Brilliant

by Kellogg, Marne Davis

  The realization that I’d made a serious and costly fashion mistake that had taken all my spending money for the rest of the trip had triggered something in me. It had plunged me into loneliness and despair, and forced me to admit certain things to myself. I was walking down a strange street in a strange city in a foreign country in a downpour having an epiphany, a nervous breakdown, a catharsis. My life was a dead end. I was a dead end. I was damaged goods—everything I’d said was true about myself was false. Everything. I was so desperate to fit in at college, I’d created an entire persona, a fleshed-out history, including a loving family who were tragically, (and conveniently), all killed in a house fire on our big dairy farm up near Cleo Springs.

  “Maybe you remember reading about it,” I’d say to my sorority sisters. “Our whole farm burned to the ground. It was in all the papers—I was the only one to escape. It was horrible.”

  “Oh, yes,” they’d answer sympathetically. “I do remember hearing about that—what a nightmare.”

  They were just being kind, of course. They were nice girls from nice families. They couldn’t remember the fire—it never happened. But it also never would have occurred to them that someone as sweet, sweet as powdered sugar icing on a coconut cake, and plump, plump as a luscious plum, and unassuming as a choirgirl as I would make up such a gruesome story. They didn’t know they were talking to a world-class liar.

  For starters, I wasn’t a farm girl. I was oil-field trash. I never knew my father, and my mother lived at the bottom of a Four Roses bottle in a grungy trailer, which was as squalid and perfume-drenched as you’d expect an Oklahoma oil-field-camp-follower whore’s trailer would be.

  Only my cubbyhole of a bedroom was clean and neat, and I was the only one who could get in—there was a dead bolt on my door. I possessed the only key, not that there was anything worth stealing.

  I was fifteen and a half when I had a baby. I gave it up to strangers without even peeking at its face. I didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. I didn’t even know who its father was. All I remember is lying in my bed at the Florence Crittenden Home—a series of charity- supported residences across the country where girls “in trouble” (as opposed to “troubled” girls, which I later became), went to have their babies and give them up—in Omaha, and crying for two days straight, feeling emptier than I’d ever imagined was possible.

  I can pinpoint it to that exact time when my heart hardened into an impenetrable block of ice, impervious to anything but the most superficial scratch, leaving me able to shed an occasional tear at the melodrama of others’ lives, but otherwise permanently embedded in emotional permafrost. My heart had been hermetically sealed against deeper cuts.

  Lying there in that clean, white bed, I realized nobody on the face of the earth knew who I was or where I was, and furthermore, nobody cared. I also somehow had the grace to understand I could look at that as either a tragedy or an opportunity.

  I made the decision I was going to have a nice life. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, or how I was going to go about getting it. I only knew I had a bigger plan for myself than following in my mother’s footsteps. I wanted to make something of myself, to be somebody.

  I left the Crittenden Home with a reference to the personnel manager at the May Company department store in Tulsa and within a few weeks I’d begun to make a fairly decent living as a salesgirl in Men’s Accessories. I supplemented those earnings by shoplifting.

  After a while, I was able to move from the boardinghouse to my own little studio apartment. I’d stand in front of my bathroom mirror for hours, listening to the Beatles and the Supremes on the radio and trying every single beauty tip in Seventeen magazines—I bought tweezers, pumice stones, razors, every eye shadow color on earth, pale lipsticks and nail polish and hair falls. I spent a fortune on my skin. But, because I was a big girl—I think I was born carrying an extra twenty-five pounds—I never had the courage or confidence to wear any of this glamour in public. In spite of what people would say about how pretty I was, I saw myself as fat and unattractive and concentrated on being wallpaper. In a sad sort of way, that’s what let me excel at my avocation because, unfortunately for us, large girls are basically invisible if we want to be, which most of us do. Or did. Things are different now.

  Twice, I got caught and locked up overnight in juvenile detention. In those days, juvenile detention in Oklahoma more resembled foster care and the “cell” they held me in was actually a bedroom in the judge’s house with bars on the window and a lock on the door. The house always smelled of Lysol and bacon grease, and the food tasted the same way. The judge’s cook, who sang hymns and praised Jesus all day long, brought my trays resentfully. She looked down on me as white trash, a soul not worth saving, and I guess she was probably right, except it certainly wasn’t a very Christian way for her to act.

  The arrests didn’t deter me. I simply became more careful as I continued to steal. I pawned all the goods for cash and for my sixteenth birthday, bought myself a little yellow Corvair convertible. I never saw my mother again.

  I became very skilled at disguise and sleight of hand, which I practiced diligently every night with marbles, which are harder to manipulate than quarters because they’re round and slippery. They’re also about the same size as many pieces of jewelry.

  On Wednesdays, my day off from the May Company, I dressed in my other “work” clothes. My favorite was the green plaid skirt, white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, green cardigan sweater, and saddle shoes that were the uniform of Tulsa Country Day School. Sometimes I’d braid my hair, or put on a pair of thick glasses, perch a little beret on my head, and wait nearby whatever shop I’d reconnoitered.

  The multistate chain of Mallory’s Jewelry Stores had the nicest merchandise and were the easiest and most satisfying to rob. I had applied for a job as a stock girl with Mr. Homer Mallory, who had a Confederate flag behind his desk and a picture of John F. Kennedy on his wall. At the end of the brief interview he told me what an asset I’d be to Mallory’s and I’d hear from him when the next opening occurred. But I was no more than out of his office and out of what he believed to be earshot, when I heard him say to his secretary, “Can you imagine putting a girl like that in front of our customers? She’s got no class. We’d go out of business.” It gave them both a good laugh. I wanted to crawl under a rock. This unnecessary cruelty by a redneck, two-faced, overweight ignoramus with boils and body odor launched and justified my crusade. To be sure, my code of ethics became more defined and refined as time went on. But at that point, robbing Mr. Mallory made me feel I was doing something worthwhile and commendable. I was exacting restitution, claiming costly revenge on behalf of all downtrodden people everywhere.

  So, I’d hang around near a Mallory’s and as soon as a well-dressed man or woman approached the entrance, I’d drop into their wake and slouch in after them. The clerk always assumed I was the daughter, a pathetic, hangdog girl with a defeated attitude, bad skin, and a thyroid condition. I could drop earrings, charms, lavalieres, brooches, rings, watches, and bracelets into my overgrown bosom quicker than greased lightning, and then I’d say something like, “I’m going outside for some air,” and the clerk would say, “That’s fine, dear. Would you like a soda?” “No, thank you,” I’d say. And then the customer would think I was the clerk’s daughter, and I’d be back home in my tidy little apartment before anyone figured out what was what.

  Well, I wasn’t quite as clever as I thought. On what was going to be my biggest caper—the Mother’s Day sale at Homer Mallory’s newest store, his pride and joy in Oklahoma City—I was spotted by a sharp-eyed clerk who’d worked for one of my previous targets. She recognized me and went into the back room and called the police before I was even all the way through the front door. I was apprehended and since, by then, my rap sheet was pretty extensive, I was incarcerated for twelve miserable months in a different sort of girl’s “home.” One for “troubled” girls, with sturdy bars on the windows, where I gave as
good as I got. I could scratch an eye, pull out a handful of hair, and throw a punch with the best of them. But, truthfully? I took no pride in that. Any knucklehead can learn to hit.

  My dream for a good life, to make something worthwhile of myself, had been seriously derailed, and I’d look around the lunchroom, and think, Is this really how you want your life to be? Is this really what you, personally, want to be: a second-rate, petty thief? Are these the kinds of people you want to associate with: common criminals? No. I was special. I had taste and was getting what I thought was class. I was a jewel thief—these girls stole hubcaps. I was smart and pretty and as strong as steel. All these girls wanted was to get married and have babies and have someone take care of them, even if they did get slapped around by their husbands every now and then. I decided that would never be my life. My life would be great, comfortable, rich. And furthermore, I’d get it by, and for, myself.

  I would become the greatest jewel thief in the history of the world. I had the big picture, but the nuts and bolts still eluded me, until one Saturday night.

  Saturday night at the Girls Home was movie night. They’d escort us all into the auditorium and show some boring movie no one watched, we’d all just sit and talk and smoke through the whole thing. But one night, they showed Pillow Talk. Everybody else thought it was stupid, but for me it was transforming. Doris Day was everything I wanted to be: She was beautiful. She had beautiful clothes and a beautiful apartment and rich men after her. But more than that: She worked! She was self-sustaining. Self-sufficient. She had a great attitude and never lost her bearings. Doris became my heroine, my role model, my beacon in the dark. She gave me hope and showed me the possibilities of what life could be. That was it. I would become like Doris Day. I made a solemn pledge that as soon as I got out of the reformatory, I’d work smarter.

  Incredibly, it never occurred to me to reform.

  When my sentence was up, because I’d been a juvenile, my records were sealed and a private scholarship fund volunteered to pay my college tuition—regular attendance was part of my probation requirement.

  “We’re giving you the opportunity to turn your life around, Miss Keswick,” the scholarship lady told me.

  “I certainly appreciate it. I won’t let you down,” I said, and I meant it. But I hated college. It was horrible. As far as I was concerned, I was still doing time. I was bored out of my mind. I was meant for something more than this: I had goals and aspirations. But with no one but a distant Doris up there on the big screen to guide me, it was hard to find my way.

  F O U R

  So there I was in London, England, as far from Oklahoma as I could get, wanting to escape. To disappear and start over. And so what did I do? I ditched the college tour group who’d gone to see Shakespeare’s stupid girlfriend’s house on some stupid river, and spent all my money on this stupid dress. Dumb.

  “Oooo, you look a regular cream puff,” the shopgirl with her platinum hair, black-rimmed eyes, and white lips (possibly the most glamorous person I’d ever seen in my life) had cooed in her wonderful accent, which had me seduced.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of short?” My eyes watered from the incense sticks that smoldered around the shop. I squinted at my rear view in the large mirror. “Aren’t my panties showing?”

  “Well, you aren’t going to be wanting to bend over, are you?” Ha. Ha. Ha. “Do you want to try the boots? We’ve been showing them with this frock.”

  Frock! Frock! Do you have any idea how many “frocks” we had in Oklahoma? Zero. We had housecoats, suits, dresses, blue jeans, and even cocktail dresses, but frocks? You must be kidding. So naturally, I had to have the boots, the hot pink, shiny vinyl, high-heeled boots.

  What in the hell did I know about fashion? Or anything, for that matter, I cried as the rain soaked me. Even after all I’d been through, this was unquestionably the lowest point of my life. I wasn’t Doris Day. I was eighteen years old, and I was still nobody. Obviously too stupid to have an umbrella, at least that’s what the other people on the street were thinking. Look at that stupid fat girl from Oklahoma, she’s too stupid to come in out of the rain. The dress stuck to me like a bathing suit.

  That’s when the pearl gray Rolls Royce Silver Cloud pulled over and a man’s voice called to me from the backseat. He looked and sounded like Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink trying to cajole an insulted Doris into his car. “Get in here, miss,” he said authoritatively. He leaned over and opened the door. “Get out of the rain.”

  I stepped through the looking glass.

  The Rolls Royce smelled like spice and had little glass vases with real roses.

  “Miserable weather,” the man said, and draped his raincoat around me. He did it gallantly without groping me or making any cracks about my almost naked appearance. His driver took us to Claridge’s, which I thought was his house, the way they all greeted him by name. He guided me gently, and directly, to the waiting elevator.

  Forty-eight hours later, Sir Cramner and I were still in the suite at Claridge’s, rosy and pink with love, champagne, laughter, happiness, and nonstop room service. I’d never seen nor eaten such beautiful food in my life. Nor been in such a beautiful suite of rooms. I had no idea such places even existed. My bathroom at Claridge’s (our suite had two!) was bigger than my whole apartment in Tulsa.

  “Always insist on your own bathroom,” Sir Cramner said. “That way, the romance stays alive.”

  This was the man for me.

  My prayers had been answered. I think it was the pink vinyl boots, which I wore for two days. I finally had to cut them off with my fingernail scissors.

  He offered me a job as the mail room girl for the executive suite of Ballantine & Company, bought me a proper wardrobe, and set me up in a spacious three-room flat in Belgravia in quiet, leafy, Eaton Square, home to embassies and people who lived private, sedate, lives behind picture-perfect Edwardian façades.

  I had no idea that people could be so nice.

  I consider those days at Claridge’s as when my real life began. I might have been slightly street savvy—well, as street savvy as some- one from Oklahoma can be—but when it came to social or cultural awareness or refinement? I was a virgin, a blank canvas. I was as green as a person can get. I was also smart enough to know it and wanted to learn. I became a giant sponge that absorbed every drop of information it came into contact with. I studied the women who worked in the auction house as well as the women who attended the auctions—how they dressed and carried themselves. How they modulated their voices. I noticed that none of them—at least the ones with style, class, and power, not the mistresses or tarts—wore colored eye shadow or white lipstick or flashy clothes. I devoured books on manners and etiquette, learned the value of discretion and the virtue of keeping my mouth shut and the essential nature of confidentiality and trustworthiness.

  When it came to the material things—paintings, furniture, jewelry, porcelains, textiles—I was lucky enough to be working in the greatest school in the world. Whatever came through the doors of Ballantine & Company—whether they were the real thing or fakes—was fuel for my insatiable desire for knowledge. And because my interest and enthusiasm were genuine, the firm’s experts were generous with their knowledge and expertise. Over the years, my eye has become as good as, if not in some cases better than, theirs.

  Because I enjoyed my circumstances so much, and the security Sir Cramner provided me, I was able to become secure with myself as well, and accept myself, all of me. My size didn’t mean I was less of a girl. I began to see my shapeliness as an asset, and why shouldn’t I? All the men around me seemed to see it that way. I drew them like flies.

  I stopped buying cotton underpants and Cross-Your-Heart Extra-Support Bras that, in spite of their promises and best efforts, turned my bustline into something resembling a low-slung watermelon, and started buying lingerie—silk and satin panties and slips and lacy low-cut French bras. I bought well-cut and well-made suits and dresses that fit me properly.
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  Jewelry continued to be my passion and occasionally I’d mention certain pieces that were coming up for auction to Sir Cramner and he’d buy them for me, and I’d wear them in the evenings in one of my custom-made peignoirs. After a particularly successful series of sales, he surprised me with the Pasha of St. Petersburg, a twenty-five carat, brilliant-cut diamond pendant. From the moment he draped the thin platinum chain around my neck, I’ve never taken it off. Sir Cramner and I loved nothing more than a good scotch and a quiet evening in my flat watching the news—with me in my negligée, loaded up with bijoux, the quarter-sized Pasha winking from my décolletage. We’d have Indian or Chinese food delivered from around the corner, or I’d fix his favorite dinner of a cheese soufflé and tomato bisque with a dollop or two of sherry. It was a comfortable and cozy existence.

  Did I mind that he was married and had a family and a family life? That he only came to call an evening or two a week? Or that he would never marry me? Well, I’d be lying if I said that I never occasionally longed for a life in the full light of polite society. At first, I couldn’t help but be resentful of my geishalike existence but after a while, I took up a hobby: learning to make fine jewelry, and it filled my evenings. From time to time, I’d meet a man and think, This is the kind of man I want. I could settle down with him. But the fact is, they were all just like Sir Cramner. Kind, good-natured, funny. Married. As the years passed, I made a conscious decision to get over my desire for a traditional marriage and family and settled into the comfort and pleasure of who I was and what I had.