The Jewels of Tessa Kent

by Judith Krantz

  “Any cramps?”

  “No, just the bleeding.”

  “I think it’s a false alarm, just spotting, but I’ll get a doctor immediately.” Tessa sounded more reassuring and knowledgeable than she felt. If ever, this was the time to convey calm and self-possession.

  “Why a false alarm?” Maggie gasped.

  “I’ve lost two pregnancies. I could never have made it down a hotel corridor on my own. I had terrible cramps and I lost blood like mad. Now keep quiet, take deep breaths, and try to relax.”

  Tessa picked up the phone and spoke to the night operator.

  “Operator, this is Tessa Kent. What’s your name? Dolores? Excellent. Now, Dolores, connect me to the manager of the hotel, no, Dolores, not the night manager, the general manager, at his home, immediately, and tell him to call me at once. This is an emergency. It’s very serious, Dolores. I am Tessa Kent and I’m counting on you. After you’ve reached the general manager, call the night manager and tell him to come up immediately to Tessa Kent’s suite with an empty hot-water bottle and two buckets of ice cubes. Immediately. It’s an emergency! Thank you, Dolores. I’ll hang up so the general manager can phone me directly, at once, you understand? At once, immediately. Don’t try to inform the night manager until after you’ve reached the general manager, and remember, Dolores, ice and a hot-water bottle, for Tessa Kent. Yes, of course I’ll sign an autograph, if you hurry. But only if you hurry.”

  She turned to Maggie, whose face was twisted with apprehension. “I’m going to get some towels, it won’t take a second,” Tessa said. She hurried to the bathroom and returned with an armful of towels.

  “Here, I’ll pull your pajama pants off over your feet, and you put one of these between your legs. No cramping? Good girl.”

  She turned to answer the phone. “This is Tessa Kent. Thank you, Señor. As you know, I am staying in your hotel. Thank you, Señor. Yes, it’s an emergency, a major emergency. I need the best gynecologist in Sao Paulo here in my suite immediately. What’s the best hospital in the city? Good. Now, please call the Albert Einstein, immediately, you understand, and tell them it’s for Tessa Kent, I’m in an emergency situation. Ask for the Department of Gynecology and write down the names and home phone numbers of their top doctors. Explain that it’s for me, Tessa Kent. If anyone doesn’t want to give out home numbers, call the director of the hospital at home. Immediately. If one of the doctors is available right now, at the hospital, go get him and bring him to my suite at once. Otherwise, call them at home, ask the first one who answers to come here for me, Tessa Kent, at once. Immediately. Tell him to speed, it’s an emergency, Señor, in your hotel. No, not the hotel doctor. Never a hotel doctor! Would you send your wife to a hotel doctor, Señor? I thought so. I’m counting on you, Señor.”

  Tessa turned back to Maggie. “Would you mind if I took a look at that towel? Good, there’s not too much blood, but you’re still bleeding. Here’s a fresh one. Just relax and lie still.”

  “I never thought I’d hear those words so often in two phone calls,” Maggie said in a weak voice.

  “Which words? ‘Immediately’ or ‘emergency’?”

  “ ‘Tessa Kent.’ ”

  “They work best. Oh, that must be the ice,” Tessa said, relieved, scrambling to open the door to the night manager. She took a tray from him and told him to go downstairs to wait for the general manager. Quickly, she filled the hot-water bottle with ice cubes, wrapped it in a hand towel, and placed it low on Maggie’s abdomen. “The ice would drip too much without a hot-water bottle,” she explained.

  “Where’d you learn all this?” Maggie asked to distract herself.

  “I’ve put in my time with gynecologists.”

  The phone rang again as the general manager reported that he was driving a top gynecologist to the hotel, leaving that minute, for Miss Tessa Kent.

  “Won’t they be surprised when they see you’re up and about?” Maggie whispered, unsmiling but visibly relieved that a doctor was coming. “And in that nightie?”

  “Good Lord, I’d better put on a robe. Would you like a wet towel on your forehead?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Would you like a piece of ice to suck? No, better not. Who knows about the water anywhere? A sip, but only a sip, of mineral water?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Maggie lay on the bed and Tessa brought a wrung-out, cool, wet hand towel and the water and pulled up a little chair to sit beside her. She gave Maggie a little water and quietly ordered, “Now just close your eyes, it won’t be long.”

  Maggie sighed and obeyed. Tessa looked at Maggie’s hand lying protectively over the hot-water bottle and willed herself not to touch it or to speak. Perhaps Maggie could fall asleep for a minute or two, Tessa thought, breathing as quietly as she could. Soon, very soon, even in this gigantic city, the doctor would arrive, but until then she gave herself up to imagining that she was spending a whole night alone with her daughter, waiting and watching and keeping her from harm, in the circle of pale yellow illumination made by the lamp on the bedside table.

  Soon a knocking on the door announced the arrival of the night manager, the general manager, and a short, powerfully muscled, handsome, middle-aged man who announced that he was Doctor Roberto Goldenberg.

  “Thank you gentlemen, thank you so much,” Tessa said, shutting the door on the hotel men and admitting only the doctor.

  “Miss Kent, what seems to be your problem?” he asked in a deep voice that resonated with self-assurance.

  “It’s not me, it’s my daughter. She may be having a miscarriage. I’ve got her flat in bed with an ice pack on her belly.”

  “How long ago did it start?” he asked, as he hurried across the entrance to the bedroom.

  “I’m not sure. Maggie woke me up about a half hour ago.”

  “You work quickly, Miss Kent. From the hotel manager I imagined you must be having triplets this very minute.”

  “Where were you in medical school, Doctor?” Tessa demanded.

  “Harvard, and later Johns Hopkins. Hello Maggie. I’m Doctor Roberto,” he said, smiling with very white teeth. “Now, let’s take a look at you. Mamãe, wait in the sitting room, please,” the doctor said, bending over Maggie.

  Vanquished by a superior force, Tessa retreated, reassured by the doctor’s manner, and huddled in a chair in the sitting room, watching, without seeing, the spinning, spilling field of lights of the vast city.

  After some time she was joined by the doctor, who sat down next to her.

  “In my opinion, Maggie’s not having a miscarriage,” he said, patting her hand kindly. “The chances are very low, although you realize that they’re never zero, that she will lose this pregnancy. This kind of spotting is frequent, and it has almost stopped. However, it’s best to be on the super-cautious side for the next three days. Don’t let her get up except to go to the bathroom, and before I leave I’ll give her a stool softener so she won’t get constipated. She can eat whatever she wants, and if she doesn’t want to eat until some time tomorrow, don’t force it. She can live on soup. Your little girl is very far from delicate, Mamãe. The most important thing is rest, rest, rest, and plenty of fluids.”

  “Did you give her all those instructions?”

  “I’m telling you, isn’t that enough?”

  “You’re going to have to repeat the rest part to Maggie. She’s down here to work and she won’t listen to what I say.”

  “She’ll obey me,” Dr. Goldenberg promised, with a chuckle.

  “How pregnant is she?” Tessa asked.

  “That’s what Maggie wanted to know. Astonishing! My own patients pay very close attention to such questions. They come in and say, ‘Doctor Roberto, I’m two weeks and five days gravida. In Maggie’s case, I’d say close to three months, but without the date of her last period I can’t tell exactly, and she seems to have no idea when that was. Extraordinary, you North Americans.”

  “Could you possibly come back tomorrow,
Doctor?”

  “Certainly, Mamãe. Every day. Every evening if necessary, but I don’t think it will be. And on Tuesday, I’d like to see her in my office for an ultrasound, so we’ll be able to see what’s going on in there.”

  “Oh, Doctor Goldenberg—isn’t there any way you could bring the ultrasound machine here, to the hotel? I don’t want to risk the drive through this city, the traffic, the elevators, the crowds—” Tessa looked at him imploringly.

  “It’s … unusual, but … yes, of course, Mamãe. The machine is portable, after all. Now come with me while I put the fear of Doctor Roberto into Maggie.”

  The doctor looked at Maggie severely, as Tessa stood by his side. “Listen, Maggie, I’ve told your mamãe and I’m telling you, the only way to be sure you don’t lose this baby is to stay exactly where you are, with your feet up, and rest for three days. Drink lots of fluids, eat what you want, but stay in bed. You don’t need the ice pack now. You can get up carefully and slowly walk to the bathroom. But you absolutely cannot go downstairs and run around that exhibition you were fretting about. You may not! Under any circumstances. Doctor Roberto completely forbids it. Let your mamãe wait on you hand and foot. Understood?”

  “Oh, Doctor Roberto, I have so much responsibility,” Maggie protested weakly. “This couldn’t happen at a worse time.”

  “Someone else will take care of everything, count on it. Your mamãe will manage that as well as she managed to get me here in the middle of the night. Now, Maggie, it’s time for you to sleep. I’ll come back and check on you late in the afternoon tomorrow.”

  Tessa accompanied the doctor to the door to her suite. “Oh, Doctor Goldenberg, you’re an absolute angel! I can’t possibly thank you enough!”

  “Not at all. You must understand, I’d do as much for anyone … well, perhaps not the ultrasound, but everything else. However, in your case …” he looked suddenly shy. “Would you mind?” He handed Tessa his prescription pad and a pen. “I won’t pretend the autograph is for my wife, it’s for me. I’m a shameless fan, I’ve seen all of your movies. How, and I ask you this strictly as a man of medicine, you understand, can you possibly be old enough to have a grown-up daughter?”

  “It’s a long story,” Tessa laughed, “and one that probably only a gynecologist would believe.”

  37

  Tessa closed the door behind Dr. Goldenberg and marched into the bedroom armed with a feeling of complete authority. Maggie was sitting up in bed, with the beginning of a potentially rebellious expression on her face.

  “But Tessa—”

  “You heard what the doctor said, Maggie. You’re not going anywhere.” Oh, the simple joy of saying those words, Tessa thought, words every mother must have said a million times.

  “Wow, talk about a Brazilian Alpha Male! Calling you ‘mommy’ and referring to himself in the third person! He’s devastating, isn’t he, that Doctor Roberto?”

  “I worked in Brazil once, years ago. Their word mamãe is pronounced ‘mommy,’ but as I understand, it’s just a way of saying ‘mother.’ ”

  “If I have to stay here, you take my suite.”

  “Nonsense. There’s plenty of room for both of us. Doctor Goldenberg was horrified enough that I didn’t know how many months pregnant you are. Can you imagine what he’d say if I left you alone? Consider me your personal Florence Nightingale. I’m in thrall to Doctor Devastating.”

  “Why did he expect you to know all the details?”

  “I guess in Brazil the mamãe is the first to find out.”

  “Well, you were. I didn’t know until a few seconds before you did. Yesterday was the first time I had morning sickness. I didn’t have any today. Oh, God, do you think I’ll have it again tomorrow?”

  “Probably not,” Tessa said with more conviction than she felt, but she didn’t want to eliminate the power of suggestion. “There was all that eating going on, all those food smells, added to the stress of knowing we were leaving the next day. It could easily have been a onetime thing. Doctor Roberto said you were about three months pregnant and that’s almost always when morning sickness stops. After all, you were fine this morning.”

  “It could just have been a fluke,” Maggie said dismissively, looking concerned. “The worst of it, besides being out of commission, is I can’t reach Barney to tell him. He took that gorgeous Ducati he’s in love with and went off with her for the weekend. Damn!”

  Tessa waited a few well-timed seconds before she murmured, without any inflection at all, “Ducati.” Oh, God, let Maggie not be involved with a man who didn’t adore her.

  “His new motorcycle. Very special, I gather. Barney owns a custom bike-building shop. Don’t even ask, but he does well, very well.”

  “Barney,” Tessa all but hummed in a way that kept any element of question out of her voice. Tensely she waited for Maggie to reply.

  “You remember Barney! For heaven’s sake, Tessa, you can’t have forgotten Barney?” Maggie asked with as much indignation as she could summon lying down.

  “The only Barney I remember actually seeing with my own eyes wasn’t quite five years old.” Barney, she thought, with a leap of her heart, remembering the little sunburnt boy who had taken care of Maggie from the moment he met her, Barney, protective Tarzan to Maggie’s timid Jane.

  “But we’ve talked and talked about him! Don’t you remember how he’d never leave me alone? Always pestering me?”

  “Barney Webster? … Your old faithful Sancho Panza?” She started to breath again in relief.

  “Tessa, really! There’s never been another Barney in my life.”

  “He certainly never gave up, did he? Making you gravida seems an ultimate form of pestering, if you ask me.”

  Maggie giggled, sleepily. “Neither one of us ever gave up, not really.”

  “Will he be happy?”

  “Beyond happy … way, way beyond happy,” Maggie said faintly, as she closed her eyes and fell silent.

  Tessa watched her intently until she was satisfied from the changed sound of Maggie’s breathing that she was fast asleep. Now that Maggie wouldn’t be disturbed, Tessa began the slow, stealthy labor of tugging, inch by inch, two deep, heavy armchairs until they came together near the bed. She positioned them so that they faced each other and formed a short, downy couch on which she planned to curl up for the night. She found a pillow and an extra blanket in a closet and snuggled down, her knees bent, in what seemed to be a fairly comfortable position, but sleep eluded her. She couldn’t make herself close her eyes and waste this opportunity to look directly at her daughter as much as she liked.

  Even in sleep Maggie had a theatrical quality, Tessa thought. Even without the play of her eyes she was vibrant, vivid; her parted lips looked as if she were waiting for a kiss. A curtain could rise and show her sleeping and an audience would immediately be caught by her, would wait patiently to see what was going to happen to this vital, young creature with her eloquent coloring and laughter-promising features.

  What would it have been like, Tessa asked herself, as she contemplated Maggie’s face, if she’d never met Luke, if he’d never come to Edinburgh Castle and instantly transformed her entire life just by existing? After her parents died, Maggie naturally would have come to live with her, that serious, roly-poly, staunch little five-year-old, and all Maggie’s problems and hurts would have been brought to her for comfort. Her career and Maggie’s life would have been intertwined. When she came home from the studio, Maggie would have been there, working earnestly on her home work, waiting to read her a composition or asking to be drilled on a spelling test. If Maggie had fallen, she would have been the one who gently washed her knee and applied iodine and a Band-Aid. She would have planned Maggie’s birthday parties and gone shopping with her for party dresses and her first pair of high heels; she would have sent Maggie to summer camp and seen her off, protesting that she didn’t want to go, and two months later, welcomed home a surprisingly taller girl, tanned and laden with prizes, a girl who mis
sed her friends from camp and temporarily hated everything about her home life.

  Tessa gave a great sigh as she thought of all the things she’d missed, of all the potential of their history, lost forever. She would have told Maggie about sex and love, and the many shades of difference between them; she would never have married a man who hadn’t passed Maggie’s inspection and didn’t know that she was Maggie’s mother. As soon as Maggie had been old enough to understand, by six or seven, she would have told her what they truly were to each other and by now the idea that she had once claimed Maggie as a sister would have faded into a dim memory, not a painful lie that had been temporarily suspended, in order to simplify matters for a doctor summoned in the middle of the night. Everything would have been very different … so difficult to imagine … so many other things could have happened … too complicated … Tessa thought as she finally drifted into sleep.

  Many hours later, Maggie woke to find Tessa sleeping alongside the bed. Soundlessly she slid out of bed on her way to the bathroom.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Tessa asked, one eye flying open.

  “The john. I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I was.” Tessa sat up, threw off the blanket, and yawned. “And then I dreamed you were trying to escape, so I woke up.”

  “I’ll be back one of these days,” Maggie said, putting one foot down in front of the other in slow motion, with a show of caution.

  Tessa scampered to the second bathroom of the suite to splash icy water on her face and run her fingers through her wild hair to try to smooth it down. Every limb ached because of her awkward sleeping position, but she welcomed the evidence that they’d both managed to get some rest. She quickly rejoined Maggie, who’d dutifully returned to bed.

  “Any bleeding?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Nope. Not a sign. And I feel terrific. In fact I’m starving.”

  “Oh, Maggie, that’s the best sign of all! What would you like to eat?”