fake pearl and fake gold earrings from the Mall

When my husband told me that he had been depressed for two years about working in our Marin County California garage and only getting out at the lunch hour for pizza and a drive to the beach, and that we were going broke paying those kinds of mortgage payments, I said I would move to Atlanta if I didn’t have to work anymore. I was 44 years old and had been commuting an hour and 40 minutes each way across the Bay for as long as we had been married.

We got scared about selling our house in a down market and being stuck with balloon payments, so I called someone I knew who used to work for a congressman, and she said there was an opening to head up a child advocacy group.

I wore a navy blue suit with fake brass buttons and low navy heels to the interviews in mid-town Atlanta. I bought the fake pearl drop earrings at Lenox Mall, I can’t remember which jewelry counter.

I took the job, even after the woman who recommended me said I had to talk slower and asked me to come up with a plan to lower teen pregnancy and solve child poverty in five years.

When Governor Zell Miller was inaugurated for the second time, I went back to Lenox and bought the fake pearl cluster earrings with the dark blue beads inset to match a black sleeveless dress I wore with my mother’s old blue fox fur. No one told me it was a country theme.

Photograph by Doug Greenberg © 2005