Her body shook visibly, terribly. She stopped, perplexed, almost ready to drop with terror and exhaustion, and was caught by a customs official.
She wore the same clothes she had worn the night Jack had made love to her. He was all she had thought of since the sinking, and she doubted he would ever leave her mind ever again. She squinted at the large crowd. She had never seen so many people, perhaps thousands.
She staggered rather than walked. A tall, thin man with gray hair approached her silently and stood in front of her. “Are you Rose Dawson? Formerly DeWitt Bukater?” he asked her, his voice showing he had some sort of authority.
She stared blankly at the man, who was dressed in a gray and black suit. “Yes, I am.”
“Mrs. Dawson, I am Spicer Lovejoy. Your mother is here in New York.”
Rose thought she was dreaming the whole scene around her. It was too surreal. “My mother?”
“Yes, Mrs. Dawson. Mr. Caledon Hockley found out that you had boarded the Titanic on April the eleventh in Ireland. Your mother was terribly worried, and was too distraught to come here tonight, so I was sent to find you if you had survived the disaster.”
Rose nodded numbly. “Is Cal here?”
“No, ma’am, but he is on his way to New York by ship as we speak.”
A part of Rose told her to run away from this man, to start the life she and Jack had wanted, but then again, she thought of her mother and how she would like to see her. No matter what Cal said or did, there was no way she would marry him, for she was already a married woman.
“Mrs. Dawson, I have a car waiting. Would you like me to take you to your mother?”
Rose nodded, following the man to the Renault, which was chauffeured back to the Waldorf-Astoria, where Ruth DeWitt Bukater was awaiting the arrival of her daughter. The Waldorf-Astoria was located on Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street. The Renault pulled up outside as the rain dashed down heavily.
Rose didn’t care. She couldn’t feel the cold anymore. Staring up at the nondescript building, she looked inside the swinging doors. She looked back at Lovejoy, who darted for cover beneath the awning of the hotel.
Rose had stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria in early 1911 before she had boarded the Mauretania to France for finishing school. She and Cal had had adjoining rooms. As she entered the luxurious hotel, she hoped that she wouldn’t be faced with that problem now.
She couldn’t believe she would soon see her mother. They walked through the lobby of the grand hotel. As they approached the desk, Rose felt eyes on her. An old couple who were sitting on a couch in the lobby had obviously exchanged views on how disheveled she appeared. The dress she wore was wrinkled and as shabby as rags. Her coat was a little dirty, her hair was straggly, and her face was pure white. These people judged her appearance, not taking into account such things as the fact that she had just lost her husband and survived the sinking of the Titanic. No, not one of those things crossed the narrow minds of these people.
“Mrs. DeWitt Bukater is in Room 366. She is expecting you,” the clerk told Mr. Lovejoy, who led Rose into an elevator.
Her body still shook immensely from both nerves and the pain she had felt since the night of April fourteenth. She remained silent, her hands shoved into her pockets, not wishing to see them shake.
What would her mother say to her? How would she react to see her? Rose wondered why she had even made the decision to see her mother after a year and four months away, but she knew that she had made the right decision to come here with Lovejoy. Perhaps now that Jack was gone, it was the only home she would ever have. Her mother would understand her reasons for not marrying Cal, for she still belonged to Jack. Until the day she died, she would never touch another man. Even though she was just seventeen, she was sure of it.
The elevator stopped on the thirteenth floor and Lovejoy led Rose into the winding corridor. Pieces of art hung on the walls, and Rose fought back tears at Jack’s memory. She didn’t think she had grieved properly for him yet. Reality hadn’t hit her and the events of the last week were an absolute blur to her.
After knocking on the door of Room 366, Lovejoy entered and Rose followed. The room was breathtaking. The walls were of a dark oak wood. The furniture was light in color, different shades of brown and beige. A fire burnt in the corner of the sitting room.
Ruth approached from the bedroom and stopped in her tracks as she caught sight of her daughter for the first time in almost a year and a half. They both stood silent.
“Thank you, Mr. Lovejoy. You may leave.”
Nodding to Ruth, he left the room. Ruth immediately came closer to Rose, taking her young daughter’s face in her hands. Who was she now?
“Oh, Rose.” Ruth’s eyes filled with tears. Rose had never seen her mother show any emotion. Rose could feel the tears falling freely from her eyes. “Why has God allowed this to happen to my child?” Ruth removed her hands from Rose’s cheeks. “Come, Rose. I have brought with me a change of clothes for you. Take a bath and I will have food brought up to you,” Ruth told her daughter.
Rose nodded, too tired to argue with the fact that she was being told what to do by her mother once again. But right now, she needed to eat, to take a bath, and to have a change of clothes, so she was grateful to her mother for being here and giving her some sort of comfort and a nice bed, rather than the corridor of the ship she had called her bed since the disaster.
After bathing, Rose sat in the sitting room of the suite. The fire burned warmly on the cold New York evening. Rose ate cautiously, knowing her mother despised loud, animal-like eating, but she was starved. She could feel her mother watching her sipping from her small glass of wine.
“Lovejoy tells me you married a young man named Dawson.” Ruth raised her voice.
Rose stopped chewing for a moment, unsure of whether she wanted to talk about Jack right now, when she obviously hadn’t come to terms with his death. “That’s right. Jack Dawson.” Just speaking his name caused her to miss him more than anything. She pushed her plate away, unable to eat any more soup.
“Is he a nice boy?”
“Mother…Jack…well, he died in the sinking,” Rose told her, tears in her eyes.
Putting her wine on the end table, Ruth put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my Rose, I’m so sorry…”
Although they were mother and daughter, Rose felt she and Ruth were strangers. Society had never allowed her mother to show emotion in any way. If it was anyone else here, they would have hugged her or tried to show her comfort.
“May I ask, Rose, how you met this boy?”
“In Paris. He was an artist. We met in the park when I was admiring his work. When I left finishing school, I lived with him and his friend.” Rose looked up to see if her mother showed any disgust in her for leaving school to live with two strange men. “We fell in love and moved to England in May of 1911. We married in December of that year before moving to Ireland and then boarding the Titanic.” Rose felt the heart-wrenching pain of remembering how she and Jack had met. It seemed so long ago, yet it seemed like just the other day.
“Did this boy look after you? Treat you right?”
Rose looked up at her mother. This boy? She made him sound like a three-year-old child. “He wasn’t just a boy. He was nineteen years old, and he was my husband!” Rose snapped. “And yes, he treated me better than Cal ever could.”
“I highly doubt that, Rose. Mr. Hockley told me you resorted to becoming…a prostitute.”
Rose laughed a little. She couldn’t believe Cal had told her mother anything like that. “You believe him, do you? No, Mother. Don’t worry. I didn’t become a whore…”
“Rose…” Ruth watched as her daughter stood. “Don’t talk so foul.”
“But while I was at the brothel with my friend, Maria, who yes, was a whore…Cal tried it on with me and Maria hit him to stop him from hurting me.”
Ruth’s eyes widened. She stood and came closer to her daughter. She saw how much she had grown into a young woman. “Is this true?”
“Of course it’s true. That’s why I left for England—to get away from Cal.” Rose felt tears flow down her cheeks. “But I was so happy in England when I married Jack.”
Ruth pulled her daughter into an embrace, something she hadn’t done since she was a child, but to Ruth she was still a child.
“Now he’s gone, Mother. My Jack’s dead.”
Rose couldn’t breathe. As the grief hit her, she felt heart-wrenching pain in her stomach and chest. Ruth didn’t know how to comfort her daughter, having never seen someone so hysterical. She thought of fetching a doctor, but she knew that wasn’t the answer. She had to allow her daughter to grieve for her husband.
*****
Stepping from the gangplank, Jack looked out at the thousands of people who had turned out on the pier to see the Titanic survivors docking. Looking outward, he tried to spot anyone that resembled Rose. He refused to believe she had died. Aboard the ship, he hadn’t been allowed out of the infirmary, but now he wouldn’t rest until he found out the truth. Suddenly, he was stopped by a customs official.
“Your name, sir?”
“Uh…Dawson. Jack Dawson.”
The customs official noted the name before turning to the next survivor, but Jack grabbed his arm.
“Please, sir, could you tell me if a Rose Dawson is on the list? She’s my wife.”
Scanning the list, the customs official marked a dot beside the name Jack had asked for. “Yes. Mrs. Rose Dawson.”
He breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the customs official. He felt like his life had meaning once again. But what about Tommy and Sharon?
“Is there a Thomas Ryan or Sharon Ryan on the list, sir?” he asked. He squeezed his eyes shut, praying for them to have survived. He could feel his heart beat faster when he heard nothing from the customs official. Opening his eyes, he looked at the face of the man with the list, who had tears in his own eyes.
“I’m sorry. No Ryans are on the list.”
Jack nodded numbly. His friends were gone. He shouldn’t have told them to find another boat. At least then Sharon might have survived, along with her poor child. Had they frozen in the sea together? Jack blocked out any mental images of the night, which would haunt him for the rest of his life. He had to concentrate on his Rose now, on finding her.
Dr. Connelly had told Jack that he might never regain feeling in some of his fingers, meaning he couldn’t draw. He had been advised to see a doctor once arriving in New York, but Jack knew he had to find Rose first.
He didn’t know where to start. She had been on the same ship the entire time and had docked there not long before Jack. She couldn’t be too far.
Walking out into the crowd of thousands, he was faced with questions from the press and the flashes of photographers. He could barely think straight. He knew he had to get out of this media frenzy so he could find someplace to sleep and eat before he began his search for Rose.