The Pearl Necklace

Above anyone or anything my mother wanted prettier things. She was a spender. Always said a ROTH is just an expensive liner for your casket. Like it was something you visit on the first and the fifteenth to toss ten percent into and admire how soft it’s gonna be. So when she died at sixty-four it was the perfect payoff to a long-running joke. Besides the jewelry there wasn’t much in the way of inheritance. But at least she was smiling at the funeral. The expensive paper-white necklace was more comfort to her than any green bill. 

 But they always try and make you inherit something.

 “Those pearls there are WORTH something. Why don't you at least keep it to sell? Otherwise it goes underground. Sotheby's will gladly take it off your hands” And consequently off my mother's dead body. Yeah right.

 “Oughta been buried a long time ago” Was all I said. An understanding nod. I'd already made up my mind.

 The Sotheby's my father sitting next to me in the lawyer’s office is mentioning is not Sotheby's the retail and auctioneer business famed for its haughty selection but our small town offshoot of the same namesake and local flair. Local flair. That phrase posted on the billboard that covered the ‘Welcome To!’ sign. Advertised as if the only industry in this town was dead people's stuff. They think just because people choose to die here they leave behind a piece of this place. Maybe. Maybe they would be bought by that cafe owner that always raved about them when she saw them on my Mother's neck on the infrequent Sunday when the jewelry rotation aligned with her one-day-a-week off work cafe runs. But I doubt it. Those pearls are dead now. Of course they've always been dead. Just layers of calcium built up to soothe an oyster's toothache. Rock the deadest thing you know covering something and making it beautiful. I wonder what her headstone will say.

 The pearls are still shining and the lobster clasp was recently polished but what gave the string life was its position in the world. The way it lay on her. Not how they sit now unmoving. All stone-like. I think they... what the hell? They fucking pinned the thing to her. Stuck pins in my mom. Great now I'm gonna have to have a talk with the morticians. They used to drape across her neck and dance in their heavy fashion. Handpicked with so much attention paid to them that on top of being identical to the ones to the left and right the beadstress made them perfectly symmetrical along their x and y planes. So balanced the lobster clasp never moved from my mother's cervical vertebrae, a term I was not particularly fond of finding in the skeletal anatomy book I used when remembering the back of my mother's neck. It was made to weigh the same as the dozen or so little marbles it would had to have replaced had my mother chosen to just slip the long strand over her neck every time instead of plucking at the lever to release the claw and the beads from her neck. But I guess that wasn't her decision anyway. She just liked the way it looked. 

But now they're dead. No compliments while she lay there like that. No one singsonging how amaaazing they look at the coffee shop. No proudly unwhitened nor unverneered teeth to fill the asymptotes invented by her shoulders. Unrecognizable outside of my mother's context. The olive skin backdrop to bring out the slight pinks and platinums in the nacre is replaced now with an odd tone. I'm really gonna have to talk with those morticians. She doesn't look anything like how she used to this time of year. But I guess it's close enough. And green must be hard color to pull off trying to put some life in a dead woman. 

Now with her eyes closed like this they are the only thing to look at. Instead of something I found comfort in drawing my gaze away when the subject of career or girlfriend comes up at the dinner table they are the only thing I can stand to look at. 

They were dead long ago. They'd've died the second she draped them around her own neck had she known where they came from. But the way she looked at them we thought they must have been the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on. So my father never told her. And it was just yesterday at the reading of the will that he told me.

 “I guess the story ended as soon as that last knot was tied”

 “Guess so”

Go down to your nearest mom-and-pop jewelry joint to buy a pearl necklace for your wife or girlfriend. I suppose you could buy one for your husband or boyfriend times have changed but after the first time they show up wearing it around their straight friends at the office or poker night you'll be the one wearing it. If the just-old-enough-to-work granddaughter with the same surname as the place behind the glass case has any natural sales ability she will tell you all there is to know about a piece like that.

“These are single strand. It's exactly what it sounds like so don't worry I don't have to dumb all this down for you” She's right. The look on your face and fact that you eyed her up when you first walked in a 16 year old though you swear she don't look it makes you a perfect target. Turns out she's some sort of prodigy at jewelry sales.

“One strand of nylon or... silk. See those white knots there? Dainty right?” Now she's got you nodding like an idiot. Lock in would you? You are shopping for your wife you pervert.

“These are double strand. Two threads. Chunkier knots see? Between the beads. It all depends on what she likes. There is a she right?”

“Yeah a she. I mean. My wife. Would be for my wife” Why is it so hard to admit you have a wife? Jesus dude what are you gonna tell this little girl you're spoiling yourself with a necklace?

“Awwwww wait that's so cute she's gonna love them” Giving you a second to look. “These are understated. Timeless. Sexy” Pulling out the first set holding them up against her chest. “These” Making heavy of the display with the second set. “Are bold. Classic. More of a statement. Kind of an Art Deco look but I dunno. I just learned about it in art history class. From the 1920's you'd probably know more about that than I do though”

 How old does she think you are? “How old do you think I am?”

“You did say wife right? Not girlfriend? Or fiancé?”

Guess it's old school to have a wife now. 

You probably don't see the difference. Plus now you're all uptight from eyeing up expensive jewelry and a teenager.

“What about that one?” You figure if something catches your eye in the environment designed to catch eyes now you know it must be special. Like meeting your wife at a busy nightclub.

The girl's permasmile defrosts and she sidesteps to the next case over. The necklace is solitary in its own glass box and she hesitates to open it. “Well. That one. That one is triple strand. Black and a deep red and very dark blue. It is quite beautiful. But you don't want this one” And as soon as she says it remembers she is talking to you. Someone who by the way you are looking at both her and now the necklace very much does want it. Forbidden fruit and whatnot. She goes on. “These are from the Persian Gulf. Basra actually. Where my dad got them. You don't see strands from around there anymore. I suppose because of all the war. They don't farm them there. All wild. Big naturals”.

A cough. 

“They still have pearl divers there” Continuing. “Shoals over a hundred feet down. And it's a free dive. One at a time. Look at how they're all exactly the same size. These ones are damn near identical. Do the math. This strand has sixty-four pearls. Take a deep breath and swim straight down a hundred feet. Your ears are popping. You feel the weight of the sea on your temples. Pry open an oyster. Harder than you think. You ever shucked your own oysters? Lift up its tongue or whatever. Its belly maybe. Check. On the way up for air a shark bumps into you or your vision starts clouding over because you didn't hyperventilate thoroughly enough. You surface empty handed. Do it again. You find one in a hundred have a pearl. You come up put it in a bucket. Your family on the dinghy is relieved they get to eat today. Deep breaths. Go down for another. This hundred? Nothing. It's a probability. Now what's the probability that in a lifetime of harvesting you don't make any fatal slip with your shucker. Hell what's the probability that in a lifetime of living in Iraq with precious gemstones you don't get killed. Americans or otherwise. Take a look. Blue knot for each pearl that cost the diver their life red knot for each murder committed to make this strand. Black knot for a pure pearl”

Not a single black knot. The little fabric beads between the precious ones alternate blue red long string of blues few more reds mostly blues terminating in a big gaudy chunk of gold in the shape of a lobster claw. Obviously knotted in blood red.

She loved it. When Dad reached around Mom's neck that Christmas morning to attach her newest ornament she said she loved it. It was like the popcorn garland on the tree. Buttery white but much smoother and strung with this nearly imperceptible white thread. But she took it off in the car the next day and put it back in its felt box. We parked in front of a store with the same artsy surname logo as the box and she took it and went in. I stayed in the car. When she came out she was wearing the necklace again and holding the box and she got back in and smiled at me so pretty and so happy that all I did was giggle. I don't remember much else. Maybe we got ice cream but it was cold out so that doesn't sound right. What I do remember was my mom didn't wear that necklace for a long time. I missed it. I missed the smile she wore when she put it on. Seemed like she really did love it. When finally I asked her about it it was summer time and we were going to the beach. I thought pearls were perfect for the beach. She said she would wear them there and she did. My dad my mother and I at the beach and she had that big smile when she looked at me but not when she looked at him. She wore it more after that and she smiled at my dad again. Christmas came around and the tree in the living room was bare. As we worked on threading popcorn I noticed her pearls didn't look like the homemade garland anymore. They had the same thick dark strand that the popcorn did and if you looked closely they were colorful. They were so beautiful then I realized why it made her so happy. I told her how much I liked her pearls and how cool it was that they were spiderman colored. 

“Spiderman colored?” my dad questioned from the kitchen. 

“Blue and red and black like Spiderman,” To which my dad stopped and came over to us. He smelled like the cinnamon rolls he had just taken out the oven. She didn't look at him but she froze up for a second then went on with our stringing. My dad looked at them closely at the back of her neck.

“Yeah I guess they are”