A Circle of Wives

by Alice LaPlante

  “So she didn’t actually see him go to John Taylor’s door?” I ask, disappointed.

  “No, but after she closed her door, she heard a knock, close by.”

  “Well, that’s something,” I say, and turn around to go right back out the door. I’ve got some questions for Dr. Epstein. “I’ll keep you posted,” I call to Susan.

  “You do that,” she says, and I know she is smiling.

  51

  Samantha

  THIS TIME I KNOW HOW to find the entrance to the clinic. I nod to the security guard, but he still insists that I show him my badge. Must be bored. I certainly would be, doing nothing but sitting in a little booth, waiting for visitors. When I walk into reception, I’m told that Dr. Epstein is busy, so I settle down to wait in the plush waiting room. After an hour goes by, I approach Ms. Perfection at the reception desk. She lifts the phone and whispers into it. No, she tells me. Not yet. I go back to my comfy seat in the warm room.

  Some time later I jerk awake. I’d been drooling while I slept, and my chin must be glistening with saliva. Embarrassed, I wipe it off with my hand and look at my watch. I was asleep for nearly twenty minutes. Enough is enough. I march up to the receptionist again.

  “I must see Dr. Epstein now,” I say, and flash my badge. “This is important business.” She obeys me with such alacrity that I’m embarrassed, only this time at having meekly accepted her earlier statement that the doctor couldn’t see me yet. She pushes a buzzer and waves me through the double doors. I know the way to Dr. Epstein’s office. He’s sitting in an easy chair to one side of his desk, reading a medical magazine. I curse myself again for not insisting on seeing him right away.

  “Ah yes, Detective,” he says, and reaches out to shake my hand. He doesn’t bother getting up. I know it’s petty, but I don’t extend my hand in return. Instead, I let his hover awkwardly for two or three seconds.

  There’s a chair in front of his desk, but I remain standing.

  “Dr. Epstein, why were you at the Westin in Palo Alto the evening of Friday, May 10?” I ask.

  He keeps a smile on his face, and I remember what the witness had said about his beard. As a petite woman, I don’t mind the fact that he is rather small himself. But coupled with facial hair that seems to be nine-tenths air and his general aura of complacency, I could see why the witness remembered him with contempt. He is annoying. You want to kick him just to jar the smile from those thin lips.

  “You told me the first time we talked that you’d been at home that evening. Your wife backed up your statement.”

  “So why are you questioning it now?” he asks. He is still smiling.

  “Because we have a witness placing you at the Westin, on the second floor, in the corridor of John Taylor’s room, within the time frame that the death occurred,” I say.

  He is quiet for a moment, calculating. Then he shrugs. “Yes,” he says. “I was there.”

  “What time precisely?”

  “Around 7:40, 7:45,” he says.

  “And was John Taylor alive when you left?” I ask.

  “No,” he says.

  I hadn’t expected that.

  “What?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “John was dead. But he was dead when I arrived. I didn’t kill him.”

  “You’d better come down to the station house,” I say, “And tell us everything.”

  52

  Excerpt from Transcript

  Police interview with

  Dr. Mark Epstein,

  August 26, 2013

  [preliminary introductions, explanations of police processes and procedures, notification that the session would be videotaped]

  Mark Epstein: John and I had been arguing on and off for the better part of the previous month. Along with Edward—you know, Dr. Kramer. Edward and I were eager to bring on more associates so we could grow the business through increasing the volume of cosmetic procedures. John refused. But we felt very strongly that it wasn’t fair to take us on as partners and then force us to leave so much money on the table.

  John hadn’t shown up at the clinic for two days. It was quite unprecedented, really. Whatever the man’s faults, he never shirked work. But he cleared his calendar with a call to our intake director, first Thursday morning, then again Friday morning. He wasn’t answering his cell phone, returning any texts, or replying to his emails. I asked Dr. Fanning where he was.

  Samantha Adams: Did you know they were involved?

  Mark Epstein: Not officially. Though it didn’t take half a brain to guess. They were always around each other, and although they never left the clinic together, each one always seemed to leave within five minutes of the other. But it was none of my affair. I didn’t know about all the women, of course. Just that he was married to a woman named Deborah. And if that’s the way he wanted to play it, who was I to interfere? So Claire—Dr. Fanning—told me he’d checked in to the Westin, and gave me his room number. Frankly, that surprised me. For two reasons. First, why would he check in to a hotel in his own hometown? And, secondly, why would Claire give me what was clearly privileged information? She always took John’s side of things. But I took it they’d had a fight as well, and she was as frustrated with him as the rest of us.

  Samantha Adams: Dr. Fanning willingly told you that Dr. Taylor was at the Westin?

  Mark Epstein: Yes, that’s right.

  Samantha Adams: Please go on.

  Mark Epstein: So I went to the Westin Friday evening after dinner.

  Samantha Adams: What time was this again?

  Mark Epstein: I told you, 7:40, perhaps a little later. I knocked on his door. There was no answer, but I noticed it was ajar. I walked in and found him, already dead, on the floor. It was quite a shock, I have to tell you.

  Just then there was a knock at the door. I’d shut it all the way behind me, and whoever it was couldn’t get in. I panicked. I thought, I can’t be found here with a dead body, so I kept quiet. The knock came again, and this time a man’s voice identified himself as room service. I held my breath and waited, and, after calling a couple more times, he went away. Once I was sure he was gone and the corridor empty, I left the room myself and drove home. I told my wife what had happened, and we agreed that there was no need to explain that I’d been there; it would only complicate matters. When we found out later that foul play was suspected, we felt it was too late to speak up.

  Samantha Adams: You didn’t struggle with John Taylor?

  Mark Epstein: No! I’m telling you he was dead already!

  Samantha Adams: How did you know he was dead?

  Mark Epstein: I’m a doctor.

  Samantha Adams: So you examined him?

  Mark Epstein: Yes. I felt for his pulse. I was quite satisfied that he was dead.

  Samantha Adams: You didn’t inject him with potassium chloride?

  Mark Epstein: He was dead already.

  Samantha Adams: But with John Taylor dead, your way forward at the Taylor Institute was clear. You could expand the cosmetic part of the practice. You could take all that lovely money off the table as you put it.

  Mark Epstein: Look, I know that sounded kind of flippant. Even callous. But that doesn’t mean I would kill someone for a bigger paycheck!

  Samantha Adams: What about the fact that your fingerprints weren’t anywhere in the room?

  Mark Epstein: Once I understood the situation I was careful not to touch anything. And I wiped down everything I had touched coming in, the door, the doorknob, the lock. I know, I know, that seems suspicious. But I was trying to avoid what is happening now—the police making a grave mistake.

  Samantha Adams: Mistake or not, I’ve been instructed to book you for the murder of John Taylor.

  53

  Samantha

  MARK EPSTEIN WAS NOT ARRAIGNED after all. We booked him, and he immediately got on the phone to his lawyer, who got on the phone with the district attorney’s office. The filing deputy at the DA rejected the case as not having sufficient evidence to st
and up in a jury trial, and sent it back to us with the instruction to get more proof.

  This made Susan boil, as she had been the one who instructed me to arrest Epstein. Against my better judgment, I must say. I wasn’t convinced it was him, and here’s why: because he’s so damn small. Not much bigger than I am, really. I couldn’t see that he had the strength to overcome a large, heavy man like Dr. Taylor. In any event, we’re back at square one, still looking for evidence. If Mark Epstein had been the killer, he’d been a clever one. If it’s someone else, they’re cleverer still. Either way, we don’t have sufficient evidence to arraign anyone yet.

  54

  Samantha

  I WOKE UP TODAY THINKING of Helen, about her pregnancy. Was it intentional? I wonder. A deliberate attempt to thwart John Taylor’s edict against conceiving children? We’ll never know. Would it be motive enough for murder, wanting to keep her child? That didn’t make sense to me. Helen could simply have divorced John Taylor and had the child on her own. Although she possessed such an odd affect when I saw her in LA. And there is that issue of no alibi. My mind is going around in circles.

  Peter and I have done this dance. Peter wanting a bunch of kids one day, me not being sure, naturally. Once we actually got pregnant, Peter and I. We took a chance one night after drinking too much, when we didn’t have any protection in the house or any safe way to get to the store to buy some. We got totally busted. I missed my next period and there we were—still in school and facing early parenthood.

  Nature took care of it. I was surprised to find out that 10 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriages. I got every symptom in the book: the morning sickness, the bloating, the mood swings. And then we didn’t even have a chance to pick our jaws off the floor after the test revealed we were pregnant. The next day I started bleeding. End of the story. That night, in bed, Peter, trying to comfort me, placed his hand on my belly. But having those long fingers splayed out on my stomach repulsed me. As if he were probing for something. A center. My center.

  Those twenty-four hours changed us. He began to truly long for grown-up status whereas I began pushing it away. I would have been up for the job of being a mother. But if I didn’t have to be? I celebrated that mattress on the floor, and the mismatched dishes. So it brought us together briefly and established just how far apart we were. We didn’t have to discuss it. Everything crystalized for us. Then we fell back into a rhythm: wake up, coffee, shower, work . . . but it was a different rhythm.

  Poor Peter. Honest Peter. He’s not really cut out for this tough world. He once found a wallet with five hundred dollars in it, and promptly returned it to campus lost and found. This was during our starving days, and well before I became an arm of the law. I didn’t speak to him for three days.

  But he’s got such a big trusting heart. Really, Peter is a sweet man—I’d be hard-pressed to find a sweeter one. Yet he lacks the backbone to forge his way in this world and get what he wants. I think of John Taylor’s skill as he changed lives, pulled skin away from thighs and attached them to cheekbones, made incisions, built up chins and noses, transforming dysfunction into beauty. He was truly a god, whereas Peter is all too human.

  55

  MJ

  I HAD TROUBLE GETTING UP this morning. Even knowing the day was forecast for more glorious late summer sun couldn’t rouse me. I had that bad feeling. The feeling I thought I’d vanquished with years of therapy and yoga and mindfulness.

  I don’t talk about that particular thing that happened very often. That’s how my parents referred to it. But all this bustle of police officers, this being called repeatedly to the station house, this aggressive, almost bruising questioning, reminds me of it.

  I kept a diary of that time. Well, of the time before. Afterwards, I didn’t want to engage in any introspection. I took the diary out and read it the other day. How vapid and shallow was that girl! Nothing on her mind except boys, boys, boys. Everything in her world soaked through with budding sensuality. What a fool.

  I was fourteen. I practiced walking differently, talking differently. I liked it when I was in town and men’s eyes lingered on my long legs; I realized they, and my breasts, were precious assets. My parents did the usual, sent me back to my room to change when I dressed inappropriately. So I went underground. I’d leave the house with a bare face and decent clothes, and change and apply makeup in the bathroom at school. I wasn’t the only one, of course. Some of the girls were able to wear their makeup openly, but many of us, especially from the more religious families, had to hide it, and strip it off at the end of the day before going home. I can’t blame my mother. I’d do the same with a daughter that age.

  But that thing. It was the end of eighth grade. May. I was walking home from school. I was alone, having left my friends at their houses along the way, mine being the farthest one out. A bunch of high school boys were huddled by the side of the road, taking turns pulling on a joint. “Hey,” they called when they saw me. My makeup had been scrubbed off, and I had my decent clothes on, but I was wearing them differently than I would if my mother were watching. I looked young and, doubtless, eager to please. I remember their words exactly, because they thrilled me. “Hey, sexy thang, come here for some part-ay-ing.” So I walked over. I recognized a couple of them, mostly the older brothers of kids in my class, although there were a couple boys my age. They offered me the joint, and I took it, tried to act casual as I inhaled with a deep breath, but predictably just choked and coughed. The boys laughed, and one said, “That first toke is a killer,” in a friendly way, so I felt okay.

  One boy I’d had a crush on for years. Richard. Something was wrong with his heart and he couldn’t play football. This was usually the kiss of death socially for boys at my high school, but he managed to hang with the football players from sheer force of will. When we were six I’d drawn him a valentine heart with a tiny hole in it, the way my mother had described. The teacher took one look and crumpled it up. Richard never saw it. Still, I’m sure he could tell I liked him. Certainly, the other boys noticed, because they subtly pushed him forward to be by my side as they suggested a walk into the woods.

  I’d thought nothing of it, the woods being my backyard. Afterward of course, everyone took my easy acquiescence as proof that I understood exactly what I was getting into. I didn’t, not even when it started. We’d stopped in a clearing, and I thought they were going to light up another joint, but instead Richard got pushed forward again, and I blushed as I saw he was going to try to kiss me.

  You can probably guess the rest. I don’t want to go into it. It hurt, certainly it hurt, but mostly it was the shame. The awkward scrabblings at my breasts. A rock under my shoulder blades. I could glimpse the blue of the sky through the leaves of the trees above. A couple of the boys had trouble, and that hurt most of all as they tried to poke their way to success. Then, suddenly it was over and I was alone. I got dressed and went home. My mother had been frantic, had been on the phone calling the whole town. Any thoughts I had of not saying anything vanished when she saw me, my dirty clothes, my face. She had the story out of me in about five minutes, and we were on our way to the police station in ten. The whole time she was lecturing me that it was partially my fault, the way I dressed, the way I walked. “You can’t tempt those boys,” she told me. “At that age, they’re hogs in heat.” Hawgs in heet. I will say she fought for me, though. When my daddy arrived he was angry that my mother had gotten the police involved. Said it was a regrettable incident, but we all know what boys are. My mother for once ignored him; they nearly came to blows in the police station. Then the questioning began. Yes, I knew the boys. Yes, I went with them willingly into the woods. What was I thinking? I told them that I guess I wasn’t. The police officer on duty reluctantly took my statement and said they’d look into it.

  So began the first worst period of my life, the second being of course when I was married with two kids stuck in a small garage apartment. But that was later. I was told that the boys said I agreed to it,
that they were good boys, they wouldn’t lie. A couple of them were from prominent families in town with money and lawyers and in the end, after the hours of questioning and fuss, somehow the tables got turned and we were on the spot, we were going to be in trouble if we didn’t drop the charges. So we did. One policeman had placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You don’t want to end up in the Odditorium yourself, young lady.”

  I’d see those boys around town, sometimes with older girls, and I’d think, I’ve had knowledge of you. Some phrase I’d gotten from church. One of the reasons I married my first husband was that he was one of the few boys who was kind to me in high school after word got around. MJ pulled a train. That’s when I started to wear the long skirts, the shapeless blouses, to hide my figure, even pants were too revealing.

  John helped me with all of this more than the therapists I’ve paid over the decades. He took on my pain. When I told him, I saw him weep, and with each of his tears I felt lighter. It was miraculous, really. “You had a heinous crime committed against you, and they should have been punished,” he had said. “But they won’t be. So the least you can do is not punish yourself.”

  But yesterday, today, tomorrow, I feel as though the world is punishing me. Threatening to take it all away. Time hangs heavy. I feel the tick of every second of the clock, and the empty hours stretch in front of me. I honestly don’t see a way out.

  56

  Deborah

  AFTER I HANG UP THE phone, I move around the house, breaking things.

  So that . . . person . . . that Helen, is pregnant. She broke the pledge.

  Smash goes the blue living-room lamp, the one John and I picked out in Florence together for our first house, amazed that money was starting to come in after the years of penury. He said the blue matched my eyes. A pang at that memory. Then, smash goes silverware from the drawer. I hurl forks and knives onto the floor. A hailstorm of sharp edges, and I am sorry there is no one here to get pierced with them. I am utterly alone in this house. Not even a goldfish, hamster, lizard, the pets of the children’s innocent years.