A LIFE SO CHANGED
Chapter Four

An enormous Sea Stallion helicopter thundering across the ocean. Pan one hundred eighty degrees as it roars past. There is no land at either horizon. The Keldysh is visible in the distance.

Rose’s face is visible, looking out calmly. She holds her dog in her lap. Lizzy is with her also. Lovett and Bodine are watching Mir Two being swung over the side to start a dive.

"She’s a God damned liar! Some kind of a nut case seeking money or publicity. God only knows what. Like that Russian babe...Anesthesia," said Bodine to Lovett.

"They’re inbound!" said Buell, pointing at the helicopter. Lovett nods and the three of them head forward to meet the approaching helicopter.

"She says she's Rose Black. Rose Black died on the Titanic at the age of twenty, right?" asked Bodine.

"That’s right," said Lovett.

"If she’d lived, she would be eighty-five by now."

"Eighty-six next month."

"Okay, so she’s a very old God damned liar." Lovett and Bodine are on the stairs. "Look, I’ve already done the background on this woman all the way to her early twenties. She was working as an actress. An actress! There’s your first clue, Sherlock. Her name was Rose Dawson back then. Then she married a guy named Calvert, and moved to Cedar Rapids. She punches out a couple of kids. Now Calvert's dead, and from what I've heard, Cedar Rapids is dead."

"And everybody who knows about the diamond is supposed to be dead...or on this ship. But she knows," said Lovett, getting angry with Bodine.

In a thundering down blast the helicopter’s wheels bounce down on the helipad. Lovett, Buell, and Bodine watch as the Helicopter Crew Chief hands out about ten suitcases.

"Doesn’t exactly travel light, does she?" asked Bodine to Buell.

Lovett walks over the helicopter to greet Rose. Rose is lowered to the deck in a wheelchair by Keldysh crewmen. Lizzy, ducking unnecessarily under the rotor, follows her out.

"Mrs. Calvert, I’m Brock Lovett. Welcome to the Keldysh." Shaking Rose’s hand. She nods.

"OK, let’s get her inside there. Hi, Miss Calvert." Shaking her hand.

"Hi!" said Lizzy.

"Welcome to the Keldysh."

The crew chief hands a puzzled Lovett a goldfish bowl with several fishes.

Lizzy is unpacking Rose’s things in the small utilitarian room. Rose is placing a number of framed photos on the bureau, arranging them carefully next to the fishbowl. Lovett and Bodine are in the doorway. They don’t see the pictures. Lovett knocks.

"Yes?" asked Rose.

"Is your stateroom all right?" asked Lovett, coming in. Bodine is waving at Rose and Lizzy.

"Yes. Very nice. Have you met my granddaughter, Lizzy? She takes care of me." Looking at Lizzy, with a grandmotherly love. Lizzy was her favorite. Her oldest grandchild.

"We met just a few minutes ago. Remember, Nana? Up on deck?"

"Oh, yes." Forgotten that they did.

Lovett glances at Bodine. Bodine rolls his eyes. Lovett turns back to Rose, watching her finish arranging her photographs.

"There, that’s nice. I have to have my pictures when I travel." Rose laughs.

"Can I get you anything? Is there anything you like?" asked Lovett.

"Yes...I would like to see my drawing."

Rose looks at the drawing in its tray of water, confronting herself across a span of sixty-five years. Until they can figure out the best way to preserve it, they have to keep it immersed. It sways and ripples, almost as if alive.

Rose’s eyes gaze at the drawing. She has a flashback of a man’s hand, holding a conte crayon, deftly creating a shoulder and the shape of her hair with two efficient lines.

His eyes, just visible over the top of a sketching pad. They look up suddenly at someone. Her. Soft light blue eyes, but fearlessly direct and loving.

Rose opens her eyes and sees her young face in the drawing is dancing under the water. She smiles. Lovett has the reference photo of the necklace in his hand.

"Louis the Sixteenth wore a fabulous stone, called the Blue Diamond of the Crown, which disappeared in 1792, about the time old Louis lost everything from the neck up." Rose shakes her head. Lovett continued.

"The theory goes that the crown diamond was chopped too...recut into a heart-like shape...and it became known as ‘The Heart of the Ocean.’ Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond."

"It was a dreadful, heavy thing..." Rose points at the drawing. "I only wore it once."

"You actually think this is you, Nana?" Looking at the drawing.

"It is me, dear. Wasn’t I a hot number?" Rose and Lovett laugh.

"I tracked down through insurance records...an old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Can you tell me who the claimant was, Rose?" asked Lovett.

"I should imagine someone named Black." With a sneer.

A current of excitement runs the crew members in the room.

"Cal Black, that’s right. The claim was for a necklace that he bought for his oldest daughter, Renee, for her birthday, but wore by his youngest daughter, you..." Rose rolls her eyes. "A week before he sailed on Titanic. It was filed right after the sinking. So the diamond had to go down with the ship...see the date?"

"July 14, 1998," said Lizzy.

"Which means if your grandmother is who she says she is, she was wearing the diamond the day the Titanic sank," said Bodine to Lizzy.

"And that makes you my new best friend," said Lovett to Rose.

"These are few of your things that we’ve recovered from your stateroom," said Lovett.

Laid out on a workable are fifty or so objects, from mundane to valuable. Rose, with a trembling hand, she lifts a tortoise shell hand mirror, inlaid with mother of pearl. She caresses it wonderingly.

"This was my friend’s. How extraordinary! And it looks the same as it did the last time I saw it," she said to Lizzy. She turns the mirror over and looks at her ancient face in the cracked glass. "The reflection has changed a bit."

Rose puts the hand mirror down and sees something else. A gold bracelet covered with green color on it.

"My mother's bracelet. She wanted to go back for it. Caused quite a fuss."

Rose picks up an ornate art-nouveau hair comb. A black cat takes flight on the ebony handle of the comb. She turns it slowly, remembering. "This was mine."

They can see that Rose is experiencing a rush of images and emotions that have lain dormant for six decades as she handles the cat comb. Lovett gently put his hand on her shoulder. "Are you ready to back to Titanic?" Rose nods.

It is a darkened room lined with TV monitors. Images of the wreck fill the screens, fed from Mir One and Two, and the two ROVs, Snoop Dog and Duncan.

"Live from twelve thousand feet," said Bodine, with a smile.

Rose stares raptly at the screens. She is enthralled by one in particular, an image of the bow railing. It obviously means something to her. Lovett is studying her reactions carefully.

"The bow's struck in the bottom like an ax, from the impact. Here...I can run a simulation we worked up on this monitor over here," said Bodine.

Lizzy turns the wheelchair so Rose can see the screen of Bodine's computer. As he is calling up the file, he keeps talking. "We've put together the world's largest database on the Titanic. Okay, here--"

"Rose might not want to see this, Lewis," said Lovett.

"No, no. It's fine. I'm curious," said Rose, with a wave.

Bodine starts a computer animated graphic on the screen, which parallels his rapid-fire narration.

"OK, here we go. She hits the berg on the starboard side, right? And it sort of bumps along...punching holes like a Morse code...dit dit dit, down the side, below the waterline..."

The animation then follows the bow section as it sinks. Rose watches this clinical dissection of the disaster without emotion.

"...and the forward compartments starts to flood. So now as the water level rises, it spills over the watertight bulkheads, which unfortunately don’t go any higher than E deck. So now as the bow goes down, the stern rises up. Slow at first then faster and faster until finally she’s got her whole ass is sticking up in the air..."

Rose makes a look, when Bodine said, "Ass."

"...and that’s a big ass, we’re talking twenty...thirty thousand tons, O.K.? The hull is not designed to deal with that pressure, so what happens? SKRTTT!" Bodine is making a sound in time with the animation. "...it splits! Right down to the keel, and the stern falls back level. Then as the bow sinks, it pulls the stern up vertical, and then finally detaches. Now the stern section kind of bobs like a cork for a couple of minutes, floods and finally goes under about 2:20 a.m. Two hours and forty minutes after the collision. The bow section planes away, landing a half a mile away going twenty...thirty knots before it hits the bottom floor...kaboom! Pretty cool, huh?"

"Thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Mr. Bodine. Of course the experience of it was somewhat different," said Rose, with a smirk.

"Will you share it with us?" asked Lovett.

Rose’s eyes go back to the screens. A view from one of the subs tracking slowly over the boat deck. She gets up slowly from her wheelchair, and walks over slowly to the screen. She recognizes one of the Wellin davits, still in place. She hears ghostly waltz music. The faint and echoing sound of an officer's voice, English accented, calling, "Women and children only."

Rose has a flashback of screaming faces in a running crowd. Pandemonium and terror. People crying, praying, kneeling on the deck. Just impressions...flashes in the dark.

Rose looks at another monitor. Snoop Dog moving down a rusted, debris-filled corridor. Rose watches the endless row of doorways sliding past, like dark mouths.

She also flashbacks an image of a child, three years old, standing ankle deep in water in the middle of an endless corridor. The child is lost alone, crying.

Child: "Help me!"

But most of all, she remembers, herself on broken wooden driftwood in the water, hearing a man crying out.

Man: "Please help us!"

Rose is shaken by the flood of memories and emotions. Her eyes well up and she puts her head down, sobbing quietly. Lizzy goes over and takes her shoulders. "I’m taking her back to our room."

Rose shakes her head. "No."

"Come on, Nana," Lizzy protested.

"NO!" Her voice is surprisingly strong.

Lovett signals everyone to stay quiet. Rose walks back slowly to the wheelchair, and sits. He switches on the mini recorder and sets it near her. "Tell us, Rose."

Rose takes a deep breath. "It’s been sixty-five years--"

"It’s OK. Just try to remember anything. Anything at all," said Lovett.

"Do you want to hear this or not, Mr. Lovett?" Lovett nods.

"It’s been sixty-five years...and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams. And it was. It really was." The screen behind Rose is the Titanic of 2063. It suddenly dissolves to the Titanic of 1998...

Chapter Five
Stories