Rose was brushing her hair and putting on a pretty dress when she heard a knock at the door. She ran to the foyer and opened it. She squinted her eyes and scrutinized the man with the dark blond hair and blue eyes standing in the threshold. She blinked a few times but said nothing. "Rose?" asked the man.
"Who are you?" she asked nervously.
"Rose! My God, it’s you!" There were tears in the man’s eyes and he leaned forward and engulfed her in an embrace. But she pushed him away.
"Who are you?" she asked again.
"Rose…it’s me…Jack!" There was excitement and concern in his voice. Why doesn’t she recognize me?
"What?" Her voice was choked and revealed hurt and utter confusion. Her eyes watered. "Is this some sort of sick joke?" She stepped back and looked the man up and down. "Jack Dawson died ten years ago."
"No! Rose! I didn’t die!" He had to convince her.
"Who are you really? Go away!" Rose was crying a little now.
"Look…another lifeboat picked me up after they saved you. But I was unconscious for more than a week. That’s why we never saw each other, I guess." He stepped back and waited for a response.
Rose, quite scared, said, "But…then why have you only found me now?" It was a reasonable question. And the thought was burning in her mind. Is this really Jack?
"You weren’t on the survivor list. I assumed you had died. But then, on the list…" And he began to explain.
*****
Last month was April 15, 1922. Jack was living in Pennsylvania, where he was working on a farm with an old friend of his. He had been for ten years. Ever since he woke up in a hospital in New York and was told what had happened a week earlier. Slowly, the memories came back to him and he asked to see a survivor list. Lying in the hospital bed, he took a deep breath and began to skim the list.
"No!" he cried, after failing to find the name Rose DeWitt Bukater beside Ruth DeWitt Bukater. Tears fell down his cheeks as he carefully folded the list and put it in the pocket of his brown pants. The same ones he had worn when Rose died. For a week, Jack was inconsolable.
When they finally released him from the hospital, he got a room in the city. He bumped into a friend of his, named Paul, who learned of Jack’s situation and invited him to live on his farm with him. It was actually Paul’s dad’s farm, but he had just passed and Paul was taking it over. For years, Jack worked there, plowing the fields and helping Paul’s wife out with their two small children. But that April fifteenth, when the still single Jack realized that it was the tenth anniversary of Rose’s death, he took his Titanic box out from under his bed.
It was a wooden box that contained the clothes he had worn that fateful day, some drawing he had made of it afterwards, and newspaper cut-outs from the weeks that had followed. He hadn’t looked at this box in almost ten years. It was just too painful. He read and re-read the articles from the New York Tribune and the New York Times. He looked at the drawing he had made. There was one he had made of Rose. He had spent weeks trying to get it right. It looked just like her and portrayed her in the beautiful dress she had worn when she died. He could feel a lump in his throat as he smoothed his artist hands over the white shirt and brown pants he had worn that night, ten years back. His eyes narrowed in confusion as his hand fell upon a lump in his pants’ pocket. My ticket? he thought. He reached in and pulled out the papers. He looked it over and realized it was the survivor list. He sighed, leaned back and began to look through it. He found himself browsing through the record of third class survivors.
"Adams, John," he read. and kept looking down, reading out a few names. "Bradley, Bridge; Corr, Helen; Cribb, Laura; Davies, Evan; Davison, Mary; Dawson, Rose." He stopped, and his heart almost did as well. Dawson, Rose? Rose Dawson? Could it be? He was convinced it was. That she was alive. She must be! And after that he left the farm and spent the next month tracking her down. Now he was face to face with her. And she was just pushing him away.
"So…it’s really you?" she asked, her voice not revealing her emotion. Jack nodded. This was not the kind of response he had hoped for. He had counted on her receiving him with open arms.
"Mama, what are we having for dinner?" A little girl, about four or five, walked into the room and approached Rose. "Oh, who is this, Mama?"
Rose blinked and snapped out of the almost-trance she had been in. "Jack...Dawson. This is Mr. Dawson," she whispered.
"Do you know him, Mom?" asked the little girl with Rose’s comely red curls and large eyes.
Rose nodded. "I used to, a long time ago." Jack attempted not to show how much he was hurting, and tried not to hope to hard, thinking, Is this my child?
But then, his hope was dashed when he heard the cries of a baby. "Excuse me," she said, and rushed into the next room. Moments later, she returned, holding a small baby in her arms. "My son, Jacob," she told him. "And this is my daughter, Lucy." Rose paused and took a deep breath. "Jack, I’m married. I have been for more than five years now. Robert Calvert is his name. I’m Rose Calvert now. I’m…so sorry." Jack could see that she was trying very hard not to cry. "I know how you must be feeling right now, and I feel it, too. Really, I do. This is all so much to take in!" And she collapsed into a chair. "Oh, Jack! I can’t believe you’re alive!" Lucy ran into another room and returned with a man who was presumed to be her father. Rose stood up and Robert took the baby from her. "Robert, this is an old…friend of mine, Jack. Jack, this is my husband, Robert."
"How do you do?" asked Robert, extending his arm. Jack just stared.
"I have to go," he said, and rushed out the still-open door.
"What was that about?" asked Robert.
"I’m sorry. I’ll just be a moment," Rose said, and walked out in pursuit of Jack. "Jack! Wait! Please!" she called after him. She caught up to him and they both stopped, staring at each other. "Don’t think I don’t still love you. I do. But you told me to go on. To make lots of babies, and watch them grow. So I did. Jack! You were dead! But don’t think I didn’t think of you. Wish, pray, cry, hope, dream! I did! Always!"
"I’m not going to ask you to leave him," Jack said. "Just give me one last kiss." Rose nodded, and his lips touched hers, staying that way for more than a minute. Finally, they pulled away.
"Will I see you again?" Rose asked.
"I don’t think that would be best," Jack responded.
"Please write."
"Perhaps," he said, and turned around and walked away. Rose went inside and joined her husband, whom she loved very much, and the two children she’d had with him. Though she heard he got married and had a few kids, and lived a long healthy life, she never saw or heard from him again. It was almost as if their chance encounter had not occurred. Rose had one more son a few years later, named Jack. One of Jack Dawson’s daughters was named Rose. Jack and Rose the younger met on a ship one day when they were in their twenties. This ship did not sink. You do the math.
The End.
