A Circle of Wives (10 page)

After thirty seconds, the door opens. The young woman stands there, cigarette in hand.

Feeling awkward, I introduce myself as her neighbor. I don’t mind being authoritative in places where I have actual authority, but this is a gray area. I can hardly tell her not to smoke in her own condo, and it seems petty to begrudge her the use of her own balcony. But before I can begin she says, “come on in,” without asking what I want. Afraid of being thought rude, I step inside although I would have preferred to have the conversation in the more neutral territory of the hall.

“Excuse me,” she says, and fumbles with her phone, then puts it in her pocket. Holding her cigarette in her left hand, she sticks out her right hand to shake. “Beth,” she says.

“Helen,” I say in return. There is an uncomfortable silence, then I gesture toward her cigarette. “If you don’t mind not smoking on the balcony,” I say. I hesitate a moment before adding, “It comes right into my living room.”

A strange look comes over the young woman’s face. Almost satisfaction. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I hadn’t thought of that.” She doesn’t make any promise to stop, though. Instead, she takes another long drag on her cigarette and releases the smoke off to the side. “Can I get you something to drink? Some wine?” I resign myself to the interruption, thinking of the importance of unpolluted balcony time. I calculate that it’s worthwhile to have a short drink.

She doesn’t wait for my reply, but disappears briefly into the kitchen. The condo is the mirror image of my own, only furnished in a modern style, with uncomfortable-looking leather furniture and bright primary colors. She emerges with two glasses of red wine. She’s finally abandoned her cigarette.

“You’re a doctor, right?” she asks, handing me one of the glasses. She gestures me into a bright red sofa.

“Yes,” I say. Then, after sitting down on the cold slippery surface, “How did you know?” Bruised as I am by the day’s events, I’m suspicious and alert.

“I’ve seen you leave the condo,” she says. But that doesn’t make sense, because I don’t put on my lab coat until I get to the office. In the morning, I resemble any urban professional. When I mention this—probably sounding a bit paranoid—she laughs and says she must have seen my name on medical magazines in the lobby. Given the large numbers of journals I subscribe to, I think that plausible.

“How’s Mr. Helen?” she asks, casually. When I look askance, she adds, “your husband. What’s his name? I’ve seen him in the hall, but we’ve never introduced ourselves.”

“John,” I say, and decide not to explain that John is no more. And really, once I think of it, he had never actually existed. Not the man, not the life I thought I had.

We both sip our wine in silence for a few minutes. Casting my mind about for something to talk about, I ask, “So what do you do, Beth?”

“Typist,” she says. As if anxious to shut down that line of inquiry, she quickly adds, “How long have you been married?”

“Six months,” I say, thinking this wasn’t too hard. Not telling lies, but omitting the truth.

I take another sip from my glass, and realize to my surprise that it’s nearly empty. “Let me fill that,” she says, and goes back to the kitchen, returning this time with the bottle. She tops both our glasses.

“So you’re still newlyweds,” she says rather than asks.

“You could say that,” I say, and find myself mimicking what’s being written about us. “Just getting to know each other. Still mostly strangers, but in an exciting way.”

I don’t recognize the person uttering these inanities, which is good because I want no connection with this woman, nothing to make me feel guilty about spinning falsehoods. I briefly wonder how a typist can afford a condo in this building, but shrug it off. She must have a well-off partner.

Another protracted silence before she attempts to speak again. “Aren’t you the doctor who’s been in the news lately?” She asks this casually, looking at her wineglass.

I shrink back and she quickly says, “I’m sorry. I heard some of the other residents talking in the elevator. You know. All the reporters hanging out at the front door.” I must cringe even more because she adds, in a warmly sympathetic voice, “It must feel terrible, to be talked about. On top of the actual betrayal, I mean.”

“Yes, pretty damn terrible,” I say. I find my glass has been filled again. I’ve spent my life running under people’s radar, only emerging to surprise them with my test scores, or my skills, or my insights. Now I’ll forever be known as that woman who was married to the guy with three wives. I contemplate where I might go to escape. New York? Chicago? Houston? I could easily find another teaching hospital, another clinical appointment. But even so, I would never escape, not fully. I know better than anyone how eagerly medical interns Google their teachers and prospective teachers—virtually stalking them to find what research grants they’ve been awarded, what publications they’ve achieved, how often they speak at medical seminars, plus any nugget about their personal lives. No, no point moving. The stain is there. It will never be erased. “I’m done for,” I say aloud, and the woman eagerly pounces. “Done for, how?”

I just shake my head without explaining. Why should I? I’m ashamed of my previous pride—my pride at living what in many ways was an austere life. Now my armor has a hole in it, and anger is leaking out.

“From what I’ve heard, you were duped,” says the young woman. She leans forward, her wine apparently forgotten, is fiddling again with her phone.

Through the fog of several glasses of wine, I hear her talking on.

“I would want to kill him,” she says.

“Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind,” I say. Then I correct myself. “He was already dead by the time I discovered the truth.” I retreat onto safer ground. “I never had the chance to confront him, to ask
why
, to find out
why
me
.” The girl nods, as if I’ve said something especially clever.

“You must have wondered why he picked you of all the women he met every day. Given his profession, I mean. He must have met tons of women.”

I dismiss her suggestion. “John didn’t do cosmetic surgery. Only his partners did. He never would have fallen for someone who came to his clinic for that. If anything, it would have turned him off.”

“And he died of what . . . a heart attack? In a way, don’t you think that’s appropriate? For a man with three wives?” asks the girl. “His heart overloaded? Stressed to the limit?”

“Perhaps,” I say. “That indispensable motor, broken.” And mine, in sympathy, aching. Occupying such a tender position in my chest. I had an Egyptian professor during my cardiology internship. He said that in his home country it was sometimes said of the dead that their hearts had departed, and that it was the heart that was weighed against the feather of truth in the hall of Ma’at during the divine judgment of the deceased. A heart unburdened with the weight of sin and corruption would balance with the feather and its possessor would enjoy the eternal afterlife. But I know my heart is not light as a feather. The afterlife I am fated for is not one that will be enjoyed.

I often encourage my patients to describe their symptoms using metaphors. They are incredibly illuminating. Once a child said, “I’m being pecked by a tiny bird with a very sharp beak. His beak must be bloody.” I looked, and sure enough, there were the telltale petechiae, the flat pinpoint dark-red spots under the skin that are one of the signs of childhood leukemia.

What are my metaphors? All clichés. Heavy heart. Burdened heart. Gandhi, my hero, saying,
It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
What about neither words nor heart? I have nothing more to say. And it’s this that saves me. Because suddenly it becomes clear, this young woman’s constant fiddling with her phone, her probing questions, even her so-called profession. “You’re a reporter,” I say. She only hesitates a moment before nodding. “The
Star,
” she says. “They promised me fifty grand for an exclusive. I bribed your neighbor to go out for the evening.”

“You lured me over here with the cigarette smoke?” I ask, incredulous. Then I start laughing at her ingenuousness.

“I can’t stand to smoke myself,” the young woman says, “but it works nearly every time here on the West Coast. People who would be suspicious of a knock on the door are incredibly protective of their turf when it comes to secondhand smoke.”

I point to the cell phone she’s holding. “Have you been recording this?” and she nods.

“You gave me some good stuff, but not enough for you to feel embarrassed,” she says. “You’ll come across as heartbroken but dignified.”
Heartbroken.
Metaphors again.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I could persuade you to respect my privacy?” I ask. She shakes her head. But I seem to detect some true regret in the gesture.

“I don’t like my job very much sometimes, but I’d like unemployment worse,” she says. “But, like I said, it wasn’t too bad. You didn’t spill your sex secrets.”

“That’s because I don’t have any,” I say. And for a moment that seems true, that I have lived my life out in the open, with nothing to hide and few regrets. Then I remember, and am quiet.

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know,”
says the girl. I must look startled because she says, “Macbeth. I studied English literature in college.” I don’t think I’m imagining that she appears slightly ashamed. “We all end up in places we didn’t expect,” she says.

“That we do,” I say, and somehow find the door and leave.

15
Helen

I CAN
’
T HELP THINKING FOR
once that it’s a good thing my parents are out of this. My mother. She would have fought with editors and written letters in rebuttal, fiercely protecting me, her only surviving child. But she’s now locked in a memory unit in Indianapolis and no longer knows what a fork is used for, much less that she has a daughter. My father, on a good day, would have gathered me to his chest and wept with me. His tears a potent balm. On a bad day, he would have slapped my face and told me to get a grip. Still, I would have had to restrain him from tracking down those reporters and crippling them. Toward the end of his life, heavily medicated, he wept less. On the rare occasion when he felt the urge to break a piece of furniture, or hurt another living being, he simply took a special pill and went to bed for the rest of the day. He’d rise the next morning changed from Mr. Hyde back to Dr. Jekyll. We know now that Stevenson’s antihero could have done with a prescription for lithium or valproate. How much of our great literature has modern psychiatry rendered quaint and obsolete? Someday they’ll have a diagnosis and a pill for someone like John, something to render him less charming and beguiling, less of a risk to the women of the world. And there will be a pill for me, too. Something to keep my guard up. The world will be a healthier place. But even so, despite all that’s happened, I think it will be a far less interesting one.

16
San Francisco Chronicle

Coroner Returns Verdict of Murder in Much-Married Doctor’s Death

June 1, 2013

PALO ALTO, CA—The death of the Stanford doctor who had three concurrent wives was classified as a wrongful death by person or persons unknown by the Santa Clara County Coroner yesterday. Reasons given for the suspicions of foul play in the death of Dr. John Taylor were bruises on the body as well as a needle puncture in the back. Sources say that the police suspect Dr. Taylor was injected with potassium, which then brought about a heart attack. The police have questioned numerous witnesses, including the three women he had married, two of them illegally. Other persons of interest are also being brought in for questioning, sources say. A large funeral took place at Stanford Memorial Church, complete with closed coffin, but the body was never present, due to the suspicious circumstances of the death. “It was all for show,” said one funeral attendee, who asked for anonymity.

17
Samantha

SO. THE VERDICT OF THE
inquest was what Jake had predicted. Wrongful death by person or persons unknown.

The next step is establishing the time of death. Always done so effortlessly on television, but in actuality extraordinarily difficult to do with any degree of accuracy—as I’m learning. According to the pathologist at the inquest, John Taylor could have died anytime between 2
PM
and 10
PM
on that Friday.

However, we know he checked in to the room at 2:30
PM
, and was alive and well. There was the fact that he ordered room service at 6:35: a steak, medium rare, roast potatoes, and a glass of white wine. Chocolate fondue for dessert. The young woman who had taken the order remembers it well because of their discussion about the chocolate fondue. “I told him it would take at least fifty minutes, and asked if he wanted his meal first, and for us to bring up the fondue when it was ready,” she said. “He was very clear that he wanted everything at the same time.” It wasn’t until 7:50 that the room service waiter knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, and again. No one came to the door. “It happens,” the girl said. At least that bookends the time we know he was alive (6:35
PM
), and a time he was likely not alive any longer (7:50
PM
).