The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives

by Cheryl Jarvis

  Finally, Jonell turned to Maggie. “Well, how was your month with Jewelia?”

  “Awesome,” said Maggie. “I’ll show you.” She turned on her thirty-five-inch Sony TV to play the segment. She stood back to watch. Yes, again: This was one video she wouldn’t tire of watching. She loved seeing herself perform deathdefying acts.

  As the women watched, the temperature in the room took a dive, too. Most hadn’t seen the segment on TV. Most hadn’t known about the skydive.

  Many were thinking the same thing: What’s she doing? Where’d she get the idea that this experiment was about her being on television?

  The clip ended. No one spoke.

  The silence told Maggie that she’d dropped a bomb, but she had no idea how. When Patti took Jewelia boogie-boarding in Hawaii, everyone wanted to hear about it. When Dale took the diamonds to Paris, everyone was interested. Why wasn’t anyone interested in Maggie’s adventure?

  Baffled and hurt, Maggie didn’t say anything, either.

  Minutes after the clip dissolved, so did the meeting.

  Over the next few days, through calls and e-mails, the women decided that Jonell would e-mail Maggie to communicate the message from the group: You can wear the necklace to do whatever you want, to skydive or bungee jump or rappel from a mountain, but don’t alert the media. Personal promotion is not what we’re about.

  Reading the e-mail, Maggie’s muscles tensed, which made the veins in her arms bulge. Now Maggie was the one taken aback. She was quick to call Jonell and just as quick to pounce in her defense. After all, she’d acted no differently from the way she always had. She’d called the newspapers when unsafe surfing practices almost killed her daughter. She sent out mass mailings to promote activities of her ski club. She’d contacted every Ventura media outlet for the “Million Mom March” in L.A. Media was her background. She’d majored in communications in college in Minnesota. She’d reported for the CBS affiliate in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She’d written audiovisual scripts and sold radio ads. Until she’d started selling homes, her entire working life had been in media.

  Jonell remembered Maggie’s background from early introductions, but she listened again. “You can tell the women how you feel at the next meeting,” she said kindly. “We can talk more about it then.”

  Maggie didn’t feel like sitting on the hot seat to hear twelve women tell her she’d screwed up. She didn’t go to the meeting but stayed home, where she spent the evening thinking about this turn of events.

  Maggie could not be on the outs with these women. She was on the outs with her ex, her ex’s family, and now her teenage daughter. Maggie’d had such high hopes for the group. She would not—could not—lose her connection with them. She e-mailed the most sincere apology she could write. But within the two pages, she volleyed criticism right back at the women: In the future, she wrote, if you have a complaint about me, tell me directly—not behind my back.

  As she clicked the “send” icon, Maggie realized she’d been a solo operator for so long that she’d forgotten what being part of a group meant. She hadn’t had to clear her activities with anyone since she’d been—what?—eleven.

  That year, Maggie’s alcoholic father died, leaving their family with a year’s worth of overdue rent and thousands of dollars in medical bills, but zero dollars in the bank. Within the year, her mother succumbed to the illness of alcoholism, too, officially ending Maggie’s childhood.

  The oldest of five, she had to be home every day after school, making sure her younger brothers and sisters did their homework and chores. At fourteen, she’d needed money for clothes and contact lenses, so she started working twenty-four hours a week selling candy at the Chicago Theatre, the biggest movie house downtown. That she had to walk through a rough neighborhood at eleven P.M. on weeknights and at two A.M. on weekends didn’t deter her. She learned to swear in Spanish. She practiced tough looks in the mirror until she’d mastered a sneer that said, “Don’t mess with me.” She stood five feet, four inches, and weighed one hundred pounds, but no one ever bothered her.

  She’d worked ever since those nights in downtown Chicago. She’d worked her way through college with student loans and waitressing jobs. She’d never looked to anyone for support or advice or as a sounding board.

  None of the women mentioned the incident again. Neither did Maggie. But she thought long and hard about what had happened.

  First she looked inward. She knew her bluntness, set in motion on the mean streets of Chicago, could offend. So could the arrogance she’d developed from being a TV reporter for three years, interviewing such famous folk as Jimmy Carter and Nancy Reagan. She was going to have to act differently with these women, she concluded, think before she spoke, think before she acted. She’d have to soften her edges.

  Maggie wasn’t easily discouraged. She just faced a new challenge, that’s all. And when hadn’t Maggie risen to a challenge? When the real estate market slumped, she complained like every other real estate agent in the country, then she took action. She invested twenty-five hundred dollars in a real estate coach, made plans to get her broker’s license, and moved to a more upbeat office environment. She decided to become certified as a personal trainer, and she started teaching a twelve-week workshop, “Living a Life of Fitness and Health (No Matter What).”

  MAVERICKS IS A GYM on Telegraph Road, across from the mall, where Maggie’s a regular. She’s just finished a thirty-minute weight-lifting session. She’s wearing faded black stretch workout pants, a fitted tank top that bares her whittled midriff, and Nike Air cross-trainers. She’s added fifteen pounds of muscle since her teen years, but she’s still thin, still petite. A fine sheen of sweat covers her skin.

  “Wearing the necklace when I’m going out all dressed up—that feels glamorous,” she says. “Wearing it to the gym when I’m in sweaty workout clothes and no makeup, that’s fun.

  “I started working out twenty-six years ago when I was running a department and was so stressed I couldn’t sleep at night. At the gym I discovered it was just me and the equipment. I didn’t hear phones ringing, didn’t see piles of work. It became a form of meditation. When I saw how working out de-stressed me, I made a commitment. I kept workout clothes in the car and went straight from work to the gym twice a week. People look at me and think I must work out every day. I don’t, but I do work out consistently and have for half my life. Commitment is the number one word in my vocabulary.

  “The other reason I work out is that I need the energy because I have young kids. I’ve got a ten-year-old I shoot hoops with. If I don’t stay fit I won’t be able to do what I want to do when I’m older. When I travel I won’t be able to climb steps to a palace I want to see. If I need surgery and I’m not fit, it’ll take longer to recover.

  “Everyone in my family died by the age of seventy-five. That’s too short a life for me. I’ve got to stay fit to beat those odds because I’ll be sixty when my son’s in college. I might be seventy before I’m a grandmother. And I’ve gotta take those grandkids to Disneyland.

  “New adventures—that’s the other key to staying young. I take every opportunity to try something new. That’s also what Jewelia was about for me. My next adventure is climbing Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower forty-eight states. I’m committed. I’ll get to the top if I have to crawl.

  “I work just as hard on my mind as I work on my body. I’ve been reading books on personal transformation since the eighties when I read Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone. I have affirmations on Post-its all over my bathroom mirror and my bedpost. I’m constantly working on myself to get rid of the past, to live a healthy, authentic life. Some days it’s easy. Other days, not so easy.

  “Sometimes in this group I feel insignificant and unheard. I have to combat that feeling. I have to tell myself, ‘These are wonderful women. Feeling insignificant and unheard is your past.’

  “You have to clear out the past, clear out all negativity. If I hadn�
��t done so much work on myself, I wouldn’t have been able to handle the fallout from the skydiving incident. This group is like any relationship. And the foundation of a great relationship is a commitment to work through the problems.

  “In the beginning of a conflict, our finger points out in blame, but ultimately we have to point it at ourselves and take responsibility. I realized if I want deep friendships among these women, I have to reach out. You can’t get to know someone once a month. Meeting people one on one is the way to build relationships. I intend to call every woman to have lunch. I live by my goals, and one of them is to feel a part of this group. I’m committed.

  “Women friends are essential to a healthy life.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tina Osborne, the reluctant

  . . .

  Finding joy in making a difference

  . . .

  ON JANUARY 2, 2005, THE VENTURA COUNTY STAR published a news feature on the thirteen women and their diamond necklace. Two days later, the paper ran a letter to the editor written by a former Harvard professor, who was teaching at California Lutheran University. He lambasted the women. “A good example of how the media promote the false idea that the ownership of stuff and self-aggrandizement will bring happiness,” he wrote. “Wearing the necklace in public involves another problem: the display of feigned wealth.”

  Reading the letter, Jonell felt chagrined. Were the professor’s words true? Were the women pretending to be more than they were? On her cell phone, on her morning walks, with friends and family, Jonell talked and expanded and expounded. Mortification quickly gave way to amusement, that a psychology professor would take the time to comment on her experiment. And then amusement gave way to argument. Jonell loved to spar.

  “Well, of course, the media promote the false idea that ownership of stuff brings happiness. This is news? But that’s not what we’re about. And what’s the problem with the display of feigned wealth? And who defines wealth anyway? Maybe the sharing is the real wealth. How about that?”

  The more she talked, the more questions she asked. Finally, one remained: “Can we make this necklace mean something more?”

  The professor’s words may have rankled, but they also spurred her to action.

  TWO MONTHS LATER, on March 8, 2005, International Women’s Day, the group threw a party. The goal: to raise money for Ventura’s Coalition to End Family Violence. The lure: An Evening with Jewelia.

  The women decided to keep it simple, to print flyers on 8½-×-11-inch computer paper, to distribute them to families, friends, co-workers, and businesses. To charm friends and acquaintances into donating the space, the staff, the music, the wine, the flowers, the food: platters of bruschetta and exotic cheeses, quiches of goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, miniature tarts of figs and cherries. The women coaxed two husbands into tending bar and gave two homeless men twenty dollars to carry in the beer.

  Many of the women had been involved in fund-raisers before, but those had been major planned events. For this one they were flying by the seat of their capris. As with anything put together in a few weeks, the little bash raised the anxiety level before it raised funds: What if we give a party and no one comes? With neither R.S.V.P. enclosure cards nor follow-up calls, the women could only wonder: Will ten people show up, or might two hundred, with not enough bruschetta to go around?

  Norbert Furnee, gourmet, oenophile, and bon vivant, had offered Deco, his chic continental restaurant down-town. Just around the corner from where Erle Stanley Gardner penned his Perry Mason novels, Deco was ensconced on the first floor of the historic Bank of Italy building, its bas-relief exterior crafted of Italian marble.

  Deco wasn’t the first restaurant in Ventura with fine dining, but Furnee’s place was perhaps the first restaurant with such flair: walls painted sage green, a ceiling the color of butternut squash, a bar hand-built of Philippine mahogany, contemporary art from the owner’s private collection, a formidable wine menu.

  At five o’clock, people started arriving. By five-thirty, guests were so jammed against one another in the tiny space that they overflowed past the enclosed patio onto the sidewalk. With the noise level rising and elbows jostling, the women started to relax. They squeezed through the crowd, greeting new arrivals. “Where’s Jewelia?” asked one guest after another. The women scanned the room, then mouthed the words to one another: Where is Jewelia?

  The women knew that Tina Osborne had the diamonds this month. What the women didn’t know was that Tina didn’t want to go to the fund-raiser. Tina wanted to drop out of the group altogether.

  TWO HOURS EARLIER, while the women of Jewelia were reconfiguring Deco’s tables for maximum mingling, Tina Osborne was ending her day at Our Lady of the Assumption, a parochial middle school on Telegraph Road, across from the mall. There, Tina taught social studies, spelling, and religion.

  Student art, a UCLA banner, a poster of Jesus, and a crucifix decorated the walls of her large, sunny classroom. But there was little sign that some ninety students had used the room that day—not a stray paper or book in sight, each chair placed precisely on top of a desk.

  At five feet, one inch, Tina didn’t stand much taller than her students, but her small stature housed a big voice and a commanding presence. With her blond hair, deep tan, flat sandals, and short, floral skirt, she epitomized the “California casual” look. Her attitude, however, was all business. She didn’t let her students leave until the classroom was as orderly as when they had arrived. When she chastised them—“I am not happy with you”—they paid attention. No matter how stern her expression, it couldn’t hide her beauty. Her features were so exquisite, so perfectly proportioned, they could have been on a movie screen.

  Tina’s day had been a long one. She’d rehearsed her seventh graders for a Lenten Passion Mass. She’d enlivened the study of ancient Egypt for her sixth graders by working with them to mummify a chicken, then bury it in the schoolyard. She prepared her eighth graders for a mock trial and explained to them manifest destiny in nineteenth-century America. She tested her seventh graders on spelling, and although Tina was beat, she was staying after school to grade the spelling tests. Sometimes she stayed as late as five-thirty. Her policy? Never take work home. She wanted a life beyond the classroom.

  Lately, however, that life seemed to be narrowing.

  Three doors from her own, her ninety-two-year-old mother was failing, her eyes increasingly vacant. Having a live-in caretaker was a blessing, but Tina still bought her mom’s groceries and medicines, took her dinner during the week, and visited almost every afternoon after school. The only girl among seven brothers, Tina had bonded with her mother at an early age. Her mother had been the one woman Tina could always confide in. Those days were gone.

  And now, when Tina went home after school, the man waiting for her was no longer the man she’d fallen in love with at UCLA, the dental student who’d served her meals at the Theta house, the man who’d reminded her of her brothers: handsome, cocky, fun, quick. Ozzie was still handsome, but he was no longer quick. Ozzie had Parkinson’s. He was fifty-eight.

  “WHEN I HEARD the diagnosis, I was shocked. It’s one thing to have a parent be ill, but someone your own age hits you differently. At first I felt bad for him. Then, I thought, what happens if he doesn’t work? I knew he’d have to retire his dental practice. He’d get two years of disability, but what about after that? Would we be able to make it financially?

  “I had to go back to teaching full-time. I don’t know when I’ll be able to retire. We need the medical benefits. Neither of us comes from affluent families. Finances are always a worry.

  “I started teaching when my youngest child was in seventh grade. I liked working because it gave me my own money. I did whatever I wanted with it, which usually meant buying things for the house, which was great. Now it goes into the pot, which has been hard. I can’t hide it in my bra drawer anymore.

  “Overnight our roles reversed. All of a sudden I had to be the provider. I resente
d that. I felt I should be living another kind of life.

  “I didn’t tell anyone about his diagnosis for a long time—no one at school, none of my friends or family. I just wanted to pull in. It was too new, too private. I didn’t want people talking about us.

  “I was afraid. Of losing him. Of surviving financially. I’d wake up at two A.M. with my mind racing. Will we be able to stay in our house? What if we can’t? Where will we go? I’d reach for my rosary and pray. Please God, show me the way. I wouldn’t fall back asleep until five A.M. Half an hour later, I had to drag myself out of bed to go to work.

  “Then I became angry. Why us? Why me? I already had my mom to take care of. I was angry because I was doing more and more, and I was maxed out.

  “It’s hard to see his deterioration. He gets a serious look on his face, a mask, and I think he’s mad at me or uninterested in what I’m saying. That look is neither. It’s just part of the disease. You get angry at the person who’s ill because their personality changes. You lose the person you married. You lose your best friend.

  “More and more, I feel a separation. Between who he was and who he is. Between who he is and who I am. We’re no longer going in the same direction.

  “All of a sudden my mother’s really old and my husband’s getting old, and psychologically you can become old when you’re around old people. But I’m not there yet. And I don’t want to get there. I’m a young personality. I look young. I don’t have any physical problems. I don’t take any medications.

  “I go to my mom’s after school but she’s not communicating, then I come home and my husband’s not communicating as he used to, and I feel so lonely. I’m sandwiched between two overwhelming sadnesses. I have a knot in my stomach all the time.

  “Having to socialize with this new group of women felt like one more thing.”