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

by Cheryl Jarvis

  “The students were so interested in the necklace story that I asked them what they had of value that they might be willing to share. The necklace spurred a wonderful class discussion on friendship and generosity.”

  GABI AGUIRRE, fourteen, eighth grader, Our Lady of the Assumption: “I got to be the newscaster for our mock trial because that’s what I want to be when I grow up. I was practicing and talking really fast and Mrs. Osborne said, ‘If you speak slowly I’ll let you wear Jewelia.’ I was so excited I practiced all night. When Mrs. Osborne put it on me the next day I had a huge boost of self-confidence because I was wearing a million-dollar necklace. It didn’t really cost a million dollars but that’s what it felt like. My mom took a million pictures of me with it on—well, not a million but a lot—and she framed one for my bedroom. Jewelia’s no longer on my neck but she’s still there. Mrs. Osborne is one teacher I’ll never forget.”

  MARISSA HOOD, seventeen, senior, Foothills Tech: “I asked my mom if I could wear it to school on my sixteenth birthday. It was so cool. I wore it the whole day. I felt I had something to show off, and everyone wanted to see it. What was really cool was that my mom trusted me. She knew I’d be careful.”

  At Work

  CAROL FREEMAN, forty-nine, letter carrier, U.S. Postal Service: “I’d heard about the necklace, so I asked Dale about it when I saw her on my route. She said, ‘Would you like to wear it?’ My uniform didn’t do it justice, but what an experience! I’ve been delivering mail for twenty-two years and I’ve never had anything happen as cool as that. I felt uplifted the rest of the day. When I got back to the post office, I bragged to everyone about it. How often does a letter carrier get to wear a diamond necklace on her route, or even get to wear one at all?”

  ANNA SERRETEC, thirty-three, warehouse supervisor, Fashion Forms: “I asked to wear it because diamonds are my birthstone, and having a diamond necklace has been one of my dreams for a long time. All the girls in the warehouse were looking at me like, ‘Wow!’ I’d been depressed because I’m overweight, but wearing the necklace made me feel happy. More than that, it made me feel exciting. It made me feel sexy.”

  LUCY WILLIAMS, fifty-two, stylist and owner of the hair salon Lucy in the Sky: “I had chills going down my spine. I was actually Lucy in the Sky with diamonds. Before it was ‘with zirconium.’ Wearing it while I was giving a haircut tickled my innards. Sometimes when I’m in my garden I think back on wearing that diamond necklace. It was such a glorious feeling, like eternal sunshine, a lovely, hopeful feeling for the planet.”

  ANDREA LEON, twenty-six, surgical coordinator: “All of us got to wear it at the office one afternoon. The work didn’t feel so hectic that day. I asked one of the other girls to take my picture with Jewelia so I could add it to my profile on My-Space. I majored in feminist studies at UC—Santa Cruz, and seeing these women offer a diamond necklace to those who couldn’t afford to buy one was inspiring. I hope to do that with my friends someday.”

  LORI SHEPHERD, forty, office technician, State of California, Sacramento: “I’d just stepped out of the shower at six-thirty in the morning and there was my sister. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing there. She said, “Surprise!” and held up the necklace. She gave it to me to wear for the day for my fortieth birthday. I’m reserved and quiet by nature, but I got excited about that. Driving to work I kept looking at it in the rearview mirror. There was a supervisor at work who would never be able to buy such a thing, never even conceive of having something like that on, so I let her wear it, too. She was so ecstatic, I was as excited for her as I was for myself. I love diamonds, but I could never consider buying something like that when we need a new roof or windows. So I may not ever own one, but I’ll never forget that one day I wore a diamond necklace.”

  MONICA SCHILLER, sixty, senior consultant, Behavior Science Technology, Inc.: “On my sixtieth birthday I was conducting a training workshop in Ojai. Early in the morning Mary Osborn gave me the diamond necklace for the day. It was such an unexpected and touching way to be honored. In the afternoon, the office gave me a party. They rolled in a wheelchair and handed me a cane and a basket with granny glasses, Depends, denture cream, Preparation H, an oversized pill dispenser, and a blue-haired wig. I thought to myself, ‘You can give me all these horrid aging gifts, but the reality is, I’m sitting here wearing a gorgeous diamond necklace feeling young and beautiful.’ ”

  From a Sickbed

  SUZANNE STELLA, fifty-nine, retired librarian, San Francisco: “Roz insisted that we all wear it when we were out to dinner. I had on a collared sweater and didn’t think the necklace would look right with it, but Roz said, ‘That’s not the point. I want you to wear it to help with your healing.’ My days are spent in doctors’ offices and hospitals—I’m on dialysis. That evening was such lighthearted fun. I can’t say I felt healed after wearing the necklace, but I was moved by Roz’s wanting me to wear it. I felt drawn to what it meant, and maybe that’s where healing begins.”

  CHONA PARDO, fifty-six, full-time mom: “My mother was in hospice, in constant pain from stomach cancer. She’d been really sad. Patti Channer came and put the necklace around her and gave her a mirror to look at it. My mom smiled and stayed happy the rest of the day. Patti took a picture of her wearing the necklace and then gave copies to me and my sisters and brothers. My mother died a month later. That picture will always be special, because it’s the last picture we have of her, and she’s smiling.”

  At Play

  TAKA YAMASHITA, sixty-nine, retired nurse: “I got to wear the necklace for our golf tournament, and it elevated my whole mood. It helped me play better and brought me luck. We won first place! I love the spirit of the necklace, that it gives whoever wears it a miraculous moment.”

  BOBBIE BATTEN, eighty-nine, Jonell’s mother: “I booked the necklace for my three bridge clubs. When I wear it, everyone’s looking at me. It makes me feel special. It makes me feel pretty. The second year, I let all the other women wear it, too.”

  EIGHT WOMEN CLUSTER around two bridge tables at the contemporary Ventura home of Bobbie Batten. The group has been playing together for twenty years, and they take their bridge-playing seriously. In her silk Chinese blouse, Bobbie blends with her home’s Asian decor. Her silver hair is exquisitely coiffed, her nails lacquered pale pink, her beautiful face nearly wrinkle-free. (“Merle Norman cold cream every night for fifteen minutes,” she says.)

  Each woman focuses on the cards before her while awaiting her turn to wear the necklace. “It’s just what my outfit needed,” says Ruby, seventy-nine, wearing a hot pink striped T-shirt and hot pink sweatshirt jacket.

  Jonell transfers the necklace from one woman to another, photographing each with the diamonds.

  “I’ve never had a diamond necklace on,” says Margaret, ninety-four. “It feels wonderful. I don’t want to take it off.”

  “I need another picture,” says Jean, who doesn’t tell her age. “Stand close enough to get the diamonds, but not too close to my face.”

  “I don’t care about a picture,” says Tammy when it’s her turn. “I just want to wear the necklace.”

  Jonell leaves to get Chinese carryout for the women: orange chicken, fried rice, lo mein, and green beans with water chestnuts. As the women lunch, their conversation ranges from a book on the CIA and a child who’s an FBI agent to life in Argentina, the fires in Catalina, and the new real estate developments in Ventura. They gab about bridge sites on Yahoo! and the best way to navigate the Web to enter international bridge tournaments.

  “Who’s got the necklace?”

  “I’m still wearing it,” says Carolyn, eighty-four, in a pink cardigan twin set.

  “You’ve worn it all during lunch,” protests one of the others.

  “It just belongs on my neck, I guess,” says Carolyn. “It’s so comfortable. I’m afraid I can’t get it off.”

  Five months later, one of Bobbie’s bridge friends composed her annual Christmas letter with the year’s highlights. On th
e center of the page: her picture wearing Jewelia.

  Another day, across town, in the teachers’ lounge at Our Lady of the Assumption, thirteen women are eating salads and oranges and drinking Diet Cokes, reminiscing about their experiences wearing Jewelia. So far Tina had loaned it to six teachers, two teachers’ aides, one secretary, and one principal.

  “I was walking on air, flushed, glowing all day,” said one teacher.

  “I liked that it was real,” said another. “Usually when people compliment me on my jewelry, I have to tell them it’s fake.”

  “I liked the whole princess/tiara feeling,” said a young woman with a ponytail.

  “I liked that it was an instant breast enhancer,” said a svelte blonde. “I also liked that it affirmed I don’t need diamonds to be happy.”

  The women wondered if men could share something. “Maybe,” said one teacher, “if it’s the right item, like an expensive car or exclusive set of golf clubs. I bet there’d be some men who’d like to pass a woman around.”

  Jeweler Tom Van Gundy says that if a woman bought a diamond necklace for herself she’d typically wear it twelve to fifteen times a year. From the condition of the clasp, he calculates that this one is worn seven hundred times a year. “The clasp is always the weakest link in any piece of jewelry,” he says. “I have to believe that one of these days the necklace will wear itself out.” Until that day comes, women all over Ventura have proven the truth of Mark Twain’s words uttered decades ago: “Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Roz Warner, the leader

  . . .

  Finding a sisterhood

  . . .

  DR. ROZ WARNER WAS PUZZLED BY THE WOMEN IN THE group who just wanted to have fun. What did that mean? Her whole adult life she’d equated fun with escape, and she’d never escaped. She’d never had time. She held a harsh view of escaping because it would have brought disaster to her life.

  So naturally she’d said no to buying the necklace. What else could it be but fun? Then one night at Saticoy Country Club, she saw Patti Channer and Mary Karrh sharing the necklace with girl talk and laughter. Dr. Roz and her husband had just moved their joint gynecological practice from the East Coast to Ventura and had joined the club to meet new people. Hearing Patti and Mary’s necklace banter in the powder room, she had to admit an attraction. Not to the necklace, which left her lukewarm, but to the feeling of being in a sorority. She realized that to be in this sorority she’d have to buy the pin.

  She’d missed her opportunity four decades ago, though she’d been programmed for it. From a professional, Jewish family, she was the oldest of five and the only daughter of a judge and a homemaker. At Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, she’d captained the cheerleaders and paraded in the homecoming court. She was headed for Indiana University and sorority rush.

  Then at seventeen she became pregnant.

  Unlike most teenage girls, Roz was a doer rather than a dreamer, with her intellect dominating her emotions. She dispassionately weighed her options. She could get an abortion, but, back then in 1962, abortion was illegal and dangerous. She could go away to have the baby, but she couldn’t come home and pretend the birth hadn’t happened. She could marry her boyfriend and look ahead to a different life. She chose the third path. For Roz, pregnancy wasn’t an obstacle, only a change in plan.

  So college for Roz didn’t include dating and sororities and making lifelong friends, or, for that matter, any friends at all. As she accommodated her husband’s schooling and career, she earned her degree piecemeal at seven colleges across the country, while selling Avon during the school year and running a Travelodge motel in the summer—all the while raising a son.

  “After five years, I woke up one day and my husband was gone,” she says. “He left a note. I was devastated and crying and filled with terror: How was I going to get him back? How could I tell my mom? I went searching for him, begged him to return. When I came back home without him, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘Stop this. Now you can have a better life.’ In one day I went from feeling abandoned to feeling crazy to feeling hopeful. It would have been amazing if the marriage had lasted. We were just kids.

  “He switched careers and went back to school, so he gave me only one hundred dollars a month in child support, which made for some terrible years.

  “I was living in Indiana and working as a high school biology teacher when I fell in love with a pro basketball player, who was black. My high school had a mixed population, so I was familiar with black culture. My father, who was a strong, opinionated man, sent two of my brothers over to tell me I had to stop seeing this guy or people would hurt me and my son. At that time, a mixed couple could not be together in the Midwest. I listened to my brothers, but I wasn’t going to have other people tell me what to do. I packed up my Camaro and drove to L.A. with my six-year-old son. I was twenty-four.

  “So I became old when I was young.

  “I continued that relationship, which practically killed my dad. The only way for him to deal with it was to deny it, so he denied me. My parents disowned me for a very long time. Not financially—I was self-supporting—but emotionally. I called them monthly, but my dad wouldn’t talk to me. My mom would talk only a minute or two and then say, ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you.’ Their decision saddened me, but it didn’t crush me.

  “Six years after I left Indiana, I went back home when my dad had a heart attack. When I went to see him in the hospital’s intensive care unit, he had a second one. The stress of seeing me was too much for him, though thankfully he survived.

  “I started medical school when I was thirty-two. My son was in high school, so we went through school together. It was a grueling time. I told him I couldn’t be the kind of parent who’s always there because medical school was consuming. I got him into a good school that I knew would look after him. He hung out a lot at his best friend’s house. My son was very responsible and is today. When I went back to my high school reunion I took him with me. Why not? He was a member of the class, too.”

  PETITE AND LEAN, Dr. Roz wears her clothes like a uniform: slim black pants, black Privo flats, and, if it’s cold, a charcoal fleece jacket. All that changes is the color of her knit shirt: lilac, chartreuse, fuchsia—colors that play up her shoulder-length gray hair. Photographs from the seventies show her in an Afro, looking like a prettier Barbra Streisand in the beginning scenes of The Way We Were. Today, Dr. Roz tames her curls with the four-hour Japanese straightening process. She wears rimless glasses and no makeup. She’s tucked the diamond necklace inside her purple polo shirt.

  She’s making her way to the board room at Saticoy Country Club, where she’s just stepped down from a two-year presidency but still serves on the board. The position was nothing new for Dr. Roz, who’d been president of her UCLA medical school class four years in a row and led hospital task forces and health care initiatives in Philadelphia. But for the old boys’ network at Saticoy, a woman in charge was a first in the club’s eighty-year history. Members speak of her in superlatives: “the most amazing woman,” “the consummate schmoozer,” “really showed people around here that a woman could run things and run them better than ever.”

  An elderly couple approach her. The man espies the necklace.

  “Watch out,” he says to Roz, “you’re supposed to make love with that on.”

  “Should I go home with him?” Roz asks his wife.

  “No,” she answers, “but I’d like to borrow the necklace.”

  Her husband interrupts. “You two are making me feel like a piece of meat.”

  The wife reconsiders. “You can borrow him,” she says to Roz.

  “That wouldn’t bother you?”

  “No, he’s eighty-four.”

  Roz laughs, then makes her way to the boardroom. Whether men are eighty-four or thirty-four, she knows that one of the first things many of them think about when they s
ee the necklace is the sex guideline.

  “How ya doing, sweetheart?” a board member greets her.

  She puts her hand on his arm and smiles. “I have the necklace,” she says, “and you know what that means.”

  “Sure do,” he answers. “You’re going to have sex with the diamonds.”

  “That’s right,” she flirts. “You want to come home with me?”

  “Will Michael be there?”

  “Probably.”

  “Hello, beautiful,” says another.

  In a wood-paneled room with a sweeping view of the golf course, Roz sits among eleven tanned, well-heeled men in their fifties and sixties, retired professionals and businessmen, an insurance agent, a geologist, a judge. Some wear khaki shorts and polo shirts straight off the golf course; others are in suits and ties after a day at the office. As the board members dine on penne pasta, a green salad, and chocolate brownies, members report on finances, renovations, upcoming tournaments, all the issues involved in a multimillion-dollar operation. Roz listens attentively but rarely speaks.

  After the meeting, she banters with the chefs, the waiters, the club manager—all men. “Let me give you a hug,” she says to each one before saying good-bye.