Solomon Jones: He uncovers his wife's secret life as a bag lady
THANK GOD for caller ID. I think it may have saved our marriage. It all started last week, when I found our cordless phone lying on the couch, and noticed that we'd missed a few calls. While scrolling through the numbers on the display screen, I
THANK GOD for caller ID. I think it may have saved our marriage.
It all started last week, when I found our cordless phone lying on the couch, and noticed that we'd missed a few calls. While scrolling through the numbers on the display screen, I
noticed the name of the jeweler who'd designed our wedding rings.
I'd met him a time or two, and he seemed like a nice enough fellow. That's why I wasn't suspicious, at first.
The more I thought about it, however, the more worried I became. Could LaVeta be buying jewelry for some other guy? Could some guy be buying jewelry for her? Could our marriage be falling apart?
Later that evening, I questioned her about it.
"Isn't the guy on the caller ID the same one who did our wedding rings?" I asked off-handedly. "Are you ordering new jewelry?"
"No, he was calling to tell me about gold prices."
"Oh," I said.
Seemed like a legitimate explanation at the time. After all, LaVeta had been thinking about selling some rather gaudy gold jewelry she had left over from the '80s, so calling a jewelry expert was a reasonable first step.
A few days later, our dryer went on the fritz, and the horrible truth came out.
LaVeta had secret money with which she could buy a new dryer. She'd gotten it by selling her old jewelry. And she'd planned to use it to buy a secret designer handbag.
"And I would've gotten away with it, too!" she said in a Scooby Doo moment, "if it wasn't for my meddling husband!"
OK, she didn't really say that, but she could have, since the whole thing fell apart when Adrianne discovered the broken dryer on the day LaVeta planned to buy yet another Gucci handbag with the proceeds from her jewelry sale.
My wife's clandestine activities surrounding the jewelry sale, coupled with the fact that she's already got a gazillion designer bags, led me to one conclusion: The bags have become an addiction.
That's right. My name is Solomon, and my wife is a bag lady.
"My bag problem started a long time ago," she said when I confronted her during an impromptu intervention by phone. "But it's been lying dormant since I bought my first designer bags - two Guccis - from John Wanamaker in 1986 or 1987."
Between her bouts with handbag addiction - a malady that apparently affects millions of women - she filled the void with custom-made jewelry and fancy pots from Sur La Table and Le Creuset. Her first love, however, was handbags.
"My niece showed me a Marc Jacobs peacoat that she had," she said of the 2007 incident that made her a bag lady. "I liked it and that's how I learned about Marc Jacobs, through her."
She found more of Marc Jacobs' wares being hawked by bag dealers in Nordstroms. After she bought one, she spent years trying to get the same sensation from other bags, other stores, and other online retailers. She bought Kooba bags from Neiman Marcus, Cole Haan bags from Bloomingdales and Isabella Fiore bags from eBay. Once, she even convinced me to drive her to Maryland to get a custom bag from a fellow bag lady she'd met in a restaurant.
Today, my wife is trying to get it together. And though I'm considering buying her the Gucci Joy Boston bag in light brown leather that brought her bag obsession to light, I'm starting to think that I shouldn't, because when I asked her what her next step would be, I heard the bag addiction talking.
"I'm going to get that bag that I sold my jewelry for!" she said. "That's my next step!"
Then, in a calmer voice, she quietly admitted the truth.
"I know I have a problem, but the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying the same. I'm not ready." *
Solomon Jones' column appears every Saturday. He can be reached at