Optic Nerve

A Life in Earrings

43 A Life in Earrings 1. One foot slightly turned out the way a model stood in Seventeen: my dad took a snapshot of me, standing in the driveway, pump-shod. Even though the photograph is black and white, I know my suit is dusty rose. A ribbon holds back my hair. My ears are bare. 44 2. Allowed to wear tiny pearl earrings I bit into the apple and came to know of clips, their pinch at my lobes still 45 3. New to the city I lived above a store whose owner let me buy one egg at a time. Across the street, a girl in long flowered skirts made earrings of her own design. I chose filigree, framing a red glass bead. At the corner a store made its own sausage, two steaming links handed over the counter wrapped in butcher paper, one for immediate eating, the other holding its juices, for that egg. 46 4. I turned my head. Red glass beads caught the light. At a loft downtown, a man came up to say When you read your work, don’t wear those earrings Nothing should distract from your words. 47 5. Silver discs reflective as moons, a present for me. He was a vice-president. His office was furnished with wing chairs, and lamps like ships’ steering wheels. I was on another floor, my desk out in the corridor. Even after we were married I used to walk into that office softly, almost on tiptoe onto his rug, thick enough to lose an earring in. 48 6. At this, my first serious job, the receptionist in her spare time made earrings, strong and glinting as though found in the dirt of a ancient past. I worried: too bold? Older, I unearthed them, thrilled now to revel in their barbaric heft. 49 7. After all this time shouldn’t he know me better? How could he ever have chosen these? 50 8. I’d planned to meet him at the appointed hour dressed just so. A half hour before I was at the bathroom sink washing my face, wearing underwear and high heels, sure I had enough time, when there’s a knock on the door. “Who’s there?” and it’s him, my former husband. “You’re early,” I shout. (Ouch, did that sound wrong? What a way to begin.) “Give me a minute.” I put on pants that tie in front, like a sarong. Except I’ve got them back to front. I look like a badly diapered baby. “Sorry to keep you waiting out there, but I wasn’t dressed yet.” (Will he think I’m being provocative? Or maybe, “Just like her, always late.”) Damn! These pants narrow at the ankles. They catch the shoes, trapping them heel to toe. One shoe slides out easily; the other I can’t dislodge. I bend over, rocking the shoe back and forth, 51 “Hang on . . . I’ll be right there . . . just a second.” Got it. I forego make-up, grab what I think is a pair, clip on two mismatched earrings, run to open the door. 52 9. I only have one. I keep thinking I’ll open an old pocketbook and there will be its mate. I miss it. Then again, I only have one breast, and it’s adequate for living. 53 10. On the refrigerator door, a poodle-shaped magnet holds a postcard of a poodle. In a drawer, I have a pair, yes I do, of poodle earrings. My dog has lived longer than the average life span. From here on, both of us live in grace. When I offer her a treat, how delicately she takes it. How sweet is her warm breath on my palm. 54 11. In amethyst glass globes bedecked, I am Demeter at harvest, abundant in plums. ...