Essay: The Understudy Ring
I knew I never should have taken off the ring. Even as I slipped it off my finger and into my pocket that evening in March, I thought to myself, Don’t do it, Jenna, that’s stupid. It’s not even a real pocket. It’s a fifth pocket; it’s only good for storing pills and wadded-up gum wrappers. But I did it anyway. It hurt when I twisted the physical therapy resistance ban around my hand and the ring dug into my skin. It was only for a few minutes, and surely my admonishing thought would ensure that I would not forget about it.
I finished my exercises and iced my shoulder in the little recovery room, listening to a podcast. I was done by 7pm, and decided to look for a dress for an upcoming wedding at the big Anthropologie near Rockefeller Center. Since it was such a nice night out, I ended up walking all the way from Chelsea to Midtown, pushing my way through tourist crowds and rush-homers, taking my time and enjoying the evening. I found nothing I liked at Anthro. I went home. As soon as I got there, as I was changing out of my skinny jeans and into cozy pants, I gasped. The ring.
I dug a finger into my pocket and, of course, it was empty. It’s only an object, it’s only an object, it’s only an object, I repeated to myself. No big deal. Material things. I called the PT office in the hope that maybe they’d found it on the floor in the recovery room. They were gone for the day, so I left a message: “Hi Keira, it’s Jenna, I think I lost a ring there today. If you find it, please call me back. It has a lot of sentimental value –” My throat knotted up. I started crying. I hung up and called my mom.
***
The ring was me, in jewelry form. Just my color, just my style. Vintage, a well-cut garnet set in an art deco silver square. The square had been carved with sharp beveled edges, so that it dazzled without diamonds. That was how I was able to afford it.
I’d often told people it didn’t matter what engagement ring I got, if ever, because I already had my perfect ring. I’d bought it, in 2013, at the end of a long journey. I’d lived in Paris for two years, having quit my job to go there and stay as long as I could and write. A cliché, I know, I know, but a clichéd dream is only silly until something real comes out of it. I finished a first draft of my first novel a few days before I was due to fly back to America. I’d finally run out of money and had to go home and get a real (day) job, but at least I’d accomplished what I went there to do. I was not a failure; I was a writer.
I decided to buy a piece of jewelry to celebrate and commemorate my achievement. Having lived the cheapskate life, with the equivalent of two boxes of possessions, for two years, the idea of spending money on a material thing was a big deal to me. I did not have dishes or books or a blanket to my name, but this I wanted. Something that could remind me of what I was capable of. Something I could give to my child or grandchild and say, “I bought this in Paris, after I wrote my very first novel.” I told myself I would just know it when I saw it, maybe a pair of earrings or a necklace. But, truthfully, I had a vision in my mind that I did not think I would actually find: a red vintage ring.
I spent my last few days walking around Paris, popping into jewelry stores and hunting down antique shops, looking for the perfect thing. On one of those days I took a break and splurged on a glass of wine at La Closerie des Lilas, one of my favorite, snootiest restaurants, and as I left I realized that the antique jewelry shop a few doors down was, for the first time I’d ever seen, open. I popped in and asked to see some of the rings from the window display. The owner showed them to me, then pulled out another tray to look through while I savored the fact that I’d finally reached enough fluency to have an entire conversation in French.
I had been right: the moment I saw the ring, I knew it. I felt it. The way I have never felt about a man or a job or a home, the way I have only ever felt about New York, and Paris, and writing: this was meant for me.
It was not extravagant, but it was beautiful, and well made. It made me feel classy, elegant. It was in good taste. It was a little too big, even for my middle finger, but I didn’t care. I made it work. Over the next three years, it was the thing that kept me going: during revisions for that novel and adjusting to life after Paris and at my day job and while reading rejection letter after rejection letter, it motivated me to keep trying. I could look at that ring, admiring its glinting red depths like I was gazing at a lover’s face, and remember what I had done and the life I’d once lived. The person I once was. The life I knew that, if only I kept trying, I could have again: the writer’s life.
****
The day after I lost the ring, I woke up early, went to 49th Street, and walked up and down the block, staring at the ground lit by cold, early morning sun. When I’d walked to the subway the evening before, a stranger bumped into me and I thought I’d heard something fall; I was now sure that was my ring. I scanned the sidewalk, its gray surface spotted with the evidence of decades of people’s footsteps and discarded gum and spilled trash and animal feces. I inspected grimy corners and thought about the Kathryn Schultz essay in the New Yorker I’d recently read, about her season of losing. I, too, had had a terrible few months: the election, a fallout with my best friend over politics, a painful breakup, and a litany of health problems. This felt like the culmination of all of that, a physical manifestation of everything that had recently slipped out of my grasp.
I’d sobbed to my mom the night before. “It was so beautiful, and it went with everything,” I wailed, “but it’s not just that. I have nothing else to signify that achievement. That novel is never going to be published — ”
“But there will be others,” my mom cut in.
“But that was the first,” I said. “And it was Paris.”
“I know, honey. I’m so sorry,” she kept saying, over and over, as though a good friend had died.
Later that day, I called the Rockefeller Center maintenance department’s lost and found and searched my physical therapist’s office, to no avail. “Was it an engagement ring?” Rockefeller Center asked me. “Was it from your mother or grandmother or something?” my PT asked me. And maybe that was thing that hurt the most about losing the ring: that this was something beloved that I did not need a man to give to me, I did not need someone I love to die and leave to me; it was something I had earned, and chosen, and provided for myself, when I had no money left, at the end of my cliché.
****
I eventually came to accept that the ring was gone forever. I stopped entertaining notions of finding it one day in a pawn shop and instead invented possible stories of where it might have ended up. I put garbage dumps and landfills out of my mind. Maybe some tourist found it and took it home, an odd and lovely souvenir. Perhaps a sanitation worker spotted it and brought it home to his wife, and for her, too, it is the most beautiful thing she’s ever owned. Maybe a little girl picked it up and put it in her little pocket, and one day she will grow into it.
I have this little gold ceramic tree on my vanity where I hang the other few rings I own, and it still looks so forlorn; it’s missing a color. My finger feels naked every day, and I try to remember something my mom told me: that I will always know what I did, the good life I lived, and that will keep me going. I have me to show for it. But it’s still not the same.
One day recently, though, I plucked a ring from the tree, a thin, fake-gold crown ring, and as I slipped it onto my finger, the memory struck me of where I’d gotten that one: in Paris. Right after I finished my novel. I’d been walking from arrondissement to arrondissement, searching for my perfect commemorative heirloom, and dropped into a cheap little boutique I liked. It was perched among thirty others just like it in a display cushion near the register, and I remember trying it on and thinking, maybe this can be it. But it was only five euros, finished in a yellow patina that I knew would fade over time. It didn’t feel fancy enough. I bought it anyway, though, just because I liked it. Now I’m glad I did. It makes a good backup. Because even though it’s not The Ring, it is a ring… one that holds the same story, the same moment, in its metal.
