HEARTS WILL GO ON
Chapter Fifteen
...it hits you like a thousand
knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe, you can't think…at
least not about anything but the pain...
This was not how I pictured my life
at age forty. Since I was barely a man I had become so disgusted with hospitals
and death that I could hardly bear to even be near a hospital. Ever since my
parents went into one and never came out, I had been running...running from
something I couldn’t put my finger on. Perhaps I was running from my
life...from my pain...from any source of family and feelings I could find.
Across the Atlantic, thousands of miles away from my barren life of misery in
the States, I found what I thought was happiness. A life of freedom...a life of
liberation and carefree friendships. Sadly, I still would lie awake at night
and wonder why my heart felt empty and half-formed. Still, life produces all
sorts of second chances, and the Big Guy up there works in mysterious way, and
soon enough, I found myself on a fateful journey back to what was once home.
Back to the little family I had left. I was ready to be half the man my father
had been, maybe even to marry and father some little squirts of my own. Of
course, I could still live some years as a bachelor. I was, after all, little
more than a boy still, and yet, I felt I had truly lived.
I’d loved the little life I had
made for myself, and for the longest time, I felt as if I could live that way
for the rest of my life. Until one day, I woke on the hard cot in the house of
an elderly woman who had been kind enough to give me a home for the week. The
sunlight of early morning streamed into the room, waking me, and as I looked
out into the morning fog, I knew almost as clearly as if Pa was saying it right
into my ear. It was time to go home. But how? Arrangements were made, and I was
soon on my way back across the Atlantic to my childhood home...to my
responsibility to my parents. And then I met her...but that story is for another
day...another time, as I am not trying to convey the tragedy that was my love
life.
Nearly sixteen years later, I was
on business in Des Moines, Iowa, when I decided on a whim to stop in an art
gallery. Within moments, like a moth to a flame, I found myself drawn to an
incredible charcoal drawing of a horse, which I bought instantly. The name on
the corner of the paper? J. Dawson. It intrigued me terribly and, at the same
time, filled my chest with a terrible, ominous feeling. I felt the oddest
impulse to find this J. Dawson, to see his face, and so I asked the manager
where I might be able to find this artist, to perhaps purchase more of his
work. The man looked at me quite strangely, but smiled crookedly.
"I don’t know about the
artist, but I bought the picture from an art show. The drawing was sent up by a
high school in Cedar Rapids," he replied. I looked down at the picture.
"Cedar Rapids? A student did
this?" I asked, very surprised at the talent in this young person. I’d
never taught art, but I wanted to teach this boy. The man found the name of the
high school and sent me on my way. I cancelled my meeting for that afternoon
and took a taxi to Cedar Rapids.
The local high school was an
average-looking school, but the students had already gone home. With much
trepidation, I entered the school, clutching the drawing in my hand. The art
teacher was still there, and informed me that the mystery artist was no boy,
but a fifteen-year-old girl named Josephine Margaret Dawson. When I expressed
an interest in teaching her exclusively and gave them my credentials, I was
given her file. She was born in California, oddly enough, in a place I’d lived
for a short time. Santa Monica. It wasn’t until I saw her mother’s name that it
struck me that the girl had no father. Rose Dawson, a Titanic survivor, had
remarried a James Calvert and was living happily with him and her two children
in Cedar Rapids. Her daughter, Josephine, and her young son, James Calvert, Jr.
The file contained one picture, a picture of the girl, my potential prodigy,
and when I saw her, I knew her. It was horrible...and brilliant all at once.
She was of average height, with
wildly curling hair. Her lips were full and pursed into a self-confident smile
and her nose was delicate without being too much so. Her eyes, though, they
were something...not quite large, and nothing was quite extraordinary about
them but the light-shining color. Her eyelashes were long, it was easy to tell,
and even in the picture, it was easy to see that Miss Josephine Dawson carried
herself with a grace and confidence only a mother could teach her daughter.
I wrote the letter that very day,
inviting her to come to Philadelphia and begin lessons with me. I dared not go
to Cedar Rapids and disrupt their blissful life, for consequences could have
been severe that way. Less than a year later, I received word from Josephine,
who had asked to be called Jo, that her stepfather had been killed tragically
and that they were very tight on money. Of course, I offered to send money, but
Jo didn’t think that it was a good idea because her mother would become
suspicious. Still, I was not able to give up on her, and I had to enlist the
help of someone very close to me to get her to Philadelphia.
Indeed, the plan worked, and
shortly before Christmas of 1932, Josephine Dawson was standing in my office.
It obviously wasn’t an art school, but it was all I had. It’s very hard to
describe how I felt when I first saw Jo in person. She was beautiful...a grown
woman. Not the skinny girl from the photo I had seen, but with hair such a
vivid shade of red, it was hard to look away. Her skin was not the usual ivory
shade of redheads that tended to freckle in the sun. Instead, she was
surprisingly tanned, with rosy cheeks, pink from the cold. The color of her eyes
was startling, a twinkling aquamarine blue color. It wasn’t until she smiled,
however, that I was plunged into the demons of my past. And that voice, that
smooth, calm voice, was so familiar to me that I nearly died of shock.
As the weeks before Christmas
passed, I found myself becoming closer to her every day, and I was filled with
the overwhelming need to protect her. The times when she became very vulnerable
and melancholy hurt my soul. My first glimpse of her mother was the day I took
her ice skating for the first time. They looked enough alike to where you knew
that they were mother and daughter, but were different enough to where they
were each individually stunning. Her mother was beyond description. A woman in
her late thirties, with green eyes and the very same brilliant hair that Jo
had. They had the same smile and similar noses. Mrs. Calvert was the rare type
of woman who has a beauty which radiates from the inside as well as the
outside. Though we hadn’t ever spoken...I felt I knew her...I knew her soul. I
was torn between the life I had chosen and the life I craved. I told myself I
could explain things to Jo first...and then to her mother...tell her mother I
was mad for her...but then, my mind always seemed to say that she would hate me
for it later. I was lingering at the edges of the person I’d once been, but for
some reason, I was resisting stepping into his shoes again.
Then Jo became engaged to her
friend, David Stirling, and everything changed. She had some insane idea to
take over her late father’s business. A soap company that had been thriving
since the early 1900's. It was a preposterous thought, given Jo’s talents,
which would be wasted anyway. Somehow, I could sense that she felt a sense of
responsibility to her father, whom she had never met, and she was determined to
carry it out for him. That will was wrong, though...it wasn’t supposed to be
that way. So, on Christmas Day, I found myself on a train to Boston, on my way
to the Dawson Soap Company and on the way to see a lawyer. I sighed as I
straightened my coat and smoothed my hair, which was far too long for my own
good. I had, however, shaved but for a bit of stubble. The tips of my fingers
tingled and the parts of my feet that had lost feeling seemed to ache as well.
I expected the stares as I entered the factory, the gasps even, but I kept my
focus on the task at hand. I needed to free Jo from this idiocy and set things
right. I felt obligated, for I knew Josephine...and I knew her father. Indeed,
I knew him well...for all I had to do to see Jack Dawson was look in the
mirror.