Cheryl Jarvis - The Necklace - A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea

He went to the back room. Priscilla Van Gundy, his wife and chief financial officer, was there, hunched over the books, hyper-focused, trying to tune out the noise. She usually worked in the administrative office across the street, but because of the sale she was squeezed in the store’s small stockroom between shelves of inventory and a desk that doubled as a kitchen table.

Priscilla had heard the commotion. She’d heard the salespeople talking about the group of women, but she hadn’t left her desk to go and have a look. She avoided looking at customers’ faces. She didn’t want negotiations to get personal.

‘There’s a group of women who want a special price on the diamond necklace,’ Tom said to the thick auburn hair hiding his wife’s face. ‘What can we sell it for?’

Priscilla tapped figures into the calculator: one for the actual cost of the necklace, another for the number of months it had been in the store, a third for what they needed to make a profit.

‘Eighteen thousand,’ she said.

Tom knew the number wasn’t going to be acceptable, but he was used to the to-and-fro of negotiations. He went back to the front of the shop to counter Jonell’s bid with Priscilla’s offer.

‘Not low enough,’ Jonell said. ‘We only want to spend a thousand per woman.’

Tom had anticipated the answer. He nodded his head and returned to the back room.

‘Can we go any lower?’ he asked Priscilla.

She felt his apprehension. After thirty-three years of marriage she could read his emotions like a spreadsheet. She turned to the calculator again, tapping in more numbers.

‘Seventeen thousand,’ she answered.

Tom scratched out the twelve-thousand-dollar figure on Jonell’s sheet of paper, scribbled fifteen thousand, and showed it to Priscilla.

‘Can we do this?’ he asked.

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘It could be good for business.’

‘We sell it for that and we won’t have a business.’

Tom was silent. Priscilla said more firmly, ‘That is not going to happen.’

Tom looked at his wife. He remembered how much more relaxed he’d become after she started working with him six years ago. She had her finger on every dollar, and she was good at it. The business was doing well in large part because of her. More importantly, he trusted her more than anyone.

But little of that mattered today. Today he wanted her to be flexible.

‘I just have a feeling about this,’ he said to her.

‘You sell it for fifteen thousand and we make no profit.’

At that moment Tom Van Gundy realised he was willing to let go of any profit. In part, he didn’t want to disappoint so many women. It was the same feeling he’d had when he played football in high school and didn’t want to disappoint the fans. He knew that turning away twelve women wouldn’t be good business either. Deep down inside, though, he wanted to see Priscilla smile the way these women were smiling. Six months earlier her sister Doreen had died of cancer and he hadn’t seen her smile wholeheartedly since then.

Something more important was happening here than making money, something so important that it gave him an idea.

Tom Van Gundy rarely acted without his wife’s consent, and he knew if he continued to debate the issue with her, he’d lose. Deciding that it was better to plead forgiveness afterwards than ask permission before, he decided to deal with the repercussions later. He walked out of the back room to hand Jonell the sheet of paper on which he’d scribbled fifteen thousand.

‘I’ll give it to you for this price,’ he said, ‘but on one condition. I want you to let my wife be in your group.’ He had no idea how Priscilla would feel about it or if she’d even participate. He just knew he wanted these women in her life.

Jonell looked at the attractive, soft-spoken man in front of her. She didn’t know why he wanted his wife in the group, nor did she know who his wife was or if she’d like her or if any of the women she’d recruited would like her. But the whole idea was about inclusion and sharing, so she didn’t hesitate.

‘It’s a deal,’ she said.

Jonell wasn’t worried about Tom’s wife. She was worried that the women she’d worked so doggedly to recruit would balk at paying nearly two hundred dollars extra each. Then what was she going to do? She hid her concern behind her most radiant smile of the day.

Tom returned to the back room.

‘I gave it to them for fifteen thousand,’ he said, again to her bowed head, ‘but you get to be in the group.’

Priscilla looked up at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The group of women. You get to be part of it.’

She knew that he felt concerned about dropping the price, so her tetchy retorts stayed in her head. Had he lost his mind? Had he forgotten that the shopping centre takes 7 per cent and the salesman a 3 per cent commission? They wouldn’t even cover their costs. She was always the bulldog, he the golden retriever. Nothing ever changed. But what was the point of arguing? It was a done deal.

‘Whatever,’ she said. And that was all she said.

Priscilla stayed in the back room. She had no curiosity about the women. She had no interest in being part of the group. She had no interest in owning a necklace she could have borrowed any time she wanted anyway. All she could think was that if her husband kept making deals like this they’d be out of business. She went back to the books to try to work out a way to make up for the day’s losses.

But Tom Van Gundy saw something his wife didn’t. He saw a group of women unlike any others he’d come across in his twenty-seven years of selling to women, talking to women, understanding women. He saw a collective vitality, an unexpected opportunity. He saw possibility.

Possibility was what Jonell’s vision was all about. It wasn’t about a necklace as an accessory. It wasn’t about diamonds as status or investment. It was about a necklace as a social experiment. A way to bring women together to see what would happen. Could the necklace become greater than the sum of its links, thirteen voices stronger than one?

Jonell’s confidence wasn’t misplaced. By the time her Visa bill arrived three weeks later, she’d found the final four investors she needed. Apart from the jeweller’s disgruntled wife, there were old friends, new friends and friends of friends. Their ages ranged between fifty and sixty-two so all but one qualified as part of that eclectic generation known as the ‘baby boomers’. One of them had been married and faithful to one man for thirty-plus years, while another had had three husbands and dozens of lovers, and some were single but dating. Some were childless while the rest had up to four children, of ages ranging from ten to grown-up. There were doting grandmothers, card-carrying conservatives and lifelong liberals. Some had advanced degrees, others high school diplomas. They had stuck to one career or jumped from job to job, and they worked in finance and farming, medicine and teaching, business and property, media and law. Some came from wealthy families and others were completely self-made. They were Catholic and Jewish, feminist and traditionalist, blonde and grey-haired.

No woman said yes to Jonell’s proposition just because she was interested in jewellery or diamonds. No woman said yes to the necklace because she lusted to wear it. Some wrote a cheque without even seeing it. Each bought a share because, as Tom sensed intuitively, it represented possibility.

What the women didn’t know was that over the next few years the necklace would animate their lives in ways they could never have imagined. More importantly, it would start a conversation. About materialism and conspicuous consumption, ownership and non-attachment. About what it means today to be a woman in her fifties, potentially looking at another thirty to forty years of life. About the connections we make and the legacies we leave.