“Yes, of course. It’s my case. Susan is already talking about bringing in homicide experts from San Jose. I want to solve this on my own.”
“All right,” Peter says and hangs up. I go back to watching videos. I understand now that Dr. Taylor had chosen a happy profession. The worried and anxious looks at the beginning of each procedure always gave way to smiles, hugs, and handshakes at the end as the parents viewed their sleeping but altered child. If Dr. Taylor had ever failed at surgery, it wasn’t recorded. His failures lay elsewhere, apparently.
41
MJ
I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT about our honeymoon, mine and John’s. I realize now, of course, that it was done with Deborah’s permission, that she must have even made the reservations. If she did, she chose well. I hate fancy hotels, chichi resorts. I’ve been to Hawaii, Honolulu, stayed at the Hilton, hated every minute of it. The chlorinated pools, the air of forced frivolity, the people chattering, not to each other, but into their cell phones. Parallel play, that’s what it was called when I was raising my boys, all children go through it. Now it seems as though adults have regressed into it as well.
John and I went up north, to Ukiah, to Vichy Springs, a 150-year-old hot springs resort in the hills. The room was small but clean, no television, no electronics of any kind. You couldn’t even get a signal on your cell phone, we were so remote. We sat on the deck outside our room and watched an ancient dog totter after the wild turkeys that ranged over the property. At night, after the other guests were asleep, we snuck down to the mineral baths and filled two of the iron tubs that are positioned next to the spring, under the stars, to the brim with the warm, fizzing water. It was like bathing in hot champagne. Against regulations we shed our clothes, no bathing suits, and lay in the tubs naked staring at the stars. Afterwards, we wrapped coarse towels around our bodies and ran through the cool air back to our plain but clean room.
The sex was okay. I mean, I’ve had better. John and I were more comfortable with each other fully clothed, preferably with garden implements in our hands and dirt on our knees from planting hydrangeas: mopheads, lacecaps. Whatever motivation John had for marrying me, it wasn’t for the sex.
Did this bother me? At first, maybe. One does fantasize about passion, about being the object of desire. But I was soon reconciled to it. We were so happy! At least I was. Happier than a hungry tick on a fat dog.
How can I describe how it felt to be shopping for houses with John! Looking at places with price tags of one million, two million dollars and more, casually dismissing each until we found the special one in Los Gatos.
At a glance you wouldn’t know why we loved it so. Just another California rancher, the pavement cracked from the Loma Prieta earthquake, the front yard a mess of brambles and tall grasses. A rat scurried out of the bushes as we walked up the path for the first time. But then we saw the backyard, encompassing two full lots, with hillocks and knolls that undulated to the property line. In the corner a legacy oak tree, at least two-hundred years old, spread its limbs in every direction. We counted two fig trees, a lemon tree, and two persimmons. In another corner, a tangle of blackberry bushes. All surrounded by a high fence covered in scarlet bougainvillea. John had tears in his eyes. Now, after seeing Deborah’s tightly disciplined, clean-edged landscaping, I understand. No one would be invited (or tempted) to sit on her manicured lawn. No dog would dare shit there.
John and I rarely fought with each other, but I remember one heated argument about something silly. About all things, a hibiscus bush I had trimmed too closely. He came home from a Saturday afternoon grocery run, and I was helping him put everything away when he looked out the window at the area of the garden I had been working in. He released an anguished wail. “What have you done?” He happened to be holding a carton of eggs, which he lifted above his head and hurled with all his strength at the wall. Eggs spattered over the counter and floor. “I told you to leave that alone,” he nearly screamed. I was in shock; I’d never seen this side of him before. I didn’t remember him telling me anything about the hibiscus, and said so. This made him even more furious. He raised his voice, his face red. “I don’t expect much of you, MJ,” he said. “But I do expect you not to mess with my garden.” I was crying at that point, but he just slammed out of the house, got into his car, and roared off. He was gone four hours, where he went, I’ll never know. He was calm when he returned. He did not apologize, though. We never spoke of that incident again, but it made me tread more cautiously around him than before. And that he called it his garden. Not ours. Never ours.
42
Samantha