A Circle of Wives (17 page)

And it’s not just her looks, but her bearing that makes her stand out. For someone so young she is extraordinarily assured. She nods to me, but walks straight to Dr. Kramer and hands him a folder. “The photographs you wanted,” she says. Her voice is deeper than I expect, and raspy, almost a smoker’s voice, although I doubt she would deign to pollute her perfect body, her perfect skin, by inhaling such poison.

This woman’s black hair is cut straight across her jawline, and swings in one motion as she turns to leave the room. She is wearing a white lab coat over plain black trousers and white blouse, and some very kick-ass spectacles.

“This is Dr. Fanning, Dr. Claire Fanning, our newest resident,” says Dr. Kramer. “She’s been with us four months while completing a fellowship at Stanford. Claire, this is Detective Adams, who is following up on John’s tragic death.”

Claire flashes her black eyes at me. “What is there to follow up on?” she asks. “My understanding is that his death was due to cardiac arrest.”

“Myocardial infarction,” I correct her, and smile. She doesn’t smile back. My guess is that although she ranks a ten in beauty, her sense of humor is sadly underdeveloped.

“Detective Adams isn’t satisfied,” says Dr. Kramer.

Claire’s eyes behind the spectacles widen. The result is comically theatrical. “No?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “It’s been all over the news. The coroner’s verdict was murder by person or persons unknown. Too many unexplained factors for us to let it go.”

There’s a moment of silence. I turn back to Dr. Kramer. “Speaking of publicity,” I say, “How’s business here at the clinic? Has it been impacted by the media circus?”

“Not at all. Business couldn’t be better,” he says. He speaks louder than before, almost boisterously. “We have a waiting list for procedures that goes for months.” I notice Dr. Fanning looking at him steadily, but he seems to be avoiding her gaze.

“Who will take over the children’s cases now that Dr. Taylor is gone?” I ask.

“We haven’t yet decided. It’s obviously a big part of our brand here at the Taylor Institute. We can’t let that goodwill lapse,” Dr. Kramer says. There is no mistaking it now: Dr. Fanning is sending a message with her steady stare.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

She startles at my question, but answers quickly and decidedly. “Although the money is in the adult cosmetic procedures, we owe it to John to keep our pediatric practice going.”

“But is anyone qualified? I understand that he was uniquely talented at his work.”

“Of course he was,” interrupts Dr. Kramer. “But we mustn’t confuse the mystique with the man. There are other surgeons who are just as qualified, just as adept at the procedures. I don’t anticipate much will change in that regard.”

“Except the mix of patients and procedures,” says Claire. Dr. Kramer frowns.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Dr. Kramer says, “I don’t think we need hold Dr. Fanning here any longer,” but I motion for him to let her speak.

“There was a growing consensus to throw the children under the bus,” she says. “So to speak.” I look for a hint of a smile, but there is none. Definitely no sense of humor. “Management meetings were becoming very contentious,” she adds.

Dr. Kramer picks up a pen on his desk and begins making little stabbing motions at a piece of paper.

“Why is that?” I ask her.

She significantly rubs her thumb against her index finger: the universal sign for money.

“John was facing a mutiny,” she says.

“That’s too strong a word,” objects Dr. Kramer. “The detective is going to get the wrong idea.”

“Maybe she should,” says Dr. Fanning.

“Or perhaps the right one,” I say at the same time. We glance at each other.

“What made the meetings . . . contentious?” I ask.

“Do the math,” she says. “The adult cosmetic patients are, for the most part, cash customers. No worries about insurance, Medicaid, waiving of fees, just a rich influx of cash. The children are a different matter altogether. Wrestling with insurance companies—even when they have insurance. Scrounging for donations. Trying to constantly find innovative ways to fund the pro bono cases John was committed to.”

“Exactly how much money was at stake?” I ask.

“Annually? Millions,” she says. “John wasn’t interested in expanding the cosmetic side of the business. And John had veto power. Something he’d held on to when drawing up the partnership agreements.”

I turn to Dr. Kramer. “Is this true?”

He shrugs, trying to appear casual, but there’s a tenseness to his shoulders that wasn’t there when we started. “Business partners often disagree,” he says. “It’s the nature of the relationship.” Then he pauses before continuing, “Hardly a motive for murder.”

I nod, but in a neutral way. “No one said it was.”

“It’s where the conversation was leading,” he says. “I thought I might as well name the elephant in the room.”

I decide to change the subject. “Curious question: Why don’t you have a sign out front? This place is almost impossible to find.”

Dr. Kramer looks relieved at the shift in direction. “Our clients prefer it that way,” he says. “It’s more discreet.”

“What he means,” says Dr. Fanning, “is that the cosmetic
customers prefer it. Heaven forbid they’re seen going into a plastic surgeon’s office. Or seen leaving it. Did you see the rear exit? So our
clients
can make quick getaways.” She walks over to another door on the other side of the desk, and opens it. Through it I can see a dark hallway. “Every doctor’s office and recovery room in the clinic has a door like this,” she says. “It goes out a back way, through an alley that’s even more obscured than the front entrance. This way, our cash customers can escape unseen. Whether they’ve just had a consult or a procedure done, their identity is protected.”

Dr. Kramer stands up. “Dr. Fanning, I’m sure you have work to do. Don’t let us keep you.” He turns to me. “I understand you also want to speak with Dr. Epstein.”

“If possible,” I say. I already have much more information than I expected.

“Of course,” says Dr. Kramer. “Follow me.”

I hold out my hand to Dr. Fanning. “Thank you,” I say. “It’s been . . . illuminating.”

30
MJ

MY BROTHER IS DUE TO
come by at ten this morning. Knowing Thomas, he’ll be half an hour to forty-five minutes late. He’ll also be hungry, in need of a shower and a change of clothes. Only two years younger than me, he’s never learned to take care of himself, instead choosing partners who take him on, though always for the short term. He is between lovers right now, so I expect to see a run-down specimen when he shows up. I asked him once, how do you always find these . . . not sugar daddies, because they’re not necessarily flush with money . . . but men with an excess of compassion, and a desire, no, really a
neediness
, to tend to others, to serve them. To serve
him
, Thomas.

He says it’s a dog whistle that he can hear when these men talk, or even when they’re not talking. Something in their body language. “I can really sniff them out,” he’d boasted. “What about love?” I asked him. “Oh, I love them,” he immediately said. “How could I not? They take such good care of me.”

He’s always the one to leave these relationships, to break up with some of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. But he moves on. Usually quite suddenly. It’s like a stray cat you’ve been feeding and sheltering, and you think you have a relationship, an understanding, but then it disappears and you find out months later that it easily transferred its affections to a neighbor down the street. The stray has a different name, and a different affect to its walk, and pretends not to recognize you.

“You give out that signal, yourself,” Thomas once told me. Perhaps. But something else about me must send a correspondingly forbidding signal because I haven’t exactly been deluged with men over the years.

First my boys were small, and I was too busy raising them and earning an income. When the boys began to need me less, as teenagers, I ventured into a couple of ill-advised relationships. There was Jonah, a neighbor whose wife had just left him, taking the kids and leaving him the rental apartment and the dog. I was his rebound relationship. I knew it at the time, but still, to be touched like that after all those years. To be a sexual being again, however unequal the exchange of affection. He moved on eventually, leaving just a note taped to my backdoor handle, to which the dog was also attached.

After Jonah was Mike, who owned the gas station down the road where I got my aging Subaru repeatedly patched up. That turned out okay. Mike took my oldest, Paul, under his wing and taught him car repair at the shop. Not that he had to do much teaching, Paul was a natural. It was never something I could get excited about as a profession for him, but he has nevertheless done well, today operating his own repair shop at the age of twenty-nine. I’m proud of him.

My youngest, Jackson, is more ambitious, wants to forge his way. He went to junior college and then dropped out to get a programming job at a start-up. He’s got the bug for what they call
entrepreneurship,
which I call greed. Yes, I’d call Jackson greedy. He sees all the wealth around him, and wants his share.
Pigs get fed and hogs get eaten,
that’s what I’d tell him when he was a kid and wanted more than his share of pancakes. That first start-up failed, as did the next two. You only hear about the Facebooks and the Googles, but not about these other small businesses that rent cheap space in industrial parks east of the freeway in Santa Clara and come and go. I had to do a little protecting of John from Jackson, I’m afraid. Smelling the presence of money, Jackson hoped John would invest in his latest scheme, don’t ask me what it was, it involved some kind of software to
solve a pain point in the medical device industry
. He wanted John to give him a couple hundred thousand dollars as seed money. “You’d be an angel investor,” Jackson had said during the sales pitch that I ultimately couldn’t prevent from happening. “You’d get every cent back plus a fat return.” John said no, and Jackson never forgave him. He hasn’t stopped asking me for money either. Between Jackson and Thomas, my salary went pretty fast every month. It’ll have to stop now that I’m on my own. I’ve even decided to rent out the back guest bedroom, and with that, I should be able to scrape by, make the mortgage and still have enough to eat.

I hear a car pull up outside, and Thomas is finally here. He walks into the house an hour and fifteen minutes late, much more confidently than he ever did when John was around. “Hey sissy,” he says, and gives me a peck on the cheek. He accepts a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs. He wolfs that down, asks for another. I start cooking again. I’m glad to have the company, glad to have something to do for someone else. It’s been almost eight weeks now, and I am nowhere near acceptance of John’s death. A friend came over and packed away his things because confronting them every time I looked in the closet or in the bathroom proved too devastating.

“So the gravy train got derailed,” he says, and motions around the kitchen. “Have you figured out if you’ll be able to keep all this?”

I nod.

“Let’s go into the backyard,” I say, and he follows me. It’s getting a little scruffy because I fired the gardening service that trims the grass and carts away the debris. Too expensive. I’m doing what I can, but the weeds grow faster than I can pull them. Like everything else in my life, the once-gorgeous garden appears a shambles. I am going down fast.

We pull out chairs from under the sun umbrella, bask in the warmth of the June morning.

“You look terrible,” I say, noting his bloodshot eyes.

“So do you,” he replies sharply. I hadn’t meant my words in a hurtful way; I was just concerned. His words, however, sting.

We sit for a moment in silence.

“Well, what do you expect?” I say, finally. “After all that’s happened.”

“What’s the verdict,” he says.

“About what?” I ask.

“How much money is left?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Not on what, on whom,” I tell him. “On Deborah. She said I can keep the equity in the house. That’s the good news. Now I’m waiting to see if there will be any more.”

“Will there be?”

“It’s possible,” I say, then, half drowsily in the sun. “It’s possible,” I repeat.

Thomas smiles. “My big sister,” he says. “Who would have thought she’d have it in her?” I can tell he’s on edge, though, despite his smile. I see him go in and out of these phases (mood swings would probably be a more accurate way to describe them, except they can last weeks or even months) and he seems to be accelerating into the anxiety stage. He stands and starts pacing back and forth before me.

Then he changes the subject. “They’ve made a movie about the woods,” he tells me. “Actually, it’s an old movie, but I’ve only just seen it for the first time. A movie that really captures it.”

“Captures what?” I ask.

“The terror,” he says, simply. I’m astonished, that he’s talking about this, the thing he never talks about.