My wife had her wedding ring cleaned two weeks ago. An oddly
symbolic act; she peered at it, declared the platinum band looked scuffed,
beaten up… and hot-footed it to the jewellers. It seems an unlikely thing to
do, impulsively hand over your wedding ring to a stranger to strip it of its character
(“Not character, filth,” she declared, when I questioned her on it) and then
return it, good as new, as it was on the day I placed it on her ring finger. She
said that it felt like an anniversary, a cleansing – a fresh start.
I hadn’t looked at my ring at the time, hadn’t even thought
about having it cleaned too, though looking back I think that perhaps she was
poised on the edge of asking me to do the same, renew that vow with her. But she didn’t. She might have known that my
reaction would have been hesitant, evasive, bracing for a criticism that didn’t
come; she might have been seeking evidence. We both just admired the clean
sanctity of the metal against her skin, the clear window of diamond that opened
in the light, and acknowledged a job well done. “Didn’t you worry that they
might lose it, somehow, or mix it up with someone else’s ring?” I asked
afterward, but she just rolled her eyes at me with a smile, and made some flip,
inappropriate comment about babies in a hospital. The implication: nothing so
untoward as a mixing up of rings could possibly happen in a jewellers.
Today, though, I am going to hand over my ring to be
stripped down and rebuilt, so I can squeeze it over the swollen knuckle on the
ring finger of my scrubbed hands and admire its coolness against my raw skin. I’ve
made reservations at Cinico, my wife’s favourite restaurant, and I’m looking
forward to surprising her when the taxi takes us there rather than to a
fictional dinner party she’s dreading. She won’t notice the ring, I’m sure of
it; she’s too obsessed with her own. If anything, she’ll ask about my hands:
why is the skin stretched taut as tarpaulin, and what caused that bruise? I
have an answer to reassure with, so I’m not worried.
I like the levels you build in such a short space of time: the seemingly mundane act of having jewellery cleaned, the life shared by two people and all the things they don’t say, and the hint of what he’s done.
ReplyDeleteThe ending is great. I love the vague creepiness of his stretched, clean skin and his cool, calm demeanour. But what really stayed with me is the secrecy – the uneasy feeling that we may never really know someone. Or how much do they really know us … good work!
As an aside, my granddad has bought my nan several new wedding rings over the years to replace tired, old rings. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing or if he’s just really unsentimental. It’s weird though, right?