I even called Stanford Memorial Church, where the service was going to be held. They refused to give me any information, referred me to the funeral home managing the arrangements. But the funeral home also declined to release her data. God knows what I would have said if I had actually gotten this Deborah on the phone. I was distraught, not a word I use lightly. Not a state I’m used to being in.
That’s when I bought my ticket to San Francisco.
I push through the throng in the vestibule and enter the church. Inside, people are quieter, have put on their serious faces. The casket is already there, on a platform at the front. I am a little puzzled by this, I thought the traditional way was to carry it in at the start of the service. It isn’t open, thank God. That would have devastated me. No. Despite the size of the church, the seats are filling up. I wonder if I should feel proud of this, that my John commanded such devotion. I feel nothing. I have yet to feel anything at all.
I dressed carefully this morning, spending more time than I usually would. Given my personal taste in clothing, I’d had no trouble finding something black to pack in my overnight bag. I surveyed myself in the mirror of my room. I happen to be staying at the hotel John died in, according to the newspaper article, which also happens to be closest to the church on campus. I keep my hair neat, a dull brown shoulder-length bob that I pull back into a ponytail when I’m working. A little gray has started to creep in, not surprisingly, at age thirty-six. Let it. I’m not ashamed to be the age I am, to have earned the gray at my temples, the slight crows’ feet at the corners of my eyes. I don’t yet have to wear glasses. I wear no jewelry other than my wedding ring, and I had even protested against that when we got married. But John had insisted. And since he made few demands, I agreed. It was a small thing, but it mattered to him. Had mattered. It still feels so foreign, six months later, the cold metal against my finger.
I slide into a pew close enough to the front of the church to be part of the assembling congregation, but far enough back that I can observe the proceedings without being noticed. I first note the flowers. They are certainly exceptional—gorgeous arrangements wrapped around the altar and overflowing on either side of the casket. So very many tributes. Hundreds of them. A profusion of bright colors in that somber place—deep reds and blues and yellows splashed against the dark wooden pews. And the smell, overwhelming. The flowers’ cloyingly sweet perfume making breathing difficult. People are holding Kleenexes to their noses, popping pills. You can barely see the wood of the coffin, awash as it is in this sea of flowers.
I am most interested in the group congregating in front of the coffin, on the steps leading up to the altar. Clearly they’re the family and closest friends of the deceased. Of John, I remind myself. Right away I spot this wife, Deborah, from the photos. A tall, silver-haired woman impeccably dressed in a tailored black suit. She appears completely composed as she greets people. From where I’m sitting I can see she has makeup on, something I had thought of, but dismissed upon considering there was the possibility I could shed tears. Not that I’m a weeper by nature. But even the slight chance that I would suffer the indignity of a mascara-smeared face made me show up here with a naked visage. John’s children are less self-possessed than their mother. They stand apart from her, three young adults, smiling politely when approached, submitting with dignity to handshakes and hugs and quiet whispered words. The girl and the younger boy are both openly crying. The older boy—man—is trying to appear unmoved by what is happening, but failing altogether. His misery written on his face. They look like nice kids. Then a bell chimes and everyone takes their seats.
It is a Catholic service. I know from attending too many funerals for children I couldn’t save that having four priests processing up the aisle to stand at the altar is significant. Catholics take these things seriously. A four-priest Mass, like a four-alarm fire. A person of importance is being prayed into the afterlife. The John Taylor I knew would not have cared, but you can tell by watching this Deborah that such things matter enormously to her. She kneels, and stands and crosses herself, always a few seconds before everyone else. I find her the safest role model for what to do next. She never falters. If a tear cracks the smooth mask, I miss it. Although I do see her surreptitiously yank the robe of one of the altar boys to hide his torn jeans and sneakers as he and the priests walk back down the aisle.
I hesitate about whether to go to the cemetery. I’d hoped to briefly corner Deborah at the church, if I could get even half a minute, enough to get a phone number, an email address, something to follow up discreetly later. Given the size of the crowd, I now doubt whether I’ll have any further opportunity at the graveside. Nevertheless, I go. My other options are to hire a lawyer to contact Deborah more formally or bring in the police to charge a dead man for committing bigamy. Neither attracts me. I’m not even sure what I want. If only it were possible to forget the whole thing ever happened. Erase the last year of my life, obliterate the twelve months since I met John Taylor. I still feel married. I don’t even feel widowed—not yet. I know from my experience with grief counselors how that comes later.
Although the line of cars trailing behind the hearse is long, when we reach the cemetery it becomes clear that most of the funeral attendees hadn’t bothered, we are down to about one hundred people at most. The weather is gorgeous, one of those Northern California days with a deep blue sky of the type we rarely see in LA. A perfect mild temperature that allows people to go without a sweater or jacket. The cemetery is on a high hill overlooking the ocean. You can see a fog bank hovering offshore, but otherwise every object in the landscape for miles in every direction is visible. Below us a small seaside town, its back to the ocean. Farther north up the coast, is what looks like a military installation on a hill, complete with huge satellite dishes and control towers. Far to the south, where the coastline curves in a half-moon, another, larger town with a preponderance of white buildings that glow in the sunshine. John would have been happy on a day like this, in a place like this. Although he hated extreme weather, both hot and cold, he loved the sun. He’d open the patio doors of my condo in the early morning, before the day heated up, would drag one of my upholstered armchairs out onto the balcony and bask in the sunshine, have his coffee there. He hated my patio furniture, found it too unyielding, too uncomfortable. I’d been planning to replace it so he didn’t have to rearrange everything just to enjoy his coffee. He’ll never do that again, and the thought gets me right in the gut. I actually give out a little gasp of pain, so visceral is it. The man next to me leans closer. “Are you all right?” he asks. “Yes,” I manage to say, but I’m not. No.
The cemetery employees don’t lower the casket into the earth, but leave it sitting aboveground on a sort of metal apparatus. We are down to one priest, and he speaks only a few brief words. Amidst a few scattered amens people lay individual flowers on top of the casket, and that is it. No drama. Deborah reaches over and pats the coffin. A quick, almost impersonal touch, as if it were a piece of furniture, or a neighbor’s dog. Then the priest announces the reception, invites everyone to join Deborah at her house. And I hear Deborah’s voice for the first time. Deep and compelling. She cups her hands around her mouth so everyone can hear, but if you hadn’t actually seen her lips moving, you could have thought a man was speaking. “Everyone is welcome,” she calls out. I take one of the leaflets being distributed with the address and directions, get back in my rented car, and drive to the house of John’s real wife.
5
Helen
AS A PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGIST, I know grief. I’ve witnessed it in its rawest form, for nothing good ever comes from the death of a child. There are no mitigating circumstances. There are no words that comfort. “She’s no longer in pain” comes close, perhaps. But little else. I have been through this with parents dozens of times. You might consider that I would be inured to it.
But no. Sitting in my hot rental car in front of my husband’s house on a leafy Palo Alto street, I suddenly know th
e intimate meaning of the word. Grief. Bereavement. Bereft. So this is it, I think. The moment before, I had been considering a new case, a patient, six-year-old Cecilia, who has been suffering from what seems like a prolonged bout of flu. I had probed further. Bleeding from the gums. That is bad. Frequent nosebleeds. That is worse. The lab report has just come through by email. Not good results. Actually, terrible results. The problem with these mobile devices is bad news coming all the time. Should I inform the family of the lab results? my colleague wrote in the email. Ten minutes later, only after I have repeated the words family and lab and results until they are meaningless do I realize how large is the hole that has been blown in my heart by John’s death, his infidelity.
I roll down the window and try to fan some air into the hot car. I don’t want to approach the house yet. I have somehow beaten the crowd here and rather than knock on the door too early, I settle in to wait. The house surprises me. It’s a majestic colonial with white columns in front and a circular driveway edged with verdant bushes. A manor house from the Deep South. Tara. John had lived here, had been here when he wasn’t with me—not in some funky Victorian on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, as he had led me to believe. He must have been indulging in a fantasy when he talked about his San Francisco home. How the original anaglypta wall decorations were still intact, that the tall wooden windows wouldn’t open, that his office was lined with quarter-hewn oak. He’d been so convincing in his stories of the ancient plumbing, of the termite infestation. I’m stunned by the elaborateness of his fabrications. Such lies require forethought. He’d spoken of nights staying up until 3 AM doing dictations, pausing intermittently to admire the lights of the city below. He even described the pad thai of his favorite late-night delivery restaurant, his neighborhood café with Wi-Fi where he went over case notes, and how the noise from southbound 101 troubled him on evenings when the wind blew due south. He’d drawn me a picture of a life brimming with innocent busyness. We’d be sitting on the sofa, talking lazily about ourselves, still in that stage of discovery, and these things gradually came out. And all a fantasy. No. That is too kind. A con.
His reality was quite different. The house in front of me is pristine, perfect. No plumbing problems or termite infestations would be tolerated here. The hedges trimmed with military precision. Even the flowers are orderly, organized into discrete clusters in beds lined with evenly matched rocks, nothing growing free of constraint. The rosemary has been cut into boxy squares, the lavender shaped into neat hillocks. So this was John’s real life.
Oddly enough, my sense of being injured, of being betrayed, doesn’t take away from my grief. I still ache for him, for the John I had known. We could have worked it out, I tell him, now. You didn’t have to go and die over it. At the funeral, amidst the interminable readings and sermons and eulogies some dim-witted medical technician from John’s practice mixed her metaphors in an eager attempt to pay him homage. His heart was as warm as Texas. But Texas isn’t warm, it’s damn hot, I’d found myself silently arguing with her. Besides, that comparison was supposed to be about size. A heart as big as Texas, was the cliché she’d been searching for.
We did have a love that big. And I’d been proud of the drama-free life John and I were leading. So different from my early years. Little did I know what drama I was actually involved in. I thought our quiet conversation signaled contentment, two pleasantly exhausted professionals communicating in ways deeper than words. And then to bed. And then to bed. I’m going to miss that. For John adored my body. That’s his word, not mine. Adored. I’ve always found the sight of my slight, bony frame distasteful. But he’d clasp his hands around my waist and marvel that his fingers could almost touch. He’d lift my arms up to admire their leanness. I had begun to think of myself differently. As attractive. The fact is, I simply don’t much care for eating. I think of it as consuming the necessary units of nutrition. My vegetable matter, my proteins, my fluids. I’m indifferent to the forms my units take. I wouldn’t say I’m fastidious—if anything, the opposite. Everything is bland, nothing sticks out as particularly appetizing. A mild form of ageusia. Hypogeusia, to be accurate. An inability to taste. Not enough to put me at risk, healthwise, but it doesn’t lend itself to overeating. I tend to pick my foods by colors. Deep greens, deep yellows, deep reds.
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 f
or 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.
A Circle of Wives Page 3
