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

  It’s not surprising that Patti’s first job while in college was in retail. She worked as a floater for Abraham & Straus on Long Island, and when she was assigned to the jewelry department she bought her first pair of good earrings. They were 14-karat-gold hoops, the size of a silver dollar, the wires intricately bent into a serpentine design.

  “They were two hundred dollars—this was in 1970—and I had to put them on layaway. 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 jewelry. Never.

  “My love of shopping is genetic, and I consider myself a consummate shopper. I used to pride myself on being able to go into Marshalls and run my fingers over the fabrics and know which jacket was a Dana Buchman. I was never wrong.

  “Buying for many people is an aphrodisiac. If they’re sad, they go shopping, happy they go shopping, pissed off they go shopping. For me it’s the thrill of the hunt, finding the best quality at the best price. I rarely buy retail. I found a beaded gauze top—a work of art—in a thrift shop in Santa Barbara. I paid seventy-five dollars for it. Later when I pulled it out of the closet to wear, I discovered the original price tag—thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. Another find! It felt orgasmic.”

  Patti didn’t feel the same ecstasy with regard to the group necklace. “Diamonds are too common for me. I like artisan jewelry, both because I like unusual designs and because I like to support local artists.

  “Besides,” she added, “I needed another necklace like I needed a friggin’ hole in the head.”

  IN THE BEDROOM she shares with her husband, Patti talks about her objects of desire, her life as a consumer. It’s the perfect setting for the subject. In one corner, a bamboo hat rack is nearly invisible underneath purses—quilted and jeweled and beaded purses, feather and leather, leopard and velvet purses, today’s and yesterday’s purses. And ohmygosh the boas! Long ones, short ones, they came simple and sequined, 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 cutout fringe, and a thick felt wrap with oversized pockets. “That one’s from Dream Weavers in Martha’s Vineyard,” she says, “one of my favorite stores.” On the bottom shelf of the stand a wicker basket cascades with scarves of cashmere and chenille, painted silks in olive and aubergine. Patti reaches for a gold-and-black-sequined scarf, twists it into a belt, then a headband, then a necklace. “I use a lot of these as costumes,” she says. “With the right accessory I can change the look of anything.”

  No matter what Patti drapes around her lean body, she looks good in it. Her photogenic face is an older version of that of the actress Téa Leoni’s. At nearly five feet, seven inches, she has enviable blond 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 cherry dresser: headbands and sunglasses and reading glasses, all jeweled and tortoise and multicolored and decorated for the holidays. In her walk-in closet: berets in every color, dozens of belts, 150 pairs of shoes. “When I go to 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 cookie-cutter things. I don’t go to chain stores unless I need socks. I like flea markets and thrift stores.”

  And then there’s the jewelry. 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 jewelry inherited from her mother and jewelry for every holiday: pins and earrings shaped like wreaths, pumpkins, shamrocks, flags.

  And in the closet, a fifty-four-pocket hanging jewelry holder with a pair of earrings in every section; and a thirty-pocket quilted case with jewelry in every section. More necklaces of multiple strands, multiple colors, necklaces made of pearls, gemstones, burros’ teeth. “I have a mix of good and fake,” she says. “If you have enough good, you can mix in the faux.” Patti pulls out a necklace of burgundy silk cording with a tasseled ivory pendant hanging from a burgundy alligator glasses case. She adjusts it around her neck, flips open the glasses case, cocks her head to one side, then broadcasts a huge grin. “Would you look at this?”

  The scene recalls the line uttered by the character Clairee, played by Olympia Dukakis in the film version of Steel Magnolias: “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.”

  There isn’t a drawer, a shelf, a stand, or a chest without hidden stashes and caches of jewelry. The only place Patti doesn’t keep it is in a safe.

  “After we bought Jewelia a neighbor showed me her diamond necklace, which she keeps locked up. Other women I know make copies of their jewelry 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.”

  Patti was off to get her annual Pap smear.

  Patti loved her gynecologist. Going for an appointment was never an ordeal, always a fun time. So fun that on one visit Patti talked Dr. Roz Warner into buying a share of the diamond necklace. “I’ll join the group,” said the doctor, who had recently moved to the area from the East Coast and liked the idea of meeting new people, “but I don’t want to buy the necklace.”

  “Can’t do one without the other,” said Patti.

  The feminine examining room soothed patients, its pale yellow walls decorated with a poster of one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensual floral paintings. Like many—though never O’Keeffe—Dr. Roz interpreted the art sexually, seeing on the left side of the flower a silhouette of a woman’s face and breasts; on the right, her vulva.

  In a white cotton gown, the diamonds circling her neck, Patti hoisted herself onto the examining table and positioned her size 71/2 feet into the stirrups.

  “I have my camera!” she announced.

  “No you don’t.”

  “Yes I do. I want a picture.”

  Patti hadn’t been sure how Roz would respond—she was, after all, a physician—so she didn’t call her in advance. Patti thought life was more fun if it was spontaneous.

  Roz had been in practice twenty years. No one, not one single patient, had ever brought a camera for her annual checkup. She was startled but she moved quickly out to the hallway to nab Michelle, her twenty-five-year-old medical assistant.

  Patti prepared the settings and handed the camera to Michelle.

  “What do you want me to do with it?” Michelle asked.

  “Take my picture.”

  Michelle looked embarrassed. She knew Patti Channer was one of the livelier women who came through the office, but this was a bit much.

  “Just make sure it’s a side view.”

  Patti let rip one of her bar-girl laughs.

  Patti’s laugh was so infectious that Michelle and Roz laughed too.

  Michelle took two shots, returned the camera to Patti, and left the room still laughing.

  “Okay, Dr. Roz, now you wear it while you’re giving me the exam.”

  It was an interesting experience, Roz thought, one she decided to repeat when it was her turn with the necklace. It would be a point of conversation, something to distract the patient from the fluorescent lights overhead and the metal speculum inside.

  Patti felt good when she left the office. She liked to document her life. Every trip, every family vacation, she was the one with the camera. It was a way of remembering the fun, prolonging the experience. And sharing the photos with people was like giving a gift.

  Wearing a diamond necklace for a gynecological exam had to be a first, she thought. She couldn’t wait to show the pictures to the women.

  ___

  D
URING HER FIRST MONTH with the necklace, Patti wore it boogie-boarding at a family wedding in Oahu, shooting a 95 on eighteen holes of golf, and helping to hose down a neighborhood fire. She wore it to her husband’s pediatric-dental practice, where she worked.

  And she wore it the orthopedic clinic when Gary underwent shoulder surgery, and she donned the diamonds every evening she worried about the fallout from his operation. As she dragged on her Winston Lights on the patio, she wondered, Would they 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, handling the books? For a while he’d been the only pediatric dentist in town, which meant seeing sixty to seventy patients a day. That had been a lot of work, but gratifying too. She knew that her business smarts had helped make the practice successful. And Patti had met so many interesting women when they brought in their kids. That was the way she’d met Jonell.

  What if they did have to sell? 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 zilch. She was high-energy, always had been. She hated that word retirement—really, society needed to think of a new one. Gary was so happy at the prospect, so ready, 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 distinguishes Patti is 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 an athletic stride befitting someone who completed the Waikiki Roughwater Swim. On the streets downtown she talks to everyone—and Patti knows everyone. She calls them “doll,” “babe,” “honey,” “lovey,” like a roadside waitress. She tells everyone she bumps into the story of the necklace, all the while accompanied by the percussive cracking of her spearmint Eclipse.

  People reacted to the necklace in varied ways. Some marveled, 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 TWO more days with the necklace when one of the women 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. “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.”

  Later with the women, Patti talked about the possessiveness that surprised her, made her feel guilty and embarrassed. Made her feel like Gollum in J. R. R. Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Gollum was 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.” She called her difficulty in letting it go “the Gollum effect.”

  Collectively buying a necklace was like a real estate time-share, but in that kind of time-share owners didn’t get together to talk about their experiences. “In talking about it,” says Patti, “I realized 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, Jonell, a voracious reader, gave the group a reading list and their first assignment: 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 avid reader of literary fiction. She had no interest in self-help books. If I’d wanted a book club, 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 like the greeting card headlined “Bad Girls Book Club,” where half the group doesn’t read the book and the other half doesn’t even show up.

  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 their practice she had time. And she was a member of the Good Girls Book Club; she 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 will 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 deal,’ I’d buy two. The book got me thinking for the first time about the excess in my life. I realized that where I’ve been excessive is with my accessories. I have enough to accessorize 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 anymore. 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 multicolored lizard 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 ‘accessorize, accessorize.’ Now it’s ‘I have enough.’ Today when I look in my closet I feel sick. Mortified.”

  Patti pauses in her self-reflection. “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 holes. Today I see what I do have and shop 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

  Priscilla Van Gundy, the loner

  . . .

  Discerning the real jewels

  . . .

  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 overhauling store operations 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 gri
nd. Last year she’d taken off just twelve days, total. The pace had been grueling.

  And now one of the store managers had just quit, which meant adding selling to everything else she had to do. Priscilla didn’t like being on the floor interacting with customers; she found selling stressful and exhausting—so many women wanting to talk. Occasionally, if the customer was 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 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?

  Sure, today, Priscilla had a job, a husband, three children nearby. But who knew what lay ahead? Wasn’t this the lesson she’d learned at her sister’s deathbed?

  AFTER THE WOMAN LEFT, Priscilla retreated to the back room, where she checked her e-mail.

  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.)