The Earrings

Delilah pushed the cart inside the doorway, blocking my exit.
“Here,” she said. “Pick a few.”
I looked up from where I sat on the floor cleaning out the bathroom cabinets. She pushed a large old fashioned media cart, the kind the AV club used at school to deliver projectors to lazy teachers who showed movie after movie, instead of teaching.
“I’ve got plenty. You may have as many as you like.” She gestured toward the racks on the cart displaying her collection of earrings. Big ones, little ones, studs and loops, dangles and bobs, in every color in the rainbow assaulted my eyes.
“Thanks,” I said, not moving. “I’ll look through them as soon as I finish here.” I wondered why she was so insistent I take her earrings. Were my earrings so boring I needed to supplement them from her collection? Was she making a commentary on my sense of style? On the idea that I’d married a man who couldn’t afford to buy me expensive jewels? That she – the world traveler – had collected a large supply of earrings and I – the homebody – should be grateful? Or was she just being nice?
“Look at these,” she held up a pair of the ugliest earrings I’d ever seen. "They're perfect for you!"
They were purple and green and pink and blue with baubles and sparkles swirling in a pattern somewhat reminiscent of a nautilus shell. They made me nauseous just looking at them.
"I got them on my last trip,” she exclaimed with glee.
“I tend to wear a lot of black,” I offered, trying not to stare. I focused my gaze on the collection of small shampoo bottles I’d lifted from hotels when I used to travel, back when I had a job.
“You should add a little color to your life, girl.”
Color, I thought. How does one add color to a life?


“And that was it. I woke up after that.”
“What do you think it means?” she asked me.
“That’s why I’m paying you the big bucks,” I answered. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
My therapist smiled. “Are you concerned with your present situation? You made reference to your husband not being able to afford things. Are you not satisfied? Are you envious of her?”
“No,” I countered. I leaned back into the soft cushions of the very dated couch. The floral pattern, long faded, gave the room a lived in look. There’d been a lot of lives discussed in one-hour sessions on this spot. “She travels for a living. I did that. I’m over it,” I said in my most convincing voice.
“She seems to want you to do something. You were reluctant to do what she wanted. Do you see that as a pattern?”
“I don’t like being told what to do, that’s for sure,” I offered, but who does, continued the thought in my head. I looked out the window and watched the pollen fall from the trees. Yellow and red, the colors of spring in the south: oak pollen and red noses abound. Who likes to be told what to do, I wondered. I resist it at every turn.
“In your dream, she was encouraging you to change. To change your earrings, your style, add some color to your life. Does that appeal to you?”
I shook my head quickly, like a horse twitching off a fly.
“No. It kind of scares me. I’m perfectly happy with my style. I like the predictability of wearing black every day. It’s easy. I don’t have to think.”
“Then how do you explain your earrings, today?” she asked me.
I reached my hand up to touch what was hanging from my earlobes. They were purple and green and pink and blue with baubles and sparkles which swirled in a pattern somewhat reminiscent of a nautilus shell. I felt nauseous.
“They were a gift,” was all I could offer.