A Circle of Wives (7 page)

John wasn’t dressed particularly well, a worn pair of jeans, and a T-shirt advertising some sort of golfing charity. It turns out he’d been at a boring function at the hotel next door, had slipped away for a break, decided to come into the bar. And he did exactly what he promised. He made me—us, because we shared it—the absolutely perfect drink, semisweet, with a sharp tangy aftertaste. And I was just
gone.

Samantha Adams:
So what did you know, and when did you know it?

MJ Taylor:
Are you recording this? It’s just that you’re not taking any notes.

Samantha Adams:
Oh right. I forgot to tell you. Yes, we are videotaping this. See the camera? Is that okay? Or rather do I have your consent to record this interview?

MJ Taylor:
Of course, that’s okay. I have nothing to hide. Record away . . . What was the question again?

Samantha Adams:
When did you find out about the other wives?

MJ Taylor:
Oh, yes.

I was completely in the dark until I saw the death announcement in the
Mercury News
on Sunday. I’m one of the few people on the planet who still gets a newspaper delivered in the morning, one of the few who still enjoys turning the physical pages over coffee. I don’t usually read the death notices (I’m not that old, not yet) but I tend to flip through the various sections methodically. And a particularly large obit caught my eye. The photo alone was a quarter of a page. Then I saw the name. John Taylor.

I hadn’t known before then, how could I? John had called me Thursday morning, said he had to make one of his trips down to UCLA, there was an emergency case. He suggested I might want to visit friends in Oregon, I’d been talking about doing that for a while. But I decided I’d stay home, catch up with the house, work in the garden.

Samantha Adams:
Did John often take off like that?

MJ Taylor:
Of course, he had his hospital duties. Trips to conferences. His academic appointment down at UCLA. Nothing that struck me as unusual given the professional commitments of a man of his stature. Of course, now I feel like a fool. Bluebeard’s wife, finding the bloody chamber only after her vile husband has been apprehended.

Samantha Adams:
So you hadn’t seen him for three days when you read the obituary?

MJ Taylor:
Right. For two days he’d been dead, and I didn’t know, hadn’t felt it. I should have
known
; I have certain gifts in that direction, I could tell you stories. But no. I
had
thought it odd John didn’t call, didn’t return my calls to his cell phone since Friday. That was unusual. But not completely unprecedented, either. He was a bit of a free spirit, John. It was one of the things I loved about him.

Samantha Adams:
What was your reaction when you read the obituary?

MJ Taylor:
My first thought was, what a good-looking man! The handsomeness of the man in the photo caught my eye, not the fact that it was John. A young man sitting at a piano, his fine fingers poised to play what you knew from his smiling face would be a happy song. I remember thinking,
how sad, this attractive man dead,
then I saw the name, went back to the photo, and recognized John.

Samantha Adams:
And that was how you found out about Deborah?

MJ Taylor:
Yes.
A beloved wife.
Of course, they have to say that, but it still hit me, hard. And three grown children! I thought of John’s lack of warmth (hostility even) to my boys, which I attributed to his never having had a child himself. How wrong I was. My life blew up, then, sitting at my kitchen table. Just shattered.

10
Excerpt from Transcript

Police interview conducted
by telephone with Helen Richter,
May 19, 2013

[Preliminary introductions, explanations of processes and procedures]

Samantha Adams:
Can you hear me okay? Sometimes our phone connections at the station house aren’t so great.

Helen Richter:
Yes, I can hear you fine. Can you hear me?

Samantha Adams:
Yes. And I’m supposed to inform you that I will be taping this telephone conversation. Is that all right?

Helen Richter:
No problem.

Samantha Adams:
Okay. I don’t want to take up more of your busy day than necessary, so let’s just jump into it. I guess my first question is how did John Taylor get away with it? I mean, having three wives? How could you not have suspected something?

Helen Richter:
Isn’t that
the
question. The question everyone wants answered.
How did he get away with it?
[pause] It’s the elephant in the room at work. Some people manage to restrain themselves from asking. Most don’t. They seem to forget you’re one of the “its” being referred to. Meaning wives. And people have an almost clinical curiosity about the logistics. I suppose I can’t blame them.
What did he tell you when he went away for long periods of time? Did he keep separate credit cards, bank accounts for each wife? Did he ever show up wearing something you didn’t recognize, or smelling of a strange scent?
You wouldn’t believe the things people you barely know will come straight out and ask.

Samantha Adams:
So, did he do any of those things? You have to admit, they’re the kinds of questions that immediately spring to mind.

Helen Richter:
I still don’t know the answers myself; he did such a masterful job. Not of coming up with clever responses so much as erecting a kind of force field against them ever getting asked.

Samantha Adams:
It must be hard.

Helen Richter:
[pause]
It is. [pause] You know, if your husband has an affair with another woman, you get a certain amount of sympathy. You see, there’s an acceptable social protocol for consoling the wives of middle-aged men who wander. But if your husband has another
wife . . .
well, we don’t exactly have a boilerplate for that. And people are lost without their boilerplate. They mostly lose control of their mouths. Ask a lot of stupid questions. And the most stinging of all is,
How could you not have known?

Samantha Adams:
How did you find out?

Helen Richter:
By his death. The news article in the
Stanford Daily
.
Survived by wife Deborah, and three children, Cynthia, Charles, and Evan.
Devoted wife, I should say. Or was that the obituary? In any case, a wife that was not me. Not that I would ever describe myself as
devoted—
that has the connotation of blind, adoring worship. That wasn’t what John felt for me. Or what I felt for John. No.

I didn’t know he had children, either. That had been one of the conditions for
our
marriage. No children. No discussion. No regrets.

Samantha Adams:
Tell me more about your marriage.

Helen Richter:
It was very short and very sweet. We had just six months together, barely made it out of the honeymoon stage. Then again, it was a commuter marriage. With me in Los Angeles, him in Palo Alto. I had my job, and he had his. I liked LA, he liked Northern California. And we liked each other. So we agreed, we would have a long-distance relationship. He came down twice a month for three or four days at a time.

Samantha Adams:
You never came north, to visit him in Palo Alto?

Helen Richter:
No, never. It didn’t come up, was never an issue. You have to keep in mind, we were both very busy. When you choose a medical career, you accept a lifestyle most people would find intolerable. The long working hours, mostly on your feet. The fatigue, both physical and emotional. I’m a pediatric oncologist at the UCLA Children’s Hospital. I see fifty to sixty children every week, all very sick. No month passes without at least one, usually more, of my young patients dying. At any given time, our department is running four or five drug trials that I need to stay on top of. And when I’m not actually at work, I’m reading the latest journal articles, and trying to catch up with my dictations, my own writing.

Samantha Adams:
Didn’t you miss him when you weren’t together?

Helen Richter:
Obviously. On some level. But what you don’t seem to get—what no one seems to get—is that I didn’t have much room in my life for more than John was willing or able to give me. Until I met him I expected to remain single, and very happily so. He didn’t fill a void; there was no emptiness in my life. I even felt uncomfortable at first, shoehorning him in. Yet I wanted it, wanted him. Surprised myself by the urgency of the wanting.

Samantha Adams:
Whose idea was it to get married?

Helen Richter:
John was the one who demanded marriage. I resisted—especially since no children would be involved. I saw little need to formalize the relationship. He was insistent, even told me that without marriage he didn’t feel our . . . liaison . . . could continue. We completed the paperwork and one Friday morning went down to the courthouse and did the deed.

Samantha Adams:
Strange. I mean,
why?

Helen Richter:
Yes. He could have had an affair with me; I’d have been no wiser. I’m not the suspicious kind. The marriage certificate was important to him. The day of the ceremony, we went back to my condo and drank wine and sat on the sofa. Just sat, not touching. He asked me, “Do you feel any different?” I had to admit I didn’t, although I was certainly very happy, was deeply happy. John said he felt like a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “I feel so free,” he said. An odd thing to say, once you know the facts. Shouldering yet more responsibility, and complicating his life with more intrigue and lies.
So free.
What was he thinking?

Samantha Adams:
After the wedding, what happened?

Helen Richter:
Little changed. He moved some clothes and personal effects into my condo. We redid our wills. Otherwise, we carried on as before. We made no announcement. I informed my small circle of friends, and that was that. I don’t think most people at the medical center where I taught and where John was an adjunct knew. Although they might have realized we were attached in some way.

But all this is making our relationship sound . . . uncaring. Tepid. It wasn’t. I’m not good at talking about such things. I’m a very private person. Insular, even. So this is hard. I will say that what happened after the marriage was official took me by surprise. I hadn’t foreseen how much it would matter. I hadn’t anticipated the absolute happiness. And what could arguably be called passion
.
Yes, physical. Yet also more than that. Before, I knew what we had between us was good. I knew we had a reasonable shot at making each other happy. But I hadn’t anticipated bliss. I’d never before encountered
ecstasy
.

Samantha Adams:
[long pause] Strong words.

Helen Richter:
Yes. Still, inadequate for describing how I felt about John Taylor.

11
Excerpt from Transcript

Police interview with Deborah Taylor,
May 20, 2013

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

Samantha Adams:
So did you know that your husband had taken two other wives?

Deborah Taylor:
Of course I knew. How could I not? I made it all possible. Did you think John capable of scheming on this level with any degree of success? Nonsense.

Samantha Adams:
Why on earth would you
help
him?

Deborah Taylor:
Simple. To keep him.

Samantha Adams:
[pause] I’m sorry?