The Jewels of Tessa Kent (38 page)

Was she an orphan? Polly wondered. She knew Maggie had a lover or possibly several lovers, because there were many nights when she didn’t return to the apartment. Now wouldn’t he, or one of them, as the case might be, invite her for a holiday dinner? Polly wondered. And what had happened to cousin Barney? If, as Maggie had said, they’d been brought up together,
what had happened to that family? It was all most mysterious and worrying, for someone of Polly’s warm nature.

There was a deep essential aloneness to Maggie that made Polly feel irrationally guilty, almost maternal, but it was against her principles to delve into anyone’s personal background unless invited to do so. All she could do was triple her casual dinner invitations, so that Maggie would know that there was one place in the world where a plate was always set for her whenever a pot was simmering on the stove.

Gradually, throughout the winter of 1988 and the early weeks of 1989, Polly and Maggie became excellent friends. Maggie was still working as a temp at S & S and she fascinated Polly with the growing body of knowledge she was accumulating about the workings of an auction house. Eventually Maggie told her about Andy McCloud, but from what she heard, Polly shrewdly deduced that Andy was as close-mouthed about his parents as Maggie was about hers. The only solid detail Maggie could give her about his background was that his older sister was a ballerina in an English ballet company. How warm and important was their relationship, she wondered, if they chose not to talk to each other about their families? Wasn’t that one of the classic ways in which lovers became friends?

Polly kept her own counsel, however, even when the registered letters began arriving for Maggie. The overweight postman who normally left her mail downstairs in her mailbox complained bitterly each time he had to climb the stairs and get Polly to sign for the letters that began to arrive for Mary Margaret Horvath on a weekly basis in January 1989. As Polly placed each one on the floor in front of Maggie’s door, she noticed that they all came from the same place, a law firm named Butler, O’Neill and Jones. As she checked her own mail she couldn’t avoid seeing the same registered letters in her box, unopened, with “return to sender” written in block letters across them. Was Maggie being sued, she
wondered? It wasn’t anything she could ask about, it would make it seem as if she were spying on her, but Polly’s curiosity was aroused.

One early afternoon her buzzer sounded and a pleasant woman’s voice announced that a Miss Robinson of Butler, O’Neill and Jones would like to see Miss Mary Margaret Horvath.

“She’s at work,” Polly answered.

“Oh, no! I’ve been ordered not to dare come back to the office if I can’t see her in person. Absolutely all I need is her signature. And it’s snowing worse than ever. I have to wait for her until she gets back, even if I freeze in a snowbank. Unless—could you possibly tell me where she works? I could try to find her there.”

Polly weighed the question. She didn’t intend to tell a stranger where to find Maggie, but she couldn’t let a person with such a charming voice stand outside in one of the worst storms of the winter.

“Why don’t you come up? Perhaps I can help.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Polly Guildenstern, you’re just agog, you know you’re just dying to find out what’s going on, she scolded herself severely, as she put the kettle on to boil, her adorably pointed nose was fairly quivering with inquisitiveness, her very hair ribbon alert with unasked questions.

Attractive, young Jane Robinson left her wet boots outside on the landing, and after she’d removed her heavy coat and made friends with Toto, she thawed out, gulping the restorative tea with pleasure. “It’s my first job,” she explained to Polly. “I’m just out of law school and if I don’t bring back a signature to Mr. Butler, he’ll probably fire me … and it’s such a prize job too, they’re a major Wall Street firm. Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do? Miss Horvath has sent back the document unopened three weeks in a row, so they sent me. This tea is saving my life, I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Here, have a cookie, I made them myself.”

“Oh, bless you! I didn’t have a chance to grab lunch
today. Mr. Butler threw an absolute tantrum when he saw the returned letter, and practically chased me out into the storm. Oh, chocolate chip, my favorite! Could I … possibly have another?”

“Oh, eat them all, you’re doing me a favor, I made too many. And call me Polly.”

“You’re an angel! What a heavenly studio! And you look just like Alice in Wonderland. I wish I’d had artistic talent, but no, not a drop, so my destiny was law school and Mr. Butler. Oh, Polly, terrible, mean Mr. Butler! This document may be my downfall, and then it’ll be difficult to get another job with such a good firm.”

“Document?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s a major document. They have to have Miss Horvath’s signature before they can settle the estate, that’s the gossip around the office, but the partners are in a terrible state about the delay. It couldn’t be more important to them, the deceased was their biggest client.”

“Why didn’t one of them come in person if it’s so vital?”

“Estate,” Polly thought, and a “deceased”; how lucky she’d taken a chance and invited Jane Robinson up.

“Oh no, Polly,” Jane said, shocked. “They’re all too important to run around chasing signatures. That’s for underlings like me.”

“And of course they don’t care about my fat old postman who has to walk up all these flights,” Polly said indignantly, “or about my being disturbed having to sign for all the letters.”

“Things like that simply wouldn’t occur to Mr. Butler. Poor Mrs. Butler. Imagine the life she leads! Well, I’d better not interrupt your work any longer. I wonder, if I leave this letter with you, could you possibly just give it
physically
to Miss Horvath and tell her that she
shouldn’t
send it back without opening it and signing it? Then I can explain that she was at work but you agreed to hand deliver it. Mr. Butler might accept the fact that I did my best, even though I don’t come back with the signature.”

“I guess I can, Jane, although it sounds a little like serving a subpoena. But what if she refuses? What if she won’t even take the letter?”

“Well, I guess the next step would be, oh, dear, I could be wrong but I think Mr. Butler will track her down at work.
Himself
. And that would be unpleasant for her, and hard to explain—he’s not an inconspicuous man. And he wouldn’t be discreet. Or quiet.”

“How would he know where to find her?”

“Oh, he’d use another private detective, of course. He’d have to.”

“ ‘Another’?”

“How do you think they knew where to send the documents? Miss Horvath had simply disappeared, or so I heard around the watercooler.”

Polly was speechless. Maggie had disappeared from somewhere? A private detective had been snooping around and found out that Maggie was living in her spare room?

“Goodness gracious,” she breathed when she finally found her voice.

“Or, as my grandmother would say, a pretty kettle of fish.”

Polly and Jane looked at each other wide-eyed. This was as close as either of them had come to such a situation and neither of them tried to hide the fact that they were enjoying the drama of it.

“Jane,” Polly finally said, breaking their long, speculative silence, “there’s no possibility that Maggie will get home for at least four hours, assuming that she comes back at all tonight. Often she doesn’t. Aren’t you roasting in all that leather you’re wearing?”

“Actually I am feeling a bit overheated. And it’s so cozy in here. I feel so relaxed, you’ve been so kind to me, Polly. The mere thought of trying to get back to the office empty-handed in this storm …”

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable for a while longer? Why rush to disappoint Mr. Butler?”

“Well … perhaps … it’s not as though I could hope
to get a taxi in this weather, and the buses are so jammed they don’t even stop.”

“If you take your jacket and pants off,” Polly said casually, “I’ll bring you a blanket so you can stretch out on the sofa and take a nap. Naps are great when it’s snowing.”

“Or, consider this alternative, Polly. I could take your clothes off, very, very slowly, one adorable, dainty, tiny little piece at a time. And skip the nap.”

Polly purred, her intuition validated. “I’d prefer that. Then I can see the rest of the interesting tattoo that’s just peeking out of your cuff.”

“I’d been wondering … if maybe you might … and hoping you would.”

The next evening, when Maggie finally struggled home, trekking cross-town on foot from S & S, after spending the previous night with Andy, Polly looked up, took off the strong magnifying glasses she wore while painting, and said, “Join me for dinner? I’m baking a mustard chicken with winter squash.”

“You’ve saved my life, I’m wiped out, completely exhausted. This filthy weather! It took hours to get home. I’ve got to have a hot bath and then I’ll be right in. Oh, you are heaven-sent, Polly!”

Polly carved the chicken and poured Maggie three glasses of wine while the tired girl ate hungrily, the two friends enjoying the meal in companionable, rarely broken silence.

“Now that you’re fed,” Polly said, after Maggie had eaten two slices of her apple pie, “I have a duty to perform. I didn’t want to ruin your appetite by giving it to you before dinner.”

“Huh?”

“It’s this registered letter,” she said, thrusting it into Maggie’s hand. “It arrived here yesterday. The person who brought it said that it was absolutely necessary for you to open it and sign it, and somehow or other I got
talked into promising to give it to you. I’m sorry about that, but seriously, whatever it is, Maggie, you can’t expect our postman to keep on walking up six flights, he’ll have a heart attack and it’ll be on your conscience.”

“Shit!” Maggie glared at the envelope.

“Heavens! What can be so terrible? And how do you know when you haven’t even opened it?” Polly asked, her curiosity more inflamed than ever by the sight of Maggie’s furious face.

“I know who these lawyers are and I know what it’s about. Damn it to hell, how’d they find me? I thought if I printed ‘return to sender’ on the envelopes they wouldn’t know I lived here.”

“A private detective found out where you were living, and what’s more, if you don’t sign it, some monster of a big-shot lawyer is going to come to your office to make you sign it.”

“What! What!” Maggie burst into tears of rage. “Who told you that?”

“I did a little detective work myself on the messenger. I don’t like people meddling with you, Maggie.”

“Oh,” Maggie wept, her angry tears redoubled, “why can’t she leave me alone? I told her I didn’t want the money, that I wouldn’t touch it, isn’t that enough? She put a detective on me, she knows where I am, maybe she has me followed everywhere … oh, God, Polly, I don’t know what to do.”

“What money?”

“A bequest … a will.”

“Well what’s so terrible about that?”

Maggie looked at Polly through her tears and saw the sensible, concerned, deeply fond face of the only female friend she had in the world, the only woman besides Elizabeth, the cook, who’d ever treated her with affection and real interest, the only person besides Andy and Barney who cared about her.

She wiped her eyes and huddled in the corner of the sofa. “My so-called mother’s husband died and left me
money, that’s what the document has to be about,” she told Polly in a shaking voice.

“He wasn’t your father?”

“No. And I don’t want his money.”

“Wait a minute. What’s wrong with inheriting money? He was your stepfather, why shouldn’t he leave you money? That doesn’t make sense, Maggie. And you’ve never spoken of a mother, much less a ‘so-called mother,’ whatever that means. You never mentioned a family, you never go home for holidays …?”

“Polly! If I tell you the whole story, will you promise me never to mention it again, ever, as long as you live? Nobody in the world knows it except me and the woman who gave birth to me.”

“I’ll promise, and you can count on me to keep my promise, but I want you to be sure you truly want to tell me,” Polly said, more serious than Maggie had ever seen her. “There’s nothing worse than telling a secret to a friend and then hating yourself afterward because you wish you hadn’t. It’s ruined many friendships and no secret’s worth that. I’d much rather not know than have you regret that you told me.”

“Polly, I
have
to tell someone and I trust you entirely. It’s eating away at me, I try not to let myself think about it, I
forbid
myself to think about it, but it keeps coming into my mind anyway, all the time, and I dream about it, so many nights … such sad, sad dreams. If I can share it with you, I’ll feel better. I certainly won’t feel worse. I think I need some sympathy and there’s nobody more sympathetic than you.”

“Tea-and-Sympathy Guildenstern,” Polly laughed.

“An unbeatable combination.”

“Well, then, go ahead and tell me.”

Maggie took a deep breath and, in as few words as possible, told Polly her whole story, leaving out any identification of the people involved. She kept her eyes fixed in her lap as she spoke, as unemotionally as possible. As the story unfolded, Polly grew more and more outraged, although she kept her feelings to herself until
Maggie’s silence indicated that there was nothing more to tell.

“What kind of inhuman bitch could do that to her own child?” Polly finally burst out after Maggie stopped talking.

“Tessa Kent could do that, Tessa Kent, who was born Teresa Horvath, she could do that to me, she
did
do that to me.”

“You’re … you’re Tessa Kent’s daughter.”

“Biologically, yes. In any other way, no.”

“My God. Tessa Kent! Tessa Kent … I … it’s … my God, how could she?
How could she!
”

“That’s exactly what I keep asking myself.”

“It’s what anybody sane would ask.”

“Oh, Polly, it is, isn’t it? There’s no
excuse
, is there? I’ve tried and tried to think of one, but I can’t.”

“You can’t because it doesn’t exist! What she did is beyond inexcusable! When you think of all those movie stars having babies without being married and showing them off in the magazines … it’s not as if there’s a stigma attached to it anymore, not in Hollywood. And she’s young, she’s not of the older generation, she can’t be more than …”