The Imperfects Read online

  Beck tosses her raincoat onto the table and rests the safe-deposit box on the counter. From her bag, she unearths the black box with the diamond. The brooch is tucked into her nightstand at home. Although valuable, it’s not so valuable that it needs to be harbored inside a bank. Beck flips open the lid. Inside, the Florentine Diamond shines a rich yellow against the black velvet interior. She shifts it so the color jumps, shards of rainbow flashing. The safe-deposit box rests open on the counter, its dull gray interior so bleak compared to the green and blue light that sparks from the diamond. This is the safest place for the diamond, Beck reminds herself. Here, the Florentine will become just another unknown treasure in a vault.

  As Beck walks out of the lobby into the chilly afternoon, she emails her family: All set! They are all set. This is the arrangement they’ve agreed upon. Still, Beck can’t shake the feeling that she’s betraying Helen by leaving the diamond at Federalist Bank.

  * * *

  Ashley receives Beck’s email as she’s walking into the lobby of Bartley’s Auction House in midtown Manhattan. All set!

  Momentarily, Ashley reconsiders whether she’s doing the right thing. She’s told no one about her meeting at Bartley’s, not even Ryan. It feels good keeping a secret from him. Not good exactly. Vindicating. It doesn’t feel good keeping a secret from the Millers, but Beck is not all set. She isn’t thinking far enough ahead. Eventually, they’ll have to sell the diamond, and when they do, Ashley doesn’t want them to be desperate.

  When the elevator opens on the tenth floor, Georgina is waiting in the lobby, arms wide. “Ash.” Georgina kisses her on both cheeks. “You haven’t aged a day.”

  While Ashley managed to lose the baby weight, to find a shade of dirty blond that looks real, to smooth her skin with a dermatological arsenal just shy of plastic surgery, her age is beginning to show. Her blue eyes have turned gray, the once-taut skin of her neck now hangs loose, and her earlobes sag from years of heavy earrings. Georgina, on the other hand, with her shiny dark hair and toned olive arms, really does look like she’s still twenty-seven.

  Ashley smiles, unable to tell Georgina that she looks the same, too.

  In the aughts, Ashley and Georgina had been part of a circle of female twentysomething professionals in Manhattan. They met monthly for drinks, to network, to lament the daily advances of their male coworkers and bosses, and to confess the less overt ways their female superiors tormented them. The group disbanded organically as many of the twentysomething professionals became thirtysomething mothers and wives. Georgina hadn’t married or shifted to part-time employment; instead, she’d climbed the ladder at Bartley’s until she landed as a jewelry specialist.

  Georgina threads her arm through Ashley’s as they walk across the lobby, covered in Annie Leibovitz photographs and Andy Warhol prints, into what looks like a high-end jewelry store. Glass cases line the walls, filled with glittering gemstones. Georgina unlocks one case and pulls out a sapphire-and-diamond bracelet, clasping it around Ashley’s wrist. “This belonged to Grace Kelly.”

  Ashley marvels at the delicate bracelet.

  “Such a shame, really. The bracelet is so expensive that whoever buys it will wear it once, maybe twice a year. It will spend the rest of its life in a vault.”

  The Florentine might live its life in a vault, too, but it won’t be the one in Federalist Bank.

  Georgina sighs as she returns it to the case. “You wanted to talk about a family heirloom you inherited?” The disinterest in Georgina’s voice is palpable—old acquaintances must materialize all the time to talk to her about some modest family jewel. Ashley feels giddy as she anticipates shocking Georgina.

  Another tall, thin jewelry specialist helps a couple, gazing into a case across the room. In the corners, two large men pretend not to watch them.

  “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Georgina says, amused.

  Ashley follows her down a hall to an office with a view of midtown. It’s one of those deceptively sunny late-March days where it looks like it should be warmer outside than it actually is. A Steichen photo hangs on one wall, a Hockney painting on the other. Ashley doesn’t need to ask if they are real.

  “One of the perks of the job, we can borrow pieces before they’re auctioned off. So, tell me about the diamond you want to sell. Do you have it with you?”

  “No, but I have this.” Ashley finds a copy of the IGS grading report in her bag and passes it to Georgina. During the shiva, she’d snapped a quick photo of it while Beck was distracted. “The diamond was set in a ’50s brooch.” On her phone, Ashley flips through some photographs until she locates one of the orchid with its signature stone missing. As she shows Georgina the image, fractured by the shards of her broken screen, she curses at herself for not getting her phone fixed. “My sister seems to think it’s—”

  “The Florentine Diamond,” Georgina says, reading the numbers on the grading report. She glances briefly at the photograph of the orchid before her eyes return to the page. “Have you shown this to anyone else?”

  “My family’s seen it, and my sister has this gemologist who got the report for us.”

  Georgina keeps reading, then places the report facedown on her desk. “Ashley, you can’t be showing this to me. To anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why.”

  “It’s worth ten million dollars.” Ashley forces a smile, her heart racing.

  “This isn’t an issue of value. No reputable house is going to represent you.”

  Ashley feels queasy, like she’s both famished and going to be sick. Georgina’s face softens, and Ashley realizes that she isn’t hiding her anxiety half as well as she hopes.

  “Look, off the record, that diamond has been missing since 1918. There might be a completely legitimate explanation for how your grandmother had it, but when it goes public that it’s resurfaced, a lot of people are going to come looking for it. You need to have your ducks in a row before showing that to anyone else. My advice? Talk to a lawyer, and start doing some digging.” Georgina’s nails click against her glass desk, and Ashley realizes that the diamond makes her nervous, too.

  “You aren’t going to tell anyone, are you?” Ashley wishes she’d phrased her question differently, that her words didn’t have the uptick of apprehension at the end.

  “There’s nothing to tell. You came in looking to sell a stone, and it didn’t satisfy our requirements. End of story.” Georgina smiles as she stands. Ashley knows that smile, its smug satisfaction. Even if there’s nothing to tell, Georgina is logging this for her unwritten memoir, Confessions of a Bartley’s Jewelry Expert.

  As Ashley follows Georgina down the hall, she tries to remember any real conversation they’ve ever had. She knows Georgina grew up on the Upper East Side but can’t remember what her parents do, if she has any siblings, if Georgina’s even met Ryan.

  Georgina presses the button for the elevator, and kisses both of Ashley’s cheeks goodbye. “It’s great to see you. We have to get a drink on the books.”

  “Absolutely.” Ashley hears the defeat in her voice.

  As soon as the elevator doors close, she flops against the mirror. Why did she think this was a good idea, coming to see Georgina, presenting the Florentine Diamond like she expected a gold star? At least Georgina won’t tell anyone, Ashley thinks, then she isn’t so sure. In the mirror, the elevator’s fluorescent lights magnify the deep purple under her eyes. She appears not just tired but haggard. As she looks away, Ashley has a striking suspicion that she’s totally fucked up.

  * * *

  Jake has always worked best with a routine. It’s how he finished My Summer of Women in mere months. It’s why he hasn’t finished any script since, because he never fell into a pattern. So, he sets his alarm for eight each morning. He measures coffee grounds for a pot, pours twelve ounc
es into a to-go cup for Kristi, and settles at their kitchen table for his morning writing session before work.

  “I could get used to this,” Kristi says when she appears in the kitchen in her pink scrubs, grabbing the coffee and offering Jake a quick peck goodbye. Jake wonders whether she means the coffee or the writing, or maybe both.

  Jake has also always found that a good script comes easily. The outline writes itself. The scenes pour out of him like he’s the medium that manifests the world, fully realized. So it makes him light-headed when, on the first page, the cursor blinks after INT. and no location follows. Interior, what? Where is Helen? At the house on Edgehill Road? The apartment where she grew up in Vienna? Was that apartment big or small? And where is the Florentine Diamond? Is this even the story of Helen finding the diamond? Of something else entirely?

  The coffee cup beside his computer is drained. Still, he hasn’t written a word. He wanders into the living room and opens the drawer in the side table where he stores his stash. Since returning from the east coast, Jake has decided to stop smoking pot. He wants to be present for Kristi’s pregnancy, the baby. Throwing away the pen was easy, but the five joints he keeps in the side table—well, that would be an affront to his former self, and he doesn’t want to quit that way. Only three joints remain and he brings one to his nose, the sweet, earthy aromas almost giving him a contact high.

  The end of the rolling paper hisses as it catches fire. Jake leans back and shuts his eyes, savoring the rare treat of smoking alone. Of course he’s stuck. With My Summer of Women, he already knew how the story unfolded. Now, he knows nothing, not how Helen got the diamond, not how the diamond arrived in America, not even how Helen got to America. He knows it was by boat, but he’s never heard the story of how she ended up here alone or what happened to her family. How can he tell a story if he doesn’t have a beginning or an end?

  As he bikes to work, Jake feels shamed by the hours he’s wasted when Kristi thinks he’s being productive. Unfailingly, she believes in him. Unquestionably, he doesn’t deserve it.

  Stocking usually helps clear his mind, so he asks if he can be on the floor instead of the register. Jake falls into a rhythm as he balances bags of avocados on top of each other. His thoughts return to Kristi, her unwarranted faith in him despite his not having finished a script the entire time they’ve been together. His mind drifts to the last script he tried to write, in the spring, when Kristi’s parents had stopped in LA on their way home from China. Over king crabs at the banquet hall they frequented in Alhambra, Kristi’s mother showed them a picture of her childhood house in Guangzhou. The Zhangs hoped to buy back her family’s home, which they’d been driven out of before she fled the country. Kristi’s mother told the story of her escape, first swimming the Shenzhen Bay to Hong Kong, then traveling to an aunt’s house in San Jose. Jake saw it clearly, the film of her life, shifting between the contemporary story of reclaiming her childhood home, the past narratives of her idyllic childhood, and the traumas of the Cultural Revolution.

  Throughout their visit, Jake couldn’t stop thinking about the film. It would be epic. It would be moving. It would reignite his career. While the Zhangs stayed at his apartment with Kristi, he spent the night on Rico’s couch outlining the first act. He knew he needed to do some hefty research, but he wanted to sketch Mrs. Zhang’s story before he forgot the way she’d described it. Later that week, once the Zhangs returned to the Bay Area and Jake returned to his apartment, he couldn’t wait to tell Kristi about the script.

  “Your mom’s story is really compelling.” He hesitated, braving a look at Kristi, who stood before the bathroom mirror, hair woven into a towel atop her head, grazing her lashes with a mascara wand. “It would make a great movie.”

  Kristi turned away from the mirror. “Tell me you aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

  Jake picked at his cuticle. “I’m not thinking anything.”

  “Seriously, Jake. My mom’s private. I’m surprised she told you. It means she trusts you.” The next unspoken line hung in the air: Don’t break that trust.

  “I was just saying it would be a good movie, is all.”

  Kristi laughed and resumed her communion with the mirror, rubbing rouge across her cheekbones. “Imagine you, Jake Miller, writing that movie? Social media would eat you alive.”

  Later that night, when they returned from whatever bar they’d gone to, Jake waited until Kristi fell asleep, then found the partial outline on his computer. He moved it to his Bad Ideas folder where so many other unfinished scripts had gone to die.

  As Jake restocks the herbs, he thinks of Kristi’s mom trusting him with her story. Helen hadn’t trusted him with hers. How could he write about her, if she didn’t want him to know her past?

  His phone chimes and he sees Beck’s email. All set!

  How could they be all set about anything?

  During his lunch break, Jake isn’t intending to tell Rico about the Florentine Diamond. He doesn’t even plan to tell Kristi. He doesn’t want to get her hopes up about the money from the diamond until he’s certain it belongs to the Millers.

  Only, when Rico takes the joint from Jake and says, “I’m sorry about your gran. How you doing with it all?” Jake doesn’t know how to explain to Rico how he’s feeling. Rico, who can detail his mother’s asylum process with such precision that Jake tried briefly, ill-fatedly, to write a script about it. Rico, who sees his sisters and brother and cousins at his abuela’s house each week. Rico, who is his best friend, but what does that really mean? They smoke joints and meet at bars to watch basketball. God, when did pot become such an incredible downer?

  Jake doesn’t want to be sad, so he forces a laugh and tells Rico, “I’ve got a killer story for you,” and Rico’s eyes spark as he passes Jake the joint. “Have you ever heard of the Florentine Diamond?”

  From there the storyteller emerges in Jake. Rico laughs, not believing a word. Jake doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s relieved; it makes him clearer about his script. The script won’t be believable until he understands what drives the narrative, how Helen got the diamond, why she kept it.

  “Don’t you have to be back at work at two?” Rico asks.

  Jake checks his phone and sees that it’s two twenty. He stomps out the joint and waves goodbye to his friend. As he runs through the outdoor dining area, he notices a man with greasy black hair, wearing a leather jacket and eating alone. At the time, Jake notes only that, on this perfect seventy-five-degree day, the guy must be sweating his balls off in his leather jacket.

  * * *

  Deborah has moved so many times she has it down to a science. She knows the exact proportions of the Red Rabbit, that all of her clothes and kitchenware will fit in the trunk. She knows to move the passenger seat forward so she can fit her white rocking chair in the backseat, to double knot the mattress to the roof so it won’t blow off on I-95. The rocking chair is the only possession that made the move from her and Kenny’s first apartment in Fairmount where she nursed Ashley, to the house in Mt. Airy where she nursed the others, to the house on Edgehill Road where it’s now returning. She wishes she could call Chester for help. His 4Runner would come in handy, as would his body, but Chester hasn’t called her all week, not since he left her naked on his acupuncture table. So, she leaves the furniture that doesn’t fit in the Red Rabbit in her studio and makes her way back to her childhood home. She already knows her landlord won’t give her the deposit back.

  Before unpacking her car, Deborah lights a bundle of sage and sets her intention to fill the house with positivity. She begins in the kitchen and fans the smoke through the living room and out the front door. It’s not Helen’s energy she’s trying to erase but all the fights they’ve had in this house. Once she’s satisfied with the energy downstairs, she sages the three bedrooms upstairs and settles at the dining room table to read her tarot cards. When she pulls the Six of Wands, the Star, and the K
night of Swords, all upright, she knows she’s ready to move in.

  She unloads the kitchenware into the drawers and cupboards and sets the rocking chair in the living room, but her clothing is a different matter. Helen’s bedroom is the biggest. It has the most light. Deborah has already decided she will stay there, but when she goes to put her clothing in the dresser, it is packed with her mother’s garments. The sage may have carried the lingering presence of their arguments out of the house but it’s done nothing about the dresses Helen sewed, still hanging in the closet.

  She calls Beck with the pretense of dinner. “Please,” she begs when Beck hesitates, “I could use a little company.” Whatever Beck interprets in her mother’s desperation, she tells Deborah she’ll come over early next week.

  When Beck arrives for dinner, she can’t hide her shock over how Deborah has altered Helen’s home. The house on Edgehill Road has always been the same. Built in the ’20s, the row houses were Tudor style with stone columns and brick facades beneath stuccoed second floors and gabled roofs. Helen raised Deborah in the second bedroom, which became Beck and Ashley’s room when the Millers lived with Helen after their father left. Jake was forced to camp out in the third bedroom, Helen’s office, where women from the Main Line would stand on a box as Helen measured the hems of their dresses. Jake didn’t like sharing a room with all that taffeta. He hated having to roll up his mattress each morning, reminded that the room where he slept wasn’t his. When Ashley left for college, Jake bribed Beck to switch rooms with him. He promised to teach her how to drive and to bring her to upperclassmen parties, but Beck would have swapped for nothing. She loved the shadows the bolts of lace made across the walls, the peppery smell of freshly cut fabric, the colorful threads she’d find on her sweaters throughout the day. She was all too happy to roll the mattress up each morning, to know, should their circumstances change, she could move that easily.