The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives

by Cheryl Jarvis

  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 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 construction. 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 St. Sebastian, the only kids in the barrio waiting at seven A.M. at the bus stop.

  Priscilla grew up surrounded by family, including her grandparents and uncles living across the street, but isolated from her peers. Her remote neighborhood 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 hardcore. It’s probably the reason I gravitated to correctional work.”

  And Priscilla grew up feeling different. When her grandmother descended into dementia, her mother took care of her abuelita, which meant Priscilla and her brother had to help run their mom’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 where 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 these women.

  “I don’t think anyone who grows up like I did ever outgrows the feeling that you’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.

  “My take on these women was that they’d be upper-crust. I didn’t think I was in their league. I felt like I was back in high 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 realized 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 in 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. And “close” was a relative term, given that sometimes Priscilla went a year without talking to her. Having one friend sixteen hundred miles 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, bussed, and washed dishes in her mom’s diner, she’d worked. She’d borne three children by the time she was twenty-seven and never stopped working.

  A crisis with her beloved younger sister hadn’t changed that work-work-work pattern. But it caused her to withdraw more deeply into herself. Priscilla’s sister, diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, valiantly battled a slow and agonizing 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. 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 pajamas, and climb into bed to watch American Idol or Seinfeld reruns. 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 than to reach out to people. But there comes a time when you realize you’ve spent so much time alone that you’ve built your entire life around it. And that’s not good.”

  PRISCILLA DECIDED THAT if she was going to this meeting, she was going to make a good impression. Everything in her closet was black, the best color for slimming the extra weight she felt she was carrying. Priscilla had one of those curvaceous and lush bodies that lots of men desire. No matter that real women have curves, Priscilla viewed her body type critically, the result of years of American conditioning.

  She chose her best suit, a St. John’s knit, and Stuart Weitzman heels. Her jewelry 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’s Christmas picks two years in a row, 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 jewelry store was that she could borrow whatever she wanted. The downside was that nothing was really hers. If a customer admired her jewelry 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 at the historic Pierpont Inn, turned off the engine, and braced herself. Her nerves were frayed. The jittery feeling reminded her of 1994, when she’d wanted to return to college for her degree. For twenty years she’d been raising three kids, juggling temp jobs, part-time jobs, all varieties of jobs from locking down criminals in the county jail to selling cosmetics for Mary Kay. She’d driven to the admissions office, parked the car, turned off the engine, panicked, restarted the engine, drove around the campus, returned to the parking lot, turned off the engine, panicked, restarted the engine, and driven around the campus. Eight times—yes, she’d counted—before she’d finally mustered the courage to go inside to talk to the admissions counselor. Thank goodness she was past that now. No need to circle the grounds eight times.

  She was glad she’d paid her share of the necklace. She could’ve not paid, negotiated that in the deal, but she didn’t want to be singled out, didn’t want to be different from the others.

  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 l
ast 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 fireplace mantel brightened the dark, paneled walls. But Priscilla didn’t notice the room. She saw only the women laughing and talking at once. She saw exuberance, camaraderie—the e-mail chatter come alive.

  It took 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 out 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 blond hair and long wispy bangs 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 could count three husbands and many friends over the years. But 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’d grown up tough too.

  Maggie smiled warmly at Priscilla, but she felt just as much an outsider. So many women in the group had long-term husbands, while her marriage was spiraling down. So many from the area, while she was a transplant. Although most of the women in the group were mothers, she was the only one still raising kids 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 the cascading blond hair and the red sweater and the diamond necklace. Priscilla had seen the necklace in the store 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 powerful happening here, too. Not as seismic 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: 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. 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 checks, then 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 caught the contagion of their smiles.

  THAT EVENING AT dinner Tom saw Priscilla smile, the first time in a long time, 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 in high school, he the starting quarterback, she a cheerleader rooting for him.

  “This is a great group of women,” Priscilla said. “Thank you for making me a part of the group.”

  “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 realize 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 realization that we haven’t had a real vacation in years. And all we can do is ask: How did life get so hard?

  WHEN JONELL E-MAILED the group the date and place for the next meeting, Priscilla responded immediately: “I’ll be there. Looking forward to it.” This time she was looking forward to 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 barrio she’d learned survival skills, not the fine art of conversation. She noticed the women expressed differing opinions, but without raising their voices like the male pundits on Fox News. The women didn’t call one another “wrong” or “stupid.” Priscilla’d never encountered such civility in dissension. She wondered if the women would be as gracious when she spoke. She did feel the 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.

  At the fourth meeting Priscilla attended, Jonell ran through the agenda: where the necklace had been, where it was going, what was next for the group. Then Jonell asked, “Anything any of you want to talk about?” Roz McGrath, a veteran of women’s groups, was sensitive to those whose voices weren’t being heard. “Let’s go around the room,” she suggested. “Let’s give everyone a chance to speak.”

  Priscilla panicked. She’d have to say something. She couldn’t be the only one who was silent. What would she say? One by one the women spoke. As Priscilla listened, she absorbed once again that no one was criticized. Maybe no one would criticize her, either. She started to relax. She uncrossed her arms and legs and breathed. As she thought about what she’d say, she realized she wouldn’t speak about issues or news or the necklace. But she would speak.

  And then it was her turn. She looked around the room, twelve sets of eyes focused on her. And, odd for her, she found that her need to speak was stronger than her fear of the reaction.

  This is what she said:

  “Watching my sister die has left my emotions raw and exposed. Everything I feel has risen to the surface. Her death taught me that you have to tell people how you feel about them before it’s too late.

  “My sister’s death wrapped a millstone around my heart. But what I’ve come to realize is that in dying she also gave me a gift—finding the twelve of you. I am so grateful to be a part of your group. I feel so happy when I’m with you. You have inspired me with your warmth, your acceptance, your joy, the camaraderie you have with one another, the way you embrace life, the way you listen to one another without criticism, the way you have welcomed me into your lives. I know now the meaning of the word inspire. It means ‘to breathe.’ You have breathed life into me. Thank you.”

  As she spoke, Priscilla’s eyes had filled with tears. By the time she’d finished, the other women’s had, too.

  PRISCILLA’S FIRST TIME with the diamond necklace, she wore it to the office, to the grocery store, to the bank, to a seminar. She didn’t pick special clothes to flaunt it, didn’t talk about it. She knew she should put more time into wearing jewelry. For one thing, wearing jewelry couldn’t help but be good PR for the s
tore. But Priscilla wasn’t a jewelry kind of woman. When she and Tom traveled to trade shows, she noticed other women decked out in big rocks. Flaunting the inventory didn’t interest Priscilla. She enjoyed looking at bling on other women, but she didn’t need the billboard for herself. Adornment was the last thing she thought of when getting dressed. Not a great thing for a jeweler’s wife to admit, but the desire just wasn’t there.

  The desire wasn’t there for the diamond necklace, either. Wearing it meant nada. What excited Priscilla was thinking about the next meeting, the one where she’d cede the necklace, the night she’d get to be with the women again, the night the gathering would be at her house.

  Six weeks ahead of time, Priscilla started planning and preparing. She ironed her white linen tablecloth and matching napkins. She polished her silverware and serving trays. She brought out her Wedgwood “Columbia” china and cranberry-colored crystal stemware. She ordered a feast from the Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill in Camarillo: cold shrimp and finger sandwiches, barbecued shredded beef, assorted salads and breads. She baked a rocky road fudge cake, what had once been her signature dessert but which she hadn’t made in seven years. The final touch: Chambord and champagne. She knew several of the women loved champagne, so she reached for the bottle of Dom Perignon that someone had given the Van Gundys as a Christmas gift three years earlier. There had been no special occasion since then, no reason to open it.

  Priscilla grimaced at the yellow stain her daughter’s Maltese puppy had showered on her cream-colored carpeting, but she knew the women wouldn’t notice. Why should she care? The food looked wonderful, but even that wasn’t important. These women were casual hostesses. They wouldn’t care what she served.

  Five minutes before six, she opened the double doors of her two-story brick-and-stucco home and stood outside waiting. Geraniums lining the walkway were blooming, a burst of fuchsia and rose.