ALONE?
Chapter Two
"Happy birthday dear
Jackie, happy birthday to you!"
A little four-year-old girl with
dirty blonde curls blew out the candles with help from Rose, her mother. Her
seven friends clapped and cheered, then bombarded Rose with cake requests.
Rose took out the candles and cut
up the cake for the overeager children, not believing that four years had
passed since she had had Jackie. Four and three quarters years since the
Titanic sank. It was January 14, 1917.
When the party was over, all the
children’s parents came to take their children home. Most Rose was friends or
friendly with.
The last girl to leave was picked
up by her father. Jackie looked at the pair with an odd expression on her face.
She said good-bye to her friend and Rose showed them out.
"Did you have a fun
birthday?" Rose asked, kneeling so she could be eye-level with her
daughter.
Jackie nodded, still staring at
the door. "Mommy, where’s Daddy?"
That broke Rose’s heart. She had
told her close friends a basic overview of her story, but she had never
mentioned it to Jackie. It had taken the girl four years to piece it together.
If she was old enough to figure that out, she was old enough to hear what had
happened.
"It’s a long story, Jackie.
And it doesn’t have a happy ending like in your picture books."
The little girl nodded. She was
ready for whatever.
"If you have any questions,
ask. You’re old enough to understand."
Another nod.
Rose took a deep breath, then
began. "First of all, there is something called a class system. Not like classes
in school, though. What class you’re in depends on how much money you have.
Upper class people have a lot of money and fancy clothes. Middle class is
normal people, like us. Lower class is for people who have very little money.
And people from different classes can’t talk to each other."
"Why not?" asked
Jackie.
Rose opened her mouth to answer,
but then realized she had absolutely no idea. It was so stupid. She and Jack
had really discovered that. She finally answered, "I don’t know." She
had heard that someone somewhere had said it was really hard to admit not
knowing something, but to Rose, it was a blessing.
"Well, I was in the upper
class. My mother and I had lost all of our money, but I was going to marry a
rich man so we wouldn’t become poor."
"Why did you need to be
rich?" Jackie wanted to know.
"Some people think money is
everything. My mother was like that. It’s strange, but some people do."
A nod of understanding.
"I didn’t like the man I was
going to marry. I didn’t choose him, but no one asked me. His name was Caledon
Hockley."
Jackie snorted. "That’s a
funny name," she said, grinning.
Rose smiled. "I know. But he
wasn’t a nice person. We went to Europe on a big boat. Do you know where that
is?"
Jackie shook her head. Rose took
out an atlas and pointed it out. "We’re here."
"All right."
"We were coming back here on
another big boat called the Titanic. Your father wasn’t going to go on the
boat, but he won a game and got a ticket. He was very poor, and in the lower
class. I hated my life. I couldn’t keep going. Your father and I met while I
was trying to jump off the back of the boat."
Jackie looked horrified.
"But wouldn’t you have gotten hurt?"
Rose nodded grimly. "I
wanted to die."
Jackie still looked a bit scared.
Rose felt a little bad about exposing her daughter to such horrors at the age
of four, but Jackie had asked for the story. And this was the story.
"He saw me and helped me not
to jump off. We became friends after that. Then I fell in love with him."
Jackie grinned. Even at age four, she was a sucker for romance. "Caledon
Hockley--Cal--didn’t like that. He tried to keep me away from him. But it
didn’t work. He hated your father. The Titanic was very big, and everybody knew
about it. But it hit a big block of ice, filled with water, and sank. It took a
very long time, and I was with your father for most of it. We were on the boat
until it was completely underwater. He found a piece of wood that would only
hold me, and he froze waiting for a lifeboat. A lifeboat is a smaller boat that
they have on big boats so that if the boat sinks, the people can get off.
People thought the Titanic could not sink, so there weren’t enough lifeboats.
More than half of the people on the ship died."
By now, Rose was crying, lost in
memory. Jackie wasn’t so involved, but she hugged her mother, who squeezed her
back.
"The lifeboat came back, but
your father had already died. I got on the boat, and we were picked up by
another boat, and we finished going to America. Then I found out I was going to
have you."
Jackie was silent for a moment.
"What was Daddy’s name?"
"Jack Dawson."
"That’s our name!" she
said.
"Yes, it is. After he died,
I took his name. My old last name was DeWitt Bukater."
"If that were my name, I
wouldn’t be able to spell it," stated Jackie.
"That’s what your father
said when I met him."
*****
It was four years and nine months
after the sinking, and Jack was sitting on a bench in Central Park.
A little girl with dirty blonde
curls came running towards him. She had obviously started running, as little
kids tended to do, and lost her mother. Or parents. She stopped in front of
him, looking a bit scared of this stranger.
He stared at her. It was strange.
The frightened eyes that were looking at him mirrored his own. Her thumb went
to her mouth.
A voice came into their hearing.
"Jackie! Jackelin Ariel Dawson!" Rose rounded the corner from where
Jackie had come, grabbed her daughter’s hand, and whirled her around.
"Never run away like that again! You want to run, you tell me, all right?"
She hugged the little four-year-old fiercely.
Only when she let go did she
stand up, saying, "I’m sorry, sir--"
Then she saw who she was talking
to. Her voice trailed away. Jack grinned.
Rose, completely aware of her
daughter’s presence, or she would have kissed him until the world exploded,
threw her arms around him and hugged him every bit as hard as she had just
squeezed her daughter.
When she pulled away, he leaned
in to kiss her, but she put a hand on his mouth to keep him from doing so. She
tilted her head towards Jackie, who was staring at her parents.
A wistful expression came over
Jack’s face. He looked at Jackie, then said to Rose, "Whose…?"
Rose could have laughed out loud.
He thought she was married? "Yours."
A smile broke out on his face
again. "Are you kidding me?" She shook her head, and he hugged her
again. After they broke apart again, Rose knelt by Jackie, who had waited
patiently, sucking her thumb, a sign that she was either uncomfortable or
scared.
"Jackie," Rose said,
"this is your father."
There was an awkward silence.
"I thought you said Daddy died."
Rose breathed out. She looked up
at Jack, who had a much more serious expression on his face now. "I did,
too," she replied, looking back at the girl. "It’s getting late, and
you need dinner and bed."
They went back to the apartment.
Jack looked around while Rose made dinner for Jackie. The four-year-old was
yawning as her mother took her plate away.
When she was asleep, Rose’s
strong exterior for her daughter broke down. She kissed him hard, then hugged
him with all that she had, tears streaming down her face.
When he was able to see her face,
he brushed her tears away and said, "Shit, Rose, why are you crying?"
"For four years, I though
you were dead! Dead, gone, frozen at the bottom of the ocean! I thought I was
going to be a single mother my whole life! I thought I was alone! I couldn’t go
on! I’m so sorry! I couldn’t do it! I broke my promise!"
"Rose," he said, trying
to calm her down, "you didn’t break your promise. And I’m sorry for
putting you through that. Don’t blame yourself, all right?"
Rose nodded and kissed him again,
holding onto him like he was going to disappear.