  “From what time to what time?” I ask. I know she’ll have the right answer.

  “The meeting lasted from 6:30 to 8 PM, and I stayed an extra hour to work on some numbers we needed to turn in to the finance committee the next day,” Deborah says. “I got home around 9:15 and was home for the rest of the evening. I’m afraid I don’t have a witness from that time on, but my committee members can validate my earlier presence.”

  I ask for the names and numbers of her committee cohorts, but know they’ll hold up. Even if this woman did commit murder, she’d have everything so carefully plotted that I’d never smoke her out.

  “Tell me who might have wished your husband harm,” I say next. How lame.

  She lifts her hands and holds them out, palms up, in the classic sign of bewilderment. “Besides one of the other wives, in a jealous fit? I can’t imagine. Although I think they’d want to murder me, if anyone.”

  “Why is that?” I ask.

  “Well, as the legal wife, I was certainly in the way,” says Deborah, as if speaking to a two-year-old. I feel my face growing warm.

  “But both MJ Taylor and Helen Richter claim they had no clue about the other, or about you,” I say. “Are you saying you don’t believe this?” I’m genuinely curious.

  “Although Helen is the more intelligent of the two, even MJ should have had enough brains to figure out something was wrong,” Deborah says.

  “So you are saying that they knew,” I say.

  Deborah sighs, gently, “Either that, or they were highly motivated to believe in the fantasies John fed them,” she says. “I’m inclined to believe the latter. Everyone has their vulnerable points, and John was especially good at finding them.”

  She says this casually, with a touch of scorn, as if everyone should know these things. But I’m determined not to be bullied.

  “And what’s your vulnerability?” I ask.

  “You can hardly expect me to reveal it to you,” she says, and appears amused. I curse my tendency to blush when embarrassed or angry.

  Deborah, hands still crossed, is smiling, waiting for the next question. I get the impression that she’s playing a part; there is something about her affect that doesn’t feel quite genuine. Every once in a while around Palo Alto you see some poor rich woman who’s had too much plastic surgery and you pity her tight expressionless face. Deborah has that. I don’t mean that she’s had work done. Her face is as a fifty-four-year-old woman’s should be. She looks good for her age, but she does look her age. Still, there’s some immobility of features that suggests she is being guarded. I also feel that she’s not taking me seriously.

  “But why do you want to hear all this? Surely my opinions are irrelevant.”

  “Everything is relevant,” I say. I pick up my iced tea. It’s not like any tea I’ve ever had before. It’s bitter and aromatic at the same time. Although sweetly fragrant, the taste is sour and puckers my mouth. “If I understand John, and his relationships, perhaps I’ll understand his murderer.”

  “That seems to be taking the long way around to your goal,” says Deborah. “As I’ve said before, a goal with an erroneous premise. No one killed John. He was in terrible shape, wouldn’t take care of himself. You know the phrase. ‘Doctor, heal thyself.’ John should have done so.”

  What she says sparks a question I’d meant to ask.

  “By the way, did John have life insurance?”

  “Yes, of course. I insisted, from early on, John being our sole source of income.”

  “How much was the policy worth?”

  “Ten million dollars.”

  I must have involuntarily made some sort of noise because she adds, “ I know that might sound like a lot to someone like you”—I keep my face frozen to avoid giving her a reaction—“but you have to understand John brought in quite a bit from his share of the clinic. And we’ve put away quite a bit over the years, invested it well. So actually, I’m financially secure enough without the insurance money.”

  “I understand from MJ that you aren’t going to make any claims on equity in the Los Gatos house, although you’d certainly have a case.”

  “Yes,” says Deborah, almost indifferently. “As I said, we invested wisely. I can spare a few hundred thousand for that poor creature.”

  MJ. Poor creature. I wonder how Deborah refers to me when I’m not here.

  34

  Deborah

  WELL, THAT YOUNG DETECTIVE IS gone. A relief. No, more than a relief. A liberation. Liberation from emotions I don’t wish to feel. She reminds me too vividly of a way of living, of a milieu I am very anxious not to be in contact with. I saw how hungrily she looked around. Although I’ll say to her credit that I don’t think she hungers for things, but rather for beauty. I don’t imagine her life has much of that in it. And when one has a taste for beauty, the lack of it is a deep hunger indeed. I doubt she fully understands this. To my mind, that must be even worse, to have such an acute ache and not enough self-knowledge to know what part of the body or mind is in distress.

  I could sympathize, if I let myself. I won’t. I grew up in a world without beauty. My parents were failures. Losers, as the kids today would say. Forever changing jobs, changing houses, changing lives. Not exactly criminal, because they were never caught doing anything wrong, but my father always had schemes, always had partners with whom he was going to strike it rich. I never really understood how he earne
d a living, but when he talked on the phone, he spoke of “opportunities” and “prospects” and offers that “wouldn’t last.” For a while we’d have money to pay the rent, the electricity bill. Then the partners would disappear, the money would evaporate, and we’d move on. Once I came across an old passport of my father’s—but with a different name. I took it to my mother, who just shrugged and said he had his reasons to not be that person anymore. She said it as though it was of no importance.

  My mother, she could find work wherever she went as a court stenographer. She was good, could type 150 words a minute without a single error. It was all about focus, she would say. And she was utterly focused on the present. Because the past was over, and the future yet to come. Why worry? she would say. Character by character, word by word, she eased through life, always disappointed but sanguine when my father’s latest scheme failed and it was time to move again.

  I determined early on I would have nothing to do with that sort.

  They’re long dead, of course. My mother first, of breast cancer, which wasn’t caught until late since they didn’t have insurance. Then my father killed himself about a year after that. I hadn’t talked to him for at least six months when I got the call. He blew his head off with a gun. Always the dramatic one. I’m not sure how they tracked me down to tell me the news. I’d pretty much erased the traces that connected me to them. I was into my twenties, already a wife, already a mother, a new name with a new life attached to it.

  I met John at a church dance on the south side of Chicago. Not that either of us was religious. He was just finishing his final year of medical school at the University of Chicago, and I was still in high school in Franklin Park. Seven years difference between us. I went with a friend, as her church was sponsoring the dance, and John tagged along with some medical students to meet some “nice” girls. Funny, how they still thought that way then.