Retail Anxiety: The Necklace I Had to Have
My jewelry shopping trip made me question my identity
by Lynette Benton
Displayed at eye level on a glass shelf in a small boutique one Saturday were an orange and brown necklace and its matching bracelet. Both were made of many oversized orbs threaded on a slender, silky strap, the spheres arranged to give a pronounced three-dimensional effect. Attracted by the unusual design, I flirted with the pair. The owner—a middle-aged woman who had helped me with purchases on several previous visits to the store—hovered. She told me about the artist who had fabricated the jewelry from resin. Wasn’t it pretty? And wouldn’t that color look beautiful on me? Unlike women with fair complexions who denounce the color, all shades of orange look good against my brown skin: Clear orange. Burnt orange. Reddish orange. Pinkish orange.
But, sternly reminding myself of all the jewelry I already owned, I put on my gloves and resolutely prepared to leave the store. It was a dank November day with windblown rain splattering the pavements. My hand was on the door handle when I turned back; I would just touch the necklace. Try it on. I caressed it. I tried it on. Then I put it back on its shelf.
I was heading for the door again when the owner asked if I’d like to see the same necklace in a combination of grey, wild lime green, and a maroon so dark I thought it was black. This version was even more striking than the orange. I have a number of clothes and even earrings in that vivid yellow/green hue. Still, I thought I’d buy the orange and brown necklace, all the while knowing I didn’t have much to wear with it.
As if I were under the spell of one of those drugs administered to pre-op patients lying limp on gurneys to calm them on their way to surgery—the kind of medication that frees them from concern about what lies ahead—I floated over to the orange and brown necklace, picked it up, and carried it to the counter. The cold, wet street outside no longer existed. Life beyond the shop no longer existed. Nothing existed, except my new orange and brown necklace.
The owner rang up my purchase.
I felt elated, which should have made me suspicious. Normally, the only time a purchase thrills me is when it’s something I not only want but also need. It has to be something that fills a gaping gap, an unsettling lacuna that will complete a vague picture residing in my head. In fact, my friend Bob often complimented me on my willingness to forego an item for years until I found the exact thing I was looking for. He happened to be referring to my living room area rug, a sparse design of red cherries and dark naked branches on a tan background. When my husband crouches on it to do his back exercises, he looks as if he’s stretching in a Japanese garden. It was the sixth rug I’d brought home to try out against our hardwood floors.
I sent a text to Joyce, a fashionable friend, and attached a photo of the orange and brown necklace I’d bought. I added a caption. “Take that, mean dentist who almost made me cry.” Joyce knew my periodontist had upset me the day before by badgering me to undergo an expensive and painful procedure he felt was necessary for my dental health. Despite the fact that I hold the term “retail therapy” in scathing contempt, whenever I have a bad time at the hands of a dentist, I look for a piece of jewelry to soothe myself. I’ve only actually bought an item once before: a woven silver and pewter necklace, and that’s with quite a few agonizing dental treatments behind me. To my way of thinking, that’s restraint.
Joyce thought I owed myself the orange and brown necklace.
After I arrived home from the jewelry boutique with my purchase, still uncertain, I considered exchanging that necklace for the green and grey one. Or should I buy both the necklaces? They were only $45.00 each, plus tax. I texted Joyce: “Is it too tacky to own the same necklace in two different color combinations?” She didn’t think so; the colors themselves made them look quite distinct from each other.
The next morning, before I’d even gotten out of bed, the word “greed” wriggled like a fat wet worm through my consciousness. I felt greedy. Rapacious. I thought of a card Joyce and I had laughed over. It said: “I’m not needy, I’m wanty.”
My mother wanted things she saw, no matter how worthless they were. The salt packets and leftover bright yellow lemon wedges in restaurants. A paperback book she saw on a friend’s shelf. A napkin holder. She’d come right out and say, “Aren’t you going to give me that?” while I mumbled embarrassed disavowals to our host.
“She doesn’t need it.”
And to my mother, as to a toddler, “You already have that!”
I never related to that kind of acquisitiveness until the day after I bought the orange and brown necklace, never related to wanting so badly something in the same class as what I already had too much of, namely, jewelry. It’s happened before once or twice, but on those occasions, after I arrived home with my purchase I thought, “I really have enough of . . .” whatever it was and promptly returned it. Never had I felt as intensely desirous before. Never so ravenous.
I could only think of one winter outfit I owned that would go with the orange and brown necklace. One. The idea that I should have bought the other one tormented me, until I came to the conclusion that I needed neither of them and someone as avaricious as I certainly didn’t deserve either of them.
On Sunday, the day after I bought the orange and brown necklace, my husband, his sister, and I went on a nature walk in Ipswich, Massachusetts, about an hour from my home outside of Boston. When we stopped walking in the unusually warm sunshine for that time of year to enjoy the sandwiches, drinks, and Scottish oatcakes laden with butter and brown sugar I’d made, the nervous stomach I’ve had to coddle since childhood fluttered with anxiety.
I made a mental list of what this uneasiness could have sprung from. Partly it was about spending money on frivolities. My husband’s landscaping job in a small company had been shaky lately, mainly due to the owner’s poor health. Already too much of what I owned paired well with only one other item in my closet. I already had lots of clothes and accessories I seldom wore. I mostly worked at home so it wasn’t as if I had daily dress-up opportunities. And the necklace I’d bought was large. Emphatic. Not for everyday wear, and I live an everyday sort of life.
I continued weighing the questions: Exchange the orange necklace for the other one? Buy both? Return the orange and brown necklace, forswear the green and grey one, and feel righteous but bitter?
Aside from the issue of voracity and fretting over which necklace would go with more of my outfits, conflict like this made me call into question my very identity. For me, an item needed to do more than look good on me. An item even had to look good with my surroundings, as in the case of the area rug. It needed to display the right me, express the heart of me, the essential me.
The shop would be closed for the next two days; that would give me time to make a final decision. My identity then tied to a beautiful necklace or two, the pressing question of who I really was hung in the balance.
But could jewelry ever tell me that?
Lynette Benton is a creative nonfiction writer and writing instructor who teaches memoir and other creative writing classes in Greater Boston.
Three of her essays have garnered first prize or finalist status in literary contests. Three others have been anthologized. Her articles and personal essays have appeared in numerous online and paper publications and on a podcast. Most recently, her essays were published in Shenandoah literary journal and included in the 2021 anthology, Stories That Need to Be Told.
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"I'm not needy, I'm wanty" I would have bought that card. This is a thoughtful and beautifully insightful piece. So many of us have fraught relationships with those "therapeutic" purchases.
Ah, the temptations of our society. This is a beautifully written article that I, and many others, can identify with!