The Lost Jewel
Like most women, I’ve occasionally lost one earring. So annoying! Sometimes almost heartbreaking. I’ve lost rings too that have flown off my finger in parking lots and conference rooms, never to be seen again. Once in 8th grade, I lost a particularly sentimental ring my mother gave me, a pretty little ring with a shiny red stone. The next day I saw a girl in my class wearing the ring and when I confronted her, she said it was hers. Lie!
Once, I was the finder of a ring. This ring was a doozie, nothing like any of the jewelry I’ve ever lost. This was a heavy gold ring with two stunning blue sapphires balanced by small clusters of pearls. When I wore it, people remarked and asked to see it more closely and then remarked some more.
I found it at the laundromat around the corner from my apartment. It was in the bottom of the washing machine tub, laying there after I removed my sodden clothes. Of course I looked around, but I was alone. There was no one to report to, no one looking particularly stricken. My clothes tumbled in the drier and still no one came about the ring. I folded my clothes and walked everything home, the ring in my pocket. When I put it on, it was a perfect fit.
I wore the ring on my left hand. It was significantly fancier than my wedding and engagement ring on my left. I remember the sales lady pooh-poohing my choice in engagement ring, attempting to pit my fiancé and I against each other, trying to nudge him into spending more.
“I just need a ring I can go camping in,” I explained, quite earnestly.
“We’re not interested in any of those Liberace things,” my fiancé said with a wave of his hand, which caused both of us to laugh, but made the sales lady huff. In the end we took our business elsewhere.
But this laundromat ring! Oh, it was heavenly. Camping and Liberace step aside! This ring offered a tasteful glamor I fell headlong into. It was the first time I had experienced such a thing.
The next time I went to the laundromat there it was, a sign. Of course there was a sign! LOST RING REWARD $100.
Why hadn’t I thought of putting up a sign? There was a notice board. It would’ve been the thing to do, yet it hadn’t even occurred to me. I had been dazzled by my luck, dazzled by the sparkle and shine of this amazing jewel.
When I got back home, I called the number on the sign and confessed to finding the ring. The girl on the other end of the phone was breathless with delight. She came over to my apartment at once.
I remember asking her inside. I lived on the bottom floor of a duplex that had been built in the early 1900s. The front room was large and appeared all the more hollow for our lack of possessions. She stood just inside the door. I handed her the ring, explaining how I found it.
She slipped it on at once. It was her wedding ring, she said, adding that she obviously needed to get it sized so it wouldn’t go falling off again.
“I just knew some other girl was wearing it!” she said.
I tried to keep my poker face on.
And then she asked me about the reward. Did I really want the reward?
Yes, I said, I did.
Somewhat begrudgingly, pulling it from her back pocket, she handed me the bill. One hundred dollars. I took it from her hand and then she thanked me again and left.
I looked at the bill in my hand. One hundred dollars! (For some context, rent on that apartment was only four hundred dollars a month.) I decided I would use it to buy something extraneous and beautiful. Something for myself.
I ended up buying a gorgeous pair of simple leather sandals. They were the most expensive item of clothing I had ever bought in my life. They molded perfectly to my feet and—crazy I know—made me feel a little like the Girl from Ipanema. I cherished those sandals until they wore out years later.
The young woman who owned the ring was like me, newly wed, frequenting a laundromat. So why didn’t I just let her have her ring back? Why did I take that reward money? I have often wondered about that. What kind of person was I that I took that reward money? I would never do that now.
But I was just a girl then, twenty-four years old. I think I had discovered the allure of owning something beautiful and expensive. I had never craved anything like that, had rarely, if ever, paid much attention to objects some people had that I did not. Somehow though, just that once, after fitting that ring on my finger, I felt the astonishing pleasure of luxury and I wanted it to last a little longer. Just a little longer.
Like you, I probably would have asked for the reward then, but not now. Great story.