A Circle of Wives (22 page)

The surfers always had the radio tuned to one obscure Santa Cruz station that played coded music for the surfers on where to find the waves. That was the year of secrets. The secret waves. My secret affair with a married father I’d met while gassing up my car between taking the boys to football practice, soccer practice, swim meets. Thomas’s secret boyfriend, who really wasn’t such a secret. And the secret my mother kept of her illness. She had been prone to bouts of sadness her whole life, and I think the breast cancer diagnosis must have felt like a relief. Two months after burying her, my father moved in with a widow from Pigeon Forge.

That was my last experience with death before John, a mother so sedated that she didn’t realize I’d been gone for eleven years when I called. She would say hello drowsily into the phone, her morphine dialed up as high as it would go, so I never really had a chance to say goodbye to her, either.

40
Samantha

SUSAN SAYS I NEED TO
start showing some progress. Says she’s seen this before, a growing obsession as success eludes, and that it’s unhealthy for the officer and unproductive for the department. “Sam,” Susan says, “another two weeks and I’m pulling you off this case.”

I go back to my desk and click on one of the videos I found online of Dr. John Taylor. Educational videos on websites devoted to disfiguring birth defects or trauma: www.abeautifulchild.org and www.nomoredefects.org. I’m not interested in watching the surgeries themselves—surprisingly, a fair number of these have been videotaped. Rather, I watch and re-watch the classroom lectures accompanying them.

I fast-forward through the clinical scenes until I get to the point where Dr. Taylor is standing in front of thirty students, explaining techniques for fixing cheiloschisis in infants. It is a beautiful thing. He ignores the camera. He makes eye contact with students, and uses his large hands as a ballet dancer would use her whole body, to express what is inexpressible in words. I watch his face in particular. He doesn’t look like a man who would lie to women. I hit pause and go to the Taylor Institute website and click on another video. It is required viewing for all men and women undergoing cosmetic procedures in his clinic. Dr. Epstein, when I interviewed him on the same day I interviewed Dr. Kramer, told me it discourages almost 20 percent of prospective clients. He did not sound happy about it. I’d asked him if they continued showing it to prospective patients after Dr. Taylor died. “No,” he said, firmly. “The partners agreed it was no longer . . . expedient . . . to do so.”

“By partners, you mean yourself and Dr. Kramer?” I asked. “Yes, the remaining partners,” he said.

In the video, Dr. Taylor is sitting at a desk. He looks directly at the camera. “Before you undergo this procedure, I want you to know some facts,” he begins. He talks about the trauma to the body due to breast augmentation, facial sculpting. He talks about the odds of procedures going wrong. He talks about percentages of women unhappy with the results. He gives statistics about self-esteem: Only 29 percent of women feel better about themselves one year after the surgery. “Rhinoplasty is the exception,” he says. “But body contouring, thigh lift, tummy tuck—the gratification is fleeting.” He stares deeply into the camera for his wrap-up. “If you have confidence issues, if you feel unattractive or unlovable, plastic surgery is not for you. It will not change those basic personality traits. You will only see more imperfections, want more improvements. Your body is not clay to be molded to your specifications. It is a gift. Treat it as such.”

The first time I saw this video, I described the procedures to Peter. He was repelled at the idea of a body lift, touched my insubstantial right breast and said, “But you are perfect the way you are”
or some such nonsense. That is a lie. I am not perfect; I am not even
regular.

Once you watch the
before
and
after
videos of Dr. Epstein’s and Dr. Kramer’s patients—the ones who saw the video but were not dissuaded—you do begin to look at yourself differently. This pinched inch of excess flesh, wouldn’t it be nice if this disappeared? As you grow older, wouldn’t it be nice to reverse the inevitable sagging? I am twenty-eight years old and imperfect enough to avert my eyes from the mirror when I get out of the shower. How will I feel when I’m thirty-nine? Fifty-nine? Peter and I rarely go to LA but when we do we’re struck with the billboards advertising cosmetic procedures the way that Silicon Valley billboards advertise the latest technology advances. This is the future. Dr. Taylor had his finger in the dam trying to hold back the flood.

He appears to be a man you could trust. Here is a man who had your interests at heart. I would imagine that many of his patients’ mothers fell in love with him. But as you watch the competent, straight-talking yet compassionate man in the videos, you know he would never take advantage of the emotionally charged situations, would never prey on his patients, or feed on their vulnerability. This is not a man who would cheat on his wife.

I wonder what I would feel, sitting in the clinic, considering an arm lift or body sculpturing, listening to Dr. Taylor’s attempts to stop me. I think I might fall in love with this bear of a man, would gladly join his harem for his eyes to light upon me and stay there for even a moment. That would be enough.

I notice that he is not wearing a wedding ring in any of these videos.

The phone rings. It’s Peter.

“What time you coming home tonight?” he asks. His voice is neutral, which is his way of saying he’s sorry. We had a fight last night. He said I haven’t been “present,”
that I’m not there in the room, not listening when he speaks, not responding when he touches me. Perhaps it’s true. This case has cast a spell over me. I have the obituary from the
Chronicle
out on my desk. I’m looking at the photo of John Taylor as a young man. Very handsome. A light emanating from the eyes half closed in a mischievous smile that borders on lascivious. I’ve heard that women fall in love with their doctors, and now I see why. Really, who wouldn’t have been at risk from John Taylor?

“I’m not sure,” I tell him. “I’m working.”

“On the Taylor case,” he says flatly.

“Yes, of course. It’s my case. Susan is already talking about bringing in homicide experts from San Jose. I want to solve this on my own.”

“All right,” Peter says and hangs up. I go back to watching videos. I understand now that Dr. Taylor had chosen a happy profession. The worried and anxious looks at the beginning of each procedure always gave way to smiles, hugs, and handshakes at the end as the parents viewed their sleeping but altered child. If Dr. Taylor had ever failed at surgery, it wasn’t recorded. His failures lay elsewhere, apparently.

41
MJ

I
’
VE BEEN THINKING A LOT
about our honeymoon, mine and John’s. I realize now, of course, that it was done with Deborah’s permission, that she must have even made the reservations. If she did, she chose well. I hate fancy hotels, chichi resorts. I’ve been to Hawaii, Honolulu, stayed at the Hilton, hated every minute of it. The chlorinated pools, the air of forced frivolity, the people chattering, not to each other, but into their cell phones.
Parallel play
, that’s what it was called when I was raising my boys, all children go through it. Now it seems as though adults have regressed into it as well.

John and I went up north, to Ukiah, to Vichy Springs, a 150-year-old hot springs resort in the hills. The room was small but clean, no television, no electronics of any kind. You couldn’t even get a signal on your cell phone, we were so remote. We sat on the deck outside our room and watched an ancient dog totter after the wild turkeys that ranged over the property. At night, after the other guests were asleep, we snuck down to the mineral baths and filled two of the iron tubs that are positioned next to the spring, under the stars, to the brim with the warm, fizzing water. It was like bathing in hot champagne. Against regulations we shed our clothes, no bathing suits, and lay in the tubs naked staring at the stars. Afterwards, we wrapped coarse towels around our bodies and ran through the cool air back to our plain but clean room.

The sex was okay. I mean, I’ve had better. John and I were more comfortable with each other fully clothed, preferably with garden implements in our hands and dirt on our knees from planting hydrangeas: mopheads, lacecaps. Whatever motivation John had for marrying me, it wasn’t for the sex.

Did this bother me? At first, maybe. One does fantasize about passion, about being the object of desire. But I was soon reconciled to it. We were so happy! At least I was.
Happier than a hungry tick on a fat dog.

How can I describe how it felt to be shopping for houses with John! Looking at places with price tags of one million, two million dollars and more, casually dismissing each until we found the special one in Los Gatos.

At a glance you wouldn’t know why we loved it so. Just another California rancher, the pavement cracked from the Loma Prieta earthquake, the front yard a mess of brambles and tall grasses. A rat scurried out of the bushes as we walked up the path for the first time. But then we saw the backyard, encompassing two full lots, with hillocks and knolls that undulated to the property line. In the corner a legacy oak tree, at least two-hundred years old, spread its limbs in every direction. We counted two fig trees, a lemon tree, and two persimmons. In another corner, a tangle of blackberry bushes. All surrounded by a high fence covered in scarlet bougainvillea. John had tears in his eyes. Now, after seeing Deborah’s tightly disciplined, clean-edged landscaping, I understand. No one would be invited (or tempted) to sit on her manicured lawn. No dog would dare shit there.

John and I rarely fought with each other, but I remember one heated argument about something silly. About all things, a hibiscus bush I had trimmed too closely. He came home from a Saturday afternoon grocery run, and I was helping him put everything away when he looked out the window at the area of the garden I had been working in. He released an anguished wail. “What have you done?” He happened to be holding a carton of eggs, which he lifted above his head and hurled with all his strength at the wall. Eggs spattered over the counter and floor. “I told you to leave that alone,” he nearly screamed. I was in shock; I’d never seen this side of him before. I didn’t remember him telling me anything about the hibiscus, and said so. This made him even more furious. He raised his voice, his face red. “I don’t expect much of you, MJ,” he said. “But I do expect you not to mess with my garden.” I was crying at that point, but he just slammed out of the house, got into his car, and roared off. He was gone four hours, where he went, I’ll never know. He was calm when he returned. He did not apologize, though. We never spoke of that incident again, but it made me tread more cautiously around him than before. And that he called it
his garden.
Not
ours.
Never ours.

42
Samantha

IN ONE OF JOHN TAYLOR
’
S
videos I spotted Snow White—that young doctor I met at the Taylor Institute—among the students in the lecture hall. Everyone else was furiously scribbling, taking notes, but not her. She simply sat there, her notebook open, her pen untouched beside it, her hands folded on top. Her eyes never left John Taylor. It could have been funny; instead it was creepy. Then there was one half second where he looked straight at her. His face remained expressionless, and he glanced away without haste though also without lingering. I thought
so that’s the way it was.
And I picked up the phone and called the clinic to invite Dr. Claire Fanning to stop by. I kept my voice casual when talking to her, but I didn’t feel that way. I knew I was on to something.

Snow White—Claire—said she couldn’t meet me until 9
PM
, when she got off her shift. So here I am still at the station house at 9:15, hungry and cranky and yet not particularly eager to go home and see Peter, either.

I don’t like being alone here at night. Of course, I’m not completely alone. The night dispatchers are on duty in their office, but the door is closed, and they have their own isolated world that they reside in. At this time, the regular station house takes on an otherworldly feel, what with all the dark screens, the low lighting, the chairs left akimbo as if everyone had departed in a panicked stampede. Susan is usually the last out, but at 7:30
PM
she sighed, packed her stuff, and left. I hate being at work this late. Actually, I’m unhappy to be most places after 9
PM
, that’s why Peter and I are such homebodies. Around 8:30 I start looking for a pair of pajamas to put on.

This Claire, on the other hand, I doubt she ever sleeps. Despite telling me she couldn’t meet until after work, when she shows up, she is wearing workout clothes and has clearly been exercising, there is perspiration on her neck and arms.

“I thought I’d get in a run between the hospital and here,” she says, by way of explanation when she sees me eyeing her getup, but she’s not apologizing. In fact, it’s more of a boast. “I’m preparing for the Hawaiian Ironman, so I have to grab every opportunity I can to train.”