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

by Cheryl Jarvis

  another, “neighborhood bombshell.” In her retirement home, three men were vying for her attention, calling daily and bringing gifts.

  And then there was Dale’s grandmother, Neva. She was an elegant woman who always kept long-stemmed red roses on her coffee table, but she was also a colorful character. While Dale was at the University of California at Santa Barbara, eighty-year-old Neva was enjoying a much younger boyfriend, who was a pilot. “We have a wonderful physical relationship, too,” she’d say to Dale with a wink and a smile. Neva taped affirmations to her mirror and encouraged Dale to read books on positive thinking.

  After someone ran naked across the stage at the 1974 Academy Awards and “streaking” became a fad, especially on college campuses, Dale’s family was gathered one evening when Neva, who was visiting, ran through the living room stark naked. She’d shocked the whole clan. After putting her clothes back on, she joined the family on the sofa and everyone convulsed with laughter. As a teenager, Dale felt a little embarrassed by her grandmother’s antics. But even then she could see what an alive and happy woman she was.

  “SO THE WOMEN IN my family enjoyed sex,” Dale reflects, “which was good for me. It made sex feel normal and natural and healthy.

  “Still, it can be hard for long-married women to sustain the interest in sex, the energy and the excitement. It’s important for women to push themselves, because for men to feel loved they need sex. Visual stimuli evoke an automatic response from men, so it’s harder for them to suppress their sex drive. For women sex is more mental. We have to create a fantasy in our minds. But that means we have more control over our sex drives, which is good for women. It means we can change our mentality. We can rev up our sex life.

  “I probably could have revived ours sooner if I’d known then what I know now. You have to make it a priority.”

  IN THE MUEGENBURGS’ comfortable, art-filled Ventura home, Dale’s kitchen reveals two loves: gourmet cooking and French culture. Seven shelves of cookbooks encase titles ranging from Food Lover’s Guide to Paris and At Home in Provence to classic tomes by Julia Child and Jacques Pépin. Acrylic file boxes store five years’ worth of back issues of Gourmet and Bon Appétit. Colorful French pottery sits on the taupe tiled countertop. Mauviel copper pots hail from E. Dehillerin, the Paris restaurant-supply house that Child frequented. A framed menu from Taillevent, a grande dame of Parisian dining, hangs on one wall.

  Dale’s making eggplant parmesan for dinner. She converses easily as she cooks.

  “What I like so much about French culture,” she says, “is the way the people take time to enjoy life. They savor fine food, fine wine, sex, conversation, almost developing them into art forms. The French don’t live to work. I’m at a place where I could work full-time again, but getting only one or two weeks off a year is no way to live.”

  Dale is the sole woman in the group not working outside the house. She exploits much of her leisure time to savor life as the French do, to entertain couples with gourmet feasts, to remember friends’ birthdays with carefully selected cards and gifts, to pamper family with prolonged birthday and holiday celebrations.

  But staying home in our career-obsessed society, she’s discovered, exacts a price. “ ‘What do you do?’ is a hard question to answer. Some people immediately lose interest in you. An investment club and charity work don’t seem to be enough. You have to account for yourself in an interesting way. Jewelia has given me something interesting to talk about.”

  Dale’s wearing cotton slacks and matching collared shirt in a midnight-blue-and-black pattern of tiny checks, the shirt unbuttoned to reveal a black lace camisole. Her clothes hang loosely, the result of a recent holistic diet. From her highlighted hair to her pedicured feet, her look is polished and pulled together. You can see her walking along the Champs-Élysées, looking much more like a Parisienne than a tourist. Her voice is Kathleen Turner husky, her face unlined but also unpulled by plastic surgery. “I’m philosophically opposed to doing anything drastic,” she says, “but if there’s a lotion or hormone that’ll help, I’ll go for it.” She recently started using Obagi’s skin care line. Her skin glows.

  As Dale cuts the eggplant into half-inch-thick slices, Ted walks in, his step signaling his buoyant mood. Six A.M. at the boxing gym, a productive day at his firm where he specializes in estate planning, and now home, where’s he greeted by the aroma of tomato sauce simmering with onion and garlic and basil. His clothes hang loosely, too.

  “Dale’s the cook,” he says. “I’m the maître d’, the sommelier, and the cleanup crew.”

  As Dale sautés the eggplant in peanut oil, Ted narrates the story of one of his serving faux pas. Dale had volunteered to cook a beef tenderloin for an al fresco gathering with another couple. She’d stored the cream sauce in the same type of foil-covered container that she used for leftover cat food. Assigned to pack the picnic basket, Ted grabbed the Friskies instead of the sauce moutarde.

  “I took it pretty well,” says Dale, “at least in my memory.”

  “When have you ever made a scene?” asks Ted. “I don’t believe you have.”

  “A spectacle perhaps.”

  He looks at her and smiles. “Yes, those have been fun.”

  The conversation segues to the first month that Dale had Jewelia. The couple had decided to go to Paris, a favorite vacation spot, to celebrate Dale’s birthday and to visit their youngest daughter, who was working as a paralegal at the Paris office of a New York law firm.

  Dale always looked forward to trips, but on this one she’d be wearing Jewelia. The second guideline, devised by Jonell, was that if any of the women went to Paris, she could take the necklace, in honor of her namesake. Dale thrilled to being the first woman in the group to honor both guidelines. And no question, wearing the necklace with a size 8 outfit was more fun than wearing it with a 14. She loved the way the diamonds lay on her neck more attractively now, shaped more like a V than a U.

  Ted, a natural raconteur, picks up the story line. The two of them had developed a rhythm for travel, he explains. Dale, a researcher extraordinaire, planned the flights, hotels, and restaurants. She studied the local history and culture. Conversant in four languages, she brushed up on the native tongue. Ted planned the activities.

  “I knew just what I wanted to do,” Ted says. “Show Jewelia Paris. See the city through the eyes of a newcomer.”

  “Can you make the salad while you talk?” Dale asks him.

  As Ted continues the story he washes leaves of romaine, slices a red onion, thinly peels an avocado. Like Dale, he works easily while he chats.

  “We climbed with Jewelia to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We took her to the Louvre. To walk along the Seine. To see l’Arc de Triomphe and la Musée d’Orsay. And we took her to Cartier—that was probably the highlight. It was my idea to introduce Jewelia to a French cousin or great-aunt. Take her picture with a wealthy relative.” His tone of voice reflected amusement as if Jewelia were a member of the family.

  The couple was feeling a little intimidated as they approached the luxe surroundings: the classic awning heralding one of the world’s most exclusive stores, the jacketed doorman, the posh gilded display cases, the tall willowy blonde who approached them. Cartier has a strict policy, she told the Muegenburgs: no photographs in the store. But when she saw the couple’s visible disappointment, she whispered, “Follow me.” Leading them to a freestanding display case in a corner, she said she’d make an exception for their “leetle tennis necklace.” Ted photographed Dale and Jewelia beside a resplendent triple-stranded, diamond necklace.

  “Not a cousin,” Ted decided, “more like Jewelia’s great-grandmother, the baroness.”

  “And then we took her to the cathedral of Notre Dame, because Jewelia sleeps around. She needed to make her confession, so what better place? Tom Van Gundy can clean her but that’s only surface work. We sat in a pew and thought for a while about her sins. I really think she had a bit more luster when she came out.”


  “Dinner’s ready,” says Dale.

  Ted sits down, takes a bite of his eggplant, then looks appreciatively at his wife.

  “This is really good.” He smiles at her.

  “You have dimples,” she says, a reference to a result of his weight loss. She puts a hand on his arm. “They’re so cute.”

  He smiles sheepishly. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  Ted concludes his story: “Looking at the city as if it were our first time, we noticed details that gave the experience new texture and expression. It was a different kind of trip and it was a blast—one of the most fun trips we’ve ever had.”

  AND SO, THE HUSBAND most resistant to his wife’s buying a diamond necklace is perhaps the husband whose life has been most enhanced by it.

  “A few years ago, when my mother died and our youngest daughter left home, our active caretaking came to an end,” says Ted. “Now the two of us romp around the house.

  “In many ways Jewelia is emblematic of both of us liking ourselves better. Part of it has to do with body image. I’ve lost forty-seven pounds, some of it from chasing Dale in the necklace so we could honor the guideline. My weight loss interrelates with hers. We’re terribly codependent, so we encourage each other’s habits.

  “And part of it is that Dale’s become more self-confident. And that’s been a huge benefit for me. Sometimes I forget how old I am. In my wildest teenage years, or even ten to fifteen years ago, I could not have imagined a sex life like I have today. It’s incredible. And I don’t take anything for it, either.

  “Through Jewelia I’ve learned the value in letting go of control, being willing to let something take on a life of its own.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maggie Hood, the adventurer

  . . .

  Striving for a healthy life

  . . .

  LISTENING TO THE OTHER WOMEN’S ADVENTURES WITH the necklace was painful for Maggie Hood. She was probably a bigger adventurer than any of them. She’d bungee jumped in New Zealand, camped in the Australian outback, cycled the Pacific Coast’s Highway 1, climbed Mount St. Helens in Washington, and celebrated her fiftieth birthday by skydiving. She snow-skied, water-skied, hiked, and completed a short-course triathlon. But Maggie racked up no adventures this February, the month when she first wore the necklace. Unlike the others, she couldn’t celebrate her first turn with the diamonds. She had to focus all her energies on making a living and remaking a life.

  Maggie had plenty of experience remaking a life. Her marriage to her college boyfriend had ended after five years when he wanted children and she wanted a career. With her second husband, she filed after three months and two shoves.

  Those dissolutions paled beside the one she was going through when it was her turn to wear the diamonds. This divorce was dissolving sixteen years of marriage to the father of her two children. The split had thrown her into a depression, and the joint custody agreement continued to wring her dry. She’d kissed her kids good night every night since they were born. Now she’d see them only every other week. She knew she’d have to find new activities. She didn’t like being alone at the end of a workday.

  But her support network had shrunk. With the marital split, she’d lost couple friends. Worse, she’d lost her husband’s family, who for sixteen years had been her family, too.

  Her own parents were dead. One brother languished in a prison mental ward. Her three other siblings lived in the Midwest. Growing up in Chicago, Maggie had enjoyed a close group of girlfriends, from grammar school through high school, but those friends had all stayed in Chicago.

  Friends from former jobs—and former lives—were scattered from New York to Arizona. Even her workplaces were shrinking. She was selling homes for a real estate company with only five people in the office. As she got older, she’d discovered, life became harder to start anew.

  She’d met Jonell at a seminar and had known instantly she wanted to buy a share of the necklace. Now here she was at the end of February, “her month,” hosting the group to cede the diamonds that hadn’t been anywhere. Letting go of the necklace wouldn’t be hard. Why, she could barely remember wearing it. With the separation and move to the rental house, the month had bogged into chaos. Moving was always an ordeal, but not having her children for the first time was torture. An added misery: The necklace was hers for Valentine’s Day, but she’d had no one to go out with on the most romantic night of the year. Getting through the holidays, she’d seen then, was going to be tough. She’d loved hosting seasonal parties for her husband’s family. That was gone now. All that remained was a profound sense of disconnection.

  At six the night of the meeting, the women sauntered in talking and laughing. They hugged Maggie. “Your house looks great,” said one after another. Their compliments made the necklace exchange seem more like a housewarming. Maggie had spent only a few hours with these women, and yet, as she looked around her living room, she felt befriended in a way she hadn’t in a long time. There was some good in this month after all. The necklace had brought a new energy into her life. Maybe the necklace would lead her to a new chapter, she thought.

  She hoped.

  AS THE MONTHS PASSED, Maggie struggled to deepen the connection she felt that night at her house. But friendship didn’t come as quickly or as easily as Maggie had anticipated. In so many ways, she was different from the other women. For one thing, she looked different. While most of them showed some sign of a softer shape, Maggie, the youngest of the group, displayed the hard body of a thirty-year-old. While most of the others had chosen to age naturally, Maggie had opted for eyelid surgery and a face-lift.

  There were differences that weren’t superficial. Most of the women could count long-term friends among them, while Maggie knew only three women—casually. Maggie was the only mom in the group still raising children, ten and fifteen, which meant she sometimes came late to meetings because she had to attend parent-teacher conferences and baseball and softball games. Then, too, she missed a lot of the conversation because she was hearingimpaired. She was grateful for her hearing aids, which she’d worn since she was thirty, but the hearing loss she loathed. She missed out on jokes. Whispers were impossible. When the women all talked at once, and they often all talked at once, Maggie couldn’t hear.

  But she could hardly wait for her second go-round with the necklace. This time she’d do it right. She vowed to make it an adventure as only Maggie, the adventuress, could. She planned to skydive again. The first time had been such a rush that she’d adhered a bumper sticker on her Town and Country van that read: “Skydive! Take risks, not to escape life but to prevent life from escaping.”

  Maggie set a date, then e-mailed KCBS-TV, Channel 2 in Los Angeles. “I’ll be skydiving wearing Jewelia, a $37,000 diamond necklace. I think it’s a great story. Let me know if you’re interested.”

  A producer at the station e-mailed back, “We’re interested.”

  On a breezy, sunny day in February, Maggie drove 140 miles to the Jim Wallace Skydiving School in Perris, California. She exchanged small talk for a few minutes with the reporter and cameraman. Then she wiggled into a jumpsuit of periwinkle blue polycotton. She strapped on a harness. She put on gloves and goggles. Then she secured the diamond necklace to the back of her neck with duct tape.

  “I’m going to have one of those ‘airgasms’ today,” she vamped to the camera with a smile that broadened into a rich laugh as she added, “Jewelia’s about to jump out of an airplane for the very first time.”

  The camera zoomed in on Maggie’s fine features, her green eyes, her blond, wispy hair, the diamonds ringing her neck. As the wind blew, the camera caught the $10.99 rhinestone studs she’d bought at JCPenney to go with the necklace.

  Maggie gave a thumbs-up, then boarded the DHC-6 aircraft. She found a place on the bench seat between two other jumpers.

  The plane took off. One by one, the skydivers did too.

  “Your turn,” the instructor said to Maggie.

  She
rose from her seat. The instructor harnessed his body to hers.

  “I’m ready,” she said, smiling again for the camera.

  She leaned out the side of the plane. At thirteen thousand feet, she jumped.

  Maggie’s body went horizontal, her legs and arms flailing wide. She blew a kiss for the camera. She plummeted at 120 miles per hour, free-falling for fifty seconds, the wind roaring in her ears.

  Then she pulled the ripcord. The parachute opened. Her body went vertical. The next five thousand feet were soundless and serene as Maggie and Jewelia floated to the ground.

  Maggie arose from the soft landing, untangling herself from the harness and the instructor. “That was awesome,” she effused to the camera.

  She groped for the necklace. “Jewelia made it. She survived her first skydive.”

  When the tape stopped rolling, Maggie asked the reporter when the segment would air. Probably within a few days, he said, on the five P.M. news.

  Each afternoon, Maggie set her TiVo to record the news, and on the third day after her jump, the segment aired. Seeing the TV clip, she experienced the high all over again. She replayed the recording three times. She couldn’t wait to show it to the group. Finally, she’d had an adventure with the necklace, something to connect her to the others. And she’d showcased Jewelia to a TV audience of millions. The women would be thrilled.

  TWO NIGHTS LATER, Maggie greeted the women with hugs and high spirits. She sat patiently through dinner and the agenda.