A DEEP OCEAN OF SECRETS
Chapter Three
Rose splashed her face with water
and sighed gently, looking at her pale complexion in the bathroom mirror. At
seventeen, Rose DeWitt Bukater was the first child of the late William Bukater
and her alive and well-living mother, Ruth. Rose let down her hair from her bun
and shook her curls down at her shoulders. They were lighter than Elisabeth’s,
the ringlets smaller. Her skin was a smooth ivory color, and she, too, had red
lips and perfectly arched eyebrows. However, Rose’s nose was smaller and
rounder at the end, and her eyes were a bluish-green haze, mixed together,
staring into the mirror with disdain.
Rose had more of a figure than
her sister and was taller. Rose was much more reserved compared to Elisabeth,
and felt like she was drowning in her upper class life. Marrying Cal, to her,
seemed like something she felt like she had to do, and her heart screamed for a
true love that would pass her way. True, she did love Cal, but sometimes she
questioned if he really loved her.
Rose strolled out of the bathroom
and back into the stateroom that they shared, and found Kathy fixing
Elisabeth’s hair while she sat at the vanity. Elisabeth looked at her in the
mirror, but turned back when Rose walked to her wardrobe and pulled out a day
dress for herself. Trudy was sorting out other clothes, and when Rose slipped
off her boarding outfit, she tightened her corset strings. Rose slipped on the
dress and observed herself in the mirror.
The dress’s hem was outlined with
black, a v-neck coming down to her collarbone. The dress tied at the hips, and
the skirts came past her ankles in a swishing mass. Between the neck and the
sash, a flower sat, a beautiful pastel pink, making Rose’s hair look dark and
more red than it truly was. She sat down at the vanity, as well, and Trudy
began to work on her hair.
"You two are awfully quiet.
Is there something the matter?" Trudy asked as she tied Rose’s thick hair
into a loose bun at the top of her head, letting a few strands fall near her
face.
"Nothing is wrong,
Trudy," Elisabeth said, smiling. Kathy fixed a few strands by Elisabeth’s
face, her hair tied up in a bun like Rose’s, and she stood up, slipping on a
pair of white satin gloves that came to her elbows. Rose put on an identical
pair of gloves and stood up just as her mother walked in, wearing a
gold-colored gown and looking more like she was ready to go out to dinner than
explore the ship.
"Are you girls ready yet?
You’ve taken long enough," Ruth said, slipping on her second glove, which
was also white. She looked up and down at Elisabeth and her nose scrunched up
with disgust. "Elisabeth, why did you pick that dress? You know I absolutely
loathe it."
"Mother…" Elisabeth
trailed off, looking down at the dress self-consciously.
"Oh, well, there isn’t time
to change. Cal won’t be joining us, since he has some…business to attend to. I
was thinking about some afternoon tea at one of the cafés," Ruth said.
Elisabeth looked over at her sister with a sort of worried expression covering
her face, her eyes wide and shocked at her mother’s insult. Rose just nodded to
her mother and the DeWitt Bukaters left their suite and walked down the brightly
lit corridor.
Ruth led the way, Rose and
Elisabeth right behind her, and came to the most elegant feature of the ship,
the Grand Staircase. Elisabeth had never seen such a sight, and her eyes lit up
with excitement as she peered up at the brightly lit glass dome above her,
which made her skin glow as she bathed in the warm light.
Elisabeth walked past a crewman
talking to a woman and her husband, both dressed in lavish clothes, smiling and
laughing. "Actually, we just docked in Cherbourg, France a couple minutes
ago. More passengers are being boarded as we speak," the crewman said.
"After this, we’ll be headed off to Ireland."
Rose overheard this, too, and
glanced up at the clock at the top of the Grand Staircase reading 4:07.
"Mother, don’t you think it is a little late for afternoon tea?" she
asked, stepping next to her mother, Elisabeth at her side.
"No, darling. Dinner starts
at seven o’clock. That gives us plenty of time," Ruth replied.
"Where are we going to have
tea?" Elisabeth asked.
"Elisabeth, darling, why so
many questions?" Ruth asked, staring at her daughter. "Stop acting
perplexed."
Perplexed? Elisabeth thought furiously. She turned to
Rose. "How am I being perplexed?" she demanded, overreacting.
Rose leaned her head over and
scratched her ear discreetly. "You aren’t, sister. Mother just demands
proper first class life everywhere she goes, even if she is on the grandest
ship ever built. But if you ask me, it doesn’t look any grander than our hotel where
we were staying in Paris," she said, looking around.
"Funny, that’s what Cal
said," Elisabeth mumbled sarcastically. "But, Rose, it is so much
fancier, and…" Elisabeth trailed off, searching for words. "So…"
"Brightly lit?" Rose
offered. Her sister shrugged, losing her train of thought. Elisabeth glanced
back at the couple, who had moved on, and heard the loud voice of the woman
ahead.
The woman had a big figure and a
southern accent, but looked friendly enough. She dropped the bags she was
carrying. "Well, I wasn’t about to wait all day for you, sonny. Take ‘em
the rest of the way if you think you can manage," the lady said, and a man
took the baggage she had set down on the carpeted floor.
*****
"At Cherbourg, a woman came
aboard named Margaret Brown, but we all called her Molly. History would call
her the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Her husband had struck gold someplace out west,
and she was what Mother called new money. Of course, Elisabeth and I didn’t
really know the difference. It was all first class to us, but Mother felt as if
she was a phony, or someone who got money by luck. But as Cal used to say, ‘A
man makes his own luck.’ By the next afternoon, we had made our final stop and
were steaming west from the coast of Ireland, with nothing out ahead of us but
ocean…"