“Why, I went home. My brother Thomas had finally arrived. We went to dinner. They’ll probably remember us at the local Chinese restaurant—we go there all the time. And we must have got home again by 9:30.”
“And all through dinner you were calling John Taylor.”
“Yes. When I got home at 7:45 and found the text, I was obviously worried. So I kept calling. But never got an answer.”
“Thank you, this is all very helpful,” the detective says. Then, suddenly, the interview is over. “You’re free to go now.” Despite her words, she remains seated, seemingly waiting for me to leave first. I clumsily extricate myself from my chair and stand, towering over her.
I have so many questions, so many anxieties. I leave the police station infinitely more distressed than when I went in.
20
Deborah
TONIGHT, FOR THE FIRST TIME in many years, I find myself thinking of Gerald. He was one of John’s colleagues when we first came to Stanford, before John founded the clinic. John had just finished one residency at UCSF, had started another one at Stanford, and what with paying back his tuition, a four-year-old, a toddler, and another baby on the way, we didn’t have much to spare. We were living in married student housing at the time, surrounded by the shrieks and wails of newborns and toddlers. No one even bothered bringing in the toys from the outdoor common area, they just let the kids out in the morning to pick up where they’d left off the previous afternoon. It was before all the fuss there is now about abductions; that anyone would steal one of our babies was the furthest thing from our minds. The kids wandered in and out of each other’s apartments, and at mealtimes you could hear the mothers up and down the sidewalk outside the complex calling for Sean or Dorothy or Steven. And if they were at your house, you simply sent them home. Life was simpler then.
Gerald and Joyce lived one floor down. They were about the same age as John, and, instead of having one child in nursery school, one in diapers, and one in the womb, they had two who were in the campus nursery school across the street. I used to walk with Gerald and our kids over there in the morning. Joyce was also a resident, in OBGYN, and between the kids and her job had a pretty grueling time of it. Gerald wasn’t one to do much of the dirty work.I wasn’t working and I was exhausted all the time. God knows how Joyce did it on a resident’s schedule.
I disliked early childhood parenting. My character wasn’t suited for it. I overheard a couple of other mothers talking about me once. She has no sense of whimsy, no sense of play, said one. And no sense of humor, said the other. I wasn’t hurt. What they said was the truth.
I wasn’t well suited for pregnancy, either. Mine were difficult—not healthwise, but I was nauseated throughout all three trimesters for all three children. People complimented me on not gaining much weight, that’s the way people thought then. But it was simply that I couldn’t keep anything down. And even in the privacy of my own bathroom, I hated the indignity of retching into the toilet, the foul taste in my mouth afterward. I’d brush my teeth vigorously and then scrub the toilet bowl to erase any hint of what I considered my weakness. John honestly didn’t notice. He’d pat my tummy affectionately the way men will, not seeing how much I despised that.