The Jewels of Tessa Kent (24 page)

Shaking her head at the thought, Madison decided to shut herself in her bedroom with the
Wall Street Journal
. It had such a calming effect on her nerves.

“Maggie, do you really have to get up on that pony?” Barney begged, as he watched from the rail of the riding ring. “You know you’re not supposed to ride her without a grown-up around.”

“I’ve got to keep practicing,” she said, stubbornly, “or she’ll never get used to me.” Maggie gave her new pony lump after lump of sugar in the forlorn hope that they might ensure good behavior.

Her mount, Fairy, was a Welsh pony, a recent ninth-birthday present from Luke, the equivalent of a valuable thoroughbred horse. Unfortunately, Fairy was smarter, Barney knew, than she should be, an overbred, neurotic, cocky, smug animal with a well-developed mean streak. Maggie should be riding some old school horse that had held ten thousand kids and wouldn’t mind what she did to it, but Luke hadn’t known, and no one had wanted to tell him.

“Maggie, you stink on a horse, why won’t you admit it? There’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

“Yeah, well tell that to everybody around here. If you can’t ride, you might just as well be dead.”

“You could at least wait till tomorrow, when your instructor’ll be here.”

“He bugs me, all those do’s and don’ts, it just makes it harder.”

“But the do’s and don’ts are what help you control the horse.”

“You’re such a know-it-all, Barney, rules, rules, rules.”

“I’m just trying to keep you from breaking your arm again, like you did last year. You know how upset your sister got.”

“That wasn’t my fault. The horse was spooked by a bird on the trail, and around here a broken arm is no big deal. How can Tessa understand that? I’m riding Fairy, Barney. If you don’t want to watch, go back to the house.”

Muttering prayers to the Holy Mother and the Infant Jesus under her breath, Maggie led the pony over to the rail, stopped her, and scrambled into the saddle. She settled herself, adjusting the reins perfectly, and gave Fairy a gentle nudge to get her started. The animal walked sedately around the ring. So far, so good, Maggie thought, but riding wasn’t about walking around in circles. She gave her mount the signal for a trot and was delighted and surprised to find Fairy responding.

Her real problem, one she had thought about long and hard, was that she was petrified of horses. Every horse she’d ever seen, except newborn foals, looked menacing to her. She hated their rolling eyes, their slobbering lips, their nightmarish nostrils. This fear was something that was absolutely impossible to confess, when everyone in the Webster house, every girl at school, and everyone she’d met since she arrived in Essex County lived to ride.

It was easier to ride badly, but show courage, than to say she didn’t want to ride. If she did, everybody would understand her secret. Fear, Maggie knew, would be recognized instantly as the only possible reason anyone could have for not riding, and she’d rather die on a horse than let anyone know she was afraid of one.

“Lookin’ good,” Barney called encouragingly. Once he’d seen that Maggie’s pony was trotting, he’d mounted his own horse, a sturdy, trustworthy little mare, and was following her around the ring.

He’d never seen such a bad seat on anybody, he thought miserably. She just didn’t get it. She had bad hands, she couldn’t make a horse do what she wanted
by using the reins, and the last thing in the world Maggie would ever do was give Fairy a good kick and let the animal know who was in charge. She was too tender-hearted, she said. Bullshit! She was plain chicken, although he’d never tell her he knew, and she was too stubborn to admit it, even to him, her best friend.

Barney watched carefully as Maggie somehow urged the pony into a canter. This was where she usually got into trouble. A cantering Fairy could become a galloping Fairy all too quickly, and Maggie and a galloping horse spelled disaster. He watched closely as she tensed up, pinching the pony with her knees in an effort at control that was doomed to fail since using her knees meant that she couldn’t hold on firmly with her calves. Her legs flopped around, her upper body became rigid as she became conscious of her legs, and soon she was jerking the pony in the mouth, trying to get it to stop. Annoyed, Fairy broke into a gallop. White-faced but silent, Maggie hung on, pulling harder and harder on the reins.

Barney easily kicked his mare into a gallop and pulled up alongside, grabbing the reins and gradually slowing the pony down to a snippy little trot.

“Thanks,” Maggie said, biting her lip.

“It’s nothing. Fairy has a mean temper.”

“You know that’s not why,” she said, panting.

“You could do better on my horse, I know you could.”

“I don’t think so.” Even Fairy was better than getting on a horse she didn’t know, Maggie decided.

“You won’t even try. Come on, let’s stop now.”

“No,” she insisted, setting her face in a ferocious grimace. “I’m going to get Fairy to canter properly if I have to stay here all night.”

Oh, no, Barney thought, there went his baseball practice.

F
our years earlier, when Tessa had agreed with Luke that Maggie would be happier living with the Websters than with any of her Riley cousins, she had accompanied Maggie to New Jersey while Luke had gone off to his board meeting in Melbourne.

For a week Tessa had lived at the Websters’ house, sharing the guest suite with Maggie. She’d come to the conclusion that Maggie was making a reasonably quick adjustment to the new circumstances and would soon feel as much at home as she could anywhere else, considering that the only home she’d ever known had been swept away from under her feet in a flash of incomprehensible loss.

The instant devotion of Barney, a pint-size, gallant cavalier who was fascinated by Maggie and never let her feel alone, had touched Tessa’s heart. There was an excellent kindergarten in the neighborhood, and in a year, when Maggie was six, she’d be ready to start first grade at Elm Country Day. Candice and Allison were pleasant, kind children and, of course, Madison and Tyler both had been so welcoming, so full of assurances that one more child around the dinner table would be a joy to
them, that Tessa had felt comfortable about joining Luke in Houston. When she had said good-bye to Maggie, she had finally managed to incorporate into her heart as well as her brain all the reasons why this separation was not just the best but the only possible good solution to a situation that had no absolutely perfect solution.

During Maggie’s first year with the Websters, Tessa made as many flying visits as she could manage, whenever she was close enough to the East Coast and free from marital or film obligations for several days, but soon she realized that these visits were fundamentally unsatisfactory. They disrupted Maggie’s adaptation to her new life, they obliged the Webster family to surround an unexpected guest with gracious attention when she was sure that it couldn’t suit them to do so, and she wasn’t able to be alone with Maggie in the way she had imagined. Having Maggie visit her, on the other hand, had none of these disadvantages, and from that time on, from 1976, the little girl went to visit her sister when it could be arranged during school vacations or on holidays.

Although Luke tried as hard as he could to take a real interest in Maggie, he never could connect with her on any true emotional level. Tessa soon realized that the visits were more joyful for her and Maggie when they could be alone together, unhampered by a powerful, demanding male presence whose entrance into the house immediately, as if in obedience to a law of nature, switched her focus of attention away from Maggie, do what she could to prevent it.

During these private, precious days together, days that depended on Luke’s being away in some far part of the globe where he’d be too busy to need his wife’s company, on Tessa’s not being in the middle of making a movie, or on Maggie’s being able to get out of school—days that were possible to arrange at the very most only several times a year—Maggie was able to bask in her sister’s full attention. Whatever city they were in, Tessa arranged her days around Maggie, listening to her stories
of the Webster household, sympathizing with the limitations of Candice and Allison—“all they think of is how they look”—joining in fond abuse of Barney—“he never leaves me alone, it’s like having a dog, but a nice, friendly old dog”—and fascinated by the details of Madison’s thrift—“we’ll have a big rib roast for dinner but everyone in the kitchen only gets a stew made from the cheapest meat, isn’t that mean? Of course she thinks I don’t know, but the cook’s my friend and she tells me lots of stuff on the way to mass.”

Tessa had a collection of dolls and toys she kept for Maggie to play with, but the little girl lost interest in them as soon as she discovered the joys of “dressing-up.” “Dressing-up” was divided into two distinct and very different segments.

The first involved Maggie rigging herself out in bits and pieces she found in a trunk crammed full of fabulous odds and ends that Tessa accumulated by becoming friendly with the wardrobe head on every picture she made. They let Tessa scrounge around and walk off with samples of forgotten, packed-away leftovers of decades of movie making: spangled satin dancing dresses from the 1930s; fur pieces; feather boas; pleated velvet capes; rain slickers; embroidered vests; animal costumes and masks; a score of hats, feathered, veiled, or garlanded with flowers; sequined high-heeled shoes—all manner of gorgeous and fantastic stuff they no longer had use for. All of it found a home in the special trunk that Tessa had had flown across continents when one of Maggie’s infrequent visits was anticipated.

Tessa would leave Maggie alone to create a costume on her own and then, when Maggie appeared to startle her with one of her ever-changing inventions, Tessa would create a story to go with the costume, a story in which Maggie was always the heroine.

The other part of “dressing-up” was a far more solemn affair, for it involved Tessa’s jewelry. During the four years of their marriage, Luke had discovered or invented all sorts of occasions that served as reason to
give Tessa jewels: the first and last day of filming on the one picture she made each year; her birthday; St. Patrick’s Day; Valentine’s Day; the anniversary of the day they met, of their engagement, of their wedding; the anniversary of the founding of Melbourne; the National Day of Monte Carlo; the auctions of “Magnificent” jewelry at Sotheby’s each spring and fall. Failing an occasion, he’d come home with something he’d seen and couldn’t resist.

Tessa invariably traveled with a large and ever-changing selection of her jewelry. Luke liked to see her wearing jewels at all times, no matter how casual the occasion. Tessa had huge, unfaceted cabochon sapphires, almost as simple as deep blue glass pebbles, in invisible platinum settings, to wear with jeans and denim shirts. She had baskets full of amusing fantasy jewels designed by Verdura and David Webb in combinations of turquoise, coral, and enameled gold, to wear with her country cottons and she slept in a fabled string of Imperial jade, of an intense green, because Luke superstitiously believed it warded off sickness. But for all her serious clothes, the clothes she wore when she entertained Luke’s business associates or met with Hollywood people, or went shopping for the large and varied wardrobe she needed for her complicated life, Tessa had a vast choice of extraordinarily important jewels. She was never tempted, in spite of her age, to play with the “young Hollywood” sloppy look. Tessa was a great international star and she dressed like one. Her jewels were her signature.

When Maggie visited her, often the two of them would spend an entire afternoon in her dressing room, as Tessa showed Maggie some of her jewels, modeling them first and then decking Maggie out in them and letting her observe herself in the mirrors to her heart’s content. Tessa turned this special version of “dress-up” into a combination of magic and education.

She had discovered a book called
The Power of Gemstones
, which covered “healing powers, mythical
stones, superstitions, talismans, and mystical properties” of every kind of jewel, and she studied the background of each piece she intended to show Maggie.

“Here’s something special,” she said on one occasion when Maggie was eight or nine, clasping a necklace around her neck. “Can you guess what they are?”

“They look like round gray-black beads,” Maggie answered. “But I can see green lights and purple lights in them, so they’re not really black at all. And they reflect all the lights in the room, almost like mirrors. And, of course, they’re shaped like pearls, really big ones.”

“They are pearls, black pearls.”

“Does an oyster make them too?”

“A special oyster, called ‘pinctada margaritifera,’ which I think is almost a name like Maggie, don’t you, the pink Maggie oyster?”

“Sort of,” Maggie said, trying not to smile.

“Those oysters mostly grow in the waters of French Polynesia, which is here, on this map.”

“Will we ever go there?”

“Someday maybe, why not?”

“Are they always this big?”