The Jewels of Tessa Kent (32 page)

“Oh, God, I hate it when you’re right.”

“So you know too.”

“Yeah. We’re too fucking young. Now. We won’t always be, Maggie, don’t forget that. Don’t forget me. I
loved you from day one. I love you now, I’m going to love you
always
. You’re
my
girl Maggie. I’d better split. I’ll let you know where I am. Give me just one kiss.”

“I’ll owe it to you. One kiss and we’ll be back where we started yesterday. Good luck, darling, darling Barney. Good luck, have a good trip, and darling, goodbye.”

M
aggie, come on in the kitchen as soon as you get a chance, I have something to ask you,” Elizabeth the cook whispered with an air of secrecy, the day before Maggie’s Saturday-night birthday party. Madison reluctantly had realized that it was her duty to celebrate the occasion, considering the size of the legacy Luke had left Tyler, although why he’d felt it necessary to leave Maggie an equal amount she’d never understand.

During the past week, since Barney’s expulsion from school, Maggie had barely seen the Websters, both of whom were beside themselves with anger at their son and the need to find him and somehow place him, willy-nilly, in another school so that he could get into college next year. If they hadn’t turned the plans for Maggie’s birthday party entirely over to Elizabeth, they would probably have forgotten about it, Maggie thought, but the cook, who’d been through the older girls’ debuts and weddings, was perfectly capable of managing a dinner party for Maggie’s graduating class of twenty-three girls without any instructions from Madison. What special treat had Elizabeth dreamed
up? Maggie wondered, as she made her way into the large kitchen.

“You’re not going to show me my birthday cake in advance, are you?” she said, grabbing Elizabeth around the waist and planting a kiss on each of her cheeks. “Isn’t that supposed to be bad luck, like seeing the bride’s dress before the ceremony?”

“Maggie, come in the pantry,” Elizabeth said with unaccustomed seriousness. “I don’t know what to do about this.” She handed Maggie a letter addressed to her. “Here, read it.”

Maggie opened the envelope and scanned the single page. It was a short note from Barney, asking the cook to give Maggie, and only Maggie, his address in New York. He was fine, he said, but he didn’t want his parents to know where he was until he had a job and could support himself, because nothing would make him go back to school.

“What should I do?” Elizabeth asked. “Should I show this to Mrs. Webster?”

“Give it to me,” Maggie said. “They’re worried sick about him. They have to know he’s okay.”

Relieved, Elizabeth turned over the paper to Maggie and went back to her preparations. Maggie memorized the address, tore the letter into bits, and put it in the trash. She promised herself to go into town that afternoon and empty her sizable bank account so she could send Barney money to live on until he could pay her back. She knew he couldn’t have much, and she’d saved most of her allowance.

Maggie waited impatiently until Madison and Tyler returned for lunch.

“Barney called while you were out,” Maggie said, as soon as they arrived. “He wanted you to know that he was perfectly fine but he said he wasn’t going back to school and you shouldn’t worry, he’s looking for a job.”

“Shouldn’t worry?” Madison screamed furiously. “Shouldn’t worry, after what he’s put us through!” She sounded relieved but doubly furious. “Where was he?”

“I asked but he wouldn’t tell me, I’m sorry.”

“God, what I would give to get my hands on that rotten kid,” Tyler raved. “Who the hell does he think he is, how could he treat us this way, what kind of future does he think he has? A job—who would employ him? He must be lying around smoking marijuana with a bunch of dropouts just as bad as he is. When I think—all we’ve done for him—he could be anywhere!”

“He sounded together,” Maggie ventured, “not drugged at all.”

“As if you could tell over the phone,” Madison scoffed. “Why on earth didn’t you get more out of him? I’ll bet you didn’t try. How can we find him? How dare he hide from us?”

“I did try,” Maggie protested, “but he’s doing his thing.”

“Oh, that phrase! It makes me sick. Well, obviously there’s nothing to do till he runs out of money and turns up on the doorstep. He’ll be forced to come back, if I know Barney. Oh, and Maggie, speaking of turning up, I left too early to tell you, but Tessa is coming to the party tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a surprise but with all I have on my mind I simply can’t be bothered trying to remember.” Damn Tessa’s movie-star conceits and damn Maggie, she thought, for not having pried Barney’s whereabouts out of him; they’d always been thick as thieves.

“Tessa’s coming?” Maggie cried, stunned with joy.

“She’s taking the Concorde over from London, arriving at the Carlyle tomorrow morning, driving out here for the party, spending the night at the hotel, and returning Sunday.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it!” Maggie rejoiced, flooded with happiness: Months ago she’d given up all hope of seeing Tessa on her birthday.

As she had planned, as soon as possible after Luke’s death almost a year ago Tessa had replaced Michelle Pfeiffer, a flu victim, at the last minute on a major movie set in a small Greek village. The role had kept
her working for four months. Then, with only a week for hurried costume fittings, she’d made a Merchant-Ivory film that had finished filming in the English countryside, and she was now in the early days of a Jaffe/Lansing production also due to be made in and around Paris and London.

Tessa had sold the house in Beverly Hills, the ranch in Texas, and the villa at Cap-Ferrat. “Heart-Broken Star Will Never Revisit Scenes of Past Happiness,” the story in
People
had said, and, Maggie reflected, they had it right.

Tessa seemed to have jettisoned all her baggage except for her jewels. The rare photographs of her in the past year had been taken when she went out for an evening surrounded by a band of coworkers, once in a small Greek seaside café, twice in unknown British pubs. Inappropriate though they were for such places, Tessa had been covered with gems, blazing as if for a ball among her casually dressed friends. She must need, Maggie realized sadly, to wrap herself at all times in the protective armor Luke had given her.

Tessa had sent her brief postcards in the past year, but none of them said when she might be coming back to the United States. Maggie, in her concern, had been inspired to phone Aaron Zucker to find out Tessa’s plans for the future.

“I’m playing it by ear, sweetie,” he said, lamenting. “I mail her every script that I think has a part worthy of her in it, and let her pick and choose, because I can’t read her mind. I’m more like a postman than an agent. The scripts keep flooding in but she doesn’t want my advice on anything. She’s got nothing on her mind, as far as I can figure out, except keeping so busy she can’t think. Well, I guess it’s one way of mourning, but I keep wondering if she’s ever going to give herself enough time to feel.”

“I guess that’s the last thing she wants to do,” Maggie replied.

“But can you live life like that?”

“I don’t know, Aaron. I don’t know Tessa well enough to say.”

“How can you feel like that, Maggie? You’ve known her all your life. She’s your sister.”

“There’s knowing and knowing. I’ve spent so little time with her, even when you add it all up, and mostly I was a kid. Each visit was an incredible treat, a thrill, an adventure—not everyday life where you get to know what makes people tick. And you don’t talk frankly about yourself to someone so much younger, as I am, even if she is your sister. You, and Roddy and Fiona, you all know Tessa much better than I do. For me she’s an adored, impossibly glamorous stranger from another planet who drops in or sends for me every once in a while, lets me wear her jewels and tells me nothing serious. We’ve never had a grown-up relationship.”

“Tell me about movie stars, Maggie, tell me something new. But now you’re old enough to get to know her,” Aaron said consolingly. “Think of it that way.”

“Only if she stops rushing from one shoot to another.”

“Good point, kiddo. The minute I know what she’s going to do next, I’ll let you know.”

Maggie had hung up, after talking to Aaron, feeling farther away from Tessa than she had for years, when at least she could dream about their next flying visit.

“Tessa’s going to a lot of trouble for just one party,” Madison said sourly, annoyed at Maggie’s expression of radiant expectation.

How like Tessa, she thought, to dump her sister on other people three hundred and sixty-four days a year, and then show up once a year and get all the credit for having made an enormous effort.

“Oh, Madison, she
is
, she is!” Maggie gulped and ran out of the room in a hurry because she was about to burst into happy tears. Tessa was coming! Coming to see her!

Two days earlier, Tessa had found herself free from preproduction chores, with a whole day stretching in front
of her. London was at its best, spreading its humming vastness out beneath a sky of a singular transparency. It held not the promise of perfection but perfection itself. It was that one particular spring day that came but once a year, when every window box had reached its perfection of spring bloom; when every ancient tree in every ancient park celebrated itself with a burst of perfect new leaves, when the most conservative of Englishmen left his umbrella at home and the most conservative of Englishwomen bought herself two new hats.

Tessa stretched out in a canvas chair in St. James’s Park and contemplated the passage of three tiny white clouds that punctuated the exquisite pastel of the sky framed in a circle of treetops. She could live here, she thought idly, if every day were like this one. She could buy a house in London if she hadn’t spent last winter here, grimly accepting what any Californian would think of as a twilight zone, with lamps lit well before four in the afternoon. But it might be amusing to have a small place, just a mews house, with a little garden, only for the spring and fall, so that she wouldn’t always have to live in hotels.… With a great: start of surprise Tessa realized that she was making a plan. It was the first time since Luke had died that she’d thought of the future. Galvanized, she jumped up from her chair and started walking rapidly through the park, oblivious to anything but her thoughts.

If she could make any plan, even a tentative one based on the weather, she must be well along in the mourning process, Tessa told herself. Mourning Luke had been like having an invisible wound that left no outward trace. She could only judge its healing by the way her mind worked. She had reached this point by living one day after the other, hanging on, enduring. Every morning she willed herself to get out of bed and go to work, never thinking of her future. So … time had passed, enough time apparently, although she would never have known it if she hadn’t imagined owning a mews house. If she were well enough to consider real
estate, Tessa thought with a leap of joy, she could allow herself to be with Maggie without clinging to her and dragging her down into her grief. And oh, how right she’d been to leave Maggie in school to graduate. The past year she’d been hell to be with, she was aware of that, but since she had always arrived at the set on time, line perfect and ready to work as hard as necessary, no one she loved had been injured by the gloom of her moods.

Maggie would be eighteen on Saturday, Tessa reflected, hurrying back to the hotel. Eighteen, her child would be eighteen! The concierge could, had to get her tickets on the Concorde so that she could tell Maggie the truth without any further delay. Maggie could spend the summer with her in London before going back to start college. They’d have months in which to begin to learn how to be mother and daughter … if … Maggie would accept her after she’d told her everything that had happened.

Tessa broke into a run. There was so much to do, so much to plan. So much to hope for.

The morning of her birthday Maggie had awakened early, feeling very important. She’d had dreams of strange rapture, like dancing on clouds of gilded meringue, that vanished as soon as she’d awakened, but they’d left her feeling light, graced, and poised.

After her shower she put on her pearls and posed naked in front of her full-length bathroom mirror, admiring her rosy, abundant, sexy adult self from all possible angles. Then, for a mad minute, she capered about in honor of the kid she was leaving behind, wiggling her ass at herself in mockery. As she dressed, Maggie realized to the full how major an occasion today was going to be in her life.

Eighteen is a milestone, she thought, a stepping stone to the future, a sign of adulthood that no one can dismiss. The magic day had come at last, and, to make
everything perfect, Tessa would be arriving in New York well before noon. She knew that the Concorde left London very early in the morning and Tessa had once told her that people who made the three-hour flight often ate two breakfasts, one early, in flight, and one late, in New York. What if she took the bus into the city and met Tessa at the hotel? Elizabeth would drive her to Essex to catch the bus, and she’d have time alone with her sister before the party.