CARING FOR YOUR PEARLS
by Karen Schechner
I’ve just gotten home from the Adirondacks with my girlfriend Rachel, and I call my brother. I talk with his partner Greg, who says I should watch for a package in the mail, a present from both of them. Without putting much thought into it, I assume it’s a book, like the last couple of presents from them—Audre Lorde’s Collected Works, Jeanette Winterson’s Gut Symmetries. Perfect gifts.
When the book-sized red and blue package arrives a couple of days later, I rip into the cardboard carton. But instead of a book, there’s a manila envelope with my brother’s scratchy caution to open it carefully. Inside is a black satin bag. “Crap. Rune stones,” I think. I dump the contents into my hand and am horrified to see a necklace. A hefty strand of slightly irregularly-shaped pearls.
As I hold them, my entire Adirondack vacation flashes before my eyes: jumping off the thirty-foot rock ledge into the Ausable River; hiking through thorny blackberry bushes to a mountain lake; pretending to eat a bullfrog tadpole; catching a fish using my dogs’ water bowl; chipping my tooth and filing it down with my Swiss Army knife. Free dentistry, I said. During all of this I got scraped, bruised, and very muddy.
Not to say that a woman, or a man, can’t do every one of those things and more, and not be psyched to come home, take a hot shower, and put on her or his pearls. But I’m just not one of those people.
Along with the jewelry is a square of paper with a single paragraph entitled “Caring for Your Pearls.” My pearls? That they are already mine alarms me. I want to quickly drop them before lasting ownership can be conferred. But I hold them and read the first sentence of the paragraph: “Always put on your pearls after you apply makeup, perfume, and hairspray.” It sounds like the advice of Helen Gurley Brown.
Of course! This must be a gag gift! But I know, in my bones, that that kind of luster can only be formed by phlegmy little mollusks at the bottom of the sea. And the hope dies as I reexamine the necklace. The pearls are a faintly green and pink-hued hard reality. I sigh, thinking some other woman, somewhere else would be really happy to get these.
Trying to appreciate the gift, I consider actually wearing them in public. It wasn’t like I’d be donning a floor-length mink or anything. But it’s impossible. I put them on and feel like I’m in drag. In the mirror I look ridiculous standing awkwardly with short messy hair, a gray T-shirt, cut-off shorts, and pearls. I’m as comfortable in them as I imagine my brother would be, maybe less, given that when he was a kid, he liked wearing high-heels or, as he called them when he was three, “heel-highs.” But the question that keeps bobbing at the surface is—What the fuck was my brother thinking? What could possibly have made him believe that pearls would be an appropriate gift for his sister, who had owned trucks and a motorcycle, but did not own a dress, or even a pair of earrings? I wish he had just taken me out for dinner at the Oyster Bar instead.
I call my mother for advice.
“Ma, did you know what Alan bought for me?”
“So you got them.”
“Yes, didn’t you try to discourage him?”
“He called me after he’d already bought them. He asked me if I thought you’d like them. I said I thought you might.”
“What?! Does no one know me in this family? When have I shown an interest in pearls or anything girly, ever?” I’m upset with Alan because the pearls are a sweet and generous gift and I feel guilty for not loving them. And so, naturally, I take this out on my mom.
“Of course I knew you wouldn’t like them. But what could I say?”
“I don’t know, Ma. But what do I say, now?”
“Lie.”
Lying would be difficult. My brother is usually eerily intuitive, so baldly lying would require acting skills I just don’t have. And wouldn’t lying perpetuate the problem? My unhappiness about the gift doesn’t just stem from his spending a lot of money on a present I don’t like, but that he could be so off-the-mark about me. It was like giving a vegan a rabbit’s foot. And I feel slightly offended. My looks, my dress reflect a hard-won acceptance of who I am, and that includes an intentional rejection of the trappings of mainstream femininity. Is my brother suggesting that I should be more traditionally feminine? So…shouldn’t I let this be a difficult but honest moment during which I disabuse him of some of his illusions about his sister?
Granted, this can all be viewed as over-analysis, self-indulgent bobe mayses, but the gift itself was so metaphor-laden. The beads were born of overcompensating for an irritant, so I indulge myself. I reach for the phone to call my sister Diane.
“D., did Mom tell you what Alan got for me?”
“No. What’d he get?”
I draw out the story a little, with the build-up of expecting a book and so forth.
“…and it was a strand of pearls,” I say, refraining from yelling the last word because I don’t want to influence her reaction. In her one word response I know she understands everything. “Bizarre,” she says, and I picture her, dark hair surrounding her face, as she shakes her head back and forth in disbelief.
Her advice? Lie.
“Well, I got them! They’re beautiful,” I say, false enthusiasm dripping into the phone. My strategy is to focus on the beauty of the pearls themselves.
“Do you really like them?” asks Alan. His tone wavers between doubt and hope, and I find it physically painful.
“Yes, of course. Thank you so much!” I answer, my voice pitched high with the “vehemence of mendacity,” to borrow a phrase from the novelist Julian Barnes.
I repeat that they are beautiful and use words uncharacteristic for me, like “lovely.” We switch subjects, because we’re both embarrassed, but I come back to the subject of the pearls, so I can more fully thank and appreciate. And in a streak of unoriginality I run through the same litany of praise. Again Alan asks if I really like them, sounding more doubtful. It’s increasingly difficult to bullshit with this much zeal. When he asks me for the third time if I really like them, I realize that, at least subconsciously, he knows exactly how I feel and I
acquiesce to the inevitable.
“They really are beautiful,” I say. “But I’m just not comfortable wearing them. I’m sorry. It was sweet of you to buy them for me. I’m sorry.”
We pause. I imagine he thinks I perceive myself too narrowly, that I’m unable to break out of my comfort zone. But I also think he might be too disappointed in my reaction to the pearls to judge me, and I picture him standing in a jewelry shop impulsively buying his little sister something spectacular.
In a rush of filling the space, I say that Mom loves pearls and maybe she could borrow them from me long-term. Alan’s voice sounds a little angry, but mostly wounded, and he suggests that I give them to Rachel, who wouldn’t be any more interested in wearing pearls than I would. Then he says, “No, I want you to keep them. Just throw them in a drawer somewhere and forget about them, but I want you to keep them.”
And that’s it. He begins talking about his plans to go to Florida and visit our parents. We finish our conversation and hang up. Perhaps he suspected all along I would never be comfortable wearing the necklace, but wanted me to have the option if I had some fancy event to attend. Neither one of us felt very good about what happened, but it’s done. And I think, guiltily, at least now he won’t buy me the gown to go with my pearls.
