The Jewels of Tessa Kent (29 page)

Now both Tessa and Luke found themselves much more a part of the Hollywood scene. They no longer had the excuse of constant travel to keep them from the dinner parties, the charity benefits, the private screenings, and the galas that were such an important part of the local social life for nine months a year, barely stopping during the summer months when most of the same people moved to their Malibu beach houses and entertained each other more casually.

It suited them both, at this particular time, to welcome distraction, to accept a number of invitations; and, to Luke’s quiet pleasure, it gave Tessa many more chances to wear her most important jewels. Even now, at the peak of the lavish 1980s, when great jewelry was being worn by many women, Tessa’s vast collection of jewels was indisputably of the highest quality, the most extravagant, and the most original ever owned by any woman in one of the richest communities on earth.

“What shall I wear with this tonight, darling?” Tessa asked, turning around to show him the white silk linen dinner suit she’d chosen for an intimate dinner party in a private room at Le Dôme, where Fiona was celebrating the completion of her first production. She waited for Luke’s answer, looking puzzled at the daunting number of possibilities available to her, since everything went with white. “Don’t you think, maybe rubies?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Luke said, smiling at her from the armless slipper chair in her dressing room, where he liked to sit and watch her finish dressing.

“But which rubies?” she responded, vanishing into her closet where her built-in wall safe was open. “I don’t want to overdress, even if everyone else does these days, but somehow tonight all my rubies seem a bit over the top. Don’t you think so, Luke?” She raised
her voice slightly, so he could hear her from inside her vast closet.

“Remember, darling, I know you said I’d never cozy up to them but that’s only because they’re simply not cozy in and of themselves—but it doesn’t mean I don’t love them. Luke, come on in here and help me choose … no, never mind, I’ll bring out the trays and let you see everything,” Tessa said, as she emerged from the closet laden with six black velvet trays of jewels.

Tessa screamed and dropped the trays. Luke was slumped sideways and forward, his left arm hanging to the floor, his head and shoulders following the line of his dangling arm.

Tessa ran to him, using all her strength to push his upper body back into the chair. His head flopped forward, his chin rested on his breastbone.

“Luke! Luke!” she begged, “what’s the matter? Open your eyes, for God’s sake, is it your heart?” He didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes, didn’t speak.

In a panic that gave her superhuman strength, Tessa managed to pull the phone table toward her and dial 9-1-1 while still propping Luke up in the chair. He had fainted, she thought, she mustn’t let him fall. Tessa managed to give the emergency operator the address of the house and the fact that Luke had passed out before dropping the phone and attempting to take Luke’s pulse. As soon as she reached for his wrist he started to fall forward toward her. She abandoned the attempt, wrestling with his weight to keep him in the chair.

Now Tessa tried to listen to his heart, putting her ear to his chest. She couldn’t feel a heartbeat in the heart whose exact location she knew as well as that of her own—but his jacket was in the way, that was all. She couldn’t find his heart because he was so heavy, so heavy, such a mass of firm muscle. Above all she mustn’t let him fall.

Tessa was still holding Luke steady in the chair and imploring him to speak to her, when two paramedics burst into the room. She stood back only when they laid
him down on the floor. One of the paramedics checked Luke’s pupils and took his blood pressure while the other checked his pulse and quickly reached for the defibrillator paddles. “We’re going to shock his chest,” he explained to Tessa rapidly.

“He’s never had a heart problem,” she cried, incredulously watching the bizarre activity that had suddenly erupted in the fortress of her home. “His heart is perfect, what’s wrong, what’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” one of them answered. He had no intention of telling her that the paddles showed only a flat, straight line that indicated no electrical heart activity. That duty was for the doctors, thank God.

“How could you not know?” she shouted. “Do something, for the love of God, do
something.
”

“Yes, ma’am, we’re doing everything possible,” he told her, reassuringly.

The paramedics exchanged a look. The man’s pupils were fixed and dilated, there was no pulse, no blood pressure, he was asystolic, but they were trained to go on the basis that there was always hope. They shocked his chest, put an airway down his throat, and put an I.V. into his arm to try and push medication into him.

“Call the hospital,” one of the paramedics told the other. Suddenly three firemen entered the room, responding to the initial call Tessa had made that indicated that a healthy man was down. One of them was bringing an oxygen tank, the others helping to strap Luke onto a stretcher. The paramedic on the phone said quietly, making sure that Tessa didn’t hear him, “We’re coming in, yes, asystole, fast as we can.”

The paramedics, the firemen carrying the stretcher, and Tessa, grabbing her purse, all ran down the stairs to the ambulance that waited in front of the door, ignoring the servants who had finally materialized by the front door.

Tessa climbed into the ambulance and tried to gather Luke in her arms even though he was strapped to the stretcher. Neither of the paramedics tried to stop her.

“We’re getting him to the hospital as quickly as possible,” one of them said. He would not tell this poor woman, whose contorted features were so familiar and yet unplaceable, that her husband was dead. Stone cold dead. He’d known it the minute he’d looked in his eyes. It had been pointless to try the techniques they used for heart-attack victims. It must have been an aneurysm, he thought. Nothing else could kill as quickly. Nothing else ended a healthy life like a bolt of lightning unless you put a loaded gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger.

Maggie and all the Websters, even Candice and her husband, flew out to Los Angeles as soon as possible after Fiona had called to tell them that Luke was dead.

Madison, Tyler, and Maggie dropped the others at the Beverly Hills Hotel and went directly to Tessa’s. There they found Fiona, Aaron Zucker, and Roddy Fensterwald already gathered.

“Where’s Tessa?” Maggie asked as soon as she saw the little group huddled around a coffee table in the living room.

“In her bedroom. She won’t come out,” Fiona said, “and she won’t let anybody in.”

“Do you mean nobody’s seen her since it happened?”

“Just me,” Fiona answered. “She gave the hospital my name last night and I went to pick her up and bring her home right away—there was nothing she could do at the hospital—but when we got here, she ran upstairs to the bedroom and locked the door. She won’t answer the house intercom and she hasn’t rung for anything to eat. I listened at her door but I couldn’t hear a thing, not a sound, and no matter what I said, she wouldn’t answer, not even to tell me to go away.”

“I think we should break the door down,” Roddy said. “This can’t go on.”

“Fiona,” Maggie asked, “what was she like when you went to the hospital?”

“In shock. Total. She wouldn’t talk to me, she wasn’t
crying, she was barely breathing. I don’t know if she even realized who was driving the car home. I must have been the only person she could think of to call because she knew I was at Le Dôme.”

“What did the doctors tell you, exactly, Fiona?” Maggie said, still trying to comprehend what had happened.

“He had something called a cerebral aneurysm,” Fiona answered wearily. She’d already explained this to Roddy and Aaron. “Some people are born with the possibility of it happening. You can die from it at any time, or live to a ripe old age, it just depends. It’s like a bubble or a bunch of berries on a vine in a blood vessel that comes out of the neck and goes around it, something called the Circle of Willis. If it pouches out, you have an aneurysm, and you die instantly. The pathologists at the hospital did the autopsy and called me this morning. There’s no way to know if you have it or if you don’t, and no point in knowing either.”

“Oh,” Maggie said in a small voice. “So Tessa still doesn’t know why Luke died.”

“I agree with Roddy,” Aaron said. “We’ve got to do something, we just can’t sit around here while she’s going through this all by herself. Can’t we take the door off its hinges?”

“Let me try to get her to open it first,” Maggie said. “I’m the only one here who’s family.”

“You’re right,” Fiona agreed. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“Oh, yes, please, Fiona. I need someone to show me the way, this is the first time I’ve been here.”

As they walked up the staircase Fiona, who hadn’t seen Maggie in several years, was amazed by the steadiness of her step and her all-but-visible resolution. She’s not a kid anymore, Fiona thought, but how old can she be? Surely no more than seventeen?

“I don’t know how she’ll live without him.”

“No,” Maggie said, “neither do I.”

At Tessa’s door, Maggie knocked. When she
received no answer she spoke through the door, raising her voice so that it was impossible that it wouldn’t be heard.

“Tessa, it’s Maggie. I’m here, Tessa, I’m here for you. Please let me in. You can’t stay in there all by yourself, you need to be with somebody. I’m your sister, Tessa, I love Luke too. I’ve loved him almost since I can remember. He held my hand at our parents’ funeral, remember that day, Tessa? You on one side and him on the other? I still think of that. He never let me be by myself, he never let me be frightened. I knew he’d take care of me, even though I was only five. Luke wouldn’t want you to be alone now. You know he’d want you to be with your sister. Please let me in.”

“Maggie? Are you alone?”

“Fiona’s here with me, but she’ll go away if you want.”

The door opened and Tessa stood there, still wearing the white suit she’d had on the night before, tearless, composed, with blank eyes as dead as fossils in her white face.

“Maggie,” she said, without any inflection, without any sign of surprise at Maggie’s presence. “Maggie, have you heard about Luke.”

“Yes, Tessa, that’s why I’m here. May we come in?”

“Something happened to Luke, Maggie, something I don’t understand.”

“I know, Tessa. Please let us come in. We both really need a cup of tea and something to eat.” Maggie and Fiona both entered the room, stepping carefully over the dozens of ruby necklaces and bracelets and earrings that lay scattered all over the floor where Tessa had dropped the trays.

“A cup of tea,” she echoed.

“Yes. And something to eat.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. What time is it. I’ll call down. Where did you come from, Maggie,” Tessa said in her mechanical voice from which all emotion, even curiosity, had bled away.

“From home, Tessa. Tyler and Madison are downstairs, and Aaron and Roddy.”

“So many people,” Tessa remarked, slowly. “And Fiona, you too. Do they all know that something’s happened to Luke.”

“Yes, Tessa, they know. They came to be with you.”

“What can they do for me?” For the first time there was a question in her voice.

“Just be with you. We love you, Tessa,” Fiona said.

“Be with me? Do you think that will help?” Tessa asked blankly.

“A little, Tessa. It’s better than being alone.”

“Oh no, Fiona, it’s the same thing, it’s the same thing as being alone.”

Only after the Requiem Mass was Tessa finally able to begin to accept the fact of Luke’s death. For five days, despite Maggie and Fiona’s entreaties, she shut herself up in her room once more, went to ground like a small animal whose legs had been gnawed off, and mourned for Luke, unable to stop weeping, sleeping only hours at a time, waking hideously to a nightmare that never ceased, eating only when her body insisted. Luke, her one and only love, was gone, her safety was gone, there was nothing left to live for, but no way to die. She was condemned to life and condemned to danger. Eventually Tessa’s mind began to work again, as the useless jets of wrenching sobs, in which she’d forget everything but Luke, slowly turned to a dull perception of reality.

She must learn to live without Luke, she understood, since she was still alive. If she could only act as if she had strength, perhaps she would eventually find some measure of true strength, Tessa told herself, with all the courage she could fake. Searching in the only direction she knew, she took the first step to stitch up the tattered rags into which her heart had been ripped. She phoned her agent and asked him to come to the house.

“I need a job, Aaron. Within a week.”

“Tessa, Tessa, what kind of crazy idea is that?”

“I have to have it, Aaron, a location shoot, as far away as possible, as difficult as possible, something that will keep me from thinking or feeling for as many hours of the day as possible.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to—”

“What?” she interrupted him, “sit here and mourn? I could spend the rest of my life doing that, Aaron, and never have the slightest reason to stop. I’m afraid of that … oh, it would be so easy, Aaron, you have no idea, so horribly easy … tempting … oh, so tempting. It terrifies me when I think how
almost right
that would feel to me.” Tessa rose with determination. “The alternative is to go back to work. I know that’s what Luke would have wanted me to do. And if I don’t, how can I keep on living? Work is the only thing I know how to do now.”

“But what about Maggie? She wants to come and live with you. She can do her senior year here. She truly yearns to do that Tessa, she hopes so much that you’re going to let her, she’ll be such a comfort to you.”

“Oh, Aaron, Aaron, Maggie is such a darling, but she has no idea how bad an idea that would be for her. She may be ready to sacrifice an all-important year of school, but I’m not ready to let her do that. It’s a year in which she’ll become everything she’s been working toward, in a place where she’s finally conquered and triumphed and become a leader. How could I let her do that? How, Aaron? Only the most selfish woman in the world could allow it. She deserves her senior year at school, she needs it, you know it and I know it.”