Double Entendre: As Good as it Gets

Ellen Barkin is Jewish and is also recently divorced.

As the New York Times reports:-

Then there is her personal life, which has been turned inside out since the abrupt end of her marriage to the financier Ronald O. Perelman in January.

The breakup was tabloid-ready: Mr. Perelman’s lawyers surprised her with the news that he was seeking a divorce, and he had security guards stand by while she moved out of their regal townhouse on East 63rd Street. Much of the six-year marriage between the billionaire and the movie star seemed to play out in public because of the couple’s prominence, though its essence remained a mystery.

That fortune notwithstanding, the rupture left Ms. Barkin feeling raw. Her ex-husband’s behavior “was shocking,’’ she said. “What I thought was a commonality was a very different bond.’’

Ms. Barkin said the marriage was founded on genuine affection. “I loved Ronald Perelman,’’ she said. “I can say that unequivocally.’’ Mr. Perelman, she suggested, had struck a cooler bargain.

In his mind, she said, “I was an accessory, being accessorized, the perfect one — age-appropriate, the mother of two children, successful in her own right.’’

And then, she utters (consciously? unconsciously?) this double entendre:-

“And you know I wasn’t a bimb,’’ Ms. Barkin said, less with rancor than regret. “I was a good get.’’

Get is the Hebrew term for divorce.

So, was it good or not?

Some might think it was good:-

Now Ms. Barkin, 52, has chosen an equally public denouement by putting up for auction the extravagant jewelry that Mr. Perelman lavished on her, having decided to part with more than 100 pieces valued at $15 million — a symbolic and literal purging of the union.

“These are just not memories I want to wear out every day,’’ Ms. Barkin said.

The trove, to be sold at Christie’s in Rockefeller Center on Oct. 10, includes a 32-carat apricot diamond ring that Mr. Perelman, who is the chairman of Revlon, gave Ms. Barkin weeks before their divorce; a pair of emerald and gold cuffs designed for the Duchess of Windsor, valued at up to $80,000; an emerald necklace that once belonged to Doris Duke that could fetch as much as $350,000; and a selection of pieces by the cult Parisian jeweler JAR. Only 80 to 90 JAR creations are produced each year, said François Curiel, the chairman of Christie’s Europe. “When you have 17 pieces of JAR in an auction, it’s an event.’’

For Ms. Barkin, the sale puts a seal of finality on her relationship with Mr. Perelman, whose wish to be single again caught her unawares, she said. A divorce granted by a Manhattan court a few weeks later left her with $20 million under the terms of a prenuptial pact.