Finding Mom Again

The man in the pawnshop took the ring from me, fitted his loupe into his eye, and turned the stunning diamond this way and that, under the lights. I watched the flash of sparkle and bit my tongue, waiting.

“I think I can give you $400 for it,” the man said.

“But this appraisal says that it’s worth over $2000!” I pushed the piece of paper across the counter. Beneath the glass, a glittery graveyard of jewelry shimmered. A collection of keepsakes people had sold when, like me, they needed money. “Can’t you do more?” I asked.

“Take it or leave it,” he said, “You can always pay me back within two weeks and the ring will be yours again. No interest.” He returned the jewel to its velvet box and handed it back to me.

“I need to think about this,” I told him, “If I go out to my car and come back, will the price be the same?” I didn’t want him using my undecidedness against me. 

“No problem,” he said, “Take your time.” 

Outside, I huddled in my vehicle thinking about the man’s offer. Beyond the car window, the spring-time weeds fought with dirt to escape from cracks in the sidewalk. Above me, the 24-HOUR-BUY-SELL-PAWN sign blinked:  red - white - red - white.  My mind changed in tempo with the light:  yes - no - yes - no. I didn’t know what to do.

The ring, a breathtakingly beautiful, emerald-cut, flawless diamond set in gold, was mine now, but just two years prior, it had belonged to my mom. She had given it to me when she was dying from cancer. When she had just a month to live.

On one of the Saturday afternoons I’d been taking care of her, she sat across from me as I was measuring morphine and offering her soup, and she had asked me to get her jewelry box. Once I did, she passed the ring over the yellow dining room tablecloth and told me, “I think you should have this now.”

Twinkling up at me was the engagement ring my father, my real father, had given her.

The gesture, her tone, felt like a secret she was asking me to take, and keep. A current in the air I only sensed, but didn’t understand, made me accept the ring and hold onto the secret. 

It was the same ring I was considering selling now. I sighed and slumped against the armrest of the car, my forehead resting on my palm. Closing my eyes to hold back the tears, I wondered, how had I gotten myself into this predicament?

A man. 

More specifically, a man I now wanted to be my ex-husband instead of my husband. A man I’d met a few months after Mom died when I’d been reeling from her death and the aftermath, my judgment clouded by grief. A man who asked me to marry him, holding up the same velvet box I held now with my mother’s ring in it, and to whom I’d said yes. 

When he hadn’t bought me a ring with his own money - when he hadn’t even asked me if he could present the diamond to me as an engagement ring - I should have recognized the uneasiness I felt as a sign. Just as I’d refused to see - or open - the piles of bills in his name that arrived each month of our marriage with increasing bulk and frequency.  

We had never discussed money before we married and I’d cluelessly put my trust - and my money - in a joint account that always seemed empty. Whenever I questioned him or needed money, he always had answers and just enough cash to quiet me. But he also became short with me, angry. I shouldn’t have ignored the new furniture, the flashy clothes and gourmet dinners, and the trips he insisted we could afford. But I did. I didn’t want to draw the curtain on the charade of our marriage.

By the time I found the courage to slit the envelopes and add the balances, we were in the kind of debt I’d never imagined. Not a couple hundred, or even a couple thousand, dollars, but tens of thousands of dollars on almost twenty different credit cards - a sum of money more than my annual salary.

When I finally confronted him about our spendthrift ways, he sputtered excuses and snapped at me, saying, “I’ve got it under control.” 

Stupidly, I believed him, although the sight of all those zeros horrified me enough to find a second job. Why didn’t he? He refused and kept living the dream. A few months later, nothing had changed except my resolve. I decided to get out, get away from him. But how? For that, I needed money.

The only thought I had was that if my mom were alive, I could have called her. She would have helped me in a heartbeat. But she wasn’t here; she was dead. I was estranged from my real father and my husband had moved me four states away from the friends I’d depended upon after Mom died. I was well, and truly, alone.

Growing up, money had always been a loaded subject in our family - or stepfamily. My parents divorced when I was 9-years-old and Mom immediately married the man who became my stepdad. He had two older sons and Mom had my older brother and me. During their tumultuous marriage, bitter arguments erupted over finances, over whose kids deserved more, over whose kids were more grateful for the crumbs Stepdad begrudgingly provided. Stepdad and his real kids always won those battles. 

Mom fought valiantly. She tried to leave and take us with her, many times. But she always went back. I wished then, and always, that she hadn’t.

But before she could get away, Mom got sick and Stepdad won the final war. He brought a lawyer in a couple of weeks before she died, made sure she was drugged up, and re-wrote her will, cutting my brother and me out of any inheritance. I walked away with an antique trunk, my great-grandmother’s rocking chair, and - the secret - Mom’s ring. I left behind my childhood home and all the memorabilia of my growing up but was gifted a sense of abandonment that stretched like the most forlorn, desolate highway on earth, running into forever. 

My marriage had brought a brief reprieve, but now, alone in a car on a sad sidestreet outside of a pawnshop, I sobbed, drowning again in the loneliness and grief of an orphan, a person who has no one. All I had was this ring, a gold and diamond connection to my mom. I didn’t want to sell it. How could I?

As I watched the jewel’s prisms glisten through my tears, I remembered Mom’s last words to me.  

“I’ll never leave you.”

But you did, I thought, speaking to her in my thoughts, while my vision blurred.

But I haven’t. I heard Mom’s voice. I’m here now.

Are you? I cried to her. What should I do?

Sell the ring. It’s all right, she told me, Sell it.

Really? But how will I remember you? What do I have left?

All of that doesn’t matter. I’ll never leave you. But you - you could leave him.

I snuffled and wiped my face, considering the ring again. I’d found an apartment earlier and developed a plan. Four hundred dollars was exactly what I needed for a deposit on the new place, away from my husband. I could take my next paycheck to a bank and open an account that would be all my own. 

Sell it, Betsy. I’m here to help - that’s what the ring is for. Use it to do what I couldn’t. Please.

Something made me put my hand on my shoulder, half hugging myself. A peace came over me, almost like her hand was there, and I was touching it with my own, squeezing it. 

Swallowing my tears, I whispered, “Thank you, Mom. Thank you.” 

I pulled myself together, drying my face and blowing my nose. With a deep breath, I took a last look at the ring and snapped the box shut. 

Feeling comforted and calm, I walked into the pawnshop and sold Mom’s diamond to the man behind the counter. “Good luck,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said as I walked out the door toward my freedom. But I wasn’t speaking to him. I meant it for my mom. Thanks, Mom.