BACK WITH YOU
Chapter Thirteen
Jessamyn was up before sunrise the next
morning, cooking breakfast for Rose. She herself was not hungry in the least,
and after the sleepless night, the only thing she really felt like was coffee.
Her mind was still actively occupied with the idea of Mr. Jack being her
father, and the reality of what that might mean was astonishing. Had there been
no Titanic story? Was Jack Dawson just some random man her mother had slept
with? Or was there some deeper, darker tragedy surrounding their paths? A twist
of fate, maybe? Jessamyn couldn't shake the feeling that it was the latter, and
tried her best to ignore it.
Rose got up around eight and welcomed the
surprise from her daughter. She was in a better mood than the night before and
enjoyed listening to Jessamyn rant and rave about her date with Charlie,
although she did notice that Jess became suddenly reserved when talking about
the end of the evening, and she wondered what on earth had happened.
Nevertheless, she ate her pancakes
gratefully, enjoying the first hot breakfast she had eaten in years. She
decided that Jessamyn's sour mood change must just been hormones or something
to that effect and managed to push it to the back of her mind. She was not
going to let anything ruin her perfectly good Saturday.
At around eleven, Rose announced that she was
going to spend the day down by the shore and asked Jessamyn if she would like
to keep her company. Jessamyn declined, saying she had things to do, which was
the truth, but lying by saying it had to do with clearing some things up with
her family in Maine. She knew that her mother would not press that subject for
details and thankfully had been left alone.
Not long after Rose left, Jessamyn started
phase one of the plan she had not so carefully planned during breakfast.
Cautiously, as if her mother might be there, she crept into Rose's room and
started to look around, more carefully this time. It was only then that she
really noticed a big chest sitting at the end of the bed. Jessamyn ran over to
it and tried to open it, only to find in vain that it was locked. After some
time of searching, she finally found a key ring in the bottom drawer of Rose's
nightstand. Several of them she recognized, including the house and office
keys, but a few were unfamiliar and she wondered excitedly if they fit the
lock.
After a couple of futile tries, one of them
finally turned and Jessamyn slowly opened up the heavy lid of the cedar chest.
It smelled of water and roses, causing her to cough in the dust. But what she
saw made up for it all.
Lying on top of a huge bunch of things was
the Heart of the Ocean, stashed away in an open topped small jewelry box with
some earrings, a necklace, and a few other little things. Gingerly, Jessamyn
lifted the box out and set it on the floor. Underneath were some old, yellowing
newspapers. These, too, Jessamyn took out and began to look through. All of
them were dated from 1912 and there was one prevalent theme: Titanic. Most of
them were just articles about the disaster. But the last one shocked her to the
bone. It was from May second, and the headline read: Memorial Services To Be
Held in Philadelphia Today For Dead DeWitt Bukater Girl. Underneath was a
picture of a woman. A woman, who, Jessamyn recognized, was unmistakably Rose.
There was no doubt that the face was that of her mother.
Jessamyn felt her breath quicken as she began
to read the article. The words astonished her and she felt sick, realizing that
someone had held a memorial for Rose when she was really alive and well in New
York at the time. How odd it must have been for her mother to see people
mourning over her. And yet, she had never told anyone. How amazing.
There was a statement from Rose's fiancé,
that Hockley man. I am deeply saddened by the recent events and will
continue to love Rose forever. Her memory will remain with me always, as will
her spirit.
What bullshit, Jessamyn thought. She knew very well that Hockley
had married no less then two years later, and had killed himself over money in
1929. There was no way he was that sad about Rose, except for maybe the fact
that he was losing a trophy wife.
Quickly, Jessamyn realized that Rose had
indeed been telling her the truth about the Titanic. There was enough evidence
for Jessamyn to believe her again and she found more going through the rest of
the things. There was an old, water-stained dress made out of silky fabrics
that could have only been from that ship and there was also a coat in the same
boat. Jessamyn even found a pair of stockings, some shoes, and undergarments.
But the most astonishing thing was a folded up note she found need in the inner
pocket of the big black coat; a note, clearly in Rose's handwriting, stating
something about keeping both locked in a safe. She could make out no other
words. Water had damaged too much of it, but the headline read RMS Titanic. It
was enough for her.
Her hands shaking, she put everything back
the way she found it and stalked out into the living room, completely stuck.
Her plan had counted on proving Rose wrong and then confronting her about it.
But now what?
Groaning, she flopped down on the couch and
stared up at the ceiling, expecting it to give her the answers. When it didn't,
she got angry and got up again. Slipping on some shoes, she ran out the back
door and towards the ocean.
Jessamyn found Rose sitting on a blanket on
the sand, a book in her hands and a huge sun hat atop her head. She sat down
next to her mom and waited for Rose to notice her.
"Do you need something?" Rose
asked, without looking up from the book.
Jessamyn didn't say anything and turned her
gaze toward the Pacific. The water glistened under the bright sun and the waves
were calmer than usual. She dug her hands into the sand and sighed.
"What did Dad look like?" she
finally asked.
This got Rose's attention as she lowered the
book slowly and her head turned toward Jessamyn, who just sat there, her face
betraying no emotion.
"Why do you want to know?" Rose
asked, her tone more angry than she expected. She sighed and then repeated
herself in nicer terms.
"I want to know what part of my looks I
get from him," Jessamyn answered, half-lying. She wanted to know that, but
she also wanted to know for a different reason.
Rose looked away for a moment and it looked
as if she were thinking hard. She knew her daughter had every right to know,
but it was things like this that she hated. It just made her relive the whole
thing again.
"Um…" Rose began softly, not really
sure where to start. She turned her gaze back to Jessamyn and gave her a tiny,
sad smile. "He was tall, but not overly so, and lean. He had this…"
She giggled unexpectedly. "…really straight, saggy blonde hair that was
always falling in his face. And he had the most piercing blue eyes I've ever
seen. Well…except for you. That's one thing you definitely got from him."
She paused and a happier grin spread to her face. "He had the cutest
boyish smile; I loved it. Whenever he smiled, it made me smile. You've got his
nose, too. I’ve noticed that. And he had really rough, but really tender,
hands..."
Rose trailed off and Jessamyn rolled her
eyes. Seriously, what was it that made her mother slip off into that little
state where she got the funny grin on her face and the sad look in her eyes? It
was freaky; she didn't like it.
Before she had to do anything though, her
mother slipped out of the trance and smiled again. "I miss him," was
all Rose said before returning to her book, as if nothing had happened.
Jessamyn got up and walked off again, this
time in a different direction from the house. She walked the beach until she
got to the boardwalk, and from there she started a search for Jack. When she
found him, he was busy with his nose in that sketchbook. So Jessamyn sat down
on a bench about ten or fifteen yards away and just watched him. He was so
serious and he was concentrating so hard. She also noticed that he had the same
sort of characteristics as Rose had described. Of course, they were older and
tired looking, but they were still there. And she could remember quite clearly
how stunning his eyes had been. Were they really the same as hers?
This man certainly fit more than one of the
characteristics of her father. He looked the same, could draw, not to mention
he had the exact same name. The possibility of it being a big coincidence was
slimming quickly. But the question was still there: how? How could this man be
her father when Rose had said she had watched him slip beneath the ocean's
surface, dead to the world?
When he had finished his present drawing,
Jessamyn got up and walked over to him. Quietly, without being noticed, she sat
down next to him.
"Hello again," she said softly, so
as not to startle him.
His head turned and he smiled gently when he
saw her. Yes, same smile Rose had described. Jessamyn grinned back. "Look,
I want to apologize for how I acted last night. I was kind of shocked...and I
was tired."
The way she remarked about being tired
reminded him of her again and Jack instantly brushed the face in his mind out.
It was bad enough this girl looked like Rose, but now she sounded like her as
well? This could be bad; a sleepless night was surely ahead of him. But
nevertheless, he had missed Jessamyn in some way and was happy she had come
back.
"It's all right," he said honestly,
as he began to put his drawing tools away and then closed up his sketchbook.
"It's good to see you."
"Yeah. It's good to see you, too,"
Jessamyn replied happily. "Have you been in Santa Monica this whole
time?"
Jack nodded and leaned against the back of
the bench and folded his legs in such a way that his right ankle rested on his
left knee. He didn't look at her, but instead out at the ocean.
"Yeah," he answered. There was a brief pause, and then he spoke
again. "I can't bring myself to leave." And then, to Jessamyn’s
shock, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter.
After lighting up, he turned towards her again. "I rented a place here and
called my landlady in New York. She's renting my place out up there until I
decide it’s time to go back." Jack turned his gaze back to the ocean and
continued his smoking.
Jessamyn registered his information, but was
more interested in his lighter. He had set it down on the bench and now it was
glistened in the noon sunlight. She picked it up and gently turned it over in
her hands.
"Did you always smoke?" she
inquired after a minute. She couldn't remember him ever doing it on the train.
She peered closer and saw the remain of a sticker on the back, but the letters
were all faded away.
"I used to," Jack answered,
"and then I stopped for a while. Now it looks like I'm back at it, now
that I'm back here." He glanced over at her and then reached over, taking
the lighter out of her hands. "Careful with that," he cautioned her
as he put it back in his pocket. "It’s been through a lot. Hell, I'm
surprised it still works."
They continued with small talk for a while,
until Jessamyn announced she ought to be getting back to her mom. But for the
next week she came back. Sometimes she would just sit there for hours, watching
him. Other times she would talk to him. A few times she had tried to get him to
talk about the past, but that was, as she was beginning to see, a closed door.
He was neither interested nor willing to talk about it and Jessamyn left it at
that. She wasn't going to rush him just yet.
Late one afternoon, about a week after the
smoking conversation, Jessamyn sat on the same bench again with him. He was
always in the same general area: close to the pier, but never on or by it. They
were talking about some pointless and superficial thing when a pair of men
walked by. Jessamyn was unaffected and quite unaware of their conversation
until she heard something that made her ears perk up. Softly, she turned
around.
"He should have known better. That God
damned plan was doomed to sink like the fucking Titanic from the very straight.
Straight to the bottom. Eh, William?"
The other man, William, laughed. "You
got that right. Brought as many people down with it as well."
Both of them started laughing and continued
on their merry old way, oblivious to Jessamyn and Jack. She turned slowly
toward him again and was immediately shocked at what he saw. Jack's face was so
pale that it could have been mistaken for a bed sheet. His eyes were unfocused,
just sort of staring off into nowhere. And he held a look somewhere between
very angry and just wanting to throw up right there. It was at this moment that
Jessamyn knew she had found him. This was indeed her father, Jack Dawson. She
was this man's daughter.
"You were there, weren't you?" was
the only thing she could manage to say as her breathing became irregular and
her heart sped up. This was way too huge to fathom and now she felt like she
was going to be sick. What one earth had happened between her mother and him?
There had to be more to this story than Rose was saying...or knew. Jessamyn's
mind finally locked onto the possibility that maybe she really did think that
Jack was dead...and that he thought the same about her.
Jack hadn't heard Jessamyn's question and was
broke from his trance only when she jumped up and grabbed his hand.
"You have to come with me," she
demanded, pulling him up from his seat. Frantically, she tried to remember if
Rose was home right now. Of course, she had to be. Rose never went anywhere
besides work.
"What's going on?" Jack asked, his
voice strange because he was so confused. Before she could drag him away, he
remembered to grab his sketchbook and his light jacket, and then followed her.
She dropped his hand only when she was sure he was going to come with her.
"Listen to me," Jessamyn said
breathlessly, not only from the fast walking, but also the adrenaline rush.
"I know who you are, and you have to trust me."
Jack stopped abruptly, in the middle of the
sidewalk, which made her stop and turn around. "What do you mean you know
who I am? What’s going on here?" His voice only got higher in pitch with
each word he shouted.
Jessamyn sighed in despair. "Look, I
know," she said, stressing the last word.
"What?" Jack asked again. He was so
confused that it wasn't even funny anymore. Either this girl knew things that
she couldn't possibly, or she was just insane. He was beginning to think it was
the latter.
Jessamyn stayed where she was, which was a
couple yards from him, and gave him an exasperated look. "I'm not going to
shout it, but does a God damned huge blue diamond necklace ring any sort of a
bell in that clouded, shut off little mess of a brain of yours?" She
waited for his reaction, somewhat impatiently.
This time it was a quiet, shocked version of
what that escaped from his lips. He paled again and Jessamyn was beginning to
wonder if he would suffer a heart attack if she made another reference to
Titanic. So gently, she walked over and looked him in the eye.
"Just...come with me...please."
Jack nodded numbly and began to follow her
again. His mind was, as she had said, a clouded little mess. He didn't know
what to think.
Jessamyn was having the same bit of a
problem. She didn't know what to think. And that was the problem. She wanted to
explain it all to him, but she couldn't. She didn’t have any of the answers.
Only he and Rose did, but they didn’t know it yet.
Her head felt dizzy as they finally rounded
the corner to Rose's block and she saw the house down the street, bright within
the context of the darkening sky. A storm was brewing again. She could even
smell the rain coming.
Jessamyn stopped in front of Rose's house and
turned, watching Jack as he caught up with her. The poor guy was in for the
shock of a lifetime, as was poor, unsuspecting in the least Rose. It was going
to be very interesting. And their lives were about to turn upside down, yet
again.