A Circle of Wives

by Alice LaPlante

  I was about to graduate high school. A year late at age 19, but even that was something of a miracle given I’d gone to eight schools in five years. College had never been in the cards for me. I never even considered it; higher education was out of my league. As was John, really. But I was a looker then, and caught his attention at that dance. My goodness, was he attentive. We were married within eight months, and the babies followed after that. I was 23 when I had Charles, 25 when I had Evan, and 28 when I had Cynthia. I told John that I’d had enough at that point although he wanted to keep going. My thought at the time was he loved the admiration of his tiny fan club. They were crazy about their father. Still are. Just because someone is dead doesn’t mean you stop having a relationship with them.

  John and I were good together for many years, and tolerated each other for some years after that. John was always lively and idiosyncratic, although he slowed down and sobered up considerably as he aged. If I hadn’t seen it for myself I wouldn’t have believed he’d have the energy for three wives. I had been telling him for some time that he needed to cut back on work, get more rest, some exercise. In typical John fashion, he brushed me aside.

  I don’t know why this sticks in my mind, but in his midtwenties, John imagined himself a bit of an artist. He had some rudimentary sketching talent that had served him well in medical school. I had seen his notebooks, filled with scribbled quick sketches of parts of the human body that had helped him get through anatomy classes. I often saw him surreptitiously sketching people, friends, neighbors, strangers at the coffee shop, on the El. He told me that if he could manage to capture even one human being on paper, he’d be satisfied.

  We moved to San Francisco so he could complete a plastic surgery residency at UCSF, and we’d go to Golden Gate Park on the days they closed the road, sit there on the grass with the children—there were just two of them then—letting them run and crawl. They, and everyone around us, were our entertainment in those cash-strapped days. San Francisco in the eighties was a colorful place. Or perhaps it always is. John would sketch the people, sometimes quite adequately. Once he drew an elderly couple sitting on a bench outside the arboretum, and was so pleased with himself that he showed it to them. They were excited, and asked him if they could buy it, assuming he was a professional artist. He was flattered and simply gifted it to them, but not before they insisted on him signing it. This made him blissfully happy. But although drawing was a talent of his, it was a small talent, and I told him so, that day, as we walked home. I’ve never seen him so cut up. He stopped pushing the double stroller on the corner of 15th Avenue and Geary, and stood there, blinking tears from his eyes. He admitted then that he had registered to take drawing lessons at a night class over at San Francisco State. He’d been afraid to tell me. For good reason. I said absolutely not, that I could not have him fragmented in that way, I needed him to focus, and he said, “Deborah, one day you will kill me.” We didn’t speak for three days. Unusual for us, as those were our good times. At least in my mind. Anyway, he never drew anything again, or if he did, never showed it to me.

  Piano playing was another minor talent he had. Previously, before we moved to San Francisco, while still in medical school in Chicago, John played around town in jazz clubs, anywhere that needed an opening act for a headliner. He’d walk over his audition tapes, and got a surprising number of gigs. Leaving me home alone with Charles as a baby. John never slept, or hardly slept in those days, between his surgical residency and piano playing. God knows what was keeping him going. Sheer adrenaline. But his piano, like his sketching, was not his life’s work. Medicine was. And if he hoped to excel at it, he had to devote himself to the study of it. I told him. Repeatedly. He needed to be reminded, was easily distracted, and I kept him on track. I was not going to have an adult life that in any way resembled my early one.

  John would have been happy as a general practitioner, would have stopped his education there. I insisted he proceed into surgery. And once we were there, I insisted he specialize. He was the one who chose plastic surgery over neurosurgery, which is what I wanted. He was surprisingly forceful about this. “You don’t think much of my artistic talent,” he told me, “but I could use it in reconstruction work.” From the beginning he was determined that he wouldn’t do cosmetic plastic surgery, only medically necessary procedures. He endured the six additional years of residency required to be board certified at UCSF, and then got a fellowship at Stanford, after which he was almost immediately hired.

  About ten years ago, he opened the Taylor Center for Pediatric Reconstructive Surgery, as it was originally called. Against my wishes. His goal was to treat children only, victims of fire or birth defects or other traumas. He hoped that some insurance payments coupled with grants would be enough to allow him to see a substantial number of patients who couldn’t afford to pay, who didn’t have insurance. But, as I predicted, that was harebrained from a financial perspective. So about six years ago he took on a partner who specialized in cosmetic procedures, and changed the name of the clinic to the Taylor Institute of Plastic Surgery. Three years ago, they took on another partner due to the great demand for what John called vanity procedures. He would have nothing to do with that side of the business.

  Whether John was happy or not in the later years is a difficult question to answer. He was a complicated man. He still smiled at me over breakfast. Still sang or talked to himself in the shower. In fact, that’s how I usually gauged his moods, by listening outside the bathroom. He gave away a lot in his discussions with himself, in his brief bursts of words and song. Once I heard him say, “Oh MJ, don’t be silly, that’s a zone 12 flower.” In fact, when MJ’s name came up it was usually in the form of a fond reprimand. Helen’s name appeared less frequently, but when it did, it was only her name. Helen. Spoken almost dreamily.

  I think the three of us together added up to the perfect marriage, and he needed all of us in order to have a balanced life. Of course, he paid a high price for achieving that balance, for attempting to satisfy the needs of three women. I know I’m echoing the jokesters when I say I’m not surprised he had a heart attack.

  Now that John is dead I have to admit that I was tired, too. Tired of being the puppet master. Tired of playing God of John Taylor’s world. Even God needed the seventh day to rest. Every once in a while, amidst the chaos, and grief, and guilt, I feel a deep sense of calm. I was—am—ready for the next phase of my life to begin. Without John.

  35

  Samantha

  WE FINALLY HAVE A BREAKTHROUGH.

  All parking lots and street parking in downtown Palo Alto, near the Westin, have two-hour time limits. I’d instructed Mollie to dig up tickets given to cars that had exceeded the two-hour limit on the afternoon and evening of May 10. It was a long shot, but you never know.

  Mollie found forty-three tickets from that Friday starting at 4 PM and ending at 10 PM for the streets surrounding the Westin. I go through the painstaking work of tracking each ticketed car to its owner, and calling each of them. Mostly I get voicemail, and leave messages. But one of the names sounds familiar: Thomas Johnston. A city address, in the Mission, in San Francisco. Then I realize: MJ Taylor has a brother named Thomas, and her maiden name was Johnston. We have a match.

  Thomas Johnston has a full head of bushy black hair and black eyebrows, deep brown eyes. He strides into the police station clearly incensed. I notice him immediately. Despite his dark coloring, and darker expression, the resemblance to his blond sister is striking: the same long face, the widely spaced cheekbones, the pointed nose. You’d know they were related without being told.

  He does not meet anyone’s eyes as he’s shown to my desk, where I’m still going through the rest of the tickets. I lead him to an interview room, offer to get him a glass of water. He refuses, and sits down. He looks as if he hasn’t shaved in a week. He is not unattractive, despite all this. With his delicate, almost feminine features he is a pretty, pretty boy.

  “I don’t know why yo
u asked to see me,” he says as I turn on the video recorder. He’s slouching in the chair.

  “You are your sister’s alibi, at least for part of the evening that John Taylor was killed,” I say. “Yet there’s the matter of this ticket, which puts you quite near the scene of the death at 6:27 PM.” I can smell his unwashed body. This is not a man who takes care of himself. Repulsive, really. Yet I think of MJ’s lifelong devotion to him. The age difference must be roughly the same as the one between Gregory and myself. But MJ took on the role of protecting and nurturing her brother, whereas mine needed to be protected against me. My on-again, off-again shrink tells me this was because my parents had created a “safe” environment. If the emotional situation had been riskier for either you or your brother, you would have clung together, she’s told me on more than one occasion. According to this philosophy, we would have been more devoted to each other if we’d had less love from our parents. I’m not sure I believe that. I still crush spiders with more force than I need to. I speed up when motorists are trying to merge. There is this streak in me that I must fight against, especially with Peter.

  “So tell me where you were the afternoon and evening of Friday, May 10,” I say.

  Thomas glowers for a moment before answering.

  “I came down to visit MJ,” he says. “I knew she’d be at work until at least 5:30, but I didn’t want to hit rush hour, so I started down early—around 3 PM. Since MJ wouldn’t be home for at least another two and a half hours, I stopped in Palo Alto and walked around, went into a bunch of different stores. As it turned out, though, MJ was home, but I didn’t know that, and by the time I got to her house, she was running errands. So I didn’t actually see her until after 7:30.”

  “So can anyone verify your whereabouts between 6:30—the time you got the ticket—and the time you finally saw MJ?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure. I wasn’t watching the clock. It was probably after 7:30, but before 8,” he says “And, no, no one. I was driving between Palo Alto and Los Gatos between 6:30 and 7:00. And after 7:00 I was waiting at her house, alone.” He smiled at something then.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I had a key,” he says. “It drove John crazy that I could—and did—walk into the house whenever I wanted. But MJ was adamant: Her house was my house.”

  “What about before 6:30? What were you doing?” I ask.

  “I was just walking around downtown. I suppose you could ask in the stores if they remember me,” he says. “I personally doubt it, but you never know.”

  We sit there a moment, looking at each other. I frankly don’t know what to ask next.

  “What was your relationship with John Taylor like?” I say, finally.

  “Very friendly, the key notwithstanding.”

  “How friendly?” I ask.

  “He was generous with money when I was out of work,” he says. “I counted him as a true friend.”

  I’m surprised at this, at the thought that anyone would trust Thomas with money or friendship. “How much money are we talking?”

  He pauses and appears to be calculating. Then he says, “Maybe fifty thousand over the years. More or less.”

  “John Taylor gave you fifty thousand dollars?” I ask. “It wasn’t a loan?” Again, I’m incredulous. Such a ridiculously large amount of money—almost as much as I make a year.

  “No,” says Thomas. “Like I said, he was a very generous man.” He then says, “All that generosity died with him, you know. I would be the last person to benefit from his death. Unfortunately, he was on the verge of giving me more money. Had promised me another 10k the week before he died. I’ve been kinda down on my luck lately. And I had an idea for a new business venture.”

  “Do you have any proof of this?” I ask. “Of the money given, or promised?”

  “No,” he says. “This was all a gentleman’s agreement. John was that kind of person.”

  Something about Thomas, something about his sleek complexion and the expression in his wide-set eyes, makes him appear to be holding back, to have secrets. It makes me think that if I just poked him a little, in the right way, other stuff might come out, perhaps relevant to this case, perhaps not. So I decide to poke.

  “Can you give me a list of the stores you visited on that Friday?” I ask. “Then I can check to see if anyone remembers you.”

  He smiles and nods before he speaks, apparently trying to give the impression of being eager to please, although he fails utterly. His affect has changed completely since he walked in the door. He’s sitting straight up in his chair, is no longer glowering, but groveling. The very picture of a parasite, a weak stooge. I resist the urge to kick him.

  “I remember, I can tell you now,” he says. “The Apple Store is where I spent the most time. Then the bookstore. Then Starbucks, for a coffee. Then I figured it was time to go to MJ’s, that she’d be home.”

  “Your ticket was given at 6:27 PM,” I say. “If MJ got off work at 5:30, why would you wait so long to go to her house?”

  “I didn’t want to run into commuter traffic on 280,” he says. “I figured I’d be happier sucking back a latte than sitting bumper to bumper for an hour and a half. I left Palo Alto at around 6:30. I must have just gotten the ticket when I got to my car. At that point, I whizzed to MJ’s in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Only to find she wasn’t there,” I say.

  Again, he nods. “Yes,” he says. “She was out running errands.”

  “So between 7:30 and 8?” I ask.

  He looks down at his hands and counts on his fingers. “Maybe around 7:45,” he says finally. “Around then. I didn’t look at my watch. But that sounds about right.”

  “But that makes no sense,” I say. “Why not go straight down 280 from the city at 3 PM? You’d hardly run into traffic then. You had a key to the house, after all.”

  Thomas shook his head. “I didn’t want to just sit around her house. Neither did I want to hang around Los Gatos. Palo Alto’s more hip, more fun to hang out in.”

  “Tell me what you did in the Apple Store.”

  “I browsed the new hardware,” he says. “I’m a graphic designer. I like to keep on top of it. That’s partly why I needed more cash from John. To get the latest equipment.”

  “And after that?”

  “I walked down the street to the bookstore—you know, the one in that converted movie theatre, with the courtyard. I love that store. So I roamed around the books for a while.”

  I lean forward. “And what kind of books do you read?” I ask. I’m going to take this slow.

  “Mostly mysteries. Thrillers. Easy reads. Not like MJ. She reads the hard stuff, is in a book group that’s always reading stuff that sounds incredibly boring. Actually, I ended up buying her a book while I was there, wish I could remember. Oh, I know! Great Expectations. She was thrilled.”

  He smiles, almost shyly. “Usually I’m on the receiving end with MJ,” he says. “It was cool to be the giver for once.” He sits back, looking pleased with himself.

  “There’s just one problem with that scenario,” I say. I find, when it comes down to it, that I am genuinely unhappy at what I’m about to say, he seems so sincerely proud and affectionate when talking about his sister.

  “What?” He sounds nervous.

  I say, as gently as if speaking to a preschooler, “The bookstore closed two months ago. That amazing old cinema site is empty. For lease.”

  He’s silent.

  “So now can you tell me again why your car was parked in downtown Palo Alto from at least 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM?” I ask.

  “I really did go to the Apple Store,” he says, and he sounds desperate. He is pulling at his shaggy hair, you can see the tension in his shoulders, and how his feet are shuffling against the tile floor. “I really did look at the new iPad there.”

  “And then?”

  “And then . . . I . . . I had an appointment,” he finally spits out.

  “With whom?”

  “I can’t say.
” This he says with a determined stubbornness.

  “Even though it would give you an alibi for a murder?”

  Silence again before he says, “Is there some way you can promise me immunity if I tell you what I was doing during that time?”

  “Immunity from being charged with another crime?” I ask. This strikes me as funny and I involuntarily laugh, but stop when I see his face.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “I think you better fess up. What were you doing on the afternoon and early evening of Friday, May 10?”

  “At five o’clock I was in the Apple Store. Like I said. It was after that I had my . . . appointment. Then I went to MJ’s.”

  I raise my eyebrow at this.

  Then, in a rush, he confesses, “I was buying weed from a guy I know. My dealer in the city had run dry, referred me to a guy down here.”

  I’m quiet. And now he’s sitting up, acting like someone who has confessed. I have to ask someone whether I can hold this statement against him. It’s on the record. But really, I couldn’t care less. We don’t go out of our way to bust marijuana users. On campus, we’d have to lock up half the student population. I’d estimate that half the professors have their own stashes. I’d naturally done my share of smoking at undergrad parties, but truthfully I didn’t like the way it made me feel, and hadn’t indulged for years.

  “I’ll have to determine what to do with this information,” I say finally. But it rings true to me in a way the bookstore story hadn’t.. Much easier to see him scoring dope from a connection in some run-down student rental house. There are dozens of them downtown.

  “Okay,” I say, and start doing the math. “Even if your sister can vouch for you from 7:45 on, and even if it would take you twenty-five minutes to get to Los Gatos, that still leaves fifty minutes unaccounted for during the critical period. In almost the exact location of the crime, from 6:30 to 7:20.”