Of course, the flower’s existence proves nothing; we are agreed that we attended the prom. Yet to me it is the smoking gun, irrefutable evidence—but of what? That everything happened as I said. Why did she deny it? My story is a testament to her power, the glory of her youth.

Anyway, it’s a good thing that nothing came of our date. At thirty-five, I am still young, my life nothing but possibility. I might be interviewing second-raters now, but one day I will talk to presidents and kings, maybe work for one of the networks. Whereas Maddie Schwartz, pushing forty, has nothing to look forward to.

January 1966

January 1966

It was only when the jeweler put the loupe to his eye that Maddie realized she had already mentally spent the money from selling her engagement ring. What would he pay her? A thousand? Maybe even two thousand?

She needed so much. The new apartment was a two-bedroom, sparse on furnishings. She had assumed Seth would be living with her. But he refused, said he would rather stay with his father in the Pikesville house, near his friends and his school. Even after she offered to drive him to school, he refused to move. Milton’s meddling, Maddie suspected. She comforted herself with the knowledge that Seth had only two years left at home.

But she would have chosen a one-bedroom in a better neighborhood if she had anticipated Seth’s resistance. And then she might actually have a phone, although not having a phone wasn’t completely tragic. It meant her mother couldn’t call her every day to discuss Maddie’s future and what Tattie Morgenstern unfailingly called her reduced circumstances.

Now that you are living in reduced circumstances, Madeline, you might want to clip coupons. I saw that Hochschild’s was having a good sale—you’ll have to get used to shopping sales and cutting coupons, Madeline, because of your reduced circumstances. With your reduced circumstances, it might make sense not to have a car at all.

The infuriating thing was that her mother was right. Everything about Maddie’s post-Milton life was smaller, shabbier. The apartment was pretty enough, but Gist Avenue, while on the right side of Northern Parkway, was not nice, it turned out. The landlord had persuaded her to meet in the afternoon, when the neighborhood was empty and quiet. At that time of day, the apartment reminded Maddie of a 3-D Paul Klee painting, with the warm winter sunlight creating golden squares on empty wood floors, glinting on the tiny pink-and-blue tiles in the bath. All she saw were shapes and light, space and possibility.

It was only when she started moving her things in that she realized while the apartment was charming, the neighborhood was decidedly mixed. Mixed on its way to being not so mixed. Maddie wasn’t prejudiced, of course. If she had been younger, without a child, she would have gone south to join the voter registration project a few years back. She was almost sure of this. But she didn’t like being so visible in her new neighborhood, a solitary white woman who happened to own a fur coat. Only beaver, but a fur nonetheless. She was wearing it now. Maybe the jeweler would pay more if she didn’t look like someone who needed the money.

When Milton had learned her new address, he said Seth couldn’t visit at all, not overnight. He said that she could spend her weekends with Seth at the old house if she liked, that Milton would vacate the premises so mother and son could be together. A kind act, a gracious act, but Maddie wondered if Milton had already started seeing someone. The idea annoyed her, but she consoled herself that a new lady was probably the only thing that could persuade Milton to stop fighting the divorce.

She had leaned farther over the counter than she realized, close enough that her breath was forming little clouds on the glass.

“You didn’t buy this here?” The jeweler made it sound like a question, but she had already provided that information.

“No, it was from a place downtown. I don’t think it’s there anymore—Steiner’s.”

“Yes, I remember. Very fancy place. Put a lot of money in the fixtures. We keep things simple here. I always tell my employees: In a jewelry store, it’s the jewels that should shine. You don’t need to arrange them on velvet if they’re of good quality. You don’t need to be downtown, where the rents are high and there’s no parking. Weinstein’s may not be fashionable, but we’re still in business and that’s good enough for me.”

“So my ring . . .”

He looked sad, but it was a polite, fake sad, as if an unlikable acquaintance had died and he was pretending to care more than he did.

“I couldn’t do more than five hundred dollars.”

It was like a gut punch, not that Maddie had ever been punched or hit in any way.

“But my husband paid a thousand dollars and that was almost twenty years ago.” Aging herself a little, for she was only thirty-seven and had married at nineteen. But two decades had more gravitas than eighteen years.

“Ah, people were giddy in the forties, weren’t they?”

Were they? She had been a teenager, a pretty girl; giddy had been her natural state. But Milton was a practical young man, careful about debt, smart about investments. He would not have chosen a ring without resale value.

Except—Milton never expected this ring to be sold. The most cynical man in the world didn’t expect his engagement ring to be sold; even the men who courted Elizabeth Taylor thought they would be with her forever.

“I don’t understand how a ring that cost a thousand dollars in 1946 could be worth half that amount today.” Even as she spoke, she was aware how quickly she had moved from an exaggeration to a lie, how “almost twenty,” which was essentially correct, had become twenty.

“If you really want to know, I could bore you with a lecture on the used diamond market and profit margins. I could tell you about clarity and cut, how the fashions change. I’m happy to explain all those things, but the bottom line is, I can’t do better than five hundred dollars.”

“We had it insured for two thousand dollars,” she said. Did they? It sounded right. Or maybe it was that she had hoped to get as much as two thousand dollars.

Milton had been giving her an allowance since she left, but it wasn’t quite enough and it was fitful, with no fixed date or amount. Because she had assumed that Seth would come with her, she had expected a more generous stipend. Milton would never deny his only son. But with Seth’s remaining in the house in Pikesville, she had no such leverage. She needed money. Milton was trying to starve her out, force her to come back to him by being stingy.

“He’s not kidding about the boring part,” said a young woman with reddish hair, polishing the top of the case. Maddie was surprised that an employee would dare to speak so impudently to her boss, but Jack Weinstein only laughed.

“That’s enough out of you, Judith. Tell you what, Mrs. Schwartz—leave your number with us and if a customer comes in looking for a ring like this, maybe we can work something out. It’s not the style—”

“It’s a classic solitaire.”

“Exactly. The young girls getting married today, they have interesting ideas. Some don’t want stones at all.” Now he looked genuinely sad.

“I don’t have a phone yet. I’m waiting for it to be installed. C & P says there’s a terrible backlog.”

He put away his loupe and handed the ring back to Maddie. She was loath to put it on. That would feel as defeating as moving back to Pikesville. The young woman, Judith, understood immediately what was bothering Maddie. She pulled out an envelope and said: “For safekeeping. I’d give you a box, but I can’t endure the lecture that my brother would give me on how much everything costs.”

“Your brother? That explains a lot.”

“You have no idea.”

The young woman was more handsome than pretty. But her expressions were droll and her clothes went together in a way that came only with hours in one’s room trying things on, creating combinations, pressing and mending, shining and brushing. Maddie knew because Maddie had always been the same kind of woman. This young woman’s style was almost too matchy, which aged her a little. But her kindness was overwhelming, as kindness sometimes is, and it took enormous self-control for Maddie to not burst into tears.

She made it to the driver’s seat of her car, only barely, before her sobs started.

She had expected that money. She had imagined a new bed, something sleek and modern. A phone on the wall in the kitchen, maybe an extension in the bedroom, too. It was so terribly inconvenient not to have a phone.

However, she was crying not for the things she might have had, but for the embarrassment of being found out, of being caught yearning. It had been a very long time since Maddie had let anyone see her dare to want something. She knew how dangerous it was to let one’s desire be glimpsed, even for a moment.

A tap on the window; the droll girl’s face—Judith, her brother had called her—filled the frame. Maddie fumbled for her dark glasses, rolled down the window.

“So bright today,” Judith said, politely offering an excuse.