CARPE DIEM
Chapter Fifteen

"Jack!" the DeWitt Bukater girl shouted as we approached the Master-at-Arms office, both of us struggling with the weight of heavy skirts, now drenched in nearly two feet of water. She called again, "Jack!"

I considered asking just who it was we were attempting to find, but the chattering of my teeth against the frigidness of the water and the chill of the air quelled my curiosity. Each step was painful. The ice water swirled around us viciously and rose steadily.

And honestly…I didn’t care at all.

What in God’s name compelled me to bring the girl down here anyway? I thought this bitterly. It had been instinctive, impulsive, and entirely uncalled for. Did I want to be unhappy? Was that it? Because what I had just done, in finding Thomas and then choosing to remove myself from his presence almost immediately once again, without a Goddamned mention of anything that needed to be said, seemed to indicate just that.

But he’s busy, I rationalized. Then I answered my rationalization sardonically, And I’m a Goddamned masochist.

Ten years! Ten long years I’d done this, hidden away, silenced myself, denied myself, and to what purpose? No, truly, did I want to be unhappy? Because, although I would never believe such a thing of anyone, myself included, my actions led to no other conclusion.

The day my brother had told me Thomas Andrews was engaged to the daughter of John Doherty Barbour, the linen manufacturer from Northern Ireland who lately fashioned himself to be a baron, I had said nothing, I had not cried out against it. I finished the day as planned, walked down to St. Paul’s to give alms to the beggars sitting on the steps outside, and bought blackcurrant for cordial and rosemary for Julia’s roasted chicken on the way back.

Thomas himself had told me in his uncle’s office a couple of months later, after Bruce and the others had left the room. He had waited for me customarily, since I had always lingered behind after these meetings, gathering up my notes and arranging them in a comprehensible manner. I had not offered my congratulations, or even acknowledge that I knew my congratulations would be appropriate.

"You look well," he mentioned. It was a sincere comment, a friendly turn of phrase.

I answered shortly. "Thank you." I spoke without a smile, in an overly cold manner, half because I was concentrating on the written documents in front of me and their necessary order and half because I was enraged by his generous manner. Did he never get upset with me? My apparent lack of care? My incivility?

"I’m getting married…" He let the words hang in the air, and they lay suspended in the air between us, settling slowly over my fingers and hands, my hair, my eyelids, my mouth, like coal dust at a train yard, coating the platform with filth and grime. At his words, a feverish depression assailed my mind, body, and soul. I said nothing for a moment, pausing in my filing, my shuffling of papers only briefly to close my eyes against a spinning room and clench my fist once in frustration. I straightened up, meeting his gaze directly for the first time that entire day. His brown eyes were unguarded, but unfathomable in their depths, and I turned my gaze elsewhere soon enough, back to shuffling, back to filing.

"Well, I suppose it isn’t wise for a man to remain unmarried, is it?" I asked rhetorically. I was quoting the ladies of London society, parroting conventional wisdom, speaking impersonally and without affectation. Emotionless, reserved, I was an empty shell of a woman. At least…this was how I hoped to seem and must have seemed to him. Suppression was a talent I was well versed in. After a long pause, he spoke again, softly, quietly.

"The world can be a very lonely place, Mary Catherine," he stated frankly. I did not look up this time, though I knew he wanted me to, and he left me alone in his uncle’s office quite soon thereafter. I’d rejected him, this time of my own volition.

I sometimes envisioned a different ending to this memory. I sometimes imagined that after he spoke those final words, I had looked up. I had removed my dark glasses to reveal the tears in my eyes and held up my hands, palms upraised in intimation. And I hear myself saying, "Goddamn you, Thomas! Goddamn you!"

He had forced me to live a half-life, my arms aching for the husband he was to me, the children we should have had. If he had loved me less, I could have borne it more. You couldn’t defy fate and expect the road to be smooth. You couldn’t fight against a current without drowning. My strength was waning; I had been drowning for quite some time.

I had stopped wading through the ice water without knowing it. I stood at the end of the corridor. That young woman, with her brazen notions and shallow passions, was now far ahead of me. I could take part in her fool’s errand no longer. I had been handed dozens of chances, all wasted, all long forgotten. And if I continued with this girl, who I did not know, and frankly, did not particularly like, I knew, with that strength of certainty that tells us the sun rises in the east, that I would never have another chance to waste.

"Rose!" I called after her, my voice echoing in the relative emptiness of the corridors, off the water and the walls. She had called the boy’s name again, but turned back at my voice, surprised that I was so far back. She had thought I followed her closely. She tipped her head, irritated that I was lingering behind. I smiled sadly. What more could I do?

"Good luck, my dear," I said sincerely, my voice paper-thin and distant, even to my own ears. The water was playing tricks with our voices. She did not reply, nor yell after me, for it was at that moment that the boy she searched for finally returned her call and, distracted, she turned back and ran towards his voice. In turn, I walked away, towards the stairwell near the crewmen’s west side quarters.

I never saw Miss DeWitt Bukater again.

Chapter Sixteen
Stories