The Stars Are Fire(46)
The pile in the center of the bedspread scintillates.
The pile in the center of the bedspread screams an unspeakable amount of money.
The pile in the center of the bedspread isn’t hers.
Grace fingers the gold bracelet with ten diamonds, the only item for which she has a record. In the morning, she’ll carry the bracelet into Biddeford with the invoice and explain that her mother-in-law has died and can no longer pay the bill. If the jeweler takes the bracelet back from Grace, that will be that. If some portion of the bill has been paid, the jeweler might take the bracelet back and give Grace a small amount of money for it. And that will be that. She can’t pocket any of the rest of the jewels. They aren’t hers. For the first time since Grace entered the Victorian to stay, she wishes wholeheartedly that Gene would come back to her.
She won’t tell her mother about the diamond bracelet.
The journey into Biddeford lasts an hour longer than it ought to. Some of the roads are plowed, some are not, resulting in a tortuous route of detours. A few of the passengers mind; Grace is patient, enjoying the views outside the window.
When she is let out in the city, she climbs a long hill of brick buildings and realizes these are the mills. She notes the snow still bundled at the sills and sides of the long paned windows, and as she passes close to them, she can hear the din from the sidewalk: wooden shuttles sound like iron machines clanging against each other as if in battle. Through a pane of glass, she catches sight of a powder of tiny cotton threads released into the air. She crosses the street hoping to find the center of town only to discover she is already there. Branching off Main Street are rows of multistory boardinghouses. Trolley cars, tethered to electric lines overhead, scoot along faster than the automobiles, stopped in traffic. It has been a long time since Grace has found herself within a bustle of people. She asks a woman, waiting at a curb, how to find the jeweler she has come to see. The woman names a street and gives Grace directions.
She turns where the woman indicated and, five doors up, encounters a sign that reads, JENSEN, JEWELER TO THE WORLD. How does a man become a jeweler to the world in a barely visible shop on a side street of a poor mill town? The sign must be more of a wish than a fact.
The jeweler has white hair, poorly trimmed, yellow teeth, and wrinkles that might have been cut by the diamonds he sells.
“How can I help you?” he asks.
Grace opens her purse and lays the bracelet on the glass.
“Oh yes, I remember this,” the jeweler says. “Mrs. Holland had it specially made for her. She’d seen it in a magazine, I think.”
Before the man can ask how Grace came by it, she offers, “Merle Holland was my mother-in-law. Her son, Gene Holland, is my husband. I’m Grace Holland. Merle gave this bracelet to Gene to give to me, and now we’re in a bit of a fix because of the fire. We have two children, and our house burned down. I’m looking either to sell the bracelet back, or if it hasn’t been paid for, to give it back. I have the invoice.”
Grace sets the bill beside the bracelet, dazzling in the lighting of the store.
“Yes, that’s us,” the jeweler says. He turns the bill around. “But this is an appraisal. Mrs. Holland always paid for her jewelry with a check on the spot. One of my best customers, actually. So sad about her death.”
“Yes, it was.” Grace clears her throat. “I’m wondering if you’ll buy the bracelet back.”
“It’s not our policy.”
He puts a loupe on his eye and examines the bracelet. “It’s got some denting here—gold is soft—and a residue of some substance encircling one of the diamonds.” Pink gin, Grace thinks. “You understand I can’t give you the price Mrs. Holland paid for it. It’s secondhand now, and there’s not a lot of demand for diamond bracelets these days, with most people around here barely coping. But still, I have quite a clientele.”
I’ll bet you have, Grace thinks.
“Do you have any identification?” the man asks. “How do I know you’re not a maid who stole the bracelet or waited for Merle to die before stealing it?”
“I’m not a maid. I’m the mother of Merle’s two grandchildren. My birth and marriage certificates burned in the fire.”
According to the appraisal, the bracelet cost eleven hundred dollars, a staggering sum of money.
“I can’t give you more than seven-fifty for it.”
Grace nods, unable to speak, the sum he’s named staggering in itself.
“I don’t carry that sort of money in the shop,” he explains. “I’ll have to go to the bank. Are you all right with meeting me back here, say, at one o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s a deal. Take your bracelet—here, let’s get a box for it.”
Grace leaves the shop in silence.
She has almost two hours to wait. Will the jeweler call the police and have her checked out? Will the police tell him that Gene is missing? Or will Jensen reveal to her, when she goes back into the shop, that the value of the bracelet has dropped to seven hundred dollars? What good would it do her to point out that they already had a deal? She would take the seven hundred, of course she would. She must find a restaurant and settle in for a long lunch, even though she has only seventy cents in her purse. Bus fare home, a twenty-five-cent lunch, and twenty cents to spare. She will pick up apples for the children.