Family Jewels

Growing up, Celeste’s dad passed along a few simple sayings his father had shared with him. Truth is beauty. Save your pennies. Practice makes perfect. Smart is good. Life is pain. Like precious jewels, each adage would be tested under pressure and shine through the next inevitable trial, lighting her path.

In ninth grade, she was snubbed by some of her favorite grade school friends. They stopped raising their hands while Celeste continued her eager class participation.

“My friends are smart girls,” she told her dad. “They pretend they don’t know the answers. They’ve even stopped asking questions."

“Not tempted to follow their lead?”

“Never,” she said.

After getting cut from the junior varsity tennis team, the following summer she perfected her overhead serve, making varsity in tenth grade. Six months later, Celeste’s best friend and doubles’ partner was killed by a drunk driver. She’d never admit it, but her parents had been right. Life was all about pain. Right now, she was steeped in it.

“Life is rarely about feeling good,” her dad said, gently. “Things can hurt every day. You live through the pain. That’s the challenge ahead of us. Live through it and come out on the other side. ’Til the day we die.”

His words stung. Jenna had been her closest friend since kindergarten. “Are you and mom feeling this kind of pain?” she asked, tears staining her face.

He shrugged. “We celebrate when good things happen. We also know bad things are waiting around the corner.” He handed her a small black notebook fastened with an elastic strap. “Write one bad thing that happened to you, followed by one good thing. Once a day. Every time you fill a book, your mother and I will replace it. And give you $20,000.”

“All that money?” She sniffled. “Just for writing in this book?”

“Not for any writing. One bad thing followed by one good thing.”

“What if nothing bad happens to me that day?”

“If experience is any kind of teacher, something will disappoint you daily.”

“Like what?”

“You tell me,” her father said.

Would she fail her second-quarter chemistry final? Would someone else make first-chair clarinet? Or would she be writing the same bad thing every day—still unpopular—for daring to be her authentic self?

Celeste briefly considered all the painful things that might occur. “What if I tear my ACL this season?”

Her dad handed her a tissue. “Truly a bad thing.”

She blotted her eyes. “How about the Internet going down again?”

“How is that bad?”

“I couldn’t post my assignment. Mrs. Grant would accuse me of lying this time. She’d give me a zero.”

Her dad shrugged. “Then write it down. But don't forget. One bad thing. Then one good thing. On the same page. Good must follow bad.”

She flipped through the book. About a hundred pages in it. If she wrote on each side for 200 days, she would have earned $20,000 by the time she finished eleventh grade.

“You know what to do. Give your mother or me the book when it’s complete.”

She didn’t think she’d ever fill that book with good things—not today, not any day. No teenager on earth experienced that many wonderful things.

In the months that followed, the life-was-pain writings came pretty easily. Mostly because teenagers specialized in both dispensing cruelty and wallowing in it. For the rest of that year, Celeste struggled to chronicle one good thing each day.

She started writing the obvious. Passed chem test. Won first match of the season. Made county chorus. But as the days grew longer and warmer, she wrote about the perfume of the lilac bush while mowing the lawn, the shine of the oak coffee table right after polishing it with lemon oil, and the softness of her dog’s coat whenever she brushed it.

A few days before school let out for the summer, she handed her dad the black book, beaming. “Here you go. Filled every page.”

Her dad handed the notebook back to her. “I’m proud of you.”

“Aren’t you going to read it? Check it out before you give me the money?”

He shook his head. “You know the difference between truth and lies. You’ve shown us that.”

“Truth is beauty,” she intoned. “Dad, some of the greatest looking guys in my grade lie all the time like they’re born to it.”

“Are they attractive despite their lying?”

She thought about that for a moment, realizing these boys amused her, but she’d prefer to leave them to the wiles of the popular girls. “Their lies will catch up with them eventually, I suppose.”

Her dad pulled a stool over to the kitchen counter, wrote out a check for $20,000, and handed it to her. Then he reached into the desk drawer behind him and pulled out a new black notebook, the same size as the last one.

“Remember. Every one of these books is for your benefit. What you write in it and what you accomplish through this writing will help you.”

By the time Celeste graduated from Cornell with a degree in finance, she had filled five more notebooks and had a quarter of a million dollars invested in the stock market. The next summer, she married a fellow analyst she’d met at the New York investment firm that had hired them both after college. She dismissed Joe’s advances at first because he was drop-dead handsome. But he also proved himself smart, ambitious, and more earnest than most, or so she thought.

Soon after arriving at the honeymoon suite, Celeste was unpacking her suitcase.

Joe noticed her little notebook. “What’s that?”

“Nothing that would interest you,” she said casually. “A journal.”

“Looks a little suspicious to me. Full of top-secret stuff like insider trading tips. Other guys’ phone numbers...”

She laughed. “Observations. Simple things.”

“Can I read it?”

“It’s private.”

“But I’m your husband.”

“I’m very happy about that because I love you.” She placed the book in the nightstand beside the Gideon bible. “But this is mine.”

They’d been married two years before Joe mentioned the book again. “Look, I don’t have to see what it says. Just tell me what kinds of things you write about. Is it philosophical stuff? Poetry? What?”

“All you need to know is that my parents asked me to do this after my best friend died in a car accident in high school. They suggested I write in it each day—one bad thing that happened to me, followed by one good thing.”

“What a downer, keeping a record of all the bad things in life.”

“There’s lots of good things in there, too.”

“What kind of a mind trip did your parents pull on you?”

Now that she’d completed nine notebooks, she realized it had been a kind of discipline, the best kind. “It’s helped me see all the good things in my life to weigh against the bad.”

Joe kissed the back of her neck, his tone softening. “What’s the good thing you’re going to write about today? That you married someone who adores every inch of you?”

“We’ll see,” she said, turning to embrace him.

Two years later, Joe started heading into the office on weekends. After they moved into a brownstone on the Upper West Side, she joined the Central Park Tennis Center. While he worked Saturdays, she improved her game, and made some new friends outside the office. She didn’t lack ambition. She worked very hard during the work week—her handsome yearly bonus proved that much. Weekends were to refresh and renew. She wanted to talk to Joe about starting their family, but he was rarely home anymore.

Then Joe started showering whenever he returned from the office before they sat down for cocktails. The brownstone had a rooftop deck, and as the weather grew warmer, Celeste often waited there for him, lounging on a cedar chaise with his drink waiting at her elbow. That evening, she inhaled deeply and let the colors of the early summer sunset wash over her, shades of orange, yellow, and lavender like melting sherbet, as she exhaled.

After meditating on her thoughts, she picked up her little black book and began writing. Joe swung open the hatch to the roof. He stopped a few feet from her, staring.

“My god. I come up here to relax with you, and what are you doing? Writing in your scary book of secrets?”

She capped her pen, set the book down, and handed him his drink. “Sit down. How was your afternoon?”

He bristled. “What do you mean, how was my afternoon?”

“I mean, did you get a lot accomplished?”

He glared at her. “Did you?”

“I’m perfecting my backhand. I have more power and control when I hit two-handed,” she said.

Joe gulped his drink. “Well, bully for you.”

“I’m going to get us another drink. Be back in a second.”

Celeste picked up her empty highball glass, crawled through the open hatch, and headed to the kitchen. This time, she grabbed the pitcher. More liquid courage might be necessary.

When she returned to the deck, Joe was leafing through her black book. Startled, she dropped the ceramic sunflower pitcher, which shattered on the concrete, its shards skittering to the roof's edges.

“What are you doing?”

“What I should've done a long time ago.” He riffled through the book. “I see you write about me a lot. This is a litany of complaints about me. I should’ve known. On April 12, you wrote, ‘Joe worked at the office until early evening. So, I walked across Central Park myself.’ Tell me, was that the good thing or the bad thing?”

Arms folded, Celeste watched a grown man devolve into a petulant toddler.

“How about this one from two weeks ago? ‘Joe didn’t kiss me goodbye today before he left for the office.’ How could I have wronged you so?”

“May I have my book back?” she asked.

“Let’s see what you wrote today.” He flipped ahead to the entry she was writing moments ago. “‘Joe is having an affair with someone at the office—not sure with whom.’ With whom? We must use proper grammar when accusing our husband of having an affair, mustn't we?”

“Give it to me, Joe. I’m not asking again.”

“Here we go. ‘I am filing for divorce Monday.’ Divorce?” Joe asked incredulously, lathered up from the hard liquor, the fact that she knew about his philandering, or both. He continued the tirade. “You told me, and I quote, ‘I write one bad thing, followed by one good thing.’”

“Lower your voice. The neighbors.”

He threw the notebook at her. “What were you planning to write for the good thing? ‘I have family jewels stashed away worth millions.’”

She smiled knowingly.

“You think this is funny?”

“The part about filing for divorce? That’s the good thing.”

He shook his head violently. “You c-can’t divorce me,” he stammered. “How could you do this to me?”

“Life’s about pain. Your parents should’ve taught you that.”

He sneered at her. “Daddy’s little ice princess.”

“I try to control my impulses. There’s a big difference.”

“You drove me to sleep with someone else,” he taunted.

“Lies catch up with you eventually.” She stooped to pick up her notebook. She descended through the hatch and walked to the master bedroom. She removed an overnight bag from the closet and packed a handful of items, including her black notebook.

She grabbed her phone, stuffed it into a handbag, scooped up the valise, and left through the front door, letting it slam behind her.

Good follows bad.

Once she reached the Audi, she pulled out her phone. “Dad? Can I come visit you and Mom for a few days?”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from breaking.

"Are you okay for money?” he asked.

She sighed. “Dad, you know I am.”