Yesterday I saw a patient, a terminal case, and her heartbroken parents wanted another round of chemo—more suffering and for naught. So I vetoed it. I sent the child to the waiting room in the care of her nanny and was blunt. “If you love your daughter, you will not do this,” I said. “You will allow me to prescribe palliative measures so that the rest of her life is easier.” They were silent at first, the man weeping, the wife more stoic. Then the wife burst out, “Easy for you to say,” looking at my belly. “I remember when I was like you,” she said. “We were so happy to be pregnant. We didn’t know our baby already had this seed in her, that she was broken from the beginning. She seemed so perfect.”
I put my hand on my belly and shuddered to think of what I might have done to this child if John had lived. Then, I place my hand over the woman’s, and said, “I’m so very sorry. But you must think of the child first.”
I suppose the case of John’s murder is now closed. Well, thank God for that.
You seem like a sweet girl, Samantha Adams, but I am happy to see the back of you.
67
Deborah
RELIEF. THAT’S WHAT I WAS feeling as I got up this morning, showered, ate my breakfast fruit. MJ gone is a problem solved. The last big one, really.
It’s a misty day outside, so thick a mist that you actually get wet stepping outdoors as I do at 10 AM to do my grocery shopping. I take my cloth shopping bags and walk over to Whole Foods, two blocks away, ignore the large homeless man who always positions himself at the entrance, holding up what he considers are clever signs. Only $100,000 gets me a meal and a Mercedes, and I take my cappuccino dry, and Please no filet mignon, I’m a vegetarian. I’ve never seen anyone give him anything, but it must be a productive post or he wouldn’t be stationed there at all hours.
I walk through the aisles, picking out one avocado, three tomatoes, a can of soup. I tend to shop for only one or at most two days at a time. The structure of my life is gone without John around, and I’ve almost stopped expecting him to come home every morning. But I find myself still purchasing his favorite fruit, raspberries, and other treats that I’d pack for him to take to work in case he didn’t have time for lunch. These chores punctuated my life, gave it shape. Now there’s an amorphous stretch of time, bookended by sunrise in the morning—I still wake early—and sunset in the evening. I rarely stay up after ten. I look at my watch a lot.
Not all my friends have deserted me. Not all were appalled at the lies I had told them over the years. So I have lunch two or three times a week with these loyal women. I’m looking for something new, to fill the hours. Knitting won’t do it. Perhaps animal rescue or another satisfying charitable activity that involves working with your hands and body, not just organizing ladies for meetings and dinners and luncheons.
I go to the computer, surf the latest news. It’s only 1 PM. The day stretches out in front of me, but now the hours aren’t full of anxious dread, rather they hold promise. I am resourceful. I will find my way, again. Thank goodness money isn’t a problem.
I’ve just started scanning the headlines when the doorbell rings. I’m not expecting anyone, and when I peek through the curtains I see with horror that it’s the young police detective again. I arrange my face in an appropriate smile for greeting her and open the door. She is not smiling.
“May I come in?” she asks.
I am not happy, but I don’t let it show. I usher her into the living room, gesture to one of the chairs, and sit myself down on the adjoining sofa. She starts talking without preamble.
“So I was going through the telephone records of MJ Taylor’s cell phone for the week leading up to her death.” She pauses and looks at me, as if waiting for a comment.
I merely incline my head and say, “Go on.”
“The day of her death, she first phoned Helen Richter, then yourself.” She pauses again, but I don’t give anything away. “The call to Helen was short, less than a minute. But the call to you stretched for twenty minutes. That was at approximately 5:15 in the evening. We estimate she died shortly after that, as early as 6:30 PM, or at the very latest, 9 PM.”
I say nothing.
“What did you talk about?” the detective asks. “Helen Richter says that MJ just wanted to chat, but that she, Helen, didn’t want to be embroiled in any of MJ’s messy emotional stuff, so she politely but promptly got off the phone. Then MJ tried you. What did she want?”
“To blather on,” I finally say. “About John, about how sorry she was, about how much she missed him.”
“Did she actually confess to you?”
“Not in so many words. But amidst all the I’m sorries and how can I live with myselfs I gathered that she was trying to,” I say.
“And you didn’t contact me?” The color is high in the detective’s cheeks. She has stopped taking notes. “You seem to be taking it all very lightly.”
“I didn’t have anything definite of use,” I say. “As Helen correctly predicted, it was quite messy. I listened for a while . . .”
“Twenty minutes,” she interrupts.
“Yes, twenty minutes. Then I said goodbye and hung up.”
“Did you get the sense that she was in a desperate state?”
I pause while calculating what to say.
“Deborah, did she tell you she was going to commit suicide?” Her voice is louder.
“Yes,” I say finally. “She mentioned she was thinking about that. In fact.”