A Circle of Wives (16 page)

I go to my computer, and click to the manufacturer’s website again, to the FAQs, looking for the chance that the birth control pills I have been taking every day since I met John could fail. The label was very clear.
Less than 1 out of 100 women will get pregnant each year if they always take the pill each day as directed.
That should be reassuring, except for one word.
Always.
I read the next sentence.
About 9 out of 100 women will get pregnant each year if they
don’t
always
take the pill each day as directed. Don’t always. Don’t
now being the operative word.

As a physician, I understand the importance of the words,
as directed
. And from my own medical studies know that this means taking the pill at the same time every day. Which I always had done. Except once. One inexplicable day when I left the house without turning the wheel around and popping out the little pink pill. Thinking of John arriving that morning for his twice-monthly stint. Looking forward to seeing him in my ward, where he had agreed to consult for a child with a benign but disfiguring facial tumor. I realized about halfway through my rounds that I had forgotten. So I took the pill that evening when John and I finally got home after dinner out. Assuming that what every medical intern would recommend is good advice—take a missed medication within twelve hours and you are probably all right.
Probably.
Compared to
always.

I’ve seen so many test results that spelled death for a child, and now to have one that means life.

But a surprise this isn’t. I’ve always been regular, can predict my period almost to the hour every twenty-eight days, since I was fourteen. So I’ve known for almost two months. I knew the week before John’s last visit in late April. Yet I said nothing, and put off taking the test. Deniability. Isn’t that what lawyers call it? After all, that last weekend John was here, I didn’t officially know, so I couldn’t tell him. Now I do. And the landscape has altered, is full of strange eruptions and abruptions. I may as well be on the far side of the moon for how it relates to life as I have always known it.

27
MJ

DEATH. I
’
VE BEEN CLOSE TO
it several times. My grandparents. My mother. Now John. But my first encounter with death was also my strangest. It was also my first tangle with the law.

I was twelve, Thomas was ten. We were in and out of the woods all the time, like the other kids were. We had our secret paths and hiding spots and remnants of forts we’d been building and tearing down since we could barely walk. The Smoky Mountains weren’t the near-holy grounds that the hikers and campers and environmentalists worshipped, but one huge playground for our games. None of their dark corners held any fear for us, and we’d laugh at the hikers laden with gear who wouldn’t go near the forest without being completely provisioned with the right hiking boots, the right jackets, the latest high-tech tents.
So dumb they couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on it
.

One day, Thomas came home terribly excited. He and his friend Andy dragged me into the woods to a homeless man’s camp. The poor old guy had died sitting half propped up against a tree. There was a rudimentary home, a shelter made of branches, the remains of a bonfire, some tattered odds and ends. My brother and Andy were absolutely entranced by the whole scene. They made a point of raiding the dead man’s provisions, looking at his dirty magazines, cooking a can of his beans in his fire pit, eating it using his utensils. Pretending they were outlaws, and that he was one of their gang who had been shot. I was disgusted. Among other things, it stank to high heaven, but they just wrapped cloths around their noses, and kept going, the dead body an incredibly exciting addition to their role-playing games. They kept this up for a week or so. Then, I don’t know whose idea it was, it could well have been Thomas’s, they decided to bring home an arm. Halloween was a few weeks away, and what they did with this arm you can imagine, two boys of a certain age with such a prize.

I remember most trying to stand up to Thomas when he came home with that gruesome limb, urging him to take it back to the woods, to forget about the whole business. Instead, I helped fill the huge pot that my mother used to stew squirrels my father shot, put it on the outdoor fire pit, and boiled the flesh off the arm. I even dried the bones with paper towels for them.

What does this tell me? That I was capable, even back then, of doing anything Thomas bade me do, no matter how obscene or unlawful.

When the police came by later (it was inevitable that someone would call them with Thomas and Andy waving that grotesque thing around town) I was taken to the station for questioning with the two boys. They eventually let the matter drop, but not before scaring us with talk of the legal penalties for the desecration of bodies.

Our parents grounded us for a month. Thomas obeyed for about half a day; then he was off, climbing out his window to run around town with Andy and his other friends. As usual, I dutifully kept to the terms of my punishment (even when my parents were at work and I could have done whatever I wanted). Despite the fuss, Thomas managed to save a finger from the hand, kept it in a jar on his desk. For all I know, he still has it, a grisly trophy from that early misadventure. And, as always, he came out on top whereas I paid the full price for his escapade.

28
Helen

I
’
M A NATURAL BRUNETTE. I
’
VE
always been one. You might say I pride myself on the
ordinariness
of it, the honesty of it. Brunettes are down-to-earth. We don’t dazzle, not like blondes or redheads. And we’re not striking, not in the way truly black-haired women are.

When I was young I wanted black hair, real black hair. I would have cut it bluntly against my neck, with bangs, so I resembled the pictures of the ancient Egyptians in the books I got at the library. I was looking at my dull brown hair in the mirror last week when I remembered from reading those books that the Egyptians of both sexes cut off their hair to mourn. So I booked an appointment with my hairdresser this morning. The lovely, the fabulous, Simon. He’s wanted to color my hair since the first gray strands began appearing at age thirty-four. When I tell him I am ready to make a change, he claps his hands. “Streaks,” he says. “I think we’ll put in some golden-brown streaks.” Instead, I shock him by demanding that he cut it short, very short, androgynous-style. I also instruct him to bleach it blonde. I want an overhaul, a total overhaul. I want, no need, to shock myself into accepting that my life has now irrevocably changed. As the hair-dye commercials promise, I want a
new me.

Of course I’d read the literature on hair dye and pregnancy. Although a 2005 study suggests an association between hair dye and the childhood cancer neuroblastoma, a host of other studies on the use of hair dye before and during pregnancy haven’t reached the same conclusion. Rats fed a composite of a series of commercially available hair colorings from days six to eighteen of gestation with doses of up to 97.5 mg a day exhibited no teratogenicity. Five oxidative hair dyes were administered by gavage to rats with up to 500 mg/kg daily on days six to fifteen and again no adverse fetal effects were observed. So I feel safe proceeding with my makeover.

I make a point to avoid the mirror until Simon finishes blow-drying what is left of my hair. I watch his face instead. He has a dubious expression, like he’s being forced to eat something he doesn’t enjoy. I finally look at my reflection. I don’t recognize myself. It’s as if an ageless boy, a blond Peter Pan, is staring back at me. Someone with inner power and magical secrets. I walk out of the salon feeling considerably lighter.

Perhaps now my mourning for John can conclude. Perhaps I can begin to celebrate my new life. Because although I’ve certainly lost my much-valued personal privacy—perhaps even the respect of the greater world—haven’t I gained something significantly more important? My new self is reflected in shop windows as I walk down Mulholland Drive, and I almost laugh out loud I am so happy.

29
Samantha

I
’
M SITTING IN THE WAITING
room of the Taylor Institute, a beautifully constructed square building, just off campus, with a façade of flesh-colored stone. Only a façade, because in California real stone buildings wouldn’t have a chance of surviving a major earthquake. I actually drove around the block three times before I understood that this building was the clinic. Oddly, there’s no sign, only the street number in small gold lettering, so discreetly placed among the ivy covering the stone that I had trouble locating it. When I finally figured out that this was my destination, I was stopped by a security guard hidden in a special booth off to the side of the entrance. I showed my badge, and he let me pass.

Inside, the sofas are green velvet brocade, the carpet is rich, red wine–colored and deep enough that your feet sink down into it as you walk. A smell of rose water. The hush of a library, or a church. And everyone on staff is so damn beautiful, from the receptionist, to the “intake counselor” who comes forward with a clipboard after I told the receptionist I was there to see Drs. Epstein and Kramer, John Taylor’s partners in the clinic.

“Detective,” the intake counselor says. She’s what one would call a natural beauty, with a creamy complexion and the kind of shiny hair my mother used to promise I’d have if I washed my hair with egg yolks. I’m not sure what natural means in a place like this. Was this woman’s nose her own? How about her cheekbones? “Dr. Kramer will see you now.”

She gestures at an ornate doorway with large oaken doors. I hear a low hum as the receptionist buzzes me in. I wonder at the security of the place. Are they afraid that the masses will come bearing pitchforks and demanding face-lifts and nose jobs? I’ve done my research, though. You don’t call them that anymore.
Rhytidectomy
and
rhinoplasty
are the terms they prefer. And a boob job is a
breast enhancement.
Right-o.

A man in an exquisite tailored suit waits for me on the other side of the doors. He is everything that Dr. John Taylor had apparently not been: tall and fit, in his midforties, impeccably turned out.

“I’m Dr. Kramer,” he says. “Please come to my office.” He leads the way to more of a sitting room than an office. If it weren’t for his medical diplomas hanging on the wall, you could have mistaken it for an exclusive men’s clubroom, complete with black leather chairs and a marble-topped coffee table. I almost expect him to offer me a fine cigar and brandy. “You’re here to talk about John’s death,” he states in a low voice, as if afraid to be overheard. It is not a question.

“Do you know of anyone who might have wished John Taylor harm?” I decide to be blunt and plainspoken. After his gentle tones, my voice sounds rough and boisterous.

“No.” The answer is given in a soft but emphatic voice. “John was the kindest, most generous man I’ve ever known. No one could want to hurt him.”

“What about his three wives?” I ask. “Did that come as a surprise to you?”

“Absolutely,” he says, but so mildly that he could have stated the opposite and I would have believed him. He straightens his already-straight tie, picks an invisible piece of lint off his trousers. Then he sees that I’m waiting for more.

“I’m sure they might be upset, very upset,” he says. “But to harm him? That seems extreme.”

Dr. Kramer gazes at me now and smiles. I could hit him for that, and for what I know he is going to say next. Sure enough, out it comes. “Samantha,” he says. “How old are you?”

“It’s detective,” I say. “
Edward,
how old are you?” To his credit, he seems embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But you look like one of my daughters. Playing cops and robbers.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“I apologize.”

I decide to pretend our last exchange hasn’t happened, and plunge back in.

“What I don’t understand is how Dr. Taylor was able to live openly with his Los Gatos wife when his real one was so close by,” I say. “How could someone not have spotted them together—at the movies or the mall? What about work functions?”

Dr. Kramer nods. He’s more eager to help now after offending me. “It’s possible because John kept his personal life under wraps. None of us had even met Deborah. If we’d seen John with a woman, we would have naturally assumed it was her.”

“Never met your partner’s wife?” I ask. “That seems odd.”

“He told us she didn’t care to socialize,” Dr. Kramer says. “We had no reason to disbelieve him.” He hesitates a moment. “It’s not like we were friends in any meaningful way. We were business partners, and colleagues. Dr. Epstein and I see each other socially, but John made it absolutely clear he wasn’t interested—he wanted to keep his personal life separate from work.”

Just then, a soft knock on the door, and in walks a truly spectacular young woman. She stands out even among the other beauties here—both men and women. What a surreal place. She might be my age, or a year or two younger. It’s hard to tell because of the extraordinary whiteness of her skin, especially when contrasted to the black of her hair. These days of course we know to keep our babies covered up with hats and long sleeves, and to apply and reapply sunblock. But who would have been so obsessive about it twenty-five years ago? This woman’s parents—or whoever raised her—sure were. With her white skin and black hair she looks like a modern-day Snow White.