The Jewels of Tessa Kent (8 page)

“Yes,” Teresa heard herself say. “Yes I do. It’s Tessa.” She stood still with amazement, caught up by a powerful and unexpected sense of selfhood, as she made this claim.

“Lovely.” Peggy’s jaded attention was immediately jerked into life by the clear, distinct melody of Tessa’s voice. “Now, Tessa, why don’t you tell us something about yourself, come on over here where we can see you.”

Tessa moved forward and stood in front of the table, her hands firmly clasped behind her to hide their trembling.
They had such friendly smiles, these two women. What was the worst thing they could do, after all, except send her away?

“I’m sixteen,” she said, “and I live in Santa Monica with my parents and Maggie, my baby sister. We moved to California more than two years ago from Greenwich, Connecticut. My mother’s from a big Irish family and my father came here from Hungary back in the 1950s. Now he’s head of the music department at the Harvard School. There’s nothing particularly exciting about me, except that I’ve always wanted to act. No, that’s wrong. I
have
always acted.”

“Do you have any professional experience?” the casting director asked. As Tessa recounted the simple outline of her life, Peggy had felt unexpected chills racing up her arms and crisping the nape of her neck.

“I’ve never been in anything but a school play,” Tessa answered. “This is my first real audition, unless you count the ones at school.” She spoke with a simplicity that was as strong as her sudden sense of fearlessness.

“I see,” Peggy said slowly. “So you wouldn’t have any head shots, any eight-by-ten glossies?” Good God, a schoolgirl without an agent or experience or even pictures … but those chills … how long had it been since she’d felt chills when an unknown spoke?

“I have snapshots in the family album, but my mother didn’t bring them,” Tessa answered. “I didn’t know I needed glossies.”

“Actually you don’t. It’s just that some of the girls leave them behind so we’ll remember what they look like.”

“Just think of the girl in the dumb uniform.” Tessa laughed with an utterly spontaneous sense of the ridiculous, a wonderfully affirmative sound that rang through the little room.

Peggy and Fiona looked at each other swiftly. Normally, at a first audition of an inexperienced unknown, they’d just chat, make notes, and send her on her way, after getting her phone number in case they
decided to reconsider her. But neither of them would have dreamed of letting Tessa go without a reading.

“Take off your blazer and sit down, Tessa. Let your hair out of the ponytail so we can see it, and undo the top buttons of that very well-ironed blouse, so you can breathe a bit,” Peggy continued, writing a note to Fiona.
That laugh! Trained voice???

“Have you had voice lessons, Tessa?” Fiona asked.

“No, I haven’t, but I’ve sung in the choir all my life—I’m a contralto. And my father’s very insistent on proper speech. He learned his English from an Englishman at school in Budapest.”

“Choir?”

“At the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich and now, at Marymount.”

“So you’re a very, very good little convent girl, are you?” Peggy asked on a teasing note.

“I feel like the original model, from day one,” Tessa answered, shaking out the gleaming tumble of her hair and trying, without success, to make its lively waves fall neatly with her fingers. “But I can’t answer for the good part,” she continued thoughtfully. “It’s really hard, almost impossible, to be good, because it’s so surprisingly easy to commit a venial sin.” She’d forgotten herself while she tried to respond as honestly as possible to these women who seemed so interested in her.

“So
all
your acting has actually been done in a Catholic school?” Peggy probed gently.

“I haven’t been to any other kind of school, or to summer camp either. But the Madams at Sacred Heart put on a wide range of plays, and so do the Sisters at Marymount. Of course I’ve had lots of chances to play a boy, since I used to be taller than most of the other girls. I think I’ve stopped growing now. Last year’s uniforms still fit.”

“You’ve been given the four pages—sides—we’d like you to read. The context of the scene is that Jo March, the part you’re reading, is having an argument with her older sister, Meg, who’s dignified and proud and proper.
Jo is independent and tumultuous and rebellious. You don’t remember the book by any chance? No? Well, it doesn’t matter, we’re just looking for a rough idea. Fiona will give you your cues. You read the lines that are underlined. I think you should read the scene over again first, several times, to feel a little familiar with Jo.”

“Yes, please.”

As Tessa bent her head over the pages, Peggy and Fiona turned their swivel chairs away from her and conferred quietly.

“Isn’t she much
much
too beautiful for Jo?” Fiona whispered. “Jo isn’t supposed to be a raving, tearing beauty, she’s a tomboy whose ‘hair is her one beauty,’ remember? What a glorious kid! Those eyes! Have you ever seen a green like that? Glenda would throw a fit.”

“Glenda doesn’t have casting approval,” Peggy hissed. “That middle-aged love goddess begged Roddy to let her play Marmee so the Academy members will take her seriously come Oscar time. If it should, by a miracle, turn out that Tessa can act, Glenda won’t have to worry about anyone saying she can’t be believable in a serious role as the mother of four. They’ll be too busy looking at Tessa.”

“Still, she’s not at all the character, except for her height and her hair,” Fiona fretted.

“Miss Bridges, this is Hollywood, not the BBC. Kate Hepburn played Jo in nineteen thirty-three and trust me, she was never an ugly duckling. Casting to type bores me, anyway. All the other girls have to be pretty but Jo has to knock you right off your chair, one way or another, because she’s the heroine. It would be more constructive if you’d worry that Tessa can’t act, that maybe she’s all looks and no delivery. That’s what you should really be afraid of.”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Tessa said.

Fiona started to recite the cues she’d memorized in the course of the past three long days. Tessa read without gulping the words, giving herself an instant to look up from the pages whenever she could, look straight at
Fiona and say the next line as if she’d learned it, as if she were living it, before having to consult the script again.

In spite of this being a first reading, Tessa’s luminous intensity was immediately switched on. All the light in the room seemed to condense around her. Tessa
became
Jo March as if she’d been inhabited by an uncompromising spirit. To Fiona, the words she’d spoken so often became new and fresh with meaning as she awaited Tessa’s response. Then, so suddenly that Peggy shivered in surprise, the four sides were over and the reading ended.

But I want to hear what she says next, I need to hear her
, Peggy thought. That hasn’t happened in ten years. Fifteen! “Thank you, Tessa,” she managed to say, calmly. “That was excellent.”

“Is that it?” Tessa asked in evident disappointment, withdrawing from the character slowly and dreamily. She struggled to put on her blazer, the young, arched fullness of her breasts evident for the first time against her starched white shirt as she wriggled her arms into the sleeves.

“Oh, no, I doubt that’ll be it,” Peggy said, blowing her nose violently. She had tears in her eyes, another thing that hadn’t happened for fifteen years. That’s not it, not if I know anything about this damn business, and I do. This girl is
unconditional
; it’s all or nothing with her. She already knows all those essential things you can’t teach. But I can’t make any final decisions, all I can do is point her in the right direction.

“Ginger,” she said, buzzing the secretary. “Would you please ask Mrs. Horvath to come in?”

Agnes entered, wearing a resolute smile.

“Mrs. Horvath, can you bring your daughter back tomorrow?” Peggy asked without ceremony. “I’d like to have her read for some other people. And there are some more pages I’d like her to study overnight. Oh, and be sure she wears her uniform again, if you don’t mind.”

“Tomorrow? Of course,” Agnes said, coming forward quickly.

“But, Mother, tomorrow afternoon there’s that field
hockey match with Westlake—” Tessa reminded her, unwillingly.

“Sister Elizabeth told me not to bother about it if these ladies wanted you back.”

Her mother would have to confess before communion, Tessa thought with glee.

“Sister Elizabeth? Don’t tell me she’s still at Marymount!” Peggy Westbrook exclaimed.

“Do you know Sister Elizabeth?” Tessa asked in amazement.

“She was head of the English department and also coached the plays when I was there, a long time ago, and she wasn’t young then,” Peggy confessed.

“But, you never said!”

“No, I never do … usually. I’ve spent more time in that uniform than you have, Tessa.”

“We just did
Saint Joan,
” Tessa offered eagerly.

“What part did you have?”

“Joan.”

“And you satisfied Sister Elizabeth?”

“She said I was right for the Maid of France, that’s all. She doesn’t give an opinion if she can help it.”

“So I remember. Thank you, Tessa. We’ll see you tomorrow. And Mrs. Horvath, please leave your phone number with the receptionist.”

After the door closed behind Agnes and Tessa, Peggy and Fiona sat in silence for stunned seconds, both of them struck by the sudden flat dullness of the room as soon as Tessa left it.

“What was that business about
Saint Joan
and Sister Elizabeth?” Fiona ventured, realizing that Peggy had gone somewhere she couldn’t follow her.

“Sister Elizabeth never, ever put on a production of Saint Joan unless …”

“Unless?”

“She’d discovered someone she considered worthy of the part.”

“And what’s so terrific about this Sister Elizabeth, besides a long life span?”

“Fiona, she was the best director I’ve ever worked with. Ever. If she weren’t a nun she’d be a Hollywood legend. To my knowledge she hasn’t put on
Saint Joan
in twenty years. Miss Bridges, you’ve just been fortunate enough to witness a born actress, a schoolgirl with acting born in the bone and muscle and the fiber and the throat, the passion and the pacing, the arrogance and the humility, all there. And we were the first to hear her! You should pay me for letting you be here today!”

“I was over the moon about Tessa before she mentioned Sister Elizabeth. And you … you were gone from the minute she said hello in that marvelous voice. Must be the Hungarian father, I should think. Yummy Hungarians. Seriously, Peggy, did you really think she wouldn’t be able to act worth a damn?”

“Consider it my form of knocking on wood. As for Sister Elizabeth, it never hurts to have a saintly and infallible second opinion when magic strikes. Send the other girls away, Fi, I’m much too excited to give them a fair reading now. I’ve just remembered why I chose this infernal profession.”

“Righto. Want another Coke to celebrate, oh, secret convent queen?”

“You know perfectly well where I keep the Dom Pérignon, so stop being disrespectful to your betters.”

“I’m just jealous of that sexy uniform.”

“As well you might be. Now get out the champagne!”

T
he next afternoon, Roddy Fensterwald sat in the I casting office alongside Peggy Westbrook and Fiona Bridges. Much to his irritation, Glenda Bancroft had insisted on being present. She had heard from her assistant, who had been told by the all-knowing Ginger, that he was reading an exciting unknown for Jo.

“Roddy, lover, I’m thrilled that Peggy has found someone she thinks might do for Jo,” Glenda had said on the phone the previous night. “There’s no way I’d play Marmee with any of the hot young girls who are already out there,” Glenda continued earnestly. “They’ve all been spoiled by too many photos of them making the club scene. I’m dying to see a fresh face. Don’t be an old meanie. I promise I’ll be a fly on the wall. She won’t have any idea that it’s me. I’m aware that might make her freeze. I can’t be good if the whole cast isn’t good, you know that. After all, it is an ensemble piece.”

“You worry me when you make sense, Glenda. What do you plan to do, come in drag?”

“Give me credit for more subtlety than that. I often spend the afternoon shopping at the Price Club—it’s my
secret vice. I’ve never been spotted yet. If you have to introduce me, say I’m your secretary. I’ll make notes.”

“Damn it, Glenda—”

“Roddy, you won’t regret it. Till tomorrow, lover.”

He regretted it already, Roddy Fensterwald thought. Glenda Bancroft had taken a chair and put it quietly in a corner, as far away from them as she could sit, a diabolic move that somehow made her a focus of attention. She’d made a genuine effort not to be recognizable, he had to admit, in a truly dowdy pants suit and a head scarf, so that her signature red hair was hidden. But she couldn’t, in spite of not wearing makeup, hide her features, and she exuded that certain power that only a world-famous actress can possess. Bitch that he knew her to be, she hadn’t bothered to turn it off, as he knew damn well she could, if she pleased.