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FIRST PLACE
The Cocktail Ring
By Kathy Altman
King George, Virginia
“
How about these?” Mrs. Jacobs held up a pair
of elbow-length pink lace gloves.
“
Mother!” Andrea rolled her eyes. “Pink!
Oh, please! I’m not pretending I’m, like,
Scarlett O’Hara or anything. I’m not wearing
flounces.”
Mrs. Jacobs shrugged and carefully replaced the pair
of gloves on the shelf. Realizing she wasn’t
helping, she wisely stepped away to browse through
the handbag display.
Andrea shook her head and reached for a pair of black
silk gloves. Simple, yet dramatic. They would go well
with the white chiffon sheath she’d be wearing.
She’d look elegant, understated, like a fashion
model. She’d probably look like she was making
some kind of important, intelligent statement with
her black-and-white outfit.
She hummed along with the instrumental music that was
being discreetly released by overhead speakers. Andrea
was on top of the world. She actually had a date for
the junior prom. Brent Hollister had asked her. She
was pretty lucky, Brent being her third choice and
all. Most of her friends hadn’t even been asked
by their eight or ninth choices. And wouldn’t
be. They’d have to go with their brothers or
cousins or whatever.
Andrea really deserved to have been asked by her first
choice, Ethan. They would have looked so good together,
Andrea like a Greek goddess ... or no, more like one
of those Greek column thingies they learned about in
world history class. Katydids? Whatever. Anyway, with
tall, white-blonde Ethan beside her, they would have
made an arresting couple.
Yeah, arresting, Andrea mocked to herself. Brent was
probably a safer date. She’d heard that Ethan
was into drugs.
Andrea set the black silk gloves aside as a definite
possibility. Then she spotted a gorgeous sapphire-blue
pair of gloves, trimmed with black fur. She would really
look stylish in those.
“
Oh, not ‘katydid’“, she suddenly
remembered. “Caryatid.”
She picked up a glove, and noting it was right-handed,
she excitedly thrust the fingers of her right hand
into the fur-trimmed opening. She pictured herself
caressing Brent’s broad shoulders, or maybe even
slapping his cheek, with sapphire-clad hands.
She frowned as her fingers brushed something cold and
hard in one of the fingers of the glove. She jerked
at the fingertips to pull the glove off. She held the
glove by the fingers and shook it over her hand. Out
dropped a large ring.
Andrea’s eyes widened as she saw the size of
the ring. It was a large round-cut emerald, about the
size of a dime, surrounded by smaller diamond circles.
She was no precious gem expert, but she sensed that
the stones were genuine. Her head jerked up and her
mouth opened to call to her mother of her discovery.
But Mrs. Jacobs was several feet away, holding up a
string of pearls for close inspection.
Andrea looked around and realized that no one else
was close enough to have witnessed her finding. She
suddenly became aware of her heart as something live
within her chest as it began to beat frantically against
her breastbone.
“
Finders, keepers,” she thought to herself excitedly.
She looked down at the ring nestled in her palm, and
wondered if she dared keep it.
“
Why not?” she asked herself. “You found
it.” She looked around again, furtively. “And
there’s no one wandering around miserable as
if they’d lost a gorgeous emerald ring.”
And then her mother was there. “Oh, Andrea!” she
said, and her daughter’s shoulders slumped as
she recognized that her mother would make her turn
in the ring. But then her mother touched the sapphire
gloves she held in her left hand. “I think those
are a little much, don’t you?” Andrea’s
right hand fisted around the ring.
When they returned home from the mall, Andrea ran straight
upstairs to her room and shut the door. She rushed
over to the mirror, digging in the front pocket of
her jeans for her prize.
She slipped the ring onto the middle finger of her
left hand and held out her hand admiringly, her fingers
splayed. Then she looked in the mirror and spread her
fingers over her opposite shoulder, laughing coquettishly
at her reflection. She gently struck her cheek with
her left hand in mock surprise, shook her head and
ran her left hand through her hair, and offered her
left hand to an imaginary gentleman who was struck
speechless by her beauty.
Andrea could see that the emerald was the perfect stone
for her. It sparkled and flashed against the dark tone
of her skin. She couldn’t wait to see the kids’ expressions
at school when she started carelessly gesturing with
her heavy left hand.
Only she couldn’t, of course. She knew that.
She realized that she wouldn’t be able to wear
the ring in public for a long time. Her reflection
suddenly sobered. A long time. Not until she was in
college, maybe. Where no one knew her. Where no one
would wonder how she suddenly came by such a spectacular
piece of jewelry.
College. That was over a year away.
Andrea sank down on the edge of her bed and absently
twisted the ring on her finger. When her mother yelled
up the stairs that dinner was ready, she jumped up
and hid the ring in her underwear drawer. She was nearly
downstairs when she decided that was the very first
place someone would look. So she ran back upstairs
and retrieved the ring, then stood in the center of
her room, biting her lip as she wondered where she
should hide it.
Finally, she remembered something she’d seen
on TV. She hurried across the hall into the bathroom
and hid the ring in the little plastic container that
held her floss. Then she proudly tripped down the stairs,
hugging her secret to herself.
Her father had to ask her three times to pass the scalloped
potatoes. “Andrea, is something bothering you?” he
asked, concerned.
Andrea shook her dark curls and targeted a bright white
smile at her father. Her mother leaned over to whisper
in his ear. “I think she’s getting a little
nervous about the prom, dear. It’s probably best
if we don’t press.”
As early as she could without prompting any health
questions, Andrea excused herself from the table. She
swiftly cleared her dishes and took the stairs two
at a time back to the bathroom. She locked the door
and fumbled in the medicine chest for the case of floss.
Yes, the ring was still safely tucked inside.
Andrea looked at herself in the mirror, at her eyes
widened with anxiety and her hair in disarray and her
small chest heaving. Forgetting the ring in her hand,
she again admired the image looking back at her from
the mirror. “I look like the beautiful damsel
in distress.” She shook her generous hair back
over her shoulders. “I could be one of Charlie’s
Angels.”
Her mother called up the stairs. “Honey, don’t
forget your essay is due tomorrow. Why don’t
you bring down your rough draft so that Dad and I can
review it?”
Andrea rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror and
leaned over to open the bathroom door. “Okay,
Mom!” she yelled. “Be down in a few minutes!”
Andrea’s eyes suddenly flew open and she sat
up in bed, her heartbeat stumbling. She’d dreamed
something important. What was it?
She looked around the room frantically, willing her
eyes to adjust to the dark.
A wedding. That was it. She’d dreamed of a wedding.
But why was that important?
And then she remembered. The ring. She’d been
thinking of it only as a trinket lost by some old lady,
someone in her fifties at least, someone who had plenty
of money. Someone who’d barely notice that she’d
even lost the ring. Someone who could buy another just
like it with half the money in her cookie jar.
But what if it had been someone’s engagement
ring?
Andrea pictured a trembling young bride-to-be. She’d
been buying gloves to go with her wedding gown. She’d
wanted to look perfect for her groom. And then she
was on her way home from shopping when she realized
the weightlessness of her left hand. She’d splay
her hand just as Andrea had done, only in anguish and
terror, because she knew that her husband-to-be would
hit her in his anger ...
Wait a minute. Andrea shook her head at herself and
choked out a laugh. It couldn’t have been an
engagement ring. She’d found it in the right
glove, not the left.
She lay back in bed and concentrated on slowing her
breathing.
When she woke up the next morning, she smiled slightly
at the sun spilling so cheerfully in through her bedroom
window. She loved the pattern it made on her carpet
as it streamed through and around the trinkets she’d
hung in her window. But her smile faded as she remembered
that there was some reason she shouldn’t enjoy
it. Shouldn’t be content.
Of course. The ring.
The burden of the secret and its companion guilt was
wearing on Andrea. She wasn’t getting enough
sleep, and she was starting to get snippy with her
friends. When she got home from school three days after
finding the ring, she looked at herself in the mirror,
at the dark circles under her eyes and the unhappiness
within them. “Keep this up”, she told herself, “and
you’ll look so haggy that Brent will back out
of taking you to the prom.”
That very evening, she borrowed the car and, with the
ring wrapped in a tissue and tucked in a small zipper
pocket of her purse, Andrea returned to the store where
she’d found the ring.
A young college-age girl was running the register in
the accessories department. Andrea hesitated. She’d
been hoping to turn the ring over to an older woman.
Someone who would be gentle and understanding and soothing,
like her grandma. Not someone who would flip her hair
and pop her gum and look superior.
Andrea started to back away. If she surrendered the
ring to this girl, she was just as likely to succumb
to its siren call as Andrea had. Girl’s best
friend, and all that.
But then a woman with white curls and a round, lined
face stepped behind the counter and waved the girl
away as if to send her on a break. Andrea knew a sign
when she saw one. She retrieved the ring from her purse
and stepped up to the counter and the older woman who
was energetically dusting it.
“
May I help you?” The woman eyed Andrea.
Andrea cleared her throat and readjusted the strap
of her purse on her thin shoulder. “Yes, ma’am,” she
said in a low voice. “I found this when I was
trying on evening gloves.” No need to mention
this was several days ago.
She held her fist over the counter, fingers up, and
then uncurled her fingers to reveal the ring snuggled
against her palm. The stones winked under the display
lights.
“
Oh, my!” The woman plucked the ring out of Andrea’s
hand and held it up in front of her nose. “This
is quite a find, young lady!” She looked down
at Andrea wonderingly. “You do realize this is
genuine?”
“
I wasn’t sure ...”
“
Well, it certainly is!” She shook her white curls
and beamed. “What an honest young lady you are!
You should be very proud of yourself for turning this
in. Now let’s see ...” she pulled a notebook
from under the counter and began to flip through the
pages. “I see no report of a lost ring, but I’m
sure someone will be in looking for it soon. A ring
of this quality will surely be missed. And I’m
certain there will be a reward.” She shoved paper
and a pen across the counter to Andrea. “I’ll
tell you what. Why don’t you write down your
name and telephone number, so that whoever reclaims
this can call to thank you.”
Andrea dutifully supplied her name and number, and
then began to back away from the counter. “Thank
you.”
“
No, thank you, dear. It’s so refreshing to meet
such an honest young person.”
Andrea turned and walked away from the counter. She
didn’t feel very honest. She was a little sad
that she no longer had that glorious, flashy ring in
her possession, but she supposed it was for the better.
Her friends would have been jealous. And she probably
would have been caught with it sooner or later. And
then what would she say to her parents? Oh, well. Some
lucky woman would once more be able to impress her
friends at dinner parties, and Andrea would be able
to get more sleep. Her looks demanded it.
The white-haired saleslady watched Andrea until she
was no longer in view. Then she held the ring up to
the light once more. “Such an amazing shade of
green,” she thought. “It would go so well
with that sweater I got for my birthday last week ...”
Copyright (c) 2003 for the
author, all rights reserved. |
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