Most marriages were still arranged back then. Esther was determined to pair one of her sons with Millie, the daughter of her own best friend. According to Hersch’s comments, this was a practical as well as loving consideration on the part of Esther; Millie was an only child and her father was wealthy.

Tom’s grandfather Isaac refused. It sounds like he was a romantic, holding out for love. Esther must have hounded him about it for years, because she didn’t start working on her younger sons until 1919. Anyway, second son Gus married Millie in 1920. Esther celebrated the union by giving her diamond to the bride. Meanwhile, Isaac continued on his romantic gentile-attracted ways, while youngest son Sid appears to have pursued a Talmudic and somewhat homosexual approach to life.

Millie owned the diamond from 1920 to her death (influenza) in 1941. She had it set into a platinum ring in 1936. Herschel commented that her hands were skinny and prematurely aged; he said the diamond only drew attention to a feature best left unnoticed. Herschel died in 1937; without his diaries it’s harder to glean details about the stone’s subsequent history, but I know that Millie and Gus had no children, and that for some reason Gus gave the ring to his younger brother Sid in 1941.

Sid owned the diamond from then until his death in 1948. It was first set into a large tie tack during that time, and then into the elegant head of an ebony walking stick. There are photographs of well-dressed Sid sauntering on a nice sidewalk, punctuating his footsteps with that walking stick. Based on the family rumors about his young Talmudic proteges, based on the fact of Sid’s death by violence (he was fatally stabbed by one Jonathan Kane, who resented the months of attention (and ebony walking stick) that Sid gave to Jonathan’s dear friend Jacob), there is every indication that the diamond’s tendency to turbulence continued.

After the walking stick was recovered the diamond went to Tom’s grandfather, Isaac, who had achieved his romantic/erotic dream and found it wanting. By then Isaac had been married to his non-Jewish wife Grace for 26 years, 23 of which had been quietly, desperately boring. They were an ecstatically happy couple in 1922 when they married, in 1923 when they got pregnant, and in 1924 when they were enjoying their first-born David (Tom’s father), and working on what would be the twins. By 1925 they were experiencing significant irreconcilable differences in their opinions about how to raise their young family, and in 1928 Isaac found and settled in with his first of several Jewish mistresses. When he acquired the diamond in 1948 he had it set in a gold choker. By then he had been seeing Miriam for years, and even his son David knew it. David wasn’t present when his father first put the necklace around Miriam’s neck – he didn’t hear Isaac’s words as he attempted to compensate Miriam for his inability to marry her – but he knew his father and the situation enough by then that he might as well have been a fly on that wall.

Miriam left Isaac in 1954. She couldn’t handle being the other woman any more. She was in her early 60s and she emigrated to Israel with her sister’s family. Her neck was too old for a choker anyway. She returned the diamond necklace before she embarked. Eight months later Isaac killed himself.

He left a note and the necklace for David. Grace inherited enough by law to do all right (in fact as we all know, she hired a companion and began to travel, in a short time her companion became her lover, and Grace and Barbara were together until Grace’s death in 1977). Meanwhile, David married Ruth (1947), sired Tom (1948) and Sarah (1950), and then fell in love with Sandy (1952 or 1953).

When David inherited the diamond he promptly presented it to Sandy. He was madly in love with her but unwilling to leave Ruth; he wanted to give Sandy anything else he could. They had it reset into the ring it is today. But Ruth caught David and Sandy in 1964, when the kids were 16 and 14; she blackmailed him and the diamond away from Sandy and wore the ring until David couldn’t stand the sight of it, until 1979.

By then Ruth hated the ring too. She and David were mired in habits of bitter mutual contempt. Tom had met and declared his intention to marry Bethany. His mother didn’t disapprove. She gave him the ring.