Forty Thousand Dollars

When she said forty thousand dollars for her diamond ring, where did I go with this fact? I followed right along with her, hoping, hoping for a ring like hers for myself, because of what I believe deep down, that she is so safe because she has her ring, that she is as safe as her ring is big—and so is her entire family—her husband who gave her the ring, all of her children—and no one has ever tried to talk me out of believing this fact, because I would never speak of it, that the entire quality of her life is totally secure because of the size of that ring—that the ring is a complete uplift—that every single thing else about her is up to the standard the size of her ring sets, such as even her denim espadrilles, which I love, which she was wearing the day she was talking to me, or her gray hair pulled back, so serene, so that she is adored, so that she is everlastingly loved by her husband, and why not?—just look at her!—and she is loved by her children, and by everyone like me who has ever laid eyes on her and her ring.

She was waggling it, which I loved her to do, because I loved to see it move, to see it do anything at all, and she said, “I make my meat loaf with it.” She said, “I like that about it, too,” and I saw the red meat smears she was talking about, smearing up the ring the way they would do, the bread all swollen up all over it, all over the ring part and the jewel. I saw my whole recipe on that ring.

She said, “It goes along with me to take out my garbage, and I like that,” and I saw what she meant, how it would take out the garbage if it were taking it out with me, how it would go down with me, down the steps and out the back door—the ring part of the ring buried in the paper of the bag—and the dumping we would do together of the bag into the sunken can, before the likelihood of a break or a tear, or maybe I’d have to step on top of a whole heap of bags that was already down in there and then stamp on the top of the heap myself, to get it all deep down, to get the lid on with the ring on.

She said, “I never knew I was going to get anything like it. All that Harry said was, ‘We’ll need a wheelbar­row for you and the ring when you get it.’ A wheelbar­row!” she said. “But now don’t worry,” she said to me. “You’ll get one someday, too. Somebody will die,” she said, “then you’ll get yours—” Which is exactly what happened—I never had to pay money for mine, and mine ended up to be even bigger than hers. “This much bigger—” I showed her with two fingers that I almost put together, the amount, which is probably at least another carat more, but mine is stuck inside an old setting and cannot be measured. That was the day I walked behind her, that I showed her, that I walked with her to her car when she was leaving my house.

The rings were of no account outside, when we were saying goodbye, when we were outside my house going toward the back side of her car, because we were not looking at the rings then. The heels of her denim es­padrilles, which matched her long, swinging skirt, were going up and down, so was her strong ponytail, and her shoulders, and I wanted to go along with her to wherever she was going.

And then the sense I had of not being able to stay behind her—of not being able to see myself in my own clothes walking away—the sense I had that I was not where I was, that I could not possibly follow in my own footsteps, was gone.