BACK WITH YOU
Chapter Ten

Jessamyn’s eyelids felt heavy as she rolled over and tried to open them. When she finally succeeded, she saw the sunlight creeping into her room and noticed that it was obviously not early. Groaning softly, she glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost noon. She hadn't slept this late in years. Even the bright sunlight, which usually woke her up, had not bothered her.

Under the sheets, she stretched her legs out and yawned, debating whether to get up or go back to sleep or get up. One part of her was still very tired, but the other desperately wanted to talk to Rose again. Not to mention ask her about the box she had found last night. And of course, she needed to apologize. Jessamyn knew she had acted like a bitch before going to bed. Rose had just been trying to explain some things and Jessamyn had shut her out. It had finally hit her last night how very real all of this was.

When Rose had said, "I love you," though, Jessamyn had felt odd. She loved her, too, in a sort of unknowing way, but she wasn’t sure that she could tell Rose that. She couldn't even call her Mother to her face yet. It was just too weird. All her life, Elizabeth Calvert had been the one she called mom. It was going to be hard getting used to calling someone else that.

After lying there for about ten minutes contemplating the situation, Jessamyn finally concluded the best thing for her to do was to get up and face Rose. And so she sluggishly pulled herself from under the warm covers and made her way across the room. More light hit her sensitive eyes when she opened the door to the hallway, causing what Jessamyn feared was permanent blindness, and she had to use her arm to shield some of it. Groggily, she continued down the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen.

Rose was sitting at the table reading the paper with a cup of coffee in her hand. She started grinning when she saw her daughter, who was obviously still half asleep, approach.

"Morning," she said as Jessamyn sat down in a nearby chair.

Jessamyn made a sound that wasn't comprehendible and laid her head on the table. Her eyes closed and she managed to give a little wave.

"Are you hungry?" Rose asked, getting up from her seat. She was couldn’t stop smiling. If she went out in public like this, people would get worried. "I could make you something if you want. Waffles, eggs, um...pancakes?"

Jessamyn lifted her head and opened her eyes. "I'll just have some toast, thanks." Her eyes started to close again. "And some coffee," she added as she forced them back open again. What she really needed was a shower or a bath; that would wake her up.

Rose started laughing. "That’s probably a good choice...the toast, I mean. You don’t want to taste my pancakes. They're either burnt or half done."

Jessamyn managed a smile, but didn't say anything. She desperately wanted to ask her mother about her dad and the box. But she needed to be a little bit more conscious before that happened. Right now she probably couldn’t spell her own name if someone asked her.

While Jessamyn wrestled with the questions to ask, Rose was having similar thoughts about Jack. As she cut a slice of bread and then popped it into the toaster, her mind started to drift back. She knew she was going to have to explain it all to Jessamyn. Her daughter deserved to know where she came from. But it was going to be hard. It still hurt to think about it sometimes. Rose would be walking down the street and overhear some comment that would remind her of something Jack said, and it would all come back. Often she would break down crying and have to take time from work or whatever she was doing to compose herself again. And then there were the panic attacks. Those always seemed to get worse as the anniversary neared. Once she had gotten stuck in an elevator downtown and had completely lost it. After being trapped behind that gate as the ship was going down, she now felt herself more claustrophobic then she cared to be. Her heart had begun to beat so fast she was sure it was going to pop out of her chest. Rose had become sweaty and she couldn't see straight. But then, all at once it was fixed and she was moving again. And then the panic attack passed. The feeling never left her, though. Sometimes there would be so many reminders coming to her at once that it was almost to much to bear. It always passed, though--even if it often took some time. Telling Jessamyn was going to cause Rose to be in a sour, depressed mood for the rest of the day. But it needed to be done.

Mechanically, she set the now-finished toast on a plate and set it, along with the butter, in front of Jessamyn. The coffee was next. That too was done mindlessly and she didn't even notice her daughter's question when she set the coffee down.

"What are you doing today?"

Jessamyn, who was more awake now, could tell Rose hadn't heard her because she had this odd look in her eyes that was sort of staring off at something. Jessamyn turned and looked in the direction of the gaze, but saw only a wall. She turned back around and gave a wave in front of her mother's eyes. Rose shook her head and then blinked a few times.

"Oh, I'm sorry, darling. What’s wrong?"

Jessamyn shook her head. "Nothing is wrong. Just wondering what you were doing today," she said, before taking a sip of coffee, which happened to be pretty weak. She made a mental note to make the coffee from now on. Nevertheless, though, the caffeine was much needed.

Rose sat down at the table across from Jessamyn and shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing. I called into work and explained what happened to Phoebe; she's going to cover me for the rest of the week. I thought later today we could go to your apartment and get your things," she explained, as she tried to get her mind back on the present. "Assuming you want to stay, of course," she added.

"Of course I do," Jessamyn replied. She wanted to stay for a very long time. Getting to know Rose like daughters should know their mothers was important to her. She wanted them to have a relationship. If it were otherwise, Jessamyn would have left last night. She didn't tell Rose this, though. Instead, she reached across the table and picked up the paper. After finding the front page, she opened it up and began reading.

It was quiet for a while as Jessamyn lost herself in the current news. Once in a while she would take another sip or two of coffee, but other than that her attention was only on the paper.

Rose watched her daughter read page after page. If she had noticed anything about Jessamyn, it was how much she loved words. She was obviously well-learned. The way she read things was obsessive. Rose had watched Jessamyn pick up more soup cans and magazines in the short time she had been here than anyone else in her life. It was like Jessamyn needed to read or else she would be terribly bored.

Jessamyn, meanwhile, had peeked over and around the paper and noticed Rose looking at her. It was odd, she decided, before continuing reading. It took her only a little while to finish and then she folded the paper over itself and set it down. She took a breath for strength and couldn’t believe she was going to do what she was about to do.

"Um…Mom?" That was the first obstacle. Jessamyn felt odd, but relieved, after she said it. In fact, it felt sort of natural after a few moments, once she got used to the sound of it. It was, after all, her mother. Why not call her that?

Rose's reaction was priceless. She had noticed that Jessamyn had never called her anything but Um and You. And when she heard her daughter say Mom, it filled her heart with such happiness. Her eyes lit up and she broke into a smile. She'd been waiting for years for that simple title.

"Yes?" she asked in reply, her voice cracking.

"Tell me about my dad." It wasn’t a question. Jessamyn's words were rushed and she immediately looked down, hoping that Rose would not shy away from her request. When she finally dared a look up, she was amazed at how pale her mother's face had become. That same distant gaze was in Rose's eyes again. Maybe this was a bad idea after all. "You don't have to, you know. I don’t--"

"No, you deserve to know," Rose said gravely. She looked to Jessamyn like she would rather do anything else in the world and Jessamyn now felt very guilty. What could possibly be so horrible that Rose got this disturbed by simply thinking about it?

Rose took a deep breath and looked Jessamyn straight in the eye. "Honey, a lot of what I am going to tell you mustn’t ever be said to anyone else. And you'll understand why, once I am finished." She paused for a moment, and Jessamyn took the liberty of reaching across the table, taking her mother's hand in her own. It was icy cold. Rose gave her a simple smile and then continued. "Also…um…you know about sex...right? How it all works...you know...why and all that?"

Jessamyn couldn't help but laugh a little bit. "Of course," she assured Rose.

"It's just, well, obviously its why you're here." Rose pushed some hair away from her face with her free hand. She didn't even want to know how much about sex Jessamyn knew...or how she knew. Well, maybe she did. But now was not the time. "And it just has a lot to do with things."

"All right. I'll keep that in mind."

Rose smiled again and then took another deep breath. "All right," she began. "Here goes. Um…I was born to a rich family--"

"The DeWitt Bukaters?"

"How did you know?" Rose asked softly, amazed at the knowledge her daughter apparently already had. What else did she know?

Jessamyn grinned across the table. "Your letter," she said simply.

Rose's mind flashed back to a cold night, many years ago. She could see herself sitting at that old, rundown desk writing the letter to Jessamyn. She had completely forgotten that she had left that to be given to her. That goddamn necklace was in there, too. Shit, Rose hated that thing.

"That’s right," she mumbled. She could still hear Jessamyn crying behind her, the pain that filled her heart whenever she had heard it. Jessamyn had been so sick at that point. Every cry sounded like she was struggling for breath.

"Mom..." Jessamyn could tell her mother was slipping off to la-la land again. At this rate, she was pretty sure Rose would never make it through anything.

Rose's mind returned to the present and she shook her head in an attempt to make it all go away. She needed to tell this story before she lost the nerve.

"Sorry," Rose apologized. Another deep breath. "Anyway, I was born to the DeWitt Bukaters. Um…we lived in Philadelphia, but from the time I was about eight I was at boarding school. Mostly in France, but for a few years I was in England. So, aside from summers, I wasn't home much. And even when I was in the United States, we went traveling a lot. When I was about fifteen, though, my father died. He left us with nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing, Jess. I had known for a while that they were having money problems. But I never said anything. I think there were maybe a few hundred left in the bank when he died. And then I found out later that most of that went to pay off debts that he had tallied up those last few months." Rose paused for brief moment. This was the point where it all started to get bad. Jessamyn looked like she was listing intently, her gaze stone-like, focused upon Rose.

"Anyway, I was left with my mother. And, well, to put it simply, we did not get along. We fought over everything. She pulled me out of school and back home. Her plan was to marry me off to the nearest, richest person she could set eyes on. Have you ever heard of Caledon Hockey?"

Jessamyn's eyes widened and she gasped. "You were engaged to him? Wasn't he the rich guy who committed suicide a couple of years ago?" Jessamyn remember hearing something about the Hockleys too...about an accident involving their steel or something. She couldn't remember the details, though.

Rose nodded. "Yeah, that’s him. Mother practically forced me into this engagement with him. Well, that’s not true. She definitely pressured me into it, but it wasn't entirely her doing. He proposed me one Christmas and I said yes, thinking I could be seen as the big hero and save the family." Once again, Rose paused. "But," she finally continued, "not long after our engagement I began to see what he was really like; this awful, disrespectful, patronizing man. I couldn’t imagine my life with him and I started looking for a way out. It was February when he presented me with a trip to France as a Valentine’s Day gift. It was a real treat for me because he wasn't going and I finally had some time to myself. So anyway, we packed up and went to Paris. I think we were there for maybe a month when he suddenly showed up, beaming ridiculously about his recent business deal involving our trip home. His company had invested a great deal of their money and steel into this..." a deep breath "...new ship, and ah, we had first class tickets home."

What followed next was so revealing that when Jessamyn looked back on it years later she still got goosebumps. It was at that moment that she had realized what ship that Hockley Steel had been connected with so infamously.

"On April tenth we boarded the Titanic..." Rose's voice had dropped a few octaves and she couldn’t look at Jessamyn.

Jessamyn gasped in the realization that her guess had been correct. But, it couldn't be right, right? There was absolutely no way in hell that her mother had been on that ship when it went down. But a quick glance at Rose told her that it was indeed true. Jessamyn began to pale when she thought about it and she feared she might be sick. Her mother had been on the Titanic? And what made it worse was that Jessamyn had gone through a phase when she was about ten of wanting to know everything about the ship. She had pored over books for weeks soaking up information. It seemed so sick and twisted now that she felt incredibly guilty.

"Y-you were actually on the Titanic?" Jessamyn asked in a disbelieving whisper.

The only response from Rose was a quick, curt little nod.

"Oh, my God..." Jessamyn couldn’t believe it was true. Her hand flew to her forehead as she began to get little dizzy. That in itself was amazing, but what did her father have to do with any of it? "My dad..."

"Was on it, too," Rose answered, her gaze focused on the table. When she finally did look up, she wiped a few silent tears from her eyes. "One night I just decided that that was it. I was not going to put up with it anymore. I was sick of my mother bitching to me and reprimanding me. And of Cal always having me on display, acting like I was his prize cattle or something. I just started running and the next thing I knew I was at the back of the ship and climbing over the rail. I was going to jump and end it all and then..." Rose sniffled as her eyes filled up with tears again. "…and then a man's voice cut through the night. He told me not to do it."

Jessamyn was pretty sure what she was going to say was not appropriate. So she just kept her comments to herself. Rose was in enough pain as it was.

"He introduced himself as Jack Dawson and convinced me to climb back over the railing. And I did. And well, to make a long story short, Cal invited him to dinner in thanks for saving me from plunging to my death trying to look at the propellers. Jack and I spent the next day talking, mostly about his art and about our childhoods, and then he came to dinner. After that, he took me dancing." Rose was now pretty much lost in that world again. She could still hear the sounds and shivers ran up and down her back when she thought of Jack's touch. She continued on, almost absentmindedly, "It was the most fun I’d ever had in my life. That was when I began to realize I couldn't spend the rest of my life without him. His presence was so magnetic. I wanted him by my side forever. But I knew Mother would never stand for it. He was poor. We needed money. It would never work. And when she found out I had snuck away with him after dinner, she was none to happy either. I was ordered not to see him again. Jack pulled me aside later that day and explained how he basically wanted to see that I was okay. He would back down, but only after he was assured I was going to be all right. I gave him the programmed response that I was fine and then left. But later I realized how stupid I was and that I wanted to be with him, no matter what.

"I found him on the bow of the ship, looking so forlorn. And when I said hello, his whole face lit up. We knew then that it was too strong a pull to resist. He took me flying there; we stood on the railing and just let the boat carry us forward. And that’s where we first kissed. And I invited him back to my room and asked him to draw me."

Rose stopped talking and, to Jessamyn’s surprise, her mouth formed into a little devilish smile. "Do you still have that necklace that was in that bundle of things?" She hated the thing, and kind of hoped Jessamyn had sold it or something. But it was fun to think about what it had been a part of.

"Yes, it's in my jacket pocket," Jessamyn answered earnestly.

From Rose's mouth came a little laugh. "Darling, you've been walking about with a multi-million, if not more, dollar necklace."

Jessamyn's reaction was priceless as she let out little gasp and her face paled once again. "You're joking, right?" was the only thing she could think to say.

Rose shook her head. "No," she promised. "Cal had given it to me the night I met Jack. I was some sort of engagement deal, I guess. Anyway, I asked your father to draw me with it on, just it." She emphasized the last two words, hoping Jessamyn would get it.

And she did. Now Jessamyn really didn't know what to think. First, her mother and father had been on the Titanic. Then she found out her costume jewelry necklace she had been walking around with was actually worth more money than she had seen in her life. And now her mother was telling her she had stripped down and allowed her father to draw her naked. What the hell else could there be?

"Well, anyway, he did. And then as I was getting dressed, Cal's little sniper-valet man came in and started chasing us through the ship. Jack and I ended up in one of the cargo holds, where we found a car...and a backseat." Rose blushed profusely, not about to go into the details of what happened next.

Jessamyn read between the lines. This is where she came into play. She had been conceived in the back seat of a car! Talk about a teenage tradition. And of all things holy and not good, she did not want to hear about it. Her parents couldn't have even done it somewhere romantic, or in the very least in a goddamn bed. But no, it was a freaking car in the middle of a cargo hold. The thought made her want to shiver.

"Shit," was all she could say and Rose burst out laughing.

"Yeah, nine months later you showed up," her mother said, rather proudly, as if getting pregnant before she was married was a normal and moral thing. "But, obviously, we didn’t know that at the time. And it was just a few moments later that the ship hit the iceberg."

Rose’s tone was suddenly became very somber again. "To make another long and drawn out process short, we ended up going down together after a lot of struggles. In the water, he found a board and," her voice was cracking now, and it was getting hard to breathe, "there was only room for one. It was so cold, Jess. You can’t even imagine. Jack made me promise to go on, to live out my life. And then, by the time that boat came, he was gone. He saved me, and I didn't even get to thank him. He died before I could thank him."

The tears running down Rose's checks suddenly wouldn’t stop. Jessamyn herself was touched and felt a funny, numb feeling envelope her. It was probably the most depressing thing she had ever heard, and she had the feeling that it was only some of the story. No wonder her mother was a little crazy.

As her own tears began to fall, Jessamyn moved to the other side of the table and put her arm around Rose's shoulders. How awful to go through such a thing. She wasn’t about to bug her with questions, even though she had a lot. In fact, Jessamyn had forgotten about the whole box incident until just now. But, oh well, plenty of time later for more questions. Right now she knew that her mother needed her to just be there.

*****

Later that night, when she could not sleep, Jessamyn took the necklace out of her jacket pocket and held it for a long, long time. It was freezing cold in her hand, but it was still the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And it was real. That was the humbling part. Slowly, she lifted it to her nose and breathed in. The very distant smell of salt could still be detected. Jessamyn still couldn’t believe it had been on the Titanic. That her parents were even connected with it at all was amazing.

Slowly, she stood up and walked out of her bedroom and down the hall to Rose's room. Her mother had fallen asleep around seven, exhausted from the day, and was still out when Jessamyn entered. Quietly, she crept over to Rose and studied her for a moment. Finally, she took her mother's hand and placed the necklace in the palm, clasping the fingers around the cold stones. Rose's face immediately changed to that of pain, as if the necklace were burning into her skin. But she remained fast asleep.

Jessamyn left as quietly as she had entered. There was so much more to the story; she knew that. She could tell that Rose had loved Jack, even though she hadn't come right out and said so. The pain in her mother's face was enough to show Jessamyn how much it was killing her not to have him around. And she began to realize there were things she would probably never know.

She admired her father now, even though she really did not know him at all. She had no idea what he even looked like. But just knowing what he was like as a man was enough for her. Jessamyn was smart enough to know that no one would lay down their life for someone else unless they were a noble, amiable person. And Jack Dawson certainly had been one of those people. There would be plenty of time to figure out details. The box was going to have to wait.

Chapter Eleven
Stories