A Circle of Wives (5 page)

I am equally indifferent to alcohol. Yet John and I sat down each evening we were together with our wine. I think it was the image of the chardonnay in the glass that attracted me, the rich golden color, the cool feel of the glass containing the chilled liquid on my fingers. What sense I lack in my taste buds is most definitely compensated for by my epidermis. John had only to brush his fingers against my shoulder for me to shiver with desire.

I notice that cars are parking behind me, people are starting to walk up the pavement to the house. Deborah is in the doorway, beckoning people in.

I glance at the
Chronicle
obituary I brought with me. It is lying on the passenger seat. The photo of John when young, playing the piano. An unconventional one to choose for a death notice. John had been devilishly handsome—that youth, that mischievousness. No, the John I’d known was a tired man, a man beaten down by too much responsibility. Someone who had lost touch with joy. Yet he brought me joy. And I had believed that I introduced some pleasure to his life.

At this, the grief hits again. Strange how transient it is. Usually my emotions are stable, with predictable transitions from one state to another. But not this. The throbbing in the chest, why does it
feel
like the pain is centered there? Even the smallest children, who can’t know anything of the location of the heart, point to their chests when they’re in emotional distress. One could argue it has to do with our lungs, that the physiological pressure on them during times of extreme stress makes us associate our chests with emotion. After all, there’s no real connection between the heart and the mind. The heart is just a motor for channeling blood to the body’s extremities. Yet it does hurt there. One could hold both hands to one’s left breast to try to contain the pain.

If John had genuinely been my husband, I could announce his death to close friends and associates we had revealed our marriage to. I could grieve publicly. But I can’t slink back into my condo, husbandless, leaving people to wonder
what the hell happened?
For perhaps the first time in my adult life I find myself wondering what others might think. No. If nothing else, I’ll need to untangle the legalities. I suspect that will involve going to court to get my marriage annulled. So be it. If I can’t claim widowhood at least I’ll be single again. Not that I’ll ever remarry. I had been right to think it inhospitable territory for the likes of me.

I slowly get out of the car, smooth my dress down, and walk up the perfectly fitted gray flagstones to the imposing white house. No, I wouldn’t have placed John here, not with his missing buttons and his protruding stomach. He couldn’t get through a meal without staining his shirt. Yet I’ve seen his surgical handiwork, seen the children whose faces he’d fixed. He was a true artist, a perfectionist. He’d get calls at his office from women—and, increasingly, men, too—begging him to consider using his skill for cosmetic face-lifts, nose jobs, and cheekbone sculpting for vanity’s sake only. He refused, although his partners took such cases. Or maybe that was another smoke screen, another fantasy of the honorable life he wanted to live. It occurs to me that one can’t support a wife in a style like this in Palo Alto without raking in some pretty big bucks.

I slip quietly into the house. Quite the crowd. Easily two hundred people milling around, talking, even laughing—the solemnity of the church and cemetery shattered. Deborah had the sense to have the reception catered; young people in white shirts and black trousers are carrying trays with glasses of red and white wine and mineral water. Again, I’m struck by how composed Deborah is, by her apparent lack of sentiment. Only once does she betray any emotion, and that is when an unfortunate guest, a portly middle-aged woman, bumps into another guest and spills a glass of red wine on an Oriental carpet. Everyone freezes for a moment. Conversation ceases. They look at Deborah. She is in the center of a little group, and she also stops talking, her hand goes to her heart—that gesture again—her face reflecting the kind of horror and woe I’ve seen when giving my patients’ parents terrible news. Yet this is over a rug. Her reaction might be due to projection—after all, the woman just buried her husband; perhaps this incident triggered pent-up emotions. But Deborah is indeed distraught over the rug itself. When the guilty woman bends and starts scrubbing at the stain with a cocktail napkin, Deborah hisses at her to stop. She grabs the woman’s wrist, staying it while calling loudly for a wet towel. One of the waiters races into the kitchen and emerges with a damp tea towel. Even then, Deborah doesn’t trust anyone else. She kneels on the floor, places the damp towel on the stain, presses gently, then hands the towel to be rinsed off and brought back. She stays on the floor repeating the blotting cycle for so long that people start talking again, and gradually the noise level of the room is what it was before the incident. Deborah continues for a good twenty minutes, tending to the rug as if to an invalid.

Even though the crowd is still thick, I can’t help noticing one person. She stands out. Older than me by perhaps a decade. Midforties. Long, wavy, graying golden hair. An ankle-length, shimmering gold skirt that screams in the sea of black and gray. A long-sleeved, green sweater too heavy for this heat—you can see the sweat visible on her brow and neck. The kind of person who has
take pity on me
written all over her, and as a result creates a virtual black hole in the center of any room. I’ve never felt uncomfortable being alone. Being an observant wallflower pays off. I sip my mineral water and lime, and speak when someone addresses me, but feel no need to be constantly engaged.

I am so lost in thought that I realize I have inadvertently locked eyes with the woman in the gold skirt. I am dismayed to see her bearing down on me. She might have mistaken me for someone who needs rescuing. Perhaps she hopes I am another social outcast looking to commiserate. She stumbles as she approaches. I assume she’s had a bit too much to drink—an accurate assumption, as it turns out.

She opens just as I would have predicted. “I don’t really know anyone here,” she confesses, obviously expecting me to say something similar. Her voice, despite her nervousness, has a pleasant slow twang to it.
Ain-ee-wun hee-ahh.
Not a California native. I shrug, not wanting to encourage her. Sloppiness. It always repels me.

“So how do you know . . . the people here?” she asks.
Hee-ahh
again. She doesn’t wait for an answer. Her eyes and mouth both open wide. I can hear her breathing through her mouth. Distasteful.

Then I feel a hand at my elbow. It is cold and damp. I turn. It’s Deborah herself, who has apparently finished administering to the rug. The gold-skirt woman is staring at her, her mouth still open, clearly flummoxed. “So you two found each other,” Deborah says, gesturing at me, then at the woman. “Why am I not surprised.”

I am at a loss for words. Finally, I inanely stick out my hand. “Helen R—”

“Richter,” says Deborah. “Yes, I know. Helen Richter, meet MJ Taylor. I’m assuming you both know who I am.”

“Taylor?” I ask the woman in gold. “Are you related to John?”

“Related?” the woman begins to laugh. She’s most definitely had too much to drink. “I guess you could say so.”

“But not by blood,” suggests Deborah. She is smiling.

“No, not like that,” the woman says, then falls silent.

There’s an awkward pause as Deborah briefly accepts the goodbyes of a couple of guests, then gives us her attention again. “You two have more in common than you realize,” Deborah says. She appears as composed as ever. “In fact, we all three share something quite . . . intimate.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, but a drum has started pounding in my chest. I can feel blood rushing in my ears. I realize I haven’t eaten anything for nearly forty-eight hours.

“Excuse me,” I say, and stumble over to the nearest empty chair. I put my head between my knees. The dizziness passes.

I stay there for a moment, then gradually sit up, hoping to be left alone. But no. Both Deborah Taylor and MJ Taylor are standing next to me. MJ looks genuinely concerned and is holding out a glass of water. Deborah simply observes me.

“I think you’re beginning to get it,” says Deborah. She smiles. It strikes me that she doesn’t have a very nice face.

MJ still looks bewildered, she glances from me to Deborah and back again. “What’s going on?” she asks.
Goin aw-an.
Definitely southern roots.

“What’s going on is the inaugural meeting of John Taylor’s spouses,” says Deborah. “Would we qualify as a coven? A harem? What is the term for a group of wives?”

“Circle,” I say. “We are a circle of wives.” Then I close my eyes and this time don’t fight the dizziness.

6
MJ

I SOMEHOW GET HOME AFTER
that disastrous reception. How I did it without ending up with a DUI I don’t know. I’m not a drinker. It only takes a couple glasses of wine on an empty stomach to put me way under, and the wine coupled with the stress, and then the shock unhinged me completely. Three wives! And of course it had been me who jogged that woman’s elbow so she spilled her red wine all over Deborah’s apparently very valuable carpet. Well, despite knowing everything else, she didn’t seem to know
that.
Be grateful for small victories, I tell you. Or “Yee-
haw”
as my mother would say sarcastically when underwhelmed by an event.

How do I feel? Humiliated. I’ve clearly been outsmarted and outgunned at every point. Those fantasies I’d had of starting a quiet conversation with Deborah in which I calmly informed
her
of the situation now seem borderline hallucinogenic. Not since I dropped acid in my twenties have I felt so displaced from reality as standing in Deborah’s living room with her and that other “wife.” What was her name, Helga? Heidi? Something that begins with an “H.” She managed to hold on to her wits and, more importantly, her dignity. Even at my best I only muddle through life, grateful for the goodwill most people bear toward dumb creatures. At least Deborah doesn’t seem inclined to strip me of my assets, meaning, this house. “We’ll have that talk later,” she said to me before I left. Of course, only to me, as this . . . Henrietta? Haley? . . . clearly isn’t as concerned as I am about finances. I can’t help wondering what her circumstances are. Thank God I never quit my job. John had told me I could quit anytime, but I just hadn’t been able to imagine what I would
do
with myself all day. Come to think of it, John might have had similar worries, probably thought I’d be more likely to pry into matters if I didn’t spend eight-plus hours at the office every day. Besides, I don’t mind my job. I rather enjoy it. Bookkeeping for a software company in Silicon Valley distracts me—and affords me a certain level of respect. The sanity of numbers, the rationality of ratios, percentages. Accounting has always kept me grounded during rough patches in my life; I can only pray it will this time, too.

Since Deborah was constantly being interrupted by departing guests offering their final condolences, we didn’t discuss the details of our situation. Deborah had said, “Of course there’s no need for anyone else to know,” at which point I felt a certain amount of relief, but even so I’m unclear how it will work out. Will I claim John as dead? Will I take the death certificate to a lawyer to make sure the house is truly, officially, mine? That other
wife,
she’d nodded calmly, took it all in stride. The indignity of not being the final wife! It confirms that I lack something, that I hadn’t given John what he wanted, what he
really
needed. Not that Deborah seemed to feel anything of the sort. At least she was left twice. Not that I was actually
left.
(I have to keep reminding myself of that.) He could have done so. He could have asked me for a divorce when he met this third wife, this who
ever
. He could have just abandoned me. That he didn’t means something, it’s something to hold on to.

In the meantime what will I tell people? I suppose I can say that my husband suddenly died of a heart attack. That’s what the newspapers reported anyway. As Deborah said, “no one needs to know.” But this is all for another day when I can bear it. I am still a little tipsy and not exactly thinking clearly. I begin to get ready for bed when my house phone begins to ring.

I usually ignore numbers I don’t recognize from the caller ID, but this is a local call, which makes me curious, as does the fact that no one who knows me ever calls the landline. Everyone who needs to reach me knows my cell number. But this caller is extremely persistent, really,
aggressive
is a better word: The phone keeps ringing, and I let the call go to voicemail five times before I finally answer. “This is MJ.”

The caller turns out to be a reporter from the
Chronicle
. She got an anonymous tip. No, she doesn’t know from whom—it was anonymous.
Duh
, she practically says. Then, “Is it true that you were married to Dr. John Taylor? And that he had two other wives?” she asks.

I am floored. Who could have told her? How many people know? Deborah, or perhaps that other wife, although she hadn’t seemed the type to give much away. That type can surprise. This . . . Helen—that’s right, that’s her name—might have looked as though she had everything under wraps, with her elegant black sheath and those cheekbones and collarbone, but I’ve seen some truly spectacular meltdowns from her kind. My own tightly buttoned-up mother was a master of self-restraint, but when she broke, she broke big.