Things from Better Times

Right now I have a pair of earrings sitting on my dresser. These are not my earrings, nor are they the earrings of anyone close to me. These are earrings that belong to a girl I've never met, a girl who is now spoken of only in whispers, a girl who inspires a very violent reaction in my cousin if ever her name makes it above a whisper.

These earrings belong to my cousin's ex-girlfriend. Belonged. Now they belong to me.

They belong to me because at our family party my cousin drank an awful lot of wine and then shuffled into his room. A minute later he was back at the table and opening his fist to reveal a tangle of jewelry. There were necklaces. There were bracelets. There were earrings.

"What's your birthstone?" he asked me.

"Sapphire," I said.

He plucked the bracelet off of his palm and draped it across my wrist. It was sapphire. It had three tiny diamonds.

"No, no," I said. "I can't."

"You have to," he insisted. "I gave them to she-who-cannot-be-mentioned. After she broke my heart she mailed them back to me."

I told my cousin he should pawn them, get whatever money he could for them.

"I'd rather you have it," he said. "I wouldn't get very much money for any of this."

I told him I couldn't accept the bracelet. I just couldn't. That's when his sister frowned and reached over to take it from me. "I can," she said. "I like it."

"How about the earrings?" my cousin asked. "You like earrings. Take the earrings!"

The earrings were silver and delicate. They had jade insets. He jingled them in front of my face. "Take them, please," he said. "I don't want to look at them anymore."

He was red-faced, looking a little like he'd been brined. He'd had an awful lot to drink, and it was bringing out a certain kind of desperation I was familiar with.

After Ex-Keith took an axe to my heart and told me we were through, I went through my room with a giant box clamped under my arm. I swept things into that box: his t-shirts, pictures, gifts, dried flowers, his hat, notes, CDs, anything that reminded me of him. I thought that would make the process easier. I thought the things no longer being there would somehow make me forget him faster. It didn't. Now there were blank spaces on my walls, in my drawers, on my shelves, and I could still remember what had been there.

I found this box when I moved back to New York this summer. It was out in the office, stacked against the wall, stacked with other boxes of mine: college work, old CDs, stuffed animals. Those other boxes were appropriately labeled. The college work box said Jess's College Work. The old CD box said Jess's CDs and the stuffed animals were labeled Jess's Stuffed Animals. The one box that stood out--Keith's box--was labeled Items Belonging to a Pathological Liar.

The box was lighter now. I'd never unpacked it completely, but I had gradually removed things from it when I felt better. I removed even more things when Keith and I started speaking again, then even more when we started dating again.

The box has a new life now. I packed it full of Minnesota stuff, stuff that will need to follow me wherever I go next. I didn't bother to cross off its label--probably because it made me laugh so hard when I found it--but that makes me feel good. It's nice to be able to laugh at something that was so deathly serious, something that felt like it was piercing your lungs, something that felt like it was going to kill you if you let it. I didn't let it.

And I know my cousin won't let this kill him, either. And I will take the earrings (but not the necklace--it had butterflies on it, and I don't do butterflies) so that my cousin can get those things out of his sight. So he can start getting used to the new emptiness that exists where they used to. So he can move on to the next phase of pushing all the little memories away. In a few years I'm sure we'll have some more wine and I'll remind him of those earrings. He will laugh as he remembers how he felt like he needed those things out of his sight that second. He will tell me how funny and strange it all is, all the heartbreak and the healing, all the things he thought were going to put him under but never did.