Then Erica asked for my mother's pearl earrings. She said they were part of her wedding jewelry and that my mother had given them to her. I knew exactly which pair she meant: small pearls with worn gold posts that my mother had saved for years to buy herself after getting a better job. She had lent them to Erica for the ceremony, already ill enough that we both worried she might be too tired to attend. After the reception, Erica had taken them off and returned them to her with a kiss.
"Your mother gave them to me," Erica said, looking at the jewelry box I had placed on the dresser. I told her gently that my mother had lent them, not given them, and that I had photographs from the reception showing them being returned. Erica's face hardened. "You're going to fight me over a pair of earrings now?" she asked. I said I was willing to let Peter review any evidence she had about ownership, but I was not going to surrender something my mother had kept for herself simply because it was easier than having an argument.
Monique muttered, "This is financial violence," as I placed the box back in its drawer. Ray looked up from the carton he was carrying. "Lady," he said, "labeling boxes isn't violence. It's tape with handwriting." I gave him a look that told him to stop, though I had to work harder than expected to keep a straight face. Peter stepped between the discussion and reminded everyone that disputed items could be documented rather than decided by volume.
Erica backed down about the earrings, but she looked wounded by the refusal. I did not enjoy it. There was a time when I would have surrendered almost anything to avoid seeing that look, and perhaps some of our difficulties had been built on my habit of saying yes long after I ought to have asked why. I was learning to make a distinction between being generous and being unable to tolerate another person's disappointment. It was not an elegant lesson, and I did not learn it without guilt.
The move itself took most of the afternoon. Damon had arrived in a glossy white two-door coupe, apparently assuming that a marriage could be packed into the trunk beside a gym bag. Three boxes in, he began rearranging them. Six boxes in, he called somebody about renting a larger vehicle. By the time the moving van arrived, Damon was sweating through his expensive polo, and Ray was wearing the expression of a man who had been granted a joke by the universe and was trying not to waste it.
I helped carry the last cartons to the driveway. Erica stood beside the van while the crew checked its load, her face tired and a little dazed. For a moment we looked at each other without Monique or Damon between us. She said, "I never thought we'd end up like this." I wanted to ask whether she had imagined a version of leaving me in which the house remained staged for her return. Instead I said, "Neither did I."