Greed

Each child had a claim to a pile of jewelry when my paternal grandmother died—and how did they determine who was to have which pile?

The heirs were sent into an adjacent room and a trustee called out loudly enough to be heard by all of them—“Who will have this pile?”

My father said he shouted—“August Wilhelm will have this pile!”

Thus, my mother eventually received two gem-set rings that she wore as a pair until she achieved an advanced age and then she amalgamated the two of them into one—so that the diamonds and the sapphires were impressively bulked together.

I had to have it. It was a phantasmagoria. I selected it after my mother’s death, not because I liked it, but because it offers the memory of my mother and of the awkward, temporarily placed cold comfort that she gave me.

It’s hard to believe that our affair was so long ago.