A Circle of Wives by Alice Laplante Read Free Book Online Page B

the paper. The other wife I learned about at the funeral reception. No one accepts that, though. No one can believe I didn’t suspect something, anything.
    Samantha Adams: Well, didn’t you?
    MJ Taylor: Not at all.
    Samantha Adams: How could that be?
    MJ Taylor: I have to tell you, John simply inspired confidence. That large, imposing physique. His soothing authoritative voice. And don’t forget I was in love. I felt like a bride even after five years of marriage. I had no idea I was married to a Bluebeard. And unlike Bluebeard’s bride, when he told me there were places I couldn’t go, questions I couldn’t ask, I obeyed. Unlike her, I absolutely obeyed.
    Samantha Adams: Do you think others suspected? His secretary? His colleagues?
    MJ Taylor: I never called his office; he forbid me to, said it would disrupt his work. I was only allowed to contact him via email, or through his cell phone. I didn’t call the hotels he stayed at when he was out of town, I never showed up unannounced at any of his award dinners honoring him, any of the celebrations of his professional success. He wanted to keep his professional and personal lives separate, he told me, and I obeyed.
    Samantha Adams: Didn’t any of this strike you as strange?
    MJ Taylor: Not at the time. Or rather, John was strange. It was one of his charms, his eccentricity. He danced naked in the garden after dark. He kept caramel candies in his bedside table, popped them in his mouth during his frequent awakenings in the night, sucked them until he fell back asleep. Like a two-year-old, he suffered from night terrors, needed sweets as pacifiers.
And I was—am—a little strange myself. The hippy accountant. Fish out of water almost everywhere. Except when I’m with my brother, of course. I’m nothing if not a good big sister. But other than that, an oddball. Until John. I was truly known to him. Do you understand what I mean by that? That was John’s particular magic. My friends said this, too, you felt he saw you, really saw you. Such a man was worth waiting for. Even worth compromising for.
    Samantha Adams: Well, how did you meet John Taylor? You seem to come from such very different worlds.
    MJ Taylor: We met cute, as they say. Six years ago. I had just been laid off in one of those Silicon Valley purges that seem to happen every ten years or so. Downsizing. Or, as our CEO said when he made the announcement, rightsizing. Meaning me, and about forty thousand other people, were wrong. I went out for drinks with my fellow superfluous humans. Unusual, for me, I’m not a drinker. Neither was John, it was something we had in common. That’s what makes our first encounter in a bar so odd. That day I had a beer. And another. And another. One by one my fellow ex-employees left, and eventually I looked around and realized I didn’t know anyone. Surrounded by strangers! I’d drunk enough to become cranky, but I signaled the bartender, and ordered a real drink, in a real drinker’s glass. That’s how I ordered it, “Give me the drink that comes in that glass.” And I pointed. When it came, I gagged, it was so strong, so bitter. And I hate olives. I sent it back. I rejected it as inferior, as I had been rejected that morning. Rightsizing. Rightdrinking. My voice was too loud, and heads turned. Who expects to see an aging hippy, complete with long flowered skirt and beads, at a watering hole for software project managers and semiconductor sales reps? I was surrounded by young men (all young, young, young ) in identical uniforms, khaki pants and blue button-down shirts. Very few women, very few of anyone over the age of thirty. The guy sitting next to me at the bar was the exception.
This man—I guessed his age as midfifties—he reached out across the bar to my rejected drink, picked it up, and took a sip. He made a face. “This is clearly unacceptable,” he said, and smiled at me (an understanding smile). “Wait. Just you see,” he said. “I’ll make you the