“My grandmother, on both sides, married a farmer, sewed her own clothing, and died with the exact same amount of money she started with. Even if you go a dozen generations back, I don’t come from any kind of family that would own this ring.”
“Well,” he said, looking at her, Izzy felt flushed to understand, with the kind of affection that suggested she was made for beautiful things, “you can keep it here and wear it only when you visit me.”
“This is turning out to be less of a great gift, Mr. Jackson.”
Whenever she wanted to needle him, whenever she wanted to see his ears tint red, she called him by his teacher name. She did not like foolishness for the most part, but she thrilled at the wickedness of this small act.
Hal did not even register the needling; he was so focused on her, and she again felt the strange sensation of being witnessed, something she worked so hard to avoid in most cases. “Pretty soon, Izzy,” he then said, “if you still feel like it, you’ll have so many nice things like this that you’ll make up restrictions on them just to make them special again.”
She did not allow her emotions on the surface to change but she felt the swell of his consideration of the future. Their future. She could never figure out, and it felt childish to ask, what he expected from this relationship. She simply dug her nails into herself and hoped that the marks would remind her, years from now, of a time that was good.
“I don’t know how a person gets tired of this,” she said, and then carefully put the ring back in its box, placed it on the coffee table, and willed herself to forget that it existed.
Now, in bed, holding the box that she had still not opened since Hal died, she knew that she didn’t want to see what was inside. She wondered if it was even still in the box, or if it had disintegrated as soon as Hal left her. She could see the ring clearly in her mind, more defined than she could see Hal, who had grown hazy in her memories. If she put the ring on, would it bring Hal back to life? She considered the box for a few seconds and then placed it, unopened, in the drawer. She lay back in bed and dug her fingers into her arm, the sensation so pleasing, the slight pain, that she fell into a deep sleep.
On the night of the exhibition for her art class, nearly the entire Infinite Family came to the gallery, even the children, who had to be carefully shepherded around the precariously arranged works of art. As they sipped punch, the adults stared with polite but confounded expressions at a six-foot-long string of plaster molds of shrimp arranged like Christmas lights around a fake tree. Finally, Marnie pulled on Izzy’s arm, shocking her back into coherence, and asked her, “Where is yours, Izzy? I wanna see Izzy’s art.” Izzy pointed toward the second room of the gallery and said, “It’s in there.” Everyone in the family turned and, instead of observing all the artwork as it was set up, made a beeline for the next room.
It had taken Izzy hours to load up each plastic drum, filled with wooden letters, into the van, requiring the help of several other adults. But she alone did the arranging in the gallery. Now she was glad she had refused their help because the piece had become new to the family, even though they’d seen the rough elements dozens of times in the complex.
“Izzy,” Nina said, holding on to Izzy’s hand and squeezing it. “It’s beautiful. It’s weird, too, but it’s beautiful. It looks like real art.”
“Thank you,” Izzy said and they both stared at the mountain of letters, taking up nearly the entire room, spilling out in all directions. On the wall, blown up, were sheets of paper that held the story of “A Rose for Emily” in its entirety. But it was obscured by the letters, so many of them, impossible to count.