Family Jewels

For a good portion of my life, dad has implored me to have things from his jewellery collection. Costume jewellery, mostly. The clinking, tangled leftovers of the intense, melodramatic, generally alcoholic women who dot our recent ancestry. Whenever the mood takes dad to showcase the ordered chaos of one of his jewellery boxes, or swing a heavy rack of brass chains from out of his wardrobe, I see these dead women parade before me, spangled, furred and Eau-de-Cologned. There's the tall, black-haired one with alarming Rasputin eyes. The strong-jawed blonde with lipstick outside of her lip lines. The buxom matron. The one-eyed astrologer. And then, trailing behind them, there's the one who gassed herself with the kitchen oven. In the glassy glint of the stones I hear these women's voices, rasping, whining, trumpeting, commanding me to join them. And all of the jewellery-wearing years of my life I have absolutely refused! I have held up a stubborn hand to their fuming ghosts and said, 'No! No. I will not join your ranks!'

So why, suddenly, on the ten-millionth occasion of dad asking me if I want C's ring, A's necklace, M's brooch, as if he has never asked before, did I suddenly feel moved to take B's watch? 

I wear it to work and in a silence I hear its soft, whirring tick. I hold it to my ear.