The Necklace: A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea

The Necklace: A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea Cheryl Jarvis One day a woman of average means waltzes by a jewellery shop window and spots a ?20,000 diamond necklace. She can't get it out of her head. Eventually she gets the idea of sharing it with friends, persuading them to chip in a grand each to buy the necklace. This is the true story of 13 ordinary women, and one extraordinary adventure.The Necklace is the amazing true story of thirteen women who didn't want to give up on their dreams. They clubbed together to buy a gorgeous diamond necklace, agreeing that each of them would have it for four weeks at a time. They would meet every month to find out what the necklace (now dubbed 'Jewelia') had been up to. The club had some rules: if someone went to Paris, they got the necklace. At least once, everyone had to wear the necklace whilst making love.After two years, the necklace had been loaned out to nieces, grandmas, friends and granddaughters. It had been worn by brides and colleagues and sisters and friends. And when it was their turn for the necklace the women of Jewelia wore it for both the daily routines and special events of their lives, to teach school, to work in the farmer's market, to go fishing and skydiving. It started something.The Necklace is the story of how an object of desire became a catalyst for connection, friendship and more. It's like Calendar Girls, only maybe a bit more glamorous, glitzy and sparkling. The Necklace A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea Cheryl Jarvis For our families and friends and for women everywhere who imagine possibilities Here we are, women who have been the beneficiaries of education, resources, reproductive choice, travel opportunities, the Internet and a longer life expectancy than women have ever had in history. What can and will we do? – Jean Shinoda Bolen Table of Contents Cover Page (#ucf72d0d9-07b1-56e6-87b0-5ea24e93dcf1) Title Page (#uba15e046-146a-5cb6-8dd1-9d1424042884) Dedication (#uf34ba11e-b492-5697-9c4d-74f0b40b807e) Epigraph (#u2bb2d9bc-1de9-54b9-853c-71a7d09ede79) PREFACE (#u14f3113b-1878-5549-bf30-84c9b664228b) CHAPTER ONE Jonell McLain, the dreamer (#u534b0edb-5ac0-5f4e-b36e-aa8c8de3e657) CHAPTER TWO Patti Channer, the shopping queen (#ub643d4e5-783f-5ff7-9ad5-3cf95a4f3546) CHAPTER THREE Priscilla Van Gundy, the loner (#u0f9228ea-a7e9-54f2-bb63-0c553d8e508c) CHAPTER FOUR Dale Muegenburg, the stay-at-home wife (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIVE Maggie Hood, the adventurer (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER SIX Tina Osborne, the reluctant (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER SEVEN Mary Osborn, the competitor (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER EIGHT Mary Karrh, the practical one (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER NINE Nancy Huff, the extrovert (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TEN Roz Warner, the leader (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER ELEVEN Jone Pence, the designer (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWELVE Mary O’Connor, the rock’n’roller (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTEEN Roz McGrath, the feminist (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Experiment (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) PREFACE (#ulink_96e8bd3d-ce0a-501f-b639-de3e22d984b7) ON THE 18TH OF SEPTEMBER 2004, thirteen women in Ventura, California clubbed together to buy a diamond necklace. Within months the media had picked up their story. People magazine ran a feature. Katie Couric reported on the venture for the Today show. Other segments followed on magazine and news programmes in Los Angeles. Fox Searchlight Pictures bought the movie rights. Because the group was in its infancy, the flurry of news stories barely got beyond the purchase. No one knew then where the necklace would lead, least of all the thirteen women who’d bought it. How would sharing a necklace work? Would there be catfights and chaos? Did they all want the same thing from the experiment? Would friendships fizzle and marriages falter? How would it affect them all? Here’s the whole story, the real story, from the first sparkle. CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_34c32176-86f1-56fc-a90d-868073285059) Jonell McLain, the dreamer Making an idea happen JONELL MCLAIN WAS SITTING LOOKING at the piles of paper that surrounded her, struggling not to feel overwhelmed. She wondered why she could never clear her desk, never cross off the forty-five tasks on her to-do list. Were there always forty-five things on that list? It certainly seemed that way. She felt like Sisyphus, the king in the Greek legend who was condemned to push the same rock up a mountain, over and over again. Some days she felt as though all she accomplished was moving piles from one corner of her desk to another. Some papers she could swear she moved a hundred times. Part of the problem was that she was full of ideas, so she was continually adding new projects to the list. Executing them – well, that was a skill she hadn’t yet totally mastered. Today, the list didn’t make her feel as queasy as it often did. She’d just completed a deal on a house and was feeling the high that estate agents get when they finally receive their big commission cheques. This one represented three months of work and emotional exhaustion. People bought homes when they were undergoing major life changes, so naturally they were on edge, but the shock of prices on the West Coast made buyers moving to California especially anxious. Because the work was so stressful, Jonell always rewarded herself after each deal was completed. She hadn’t decided what to buy herself this time but she headed to the shopping centre to buy her clients a luxurious box of chocolates, part of a gift basket she’d leave to welcome them to their new home. The Pacific View Mall was the only shopping centre in Ventura, a California beach town 96 kilometres north of Los Angeles. Jonell walked quickly through the dusty-pink shopping enclave, slowing only to glance into the windows of Van Gundy & Sons, a decades-old, family-owned jewellery shop – the Tiffany’s of Ventura. And despite her errand, she came to a stop. She stared. In the centre display case a diamond necklace glittered against black velvet. A few years earlier she’d searched unsuccessfully for a simple rhinestone necklace to wear to a formal event. Now here it was, the exact one she’d had in mind. The diamonds were strung in a single strand all the way to the clasp; the centre diamond was the largest and the two closest to the clasp the smallest. The gradations were minuscule, the effect breathtaking. But this was Van Gundy’s. There was no way this necklace was made of rhinestones. Jonell rarely wore good jewellery, though she owned a little of it – diamond wedding rings from two husbands, 14-carat-gold earrings, pricey watches. Luxury jewellery was something else. She wondered what a really expensive piece of jewellery looked like up close. What would it feel like to wear something so beautiful and extravagant? On a whim she entered the shop. ‘Could I see the necklace in the window?’ she asked nonchalantly, as if she did this every day. She reached up to touch the delicate gold chain she wore. Back in 1972 a boyfriend had given her this necklace, which had a peace symbol pendant, and in 2003, at the start of the war in Iraq, she’d put it on again. She placed the diamond stunner over her old gold charm. It was, she thought, simply exquisite – and exquisitely simple. She took a breath, and as she breathed out, she asked the price. ‘Thirty-seven thousand dollars.’ Jonell couldn’t stop herself gasping. All she could think was: ‘Who buys a thirty-seven-thousand-dollar necklace?’ She looked in the mirror again. She thought back to the choices she’d made in her life, the ones that guaranteed she could never afford a necklace like this. She thought about how different her life might have been if she’d invested herself more in a career or married a wealthy man. If she’d worked harder, maybe she could have generated the kind of money that would enable her to indulge in this kind of luxury. In the end, none of this mattered, not really. In a world overflowing with need, the idea of owning a thirty-seven-thousand-dollar necklace was morally indefensible to Jonell, who’d acted as a mentor for disadvantaged kids for six years. Lost in these thoughts, she heard only snippets of the saleswoman’s description: ‘118 diamonds…brilliant-cut…mined from non-conflict areas…15.24 carats.’ Fifteen carats sounded ostentatious and Jonell didn’t like ostentation. She looked at it again. There was nothing ostentatious about this necklace. The diamonds were so small, just right for her five-foot-two-inch frame, yet circling clear around her neck they felt substantial. What was magnetic was their radiance. She’d never seen diamonds shimmer like these. Jonell hesitated to take off the necklace. After admiring it for another minute, she laid it back on the counter and thanked the saleswoman for her time. Over the next three weeks Jonell was surprised how often she thought about the diamond necklace. When she was next back at the shopping centre with her eighty-six-year-old mother, she noticed it was still in the window. ‘Mum, I want to show you something,’ she said, and led her mother into the shop as if she were seven and heading for her first Barbie doll. ‘Try it on.’ Her mother’s eyes widened as she clicked the clasp. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered. Jonell’s mother knew quality, and her admiration confirmed for Jonell that the necklace was classic, timeless. When Jonell peeled her eyes away from the diamonds brightening her mother’s neck, she glanced at the price tag: twenty-two thousand dollars. It had been reduced. And then, on the counter, she noticed an advert announced a sale in which the shop would take bids on any item of jewellery on display. Jonell remembered being thirty and in need of a respite. Burned out from her job as a speech therapist in Santa Cruz and weary of her long-term boyfriend, she’d gone to New York City to live with her best friend from her final year at the University of Southern California. There, Jonell witnessed her room-mate washing her face with Perrier water. She saw her wrap herself in a full-length lynx coat. That’s when Jonell took stock of her own chances for such luxuries. They were slim to nil. That reality aroused not envy but curiosity: why was luxury accessible to so few? After six months, Jonell left New York to return to her native California, but the question had never left her. Now it loomed large again. Why is it, she wondered, that we can stand shoulder to shoulder to enjoy sumptuous masterpieces in art museums? That whole crowds can admire magnificent landscapes together in national parks? Why can’t we share personal luxuries the same way? And an idea was born: ‘I could wear a luxury item if I bought it together with some other women. No one woman needs to have a fifteen-carat diamond necklace all the time. But’ – and here she paused as the idea took shape – ‘wouldn’t it be delightful to have one every now and then? ‘I can’t spend twenty-two thousand dollars on myself, but I can spend one thousand…A thousand dollars would not be out of reach for many of my friends…If I could convince, say, at least another eleven women to come in with me, I could bid twelve thousand…It’s already come down by fifteen thousand dollars. Why not another ten?’ And so the idea was born. Jonell started phoning friends and colleagues immediately. She talked to the women in her walking group and investment club. Women she’d met at seminars, parties, charity events, tempting them with the idea of owning an amazing diamond necklace for one month each year. Most of the women she approached said no. No money. No time. No interest in diamonds. The responses fired off rapidly: ‘A formula for disaster. Everyone will fight over it.’ ‘What’s the point of buying diamonds?’ ‘I can get a better deal at the jewellery market.’ ‘You’ll never get twelve women to get along with each other.’ ‘If I’m going to spend a thousand dollars, I want something just for myself.’ Even her mother fired off a round: ‘You’ll lose friends over this.’ Some comments unsettled Jonell, filling her with self-doubt. Some spurred her to argue. Some she ignored. But she stayed fixed on her goal. She went back again to the women who’d said no. She asked new women. By two months later she had a group of seven. Close enough, she decided. She could put the balance on her Visa card and by the time the bill arrived, she’d have found the rest. Three generations of Van Gundy men were in the shop on the Saturday of the sale: Kent Van Gundy, age eighty, who’d started the business in 1957 and was now retired; Tom Van Gundy, fifty-four, his son, who’d taken over the business; and Sean, twenty-nine, his grandson, who now managed the shop. Tom says he’ll never forget that day. Sean won’t forget it either. These women were different from the ones the Van Gundys usually encountered. So many women who come into jewellery stores aren’t happy, says Sean. Their eyes are anxious, their faces tense. Some are in tears. They’re lonely and looking for someone to talk to. Something’s missing in their lives, and they’re trying to fill the empty space. These women rushed into the shop smiling, eager to be there shortly after the doors opened to beat any competing bidders. Jonell showed the necklace to the four who came with her: two who’d said yes to her proposition, two who’d said no but didn’t want to miss the fun. Mary Karrh, a head taller than Jonell, found herself so far removed from her daily life as an accountant that her expression was one of wonder. If she’d had any fears about what she’d committed her money to, they disappeared once she was face-to-face with the diamond necklace. ‘Wow, it looks like a million bucks,’ she said. ‘Try it on, Mary,’ Jonell urged. The other women huddled around Mary, who found herself standing even taller. She sounded surprised as she said, ‘I can see myself wearing this.’ Maggie Hood represented the quintessential California girl with blonde hair and a firm body. She moved back and forth, one minute admiring the necklace, the next flirting with a good-looking salesman. ‘We need pictures!’ said Jonell. One of the women along for the camaraderie ran out into the shopping centre to buy a disposable camera. Each woman – Jonell, Mary, Maggie, the two friends – posed for a photo with the diamonds. They vamped and giggled, amazed that three of them were even thinking of buying such a thing, even as a ‘time-share’. Obviously these giddy women didn’t buy diamonds every day. Throughout the posing, there was awe. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ they said. They said it over and over. They said it when they saw it on one another and when they looked at themselves in the mirror. They breathed it when Mary wore it with her sleeveless shirt and khaki shorts. They repeated it when Maggie tried it on with her vest top and jeans. And they sighed it as the diamonds lay against Jonell’s gold peace symbol charm. ‘This necklace is so beautiful!’ The women swept everyone up in their excitement as they grinned and gushed – and anticipated. Then it was time for Jonell to hand Tom Van Gundy an envelope. In it was a sheet of paper with her handwritten bid and the names of twelve women, four of them followed by question marks. As she proffered her bid, she was confident and her grin playful but she was nervous. She was asking him to cut his price nearly in half. She was grateful for her estate agency experience in negotiating prices but she knew all too well that coming in with a low bid was a gamble. The scene had caught all three Van Gundy men in its headlights. Nothing like this had ever happened in their shop. It wasn’t just the buzz in the place. In a quarter of a century of working in the business, Tom Van Gundy couldn’t recall seeing a single woman buy expensive jewellery for herself. Women fuelled the desire but they waited for the men in their lives to make the purchase. Tom almost hated to take his eyes off these spirited women to look at their bid: twelve thousand dollars. He winced inwardly. Jewellery shops can have large mark-ups – that’s the reason why so many chain jewellery stores offer discounts of up to 70 per cent. Being in the jewellery business meant being a negotiator, and in this shop Tom usually handled negotiations himself. However, on high-priced items – and this was definitely a high-priced item – he needed clearance. This time it might be tough to get. Still, he managed to look and sound kind when he said to Jonell, ‘I need to have a look at the figures.’ He went to the back room. Priscilla Van Gundy, his wife and chief financial officer, was there, hunched over the books, hyper-focused, trying to tune out the noise. She usually worked in the administrative office across the street, but because of the sale she was squeezed in the store’s small stockroom between shelves of inventory and a desk that doubled as a kitchen table. Priscilla had heard the commotion. She’d heard the salespeople talking about the group of women, but she hadn’t left her desk to go and have a look. She avoided looking at customers’ faces. She didn’t want negotiations to get personal. ‘There’s a group of women who want a special price on the diamond necklace,’ Tom said to the thick auburn hair hiding his wife’s face. ‘What can we sell it for?’ Priscilla tapped figures into the calculator: one for the actual cost of the necklace, another for the number of months it had been in the store, a third for what they needed to make a profit. ‘Eighteen thousand,’ she said. Tom knew the number wasn’t going to be acceptable, but he was used to the to-and-fro of negotiations. He went back to the front of the shop to counter Jonell’s bid with Priscilla’s offer. ‘Not low enough,’ Jonell said. ‘We only want to spend a thousand per woman.’ Tom had anticipated the answer. He nodded his head and returned to the back room. ‘Can we go any lower?’ he asked Priscilla. She felt his apprehension. After thirty-three years of marriage she could read his emotions like a spreadsheet. She turned to the calculator again, tapping in more numbers. ‘Seventeen thousand,’ she answered. Tom scratched out the twelve-thousand-dollar figure on Jonell’s sheet of paper, scribbled fifteen thousand, and showed it to Priscilla. ‘Can we do this?’ he asked. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ ‘It could be good for business.’ ‘We sell it for that and we won’t have a business.’ Tom was silent. Priscilla said more firmly, ‘That is not going to happen.’ Tom looked at his wife. He remembered how much more relaxed he’d become after she started working with him six years ago. She had her finger on every dollar, and she was good at it. The business was doing well in large part because of her. More importantly, he trusted her more than anyone. But little of that mattered today. Today he wanted her to be flexible. ‘I just have a feeling about this,’ he said to her. ‘You sell it for fifteen thousand and we make no profit.’ At that moment Tom Van Gundy realised he was willing to let go of any profit. In part, he didn’t want to disappoint so many women. It was the same feeling he’d had when he played football in high school and didn’t want to disappoint the fans. He knew that turning away twelve women wouldn’t be good business either. Deep down inside, though, he wanted to see Priscilla smile the way these women were smiling. Six months earlier her sister Doreen had died of cancer and he hadn’t seen her smile wholeheartedly since then. Something more important was happening here than making money, something so important that it gave him an idea. Tom Van Gundy rarely acted without his wife’s consent, and he knew if he continued to debate the issue with her, he’d lose. Deciding that it was better to plead forgiveness afterwards than ask permission before, he decided to deal with the repercussions later. He walked out of the back room to hand Jonell the sheet of paper on which he’d scribbled fifteen thousand. ‘I’ll give it to you for this price,’ he said, ‘but on one condition. I want you to let my wife be in your group.’ He had no idea how Priscilla would feel about it or if she’d even participate. He just knew he wanted these women in her life. Jonell looked at the attractive, soft-spoken man in front of her. She didn’t know why he wanted his wife in the group, nor did she know who his wife was or if she’d like her or if any of the women she’d recruited would like her. But the whole idea was about inclusion and sharing, so she didn’t hesitate. ‘It’s a deal,’ she said. Jonell wasn’t worried about Tom’s wife. She was worried that the women she’d worked so doggedly to recruit would balk at paying nearly two hundred dollars extra each. Then what was she going to do? She hid her concern behind her most radiant smile of the day. Tom returned to the back room. ‘I gave it to them for fifteen thousand,’ he said, again to her bowed head, ‘but you get to be in the group.’ Priscilla looked up at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘The group of women. You get to be part of it.’ She knew that he felt concerned about dropping the price, so her tetchy retorts stayed in her head. Had he lost his mind? Had he forgotten that the shopping centre takes 7 per cent and the salesman a 3 per cent commission? They wouldn’t even cover their costs. She was always the bulldog, he the golden retriever. Nothing ever changed. But what was the point of arguing? It was a done deal. ‘Whatever,’ she said. And that was all she said. Priscilla stayed in the back room. She had no curiosity about the women. She had no interest in being part of the group. She had no interest in owning a necklace she could have borrowed any time she wanted anyway. All she could think was that if her husband kept making deals like this they’d be out of business. She went back to the books to try to work out a way to make up for the day’s losses. But Tom Van Gundy saw something his wife didn’t. He saw a group of women unlike any others he’d come across in his twenty-seven years of selling to women, talking to women, understanding women. He saw a collective vitality, an unexpected opportunity. He saw possibility. Possibility was what Jonell’s vision was all about. It wasn’t about a necklace as an accessory. It wasn’t about diamonds as status or investment. It was about a necklace as a social experiment. A way to bring women together to see what would happen. Could the necklace become greater than the sum of its links, thirteen voices stronger than one? Jonell’s confidence wasn’t misplaced. By the time her Visa bill arrived three weeks later, she’d found the final four investors she needed. Apart from the jeweller’s disgruntled wife, there were old friends, new friends and friends of friends. Their ages ranged between fifty and sixty-two so all but one qualified as part of that eclectic generation known as the ‘baby boomers’. One of them had been married and faithful to one man for thirty-plus years, while another had had three husbands and dozens of lovers, and some were single but dating. Some were childless while the rest had up to four children, of ages ranging from ten to grown-up. There were doting grandmothers, card-carrying conservatives and lifelong liberals. Some had advanced degrees, others high school diplomas. They had stuck to one career or jumped from job to job, and they worked in finance and farming, medicine and teaching, business and property, media and law. Some came from wealthy families and others were completely self-made. They were Catholic and Jewish, feminist and traditionalist, blonde and grey-haired. No woman said yes to Jonell’s proposition just because she was interested in jewellery or diamonds. No woman said yes to the necklace because she lusted to wear it. Some wrote a cheque without even seeing it. Each bought a share because, as Tom sensed intuitively, it represented possibility. What the women didn’t know was that over the next few years the necklace would animate their lives in ways they could never have imagined. More importantly, it would start a conversation. About materialism and conspicuous consumption, ownership and non-attachment. About what it means today to be a woman in her fifties, potentially looking at another thirty to forty years of life. About the connections we make and the legacies we leave. This is the story of a necklace but it isn’t the story of a string of stones. It’s the story of thirteen women who transformed a symbol of exclusivity into a symbol of inclusivity and, in the process, remapped the journey through the second half of their lives. CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_554ca285-3f27-5449-9b8d-3ecc0987fb02) Patti Channer, the shopping queen Rethinking her love of possessions JONELL SAILED OUT OF VAN GUNDY’S with the diamond necklace and a quick prayer that the other women would come through with their cheques. But she didn’t have time to worry about that now. She was throwing a party that evening and, being the last-minute hostess that she was, she still needed to clean the house and sweep the patio and pick up the food. But nothing could dull the excitement she felt at the thought of wearing the diamond necklace. At six o’clock, she slipped into her black yoga leggings and a silk zip-up top the colour of aubergines. Her philosophy of clothes was simple styles and the best of fabrics. She circled her neck with the diamonds and stared at them. Looking in the mirror, she realised that the necklace was perfect for her. Her short blond hair, her frameless glasses, her minimalist make-up – the necklace looked good with all of it, including her one concession to glamour, her acrylic nails with their deep red varnish. She adjusted the arc of the diamonds to the scoop of her neckline. No question, she thought, this necklace is amazing. I think I’ll keep it. The feeling of possessiveness vanished as quickly as it arose, but Jonell was astonished to discover that she had it at all. The next week, Jonell composed her first e-mail to the women: ‘It’s about time we got this fabulous group together. Let’s meet Thursday, 11 November, at four p.m. Please come prepared to talk about the following: the necklace’s name, how to divide up the time, insurance, considerations (how we’ll refer to rules) and anything else that seems fun, relevant or not…You realise we have created the possibility of being in each other’s lives for the rest of the ride. I can’t wait to see what happens next.’ Priscilla Van Gundy read the e-mail. She’d forgotten all about the necklace and the deal her husband had negotiated; she’d probably repressed it since it was a financial loss for them. ‘Jeez,’ she thought, ‘Who’s got time for a meeting with a bunch of women?’ Her reply was terse: ‘I won’t be able to make it. I have to work.’ Seven kilometres away, Patti Channer read the same e-mail, relieved to see an agenda. Patti liked structure. She had agreed that the meeting could be held at her house, so she replied playfully to the e-mail: ‘I’ll be there.’ Well, she pulled it off, Patti thought to herself, remembering their conversation four weeks ago when Jonell had first approached her. Patti had been driving around downtown Ventura, running errands and listening to a talk show on the radio when her mobile phone rang. ‘I want to run something by you,’ Jonell said in her typically excited way, talking faster than the rate of knots. Nothing unusual there. What Patti hadn’t heard before was Jonell speed-talking about – could it be jewellery? A diamond necklace? Patti pulled over to the kerb so she could focus. ‘If you and I could do this together and get ten others…’ The more Jonell talked, the more confused Patti became. How could Jonell want to spend money on something she’d always considered frivolous? Jonell hadn’t even bothered to replace some jewellery that had been stolen from her house. She’d met the loss with dismissal: ‘They were just things.’ When the two of them went shopping in Santa Monica last year, Patti bought an expensive shoulder bag of crochet-wrapped burgundy leather and Jonell was aghast. ‘How can you spend five hundred dollars on a handbag?’ she asked. Patti defended the purchase as a piece of art. Jonell parried that with the fact that she could feed six people for a month with the money. It was easy to understand how the two women had arrived at their different philosophies of spending. Jonell’s income from estate agency commission fluctuated, so she had to be careful to plan for the troughs with the money from the peaks. Patti’s income from managing her husband’s dental practice was steady. Jonell had two children she helped financially. Patti didn’t have children, so she didn’t have to deny herself. It’d been a running tension between them for the twenty-five years they’d been friends. That shopping excursion had ended with division: Jonell disappeared into a bookshop while Patti dashed off to contemplate the purchase of a chiffon poncho that looked like a butterfly. Patti’s thoughts were yanked back to the conversation by Jonell’s command: ‘You have to go and try it on.’ ‘I don’t need to. I’m in.’ ‘This could be a really great possibility.’ ‘Fine, I’m in.’ ‘You have to go and see it.’ ‘Fine, fine, I’m in,’ she said for the third time. Patti didn’t need convincing. The idea was so out of character for Jonell that Patti knew it’d be about something else and she knew it’d be interesting. Jonell was the only woman in Ventura who could have tempted her to say, ‘I’m in.’ She didn’t need to see it. The next day, Patti stood in front of the window at Van Gundy’s. ‘Yes, it’s a gorgeous necklace; I’ll give Jonell that,’ she thought as she leaned into the display window. But it’s not something I’d buy for myself. At dinner that evening she talked to Gary about the necklace. Gary was the dashing dentist she’d been married to for thirty-five years. When he sauntered his six-foot-one-inch lanky self into his fortieth high school reunion, the women dubbed him both ‘best looking’ and ‘best preserved’. His brown hair didn’t have more than a few flecks of grey, and his curls were still thick. After more than three decades together, she knew how Gary, a child of scarcity, would respond: ‘How much is it going to cost?’ ‘A thousand dollars.’ ‘You’re going to share it? That’s going to work?’ ‘Of course it’s going to work. Women make things work.’ ‘Well, maybe I’ll get the guys together and buy a Ferrari.’ ‘You think that’s going to work?’ Gary laughed, and Patti volleyed with her deep raucous laugh. Gary was sceptical that the ‘time-share’ would work and imagined some kind of bitchy Desperate Housewives scenario. But he’d found that married life went more smoothly if he didn’t interfere with Patti’s spending. She earned it, so she could do what she wanted with it. Gary chose to look on the bright side: at least now he’d never have to buy her a diamond necklace, thank god. For the first gathering Patti readied her beach house, a cosy, earth-toned semidetached decorated with seascapes and shells, with a bedroom loft upstairs and a redwood sundeck outside. She set out cheeses – French Brie and Irish Dubliner – red and white wines and mineral water. She chilled a bottle of champagne in her silver wine bucket. She lit the gas fireplace, the white pillar candles on the mantelpiece, and the white votive candles on the coffee table. Patti had a flair for entertaining. This was a meeting, however, not a dinner party, so she’d decided on casual hospitality. She had no idea what was going to happen in her living room. She hoped it wouldn’t turn into a free-for-all. At four o’clock, Jonell strode in carrying some soft drinks, and the others clinked in with bottles of wine and champagne. Soon the scene was like a replay of the one in Van Gundy’s – only with three times as many women, all talking at once. Each took a turn trying on the necklace in front of the mirror, immediately becoming the centre of attention as the others crowded around. Patti photographed each woman with her Sony Cyber-shot camera. Some patted the diamonds like society women in an Edith Wharton novel. Some effervesced like teenagers. Those who’d already tried it on in the shop tried it on again, but they did so hurriedly because that wasn’t what this meeting was about. After the ceremonial Trying On of the Necklace, the women squeezed together on the taupe leather sofas and on ottomans and chairs scattered around the small living room. Jonell began the storytelling as if they were gathered around a fire at the beach. She talked about herself, her idea, her excitement, and this great group of women. After her narrative, she asked each woman to say something about herself. She couldn’t have known what the other women were thinking as they half-listened, half-analysed what they were doing in this living room, with these women and that necklace. Eleven women – two couldn’t make it – all white. Eight blond, two brunette, one grey. Nine with wedding rings, one in heels. Roz McGrath had been analysing the composition of the group as she looked around the room. ‘Where are the women of colour?’ she wondered. ‘Are there only two brunettes here?’ She was sceptical of blondes – in her experience she’d found most ‘blonde jokes’ too close to the truth. She didn’t know most of these women but she wanted them to know who she was. ‘I’m a feminist,’ were the first words out of her mouth. Nancy Huff winced. ‘The seventies are over,’ she thought. ‘If this is going to turn into some consciousness-raising group I’m out of here.’ But she kept quiet. When the last woman finished, Jonell started talking again: about her work, her husband, her kids, what this group was all about. She spoke so rapidly that some of the women had trouble keeping up with her. But her message was clear. ‘We are not what we wear or what we own,’ she said. In case they missed the point, Jonell took off her yellow cotton T-shirt, revealing a sheer camisole and an impish smile. Jonell’s old friends in the group, like Patti, had seen it all before. But what looked to them like an old hippie comfortable in her skin seemed different to the newer acquaintances. Some frankly noted Jonell’s great figure – lean stomach, firm arms, large breasts – but Roz McGrath was no longer the only one who wondered what she’d got herself into! The next item on the agenda was to name the necklace. Jonell wanted to name it after Julia Child, the famous American cook and TV personality who’d died nearly three months earlier, on 13 August, 2004. The culinary idol had lived her later years in nearby Montecito, where Jonell’s husband had built the maple island in her kitchen. Naming the necklace for Child would be a fitting homage to this most admirable women. To Jonell, as well as to the women in the group who’d used her cookbooks and watched her TV show in the seventies, Julia Child introduced French cooking to Americans with an unpretentious style, an adventurous spirit and abundant humour. They appreciated that she hadn’t come into her own until she was in her fifties, but what they really applauded was her appetite for life. Several suggested spelling the name ‘Jewelia’. Meanwhile, the rest remained quiet. They thought the idea of naming a necklace at all, let alone naming it for a cook, was absolutely ludicrous but no one said so. Next on the agenda were the time-share arrangements. They agreed that each woman would have the necklace for twenty-eight days, during her birthday month. Only two women’s birthdates overlapped. Patti’s birthday was nine days away so, after they had discussed the rest of the business, she was first to take the necklace, and Jonell ended the meeting by ceremoniously clasping the diamonds around Patti’s neck. ‘Don’t lose it because it’s not insured yet,’ she said. ‘And have fun with it.’ Patti wore the fifteen-thousand-dollar necklace to bed that night but she didn’t sleep well. She woke up twice feeling panicky. Each time, she touched the necklace to make sure it still circled her neck, that it was in one piece and that nothing was broken. This was the first time since she was thirteen and had ‘borrowed’ her older sister’s gold charm bracelet that she’d worn something that didn’t belong just to her. The next morning she felt better, no longer afraid for the safety of the necklace. Still, she fretted over how to put into words what this experience was about. But even if she didn’t know exactly what to say, she decided she should look good saying it. She’d select her clothes carefully, choosing colours and styles that would complement the diamonds. That would be the easy part. Patti Channer grew up the youngest of six children in Malverne, New York, a small dormitory community on Long Island. Her mother was a fashion aficionado who each season took her daughters on daylong shopping expeditions to the Garment District in Manhattan. First stop was either Saks or Bergdorf’s. At those upmarket department stores Patti’s mother studied the new designer styles. Then she’d take her daughters to Klein’s on Fourteenth Street, the best fashion discount outlet of that era. She knew just what to buy. She’d rummage through the piles of discounted designer garments and head back home with the right stuff. Whether by osmosis, training or something in her DNA, Patti developed a similar eye for fashion and an instinct for the deal. According to all four daughters, their mother was a stunner, a stately woman who could wear designer clothes with style. She pulled her golden-red hair back in a French twist, kept her beautiful nails manicured, and always wore accessorised her outfits. She was known for her distinctive taste and for dressing her girls in style. She taught Patti and her sisters to take pride in their appearance, because she believed that clothes reveal personality. When Patti started dating boys, her mother instructed her: ‘Always look at a man’s shoes.’ When the family moved to the West Coast, Ventura was the thrift capital of Southern California and Patti’s mother was Queen of the Charity Shop. Patti never forgot finding a chandelier for four hundred dollars exactly like one her mother had bought for five dollars. ‘My love of shopping is genetic, and I consider myself a consummate shopper. I used to pride myself on being able to go into a shop and run my fingers over the fabrics and know which jacket was by one of the top designers. I was never wrong.’ It wasn’t surprising that Patti’s first job while in college was in retail. She worked for Abraham & Straus on Long Island, moving between different departments, and when she was assigned to the jewellery department she bought her first pair of good earrings. They were 14-carat-gold hoops, the size of a two-pence piece, the wires intricately bent into a serpentine design. ‘They were two hundred dollars – this was in 1970 – and I had to pay for them in instalments. I knew they were one of a kind. They made a statement. When I wore those earrings I felt special. Since that time, I’ve never gone out of the house without jewellery. Never. ‘Buying for many people is an aphrodisiac. If they’re sad, they go shopping, happy they go shopping, angry they go shopping. For me it’s the thrill of the hunt, finding the best quality at the best price. I rarely pay the full price. I found a beaded gauze top – a work of art – in a charity shop in Santa Barbara. I paid seventy-five dollars for it. Later when I pulled it out of the wardrobe to wear, I discovered the original price tag – thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. Another find! It felt orgasmic.’ Patti couldn’t feel the same ecstasy with regard to the group necklace – she hadn’t searched it out and struck the deal. But she knew from the start that this was something quite different than just another purchase. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I needed another necklace like I needed a hole in the head.’ The bedroom she shares with her husband is the perfect setting to discuss the necklace. In one corner, a bamboo hat rack is nearly invisible underneath handbags – quilted and jewelled and beaded bags, feather and leather, leopard and velvet bags, today’s and yesterday’s bags. And then there are the boas! Long ones, short ones, they come simple and sequinned, in red and chocolate and purple and pumpkin. In another corner, flowing over a wrought-iron quilt stand are wraps and more wraps – silk, woven, textured, fringed. A velvet wrap with mink pom-poms, a black suede wrap with cut-out fringe and a thick felt wrap with oversized pockets. On the bottom shelf of the stand a wicker basket cascades with scarves of cashmere and chenille, painted silks in olive and aubergine, a gold-and-black-sequinned scarf twists into a belt, then a headband, then a necklace. No matter what Patti drapes around her lean body, she looks good in it. She has a compellingly photogenic face and at nearly five feet, seven inches, she has enviable blonde hair, thick and wavy, a healthy, outdoor glow, and long limbs seemingly always in motion. Her hazel eyes literally glisten when she smiles – and as Patti gives a tour of her bedroom, she smiles a lot. More accessories fill the cherrywood dressing table: headbands and sunglasses and reading glasses, all jewelled and tortoiseshell and multicoloured and decorated for the holidays. In her walk-in wardrobe there are berets in every colour, dozens of belts and 150 pairs of shoes. ‘When I go to Las Vegas, I don’t gamble. I buy shoes,’ she says. ‘The boutiques at Caesars Palace have shoes you won’t find anywhere else in this country. I don’t buy the kind of things everyone else has. I don’t go to high-street chains unless I need socks. I like flea markets and charity shops.’ And then there’s the jewellery. On one wall, hanging from three etched glass hooks, dangle necklaces galore: chains and beads, rhinestones and pearls, chokers and pendants. In the dresser next to the hooks, she’s filled drawers with bracelets and bangles, plus jewellery inherited from her mother and jewellery for every holiday: brooches and earrings shaped like wreaths, pumpkins, shamrocks and flags. In the wardrobe, there’s a fifty-four-pocket hanging jewellery holder with a pair of earrings in every section; and a thirty-pocket quilted case with jewellery in every section. More necklaces of multiple strands, multiple colours, necklaces made of pearls, gemstones, glass. ‘I have a mix of good and fake,’ she says. ‘If you have enough good, you can mix in the fake.’ Patti pulls out a necklace of burgundy silk cording with a tasselled ivory pendant hanging from a burgundy alligator spectacle case. She adjusts it around her neck, flips open the spectacle case, cocks her head to one side, then flashes a huge grin. ‘Would you look at this?’ There isn’t a drawer, a shelf, a stand or a chest without hidden stashes and caches of jewellery. The only place Patti doesn’t keep it is in a safe. ‘After we bought Jewelia a neighbour showed me her diamond necklace, which she keeps locked up. Other women I know make copies of their jewellery and wear the copies. If you’re going to do that, what’s the point of having it? That first month the necklace was mine to wear, I made the conscious decision that I’d wear it every day.’ During her first month with the necklace, Patti wore it to go body-boarding at a family wedding in Oahu, Hawaii; she wore it when she scored a very respectable 95 on eighteen holes of golf; and when helping to hose down a neighbourhood fire. She wore it to her husband’s paediatric dental practice, where she worked, and she wore it to the orthopaedic clinic when Gary underwent shoulder surgery. Then she donned the diamonds every evening while she worried about the aftermath of the operation. As she dragged on her cigarettes on the patio, she wondered if they would have to sell the practice? Would she be out of a job too, after twenty-nine years of running their office, managing the staff, coordinating the schedules and handling the books? For a while he’d been the only paediatric dentist in town, which meant seeing thirty to forty patients a day. That had been a lot of work, but gratifying too. She knew that her business sense had helped to make the practice successful. And Patti had met dozens of interesting women when they brought in their kids. In fact, that was the way she’d met Jonell. What if they did have to sell up? For the first time in her life, this turn of events made Patti feel uncertain about the future. She was sick of people asking her if she was looking forward to retirement. No, she wasn’t looking forward to doing nothing. She was high-energy and always had been. She hated that word ‘retirement’ – really, she thought society should think of a new one. Gary was happy at the prospect, but Patti struggled with the unknown that lay ahead, grew restless just thinking about it. The necklace gave her something else to think about. Everywhere she went – and Patti went everywhere – she talked about the necklace. Patti was a talker – not a rapid talker like Jonell, but a memorable talker. More than her one-of-a-kind accessories, what distinguished Patti was her Long Island accent. She left New York in 1975, but the accent didn’t leave her. Considering it another accessory, she kept it. When she talks, her hands move constantly, her fingers snapping to make a point, her beautiful, natural nails tap-tap-tapping on the table, the steering wheel, whatever surface is handy. When she walks, she recalls the dynamism of the streets of Manhattan, ever alert, moving quickly, with a stride befitting someone who completed the famous Waikiki Roughwater Swim over almost 4 kilometres of Pacific Ocean. On the streets downtown she talks to everyone – she knows everyone. She calls them ‘doll’, ‘babe’, ‘honey’, ‘lovey’, like a waitress in a lorry drivers’ caf?. She tells everyone she bumps into the story of the necklace. People reacted to the necklace in varied ways. Some marvelled, some shrugged, some attacked. ‘What do you think you’re going to do with it?’ Patti didn’t have an answer for that one. That comment made her think: ‘What are we going to do with it?’ Scornful comments didn’t make her doubt what she’d done; they made her wonder if there was a better way to tell the story. So she changed a detail here, an anecdote there, and she kept talking. ‘It surprised me how much fun it was to talk about it. I liked the story of the deal – that is, getting the necklace for the price we did – but mostly I liked the story of the sharing. I liked that it was another conversation I could have with people. I had no idea where we were going with this, no idea where the necklace was going. Hell, I had no idea where I was going. But I was looking forward to finding out.’ Patti had just two more days left of her four weeks with the necklace when one of the other women – who? – asked to borrow it for a dinner dance. Patti said, ‘Sure.’ But when the necklace came back the next day Patti didn’t want it any more. ‘I’d enjoyed wearing it too much,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to become reattached, then have to let it go a second time.’ It was time to pass it on. Later, with the women, Patti talked about the possessiveness that surprised her and made her feel guilty and embarrassed. It reminded her of Gollum in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – the character who became mentally tortured and physically wretched from his obsessive desire for the One Ring, ‘his precious’. Patti called the necklace ‘my pretty’ and her difficulty in letting it go ‘the Gollum effect’. ‘In talking about it,’ says Patti, ‘I realised that what made the necklace exciting to wear wasn’t the necklace itself. If I’d wanted a diamond necklace, I would have bought one a long time ago. What made it exciting was the story behind it. Getting to tell the story was what I’d become attached to.’ Before Patti’s turn with the necklace would come around again the following year, she and Gary would sell his dental practice and their lives would change in many ways. The group of women changed as well, with two members leaving, and a few tensions being aired and resolved. During that first year Jonell, a voracious reader, gave the group a reading list and their first assignment: a book called Affluenza by three men no one had heard of. Jonell liked context. ‘If we’re going to talk about the necklace,’ she enthused, ‘this book will give us a frame of reference, make us more knowledgeable and effective.’ Mary O’Connor, one of the women in the group, was a former English teacher and an avid reader of literary fiction. She had no interest in self-help books. ‘If I’d wanted a reading group,’ she thought, ‘I would’ve joined one.’ But she kept quiet. Nancy Huff was quiet, too, while thinking the same thing. In fact, the group’s reaction to the reading assignment was less than enthusiastic, with almost half the group failing to read the book and the other half not even turning up to the meeting where it was to be discussed. Patti wasn’t in the habit of reading self-help books either. She liked escapist novels and crime fiction. But since they’d just sold the dental practice she had time on her hands, so she was one of the few who read the book. She read that Americans are the most voracious consumers on earth, that most of us suffer from owning too much, that everything we own ends up owning us. She read that never before has so much stuff meant so little to so many, and that the relentless pursuit of more would exact a price much steeper than the cost of the goods. ‘Reading that book was a turning point,’ she says. ‘Until I read it, I never saw myself as a consumer. If I saw a ten-thousand-square-foot home, the excess would not have resonated. “How much is enough?” was a whole new concept for me. ‘For the first time I started thinking about my possessions. When I was younger, I worked at accumulating. If the object I wanted was a “great bargain”, I’d buy two. The book got me thinking for the first time about the excess in my life. I realised that where I’ve been most excessive is with my accessories. I have enough to accessorise every woman in the group. I have at least twenty pair of sunglasses, and how many do I wear? The same pair all the time. ‘What I’ve concluded is that there’s nothing I need any more. I have too much already. I don’t wear what I have. Some things I shouldn’t have bought in the first place. Like a pair of multi-coloured lizardskin high heels. I don’t even wear high heels but I had to have those shoes. The urge to buy is like the urge to have a cigarette. It’s a need for instant gratification, but if you wait, the urge will go away. We do have a choice. When I was younger I never saw this day coming. ‘My mantra used to be “accessorise, accessorise”. Now it’s “I have enough”. Today when I look in my closet, I feel sick. Mortified. ‘I knew buying the necklace would lead to something unexpected, but I didn’t suspect it would change my view of buying. When I was younger I saw what I didn’t have and shopped to fill in the gaps. Today I see what I do have and go shopping just to look. Since owning the necklace and having so many conversations about it, I’ve started to give away my accessories. That’s made me feel lighter, made me feel free. If only giving up smoking were as easy!’ CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_50795213-6301-5c49-9871-b08d64e81521) Priscilla Van Gundy, the loner Finding out what’s truly precious PRISCILLA COULDN’T GET EXCITED about anything, and that included the first e-mail from Jonell. Scheduling time to spend with a group of women was crazy. She’d always thought so. And now that she and Tom were busy overhauling the shop she was working sixty hours a week. Who had time? She was beginning to feel like the Bill Murray character in Groundhog Day: every morning, even Sundays, waking up to the same life, the same grind. Last year she’d taken off just twelve days, total. The pace had been gruelling. And now one of the store managers had handed in his notice, which meant adding selling to everything else she had to do. Priscilla didn’t like being on the shop floor interacting with customers; she found selling stressful and exhausting – so many women wanting to talk. Occasionally, if the customer were an older man whose wife had recently died, Tom would do the listening. But usually the customer was a woman, and Priscilla was the one to pull up a chair. The same two or three trudged in every week with their slumped shoulders, their sad eyes. They’d talk and talk, sometimes for as long as an hour and a half. Then they’d cry. Their husbands had died or left them. Their children were out of town or out of touch. These women were so lost, their loneliness so palpable. Priscilla knew they were shopping just to fill their days. They didn’t want a watch or a ring. They wanted a friend. Priscilla listened and nodded and soothed. Then one day in early December, Priscilla handed one of them a box of tissues to wipe her tears, and in that moment saw the woman as a character out of Dickens – the Ghost of Christmas Future. Would Priscilla be this woman in ten or twenty years? She had a job, a husband and three children who lived nearby, but who knew what lay ahead? Just months before, Priscilla’s sister Doreen had died. After her diagnosis with a rare form of cancer, she’d valiantly battled a slow and agonising death as the disease spread from one vital organ to another. ‘Doreen was the life of our family, the actress, the jokester, ’ says Priscilla. ‘With her death I shut down completely. Every day I got up and did what I had to do, but I was just going through the motions. After work each night I’d go straight to the bedroom, put on my pyjamas, and climb into bed to watch American Idol or Seinfeld repeats. I cut myself off from everyone, even my husband. ‘One thing I was good at was isolating myself. I’d done it my whole life. It was easier to click on the remote control than to reach out to people. But there comes a time when you realise you’ve spent so much time alone that you’ve built your entire life around it. And that’s not good.’ After the tearful customer left that day, Priscilla retreated to the back room, feeling that she had to make some kind of change to avoid becoming just like that woman. She checked her e-mails and, lo and behold, there was a message from Jonell. From:[email protected] To:Women of Jewelia Well, I thought it was really fun, how about you? Mary and Priscilla, we definitely missed you. I think we got a lot done. (Consider this the minutes.) 1.The name Jewelia… 2.The schedule…to follow from Mary K. 3.The considerations, i.e. sharing and not sharing and the promise never to do either without careful thought. 4.Maybe we could do some possibility thinking. Where do you want to take Jewelia? What else could we share? What should everyone share? I don’t know why I took my shirt off. Whose suggestion was that? Someone is supposed to be giving me better advice than that. We look forward to being together again before Christmas. Further information to follow. You are all fabulous! Have fun. Jonell Priscilla stared at her computer. Could she be missing out on something? Priscilla de los Santos (‘of the Saints’) had grown up in east Ventura, in a predominantly Hispanic farm community. Her Mexican grandparents had settled in Ventura after working as itinerant farmers during the Depression. Her parents started off farming too, but over time they’d moved on to other work: her mother, packing lemons, cleaning houses, then running a diner; her dad, pouring cement and working on building sites. The oldest of six, Priscilla spent most of her time at home taking care of her younger siblings. Their family of eight – nine for the five years a cousin lived with them – had to share one bathroom. ‘So many people were living in that little house,’ she says. ‘It was probably one of the reasons I married young – to have my own place.’ Her extended family included gang members – too many of them. Her mother was determined her children would not go the way of so many of their cousins. She sacrificed to send them to a really good school, a Catholic school called Saint Sebastian, and they were the only kids in the district who were waiting at the bus stop at seven a.m. each morning. Priscilla grew up surrounded by family, including her grandparents and uncles living across the street, but isolated from her peers. Her remote neighbourhood was surrounded by orange groves and mustard fields, the plants tall enough for Priscilla to hide in. ‘I liked being alone,’ she says. ‘But in a way that stopped me from having friends.’ She grew up tough. That’s what happens when you’re surrounded by gangs – and she’d hung around her share of gang types. When she was sixteen, a group of girl hoodlums jumped her and beat her up, leaving red gashes down her arms. ‘They thought I was a weak little thing from a Catholic school, but I held my own. I’ve always felt pretty strong. It’s probably the reason I gravitated to correctional work after I left school.’ And Priscilla grew up feeling different. When her grandmother descended into dementia, her mother took care of her, which meant Priscilla and her brother had to help run their mum’s restaurant. Priscilla was only thirteen. ‘I was a really good softball player, but I couldn’t participate in sports because I had to work every afternoon and every weekend. I remember a conversation with classmates when we were talking about what we wanted for Christmas. I said I needed a coat. One of the girls said scornfully,’ Why don’t you ask for something you want? Why ask for something you need?’ But I was lucky to get what I needed. They couldn’t understand my world, and I couldn’t understand theirs. I thought it’d be the same thing with the Jewelia women. ‘I don’t think anyone who grows up like I did ever outgrows the feeling that they’re not good enough. I don’t think others thought that about me, but I thought it. Intellectually, I knew that friendship wasn’t about the way you grew up or the schools you attended, but I didn’t feel it. That thinking kept me from reaching out. ‘I assumed these women would be upper-crust. I didn’t think I was in their league. I felt as though I was back in school. Just thinking about going to a meeting was nerve-racking. Would I fit in? Would I be accepted? What if they didn’t like me?’ Priscilla realised she was still staring at the e-mail. She wasn’t an e-mail person, hated coming into the office every day to face eighty new messages. All her replies were short. ‘I’ll be there,’ she typed. ‘Looking forward to it.’ She wasn’t looking forward to it. She was just being polite. Being with a crowd of people made her physically uncomfortable. Sometimes she wondered if she had a phobia. Growing up, she always sat at the back of the classroom, anything not to call attention to herself. The extent of her contact with school friends, the few she had, was ten minutes a day. For most of her life Priscilla had only one close friend – and she lived in Houston, Texas. And ‘close’ was a relative term, given that sometimes Priscilla went a year without talking to her. Having one friend 2,500 kilometres away seemed like enough, however, when you worked all the time. And when hadn’t Priscilla worked all the time? Ever since she’d greeted, served and washed dishes in her mum’s diner, she’d worked. She’d borne three children by the time she was twenty-seven and never stopped working. Even her sister’s illness and death hadn’t changed that work-work-work pattern. But it caused her to withdraw even more deeply into herself than before. Priscilla decided that if she was going to this meeting, she should try to make a good impression. On the day of the meeting, she looked into her wardrobe. Everything in there was black, the best colour for slimming the extra weight she felt she was carrying. Priscilla had one of those curvaceous and lush bodies that lots of men desire. Despite knowing that real women have curves, Priscilla viewed her body type critically, the result of years of conditioning. She chose her best suit and designer high heels. Her jewellery she didn’t worry about: on her right hand, a Hearts on Fire diamond ring; on her wrist, a Philip Stein oval dual-time-zone watch, one of Oprah Winfrey’s Christmas selections two years in a row, the one the talk-show host herself wore. Priscilla had been attracted to the watch because it contained two copper chips, which were supposed to help induce sleep. Since she’d been waking at two every morning and staring at the ceiling, she needed all the help she could get. Priscilla sported the two-thousand-dollar version with a diamond border. One of the perks of owning a jewellery shop was that she could borrow whatever she wanted. The downside was that nothing was really hers. If a customer admired her jewellery and wanted to buy it, she took it off that day and never wore it again. It was better to make the money, so she tried not to get attached. She found a place to park outside the venue for the meeting – Ventura’s historic Pierpont Inn, turned off the engine and braced herself. Her nerves were frayed. The jittery feeling reminded her of the time back in 1994 when she’d decided to return to college and get a degree. For twenty years she’d been raising three kids, juggling temp jobs, part-time jobs, all varieties of jobs from locking up criminals in the county jail to selling cosmetics. She’d driven to the admissions office, parked the car, turned off the engine, panicked, restarted the engine, driven around the campus, returned to the parking lot, turned off the engine, panicked, restarted the engine, and driven around the campus. She circled eight times – yes, she’d counted – before she’d finally mustered the courage to go inside to talk to the admissions counsellor. Thank goodness she was past that now. No need to circle the grounds eight times today. By the time Priscilla finished her ruminations and walked into the room, the single chair at the long, rectangular table loudly indicated she was the last to arrive. This wasn’t anything new. She was always late to social gatherings. Still, she castigated herself; being late doesn’t make for a good first impression. Tiny gold lights interspersed in pine greenery gave the elegant, private room at the inn a festive atmosphere. Holly and poinsettias on the mantelpiece brightened the dark, panelled walls. But Priscilla didn’t notice the room. She saw only the women all laughing and talking at once. She saw exuberance, camaraderie – the e-mail chatter come alive. In less than a minute she saw what was missing from her life. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ said Priscilla, rushing the words. ‘I had work to take care of.’ Before the words sputtered from her mouth, Jonell had jumped out of her seat with a huge smile. She walked quickly over to the newcomer, wrapped an arm around her, and introduced her to the others. Everyone broke into huge smiles, each woman thinking, ‘So this is the woman whose generous husband made it all possible.’ Priscilla sat down. She knew it wasn’t polite but she couldn’t help staring at the woman across from her. It was Maggie Hood, her straight blonde hair with long wispy layers framing her green eyes, a leopard-print jersey wrapped snugly and suggestively around her muscular body. Priscilla didn’t know that women in their fifties could look that good. Had they had an in-depth conversation, Priscilla would have discovered that the surfaces of their lives were as different as their bodies. Maggie had had three husbands and many boyfriends over the years. But deep down Priscilla had more in common with Maggie than she could ever have imagined just looking at her. Two thousand miles from Ventura, in the inner city of Chicago, Maggie had also grown up in a tough neighbourhood. Maggie smiled warmly at Priscilla, but actually she felt just as much an outsider. So many women in the group had long-term husbands, while her marriage was disintegrating. So many came from the area, while she had moved there. Although most of the women in the group were mothers, she was the only one whose children still lived at home. Priscilla smiled back at Maggie, then found her eyes drawn to another woman in the group, the woman at the head of the table with cascading blonde hair, a red sweater and the diamond necklace. Priscilla had seen the necklace in the shop for over a year but she’d never seen it look the way it looked today. The midday sun, streaming rays of light through the inn’s tall windows, magnified the brilliance of the diamonds and cast an aura around the Woman in Red. It wasn’t just her face that was suffused with light – it was her whole being. Was it that the necklace needed to be worn to look this beautiful, Priscilla wondered, or was it this time, this place, these women? Priscilla believed in signs. The first time she’d laid eyes on Tom Van Gundy she saw a light surrounding him, knew in that moment he was the man she was going to marry. The feeling was powerful, spiritual even. She felt something momentous happening here, too. Not as potent as when she’d been a teenager, this feeling registered more as a tremor, but still, she felt something shift in the ground beneath her and she knew she wanted to belong. Meanwhile, the women were thinking their own thoughts about Priscilla. Every one of them admired her courage in joining a group where she knew no one. A few wondered how this quiet woman would fare with the loud and bawdy characters among them. When the women were finished with their salads, Jonell passed out an agenda for the meeting. Number 1:Who’s been naughty and/or nice? Hopefully both. Number 2:The cost of the insurance on the necklace: $88.46 per woman. Number 3:How does everyone feel about donating towels for a community project to help the homeless? The women wrote cheques to cover their share of the insurance, they chatted about what had happened to the necklace in the last month, it was handed over to the next woman and then at last they got up to leave. They warmly said their good-byes to Priscilla, one by one effusing over how delighted they were to have her in the group. Priscilla, herself, couldn’t stop smiling. That evening at dinner Tom saw Priscilla smile for the first time in a long while, her smile revealing teeth as white as the whites around her warm, brown eyes, now crinkling. He’d fallen in love with that smile when they were both at school, when he was a starting quarterback in the football team and she was a cheerleader. ‘It’s a great group of women,’ Priscilla said. ‘Thank you for making me part of it.’ ‘I didn’t do anything.’ ‘Of course you did.’ ‘I just saw those women having so much fun together and I wanted that for you.’ ‘I didn’t realise how much I wasn’t like that.’ ‘You used to be.’ ‘I don’t know what happened.’ ‘I don’t know either.’ Can any of us pinpoint the moment when we’ve lost our younger selves, lost joy in the simple things, stopped celebrating life? For years – decades – we work, raise a family, plant begonias. Then one day we wake up to chemotherapy and eulogies and nursing home visits and the realisation that we haven’t had a real holiday in years. And all we can do is ask: how did life get so hard? When Jonell e-mailed the group with the date and place for the next meeting, Priscilla responded immediately: ‘I’ll be there. Looking forward to it.’ This time she really meant it. But once at the meeting, Priscilla was her reticent, quiet self. She wondered if she’d ever have the confidence to speak as easily and assuredly as so many of the others. In the neighbourhood where she grew up she’d learned survival skills, but not the fine art of small talk. She noticed the women expressed differing opinions, but without raising their voices like the male pundits on the TV news. The women didn’t call one another ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid’. Priscilla had never encountered such civility in dissension. She wondered if the women would be as gracious when she spoke. She felt the same acceptance at the second meeting that she’d felt at the Pierpont Inn – more than acceptance, a sense she was valued, someone special. Her enjoyment in being with the women was beginning to outweigh her fear of not measuring up. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/cheryl-jarvis/the-necklace-a-true-story-of-13-women-1-diamond-necklace-and/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.