But Gerald. We were actually thrown together quite a bit. I was president of our apartment association, and he was on the management committee. He was poised to grow into one of those doctors who sit on the boards of the symphony and the ballet—civic-minded, and, once comfortable financially, looking to expand and enrich his mind. As it was, you’d hear classical music playing whenever you went over to Joyce and Gerald’s apartment. He subscribed to some sort of record collection series, the world’s greatest music, and was listening seriously to each track as he read the notes. Even I recognized the music, it had the familiar tunes from the Boston Pops concerts my parents used to love. But Gerald thought it was High Art.
He wasn’t a handsome man, Gerald. Not like John. He didn’t command a room, either. If anything, he was shy, and hung back from social encounters. I would have dismissed him as soft if it wasn’t for a streak of cruelty in him. A less-than-endearing habit he had was to catch flies—he was amazingly dexterous and swift with his reflexes—and pull the wings off, almost absentmindedly. He mostly repressed this streak, though, and refused to let it color any of his words or actions. This was, in my opinion, highly commendable. Unlike someone with a natural wellspring of kindness like John, Gerald had to work at it. He was also studying to be a surgeon, but with a cardiovascular specialization, and, he confided in me once when we were both a little tipsy at a party, that the biggest thrill of his life was cutting through the breastbone, opening the rib cage, and seeing a beating heart underneath, knowing he could stop it if he wished. “I make a point of studying my patients’ records, meeting with them more frequently than other surgeons, not because I’m more caring, but because I need that to cushion me from my instincts. I’m tempted, every time, to end that life, just because I can,” he told me that night. He was a much more admirable man than my husband.
The night I’m remembering lately, I was babysitting Joyce and Gerald’s children while they went out to dinner. They were loud children, even for three and four years old. I disliked their clamoring for story after story, but they knew they had the upper hand with their vocal chords, and I ended up reading until they finally went to sleep. I was quite pregnant by then, at least seven months along, and felt huge and clumsy as I walked around Joyce and Gerald’s tiny apartment, too restless to settle down and read or watch television, just willing them to come home so I could go to my own bed. When they arrived, Joyce was uncharacteristically drunk—usually she only drank soda water—and Gerald steered her straight to the bedroom. I wanted to leave, but felt it would have been rude to just disappear. As he left the room, Gerald said to me, “Stay for a moment, Deborah.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I want a couple moments alone with you,” he said. “Is that all right?”
But when we sat there he didn’t seem to have much to say. Suddenly he reached over and took my hand in his. He didn’t appear to have been drinking, and Joyce was always a stickler about having a designated driver. “Are you flirting?” I asked him as a joke, but he didn’t smile. “You are!” I said, and laughed, pointing to my belly. He still didn’t smile. But I saw that calculating look that I’d glimpse when he was operating on flies, and he reached out with his free hand, pulled my face to his and kissed me. It was a hard kiss. Just a hint of tongue and enormously erotic. I was astounded. I had genuinely thought passion was behind me.
Then Cecilia stumbled out of the bedroom and whatever might have happened stopped cold.
Whether or not things would have progressed further turned moot a week later. Gerald was in a head-on collision on University Avenue. Both he and Cecilia were killed outright. We heard the sirens that night, heard them keep coming, so many, so near to us, we knew it had to be bad. We listened to the shrieking and the silence that followed. John crossed himself, something he’s never been able to shake from his youth, and said “God help them.” We found out later it was Gerald and Cecilia, their car had gone over the yellow line and straight into a delivery van. They didn’t have a chance. The kids got spirited off by one of their grandparents, there was a quiet memorial service at the medical school, and that was that. But I often wonder what might have happened, had Cecilia not disturbed us, or had death not taken them.
Death. Always interrupting things.
21
Samantha
ALIBIS. JUST LIKE IN THE cop shows, almost everyone has one. There’s MJ’s—she was indeed accounted for at both Trader Joe’s and Walgreens. That odd-looking chick with the hat, was how one Walgreens employee remembered her, and she had in fact knocked down a cereal display at Trader Joe’s, shortly after 7 PM. Even if she had responded to John Taylor’s text at 6:47, she would hardly have been able to get to Palo Alto, much less there and back by the time one hundred boxes of Honey Nut O’s got knocked over.
Deborah was at a meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary for the children’s hospital, in Menlo Park. She had arrived at the house of the vice chair promptly at 6:25. “Deborah? She’s always five minutes early,” the vice chair had said.