“Tessa! Stop it right now!” Mimi handed her a wad of Kleenex. “You don’t have time to cry! Now listen to me. Maggie has only known one mother in her life, not two. You’re her big sister, the one she’s damn lucky to have, the sister who can make sure that she spends the rest of her life being happy and taken care of. If you’re thinking of some damn stupid moment of truth, some need to bring up the past, stamp on it!”
Tessa blew her nose and listened to Mimi, whose admonishments had so often shown her the way—although, she reminded herself, not necessarily the right way.
“Remember your mother’s last words, Tessa. You simply can’t go against them! The truth Maggie knows is that her parents and your parents are the same people and they’re dead. What on earth would you have to gain by stepping forward and claiming Maggie now? What a media orgy that would be if it ever got out, and how wouldn’t it? Give me a break! ‘The Secret of Tessa Kent’s Bastard Child!’ Please! She’s yours anyway, no one can take her away from you, you’re her next of kin.”
“I know.”
“Then where’s the problem? You must have a major self-destructive streak if you ever dream of telling him. Shape up, girl! You’re thinking crazy. Luke doesn’t know and doesn’t ever need to know, your mother would die all over again if you told anybody … or she’d come back and kill you herself … and as far as I’m concerned, it was a virgin birth and I can swear to that.”
“Don’t remind me. Oh Lord have mercy on me, we’re here.”
“I don’t see why a little girl should go to a funeral,” Mimi said. “It’s bad enough without seeing the whole thing.”
Tessa, Luke, Mimi, and Fiona were having a room-service lunch while Maggie took her nap in the bedroom next to the sitting room. She hadn’t burst into tears when Tessa had told her. She’d sighed deeply, asked one question, and then silently, stoically, and solemnly thrust her thumb into her mouth and sat passively in Tessa’s arms, refusing to snuggle or talk or ask any more questions. Later she’d refused anything more than a glass of milk at lunch, although they’d all taken turns at trying to tempt her to eat. Tessa wondered how much Maggie had been able to take in of the facts she’d been told. She had no idea how a five-year-old thought about death, she realized, trying to remember details of her forgotten catechism classes. Even though Maggie hadn’t started them yet, she’d been going to Sunday mass for years; she’d certainly absorbed the basics.
“I don’t agree,” Tessa said to Mimi. “I think there needs to be a feeling of finality, a visual punctuation mark, a ceremony she can watch and talk about with us and remember afterward, so that Maggie understands that her parents haven’t merely disappeared for a while. When I told her about the accident she asked, ‘Like on the five-o’clock news?’ Those were the only words she uttered. She didn’t even ask what was going to happen to her now—that’s an enormous amount of denial. I don’t know what to do except let her see the funeral.”
“I think you’re right,” Luke agreed. “We can make the mass as easy as possible for her, but I don’t think she should go to the cemetery and see the caskets lowered into the ground. That’s too much reality. I remember my grandfather’s funeral, and the burial part scared me for years. I still have nightmares about it.”
“That’s where I could come in,” Fiona volunteered. “The mass is scheduled for late morning. After it’s over I’ll have lunch with Maggie here and then we’ll watch television or play or she can take a nap, whatever she wants to do, until you get back from the cemetery.”
“I’ve talked to Father Vincent,” Luke continued, “and we’ve agreed that the closed caskets will be placed at the altar of St. Charles of the Holy Savior before anyone comes in. He tells me that in any case a Requiem Mass is short. I’ve left instructions that somebody should take the black ribbons off the flowers people send … silly, I suppose, but it seems less ominous for a little girl. There’ll be the organ music, of course, and I’ve asked for as large a choir as possible—I hope she’ll be more interested in that than in the mass. Tessa and I won’t take communion at the end because it would mean leaving her with people she doesn’t know.”
“You’ve thought of everything,” Fiona said, “except for the wake.”
“Wrong, the wake was easy. One phone call to the manager. It’ll be right here, at the Bel-Air. Thank God for wakes,” Luke said, taking Tessa’s hand. “People will come straight here from the cemetery. By that time, if I remember correctly, they’re all starving and dying for a drink, not necessarily in that order.”
“Amen,” said Mimi. “Will we see all the wedding guests again?”
“Except for my cousins and their kids,” Tessa said. “However, lots of the people I’ve worked with will probably come, and Luke’s employees who live nearby, Maggie’s godparents of course, and my parents’ other friends, my father’s pupils, his fellow teachers—Lord knows who’ll show up.”
“Tyler is on his way from New York,” Luke added. “He’ll be here in time for the funeral.”
Tessa raised her eyebrows in surprise. She wouldn’t have expected Tyler Webster, that elegant gent who had talked horses to her in Monaco, to come all this way for the funeral of people he’d just met and barely knew. Still, Luke was Tyler’s stepbrother even if they rarely saw each other. It was thoughtful of him, but then he’d seemed to be a particularly sweet man.
Had they turned into angels already, Maggie wondered, listening to the sound of the grown-ups’ voices in the next room, as she lay curled into as tight a ball as possible, clutching her favorite doll, one of the armload of toys the blond lady named Mimi had hastily gathered up to bring with her, along with some of her clothes. How long did it take to get out of Purgatory? In church, they never said the number of hours or days or weeks, but she knew that when Tessa said her mommy and daddy were in Heaven, Tessa didn’t understand about Purgatory. Nobody ever told you anything about what Purgatory looked like. The priests talked about Hell and Heaven, but Purgatory was a big nothing. A big fat nothing.
Anyway, they’d be in Heaven soon, she was sure of that, because if you were good that’s where you went when you died even if you had to go to Purgatory first. Died. That was the right word. Her best friend, Susan, said that people “passed away,” but it said in the Bible that Jesus died on the cross, not that he’d passed away on the cross. They’d have big white wings and wear long white dresses like her mother’s nightgowns and sit at the foot of God. When the angels flew around in heaven, did they ever have accidents, did they ever bump into each other, could they ever die again like in a taxi accident? The priests on Sunday said that Heaven was a place of perfect happiness that lasted forever, but how could her parents be happy when she was all alone down here? How could they be happy when they missed her? They’d said they’d miss her when they went away for the wedding but they’d promised her that they’d be back in a week, and now Tessa said they weren’t coming back, not ever, because of the taxi accident. So they’d miss her unless she went to heaven too, but she didn’t want to die, not even to sit at the foot of God and fly around on wings and be happy forever.
It was all mixed up, Maggie thought, tears rolling down her face, and nobody, not even the grown-ups, not even the priests, could explain it right, or maybe they really did know but they kept it a secret from little kids and that wasn’t fair. She wished Susan was with her so they could talk about it, even if Susan said “passed away” and not “died.”
15
The wake had been in full swing for several hours when Mimi took Tessa aside. “Do you think you could split for a few minutes?” Mimi whispered in her ear. “I’ve got to get some fresh air.”
Out of the corner of her eye Tessa saw. Patsy, her least favorite aunt, bearing down on her. Hastily she turned, put her arm around Mimi’s waist, and headed for the doorway.
“What a brilliant idea,” Tessa breathed in relief. “I shouldn’t stay away long, but this wake is getting to me. And I’m afraid to have a drink because I have t
o remember so many names.”
They walked down the stone pathways of the Hotel Bel-Air, inhaling the rich scents of the flowering bushes and fragrant annuals that were planted in thick borders everywhere, until they came to a quiet courtyard with a central fountain and a wooden bench.
“Wow, your family can really drink up a storm,” Mimi said in amazement.
“You’re one to talk.”
“Maggie seemed to be having a better time than I would have expected.”
“That’s one of the things about wakes, people pay a lot of attention to kids so they get distracted and forget why they’re there for a while.”
“She was so composed at the funeral it scared me,” Mimi said.
“I know, I noticed the same thing. More denial? Oh, Mimi, would you believe that I can’t even think straight about my parents, all I can think about is what to do with Maggie?”
“I can’t tell you what the answer to that is, but I do know the one thing you can’t do, not ever, and that’s raise her, you and Luke.”
“But that’s the natural—”
“It would be, if she were your sister, no matter how complicated it got, but in the circumstances, no, Tessa, just plain no. Find another way.”
“Why, Mimi, why? I could carry it off, I’m an actress, he’d never guess …”
“Maybe not, but I’m thinking of you, living each day fooling him and fooling her and trying to fool yourself, what is quaintly known as ‘living a lie.’ You wouldn’t make it, Tessa, not for long.”
“You can’t know that!”
“I’ve been your friend forever, remember? You and your crazy sense of guilt and sin. Teresa Horvath, the last of the big-time sinners, do you think I’ve forgotten, or that you’ve basically changed? Sooner or later, as Maggie grows up and gives you the usual problems kids give, the big sister facade would disappear and the maternal instinct to tell her what to do would take over. You’d crack, Tessa! You couldn’t avoid making a slip, or you’d give up and just confess the truth, but before that happened, you’d be a wreck. Always nervous, always watching yourself trying not to act too motherly, always keeping an eye on Luke’s reaction to the two of you together, always afraid of doing too much for Maggie, or worse, not enough.”
“You’ve always loved to tell me what to do!” Tessa protested.
“You wouldn’t be the woman Luke married anymore,” Mimi continued, paying no attention, “and he wouldn’t understand why, and of course he’d blame Maggie. My God, Tessa, you had exactly four days together before this happened. You’re a couple of barely newlyweds with a lot of adjustments to make like everybody else—you hardly know each other when it gets down to that, to say nothing of the major age difference, which I’ve been too polite to mention till now. Luke’s a guy who can have anything he wants, and children haven’t been high on his list. Don’t tell me that’s an accident. Or is there something I don’t know?”
“He’s never wanted children,” Tessa admitted miserably. “He said, maybe in ten years … I’ll only be thirty …”
“Well then! You simply cannot take on the burden and responsibility of a five-year-old child on top of everything else, not when there are four aunts, each one of whom made a point of telling you that she wanted Maggie to come and live with her, each one of whom has plenty of child-rearing experience.”
“My mother was the youngest of them all. The aunts are in their forties, some even in their fifties, and their kids are mostly grown up.”
“So what? Do you imagine that at twenty you’ll be better and smarter about bringing up a kid?”
“They’re not her mother,” Tessa said stubbornly, seeing Maggie’s set, plump, big-eyed face, the long, dark braids she tugged at, the valiant way she walked, never dragging her feet no matter how new the situation.
“Her mother died, come on! She’s already accepted that. You’re her sister, who visits her whenever you can and brings her wonderful presents and ends up being the person who understands her best, the person she can really talk to and confide in, the person whose advice she follows—you’re her fairy godmother, instead of the person who tells her to finish her homework and eat her peas. You get to spoil her to your heart’s delight!”
“Oh, Mimi, you should have your own advice column. ‘Ask Mimi, the All-Wise One,’ circulation one hundred million. You’re so quick to jump at a decision for someone else, imagining that they think the way you think. Hasn’t it occurred to you that I know I’m not Maggie’s sister, that I know I’m her mother, that I know I have a duty toward her? Don’t you understand that I love Maggie? I was never allowed to mother her the way I yearned to, but there was never a minute when I didn’t love her. I gave birth to her, for the love of God, I carried her for nine months, all the good reasons in the world can’t change those facts. Oh, Mimi, I’m in agony. No matter what I do, I’m going to be wrong, there’s no way out of this, no honorable way.”
“Will you think about what I said?”
“Naturally, but I can’t let you make up my mind for me.”
“God forbid.”
Tessa wondered angrily why she was still awake. After the last guest had left, after Maggie and blessed Fiona, without whose help she’d be utterly lost, had settled down in the neighboring suite, she’d planned to go to bed no matter how early in the evening it was, and sleep as long as she possibly could. Jet lag, her parents’ funeral, followed by an Irish wake—the longest, saddest day of her life—surely all that would put her into a state of immediate and necessary unconsciousness. But after trying to let go and relax for a half hour, thinking about Maggie each minute, she gave up and went to find Luke, who was reading in the sitting room next to the bedroom.
“What are you doing here, sweetheart? You look like Ophelia on a bad day,” he said, plunking her down in his lap and kissing her neck under the tangle of hair she’d been too tired to bother brushing.
“Can’t sleep. I still have jet lag on top of everything else. Look, that damn old sun hasn’t even set yet. I wonder what time it is back in Èze.”
“Almost dawn.”
“I feel as if I’ve left some hugely important piece of my soul there.”
“We’ll go back, darling, I promise, we’ll go hundreds of times.”
“But when? And anyway, it’ll never be the same.”
“Nothing is ever exactly the same, but we’ll be there together.”
“How long could we have stayed if …?”
“I’d been able to carve out ten days after our wedding. Counting from the day I met you, I haven’t attended to business, and normally I never take more than a week or two off, maximum. After Èze we have to spend a week in Melbourne; there’s a major board meeting that’s been planned for months. Then, we fly to Houston for a few days and go up to Anchorage to take a look at …”
“So even if we hadn’t had to come back here, we’d have had only another few days in Èze anyway?”
“Four more, but I could be wrong by a day.”
“So it wouldn’t make sense to go back there now and then have to turn around and leave for Australia when we’re halfway to Australia already?” Tessa asked in a forlorn, willfully blind attempt to roll back events and recapture her honeymoon.
“Is that what was keeping you up? Impossible confusions of time changes, the International Dateline, and travel schedules running through your head?”
“Everything is keeping me up,” she said, bursting into tears, pressing herself tightly into the shelter formed by Luke’s lap and chest and arms and letting herself go completely, weeping as loudly and unselfconsciously as a child locked away in a closet, wailing and moaning in a raw wordless lament that went on and on. Luke did nothing to stop her, gripping her as tightly as he could without hurting her. High time, he thought, high time.
After a long while, with a final descent into a diminishing series of sniffs and whimpers, Tessa started to dab at her eyes with the hem of her nightgown. “I need a bath towel,” she said in a ch
oked voice, “but I feel better.”
“I’ll get you a wet washcloth and a face towel,” Luke said.
“No, don’t go away, not for a second, don’t let go of me yet,” she pleaded.
“I won’t,” Luke said, picking her up, carrying her into the bathroom, grabbing a couple of towels and a box of Kleenex, and returning with her to the chair. “There, everything you could possibly want. How about a drink? Or vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce?”
“Just a kiss. And another kiss. God, I love you. What a honeymoon you’ve had. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get married before?”
“I’m glad I didn’t get married to anyone else.”
“Even now?”
“Especially now. Tessa, I know I told you that I didn’t want to share you with kids for ten years, but darling, that was before and this is entirely different, and what I said shouldn’t count anymore.” He set his lips sternly. “We’ll bring up Maggie.”
“Oh, Luke, you just said we have to go to Melbourne, Texas, and Alaska and that’s only in the next few weeks.”
“Darling, we’ll hire the best nanny in the world to travel with us. Kids are flexible, Maggie’ll have fun seeing so many new things, and then when she’s old enough for school, we’ll get her a tutor too, several tutors if necessary, and by the time she’s, oh, eight or nine, whenever little girls usually go away to boarding school, we’ll send her off, so she could make friends of her own age. There are some marvelous schools in Switzerland or England, even in Australia, wherever she’d be happiest, and she could be with us on vacations.”
The Jewels of Tessa Kent Page 16