MISS CALVERT
Chapter Three

"That’s my mother," Sarah repeated. She waited for Ruth to respond, but no response came. Sarah stared up at the painting in awe. No, it couldn’t be a mistake. It was her. Mom. Still lying on the floor, she propped herself up with one elbow, and now pointed her finger. "My mother."

Ruth bent down to the girl and tugged her arm, signaling her to rise. Sarah did so, and Ruth led her back to the nursery.

"Come." Sarah tried to study Ruth’s face. There was something there she could not read. Did she know something? Did she want to find out something? This was a life much more complicated than her own.

Ruth led young Sarah back into the nursery and ordered Suzanne to her room. Suzanne slowly stalked off.

Sarah huddled in the old armchair and brought her chin to her knees. "I don’t understand."

Ruth looked hard at the familiar looking girl. "I just might." Ruth clutched her shawl and pulled around a rocking chair. Sarah turned the chair to face Ruth. "Look at me, Sarah."

"I’m looking."

"Answer every question I ask truthfully and frankly. We both have many unanswered questions looming over our heads. Mine have been there for quite some time. Maybe yours have, too."

"Yes." Sarah nodded.

"What is your mother’s name?"

"Rose."

"And her maiden name?"

"Dawson. It was Rose Cornelia Dawson."

Ruth moved herself in her chair. "Dawson?"

"Yes, Dawson."

"Are you sure it was her maiden name, and not previously acquired from another marriage?"

"Yes, I’m sure…or I was sure. But I’m almost positive neither Mom nor Dad were ever married before each other."

"Is today your mother’s birthday?"

"Yes, actually. She’s fifty." Sarah remembered Ruth’s words about giving birth to her little Rose fifty years ago this day.

Ruth rose from her chair and moved to the bed, where she picked a small picture frame. She gazed into it, shaking her head slowly, and spoke—not crying, but very sad. "Clever girl." Sarah recognized this behavior. When her mother was so overwhelmingly proud of either her or her brother, she had the very same look in her eyes. "Very clever girl."

"Mrs. DeWitt Bukater…" She remembered the name all too clearly now.

"Sit down, Sarah. I have story to tell, and so do you. We will answer all our questions together. I’ll tell you everything I know. You tell me everything you know."

"Okay."

"Sit back. Mine’s a long one." She tossed Sarah the blanket that was hanging on the back of the rocking chair. "After my husband passed away, he left the bank in quite a bit of debt. He only decided to mention this to me a few months before. We then began a desperate search for a husband for our Rose. Someone who would be wealthy enough to cover up our secret, but also be willing to keep it at the same time. We found one: the son of Hank’s old business partner and friend, Nathan Hockley. Hockley Steel was among the top in the nation, let alone the world, and Caledon was the oldest, so he would take it over after Nathan. And they, being an allied family, would gladly keep the DeWitt Bukaters from falling to shame. And Rose being a gorgeous girl, Cal would gladly marry her. After Hank died from his heart disease, Rose and Cal were already engaged. Rose generally disliked him. Rose was desperately unhappy without her father, so we took her to London for a month. She loved London. She always said it was her favorite city. But when she got there, she never wanted to go out or even leave her room. She even forgot her own birthday. She turned seventeen."

"Actually, that’s as far back as Mom will go. She said she moved from Philly to New York when she was seventeen, in the spring of 1912…after she lost her family. That’s all she’d tell me about that."

"Well, that’s when we decided to take her back home to America. In April, 1912. She was our golden girl, so we decided to get tickets for the Titanic and have her sail home on the most luxurious ship in the world."

"Oh, my God."

"Well, I told you she was unhappy, didn’t I?"

"Yes."

"One night, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She decided to take a walk one night after dinner. When the men brought her back to her cabin, they all gave some bullshit story about how Rose was leaning over the back of the bow trying to see the propellers." Ruth shot Sarah a playful look. "What? You’ve never heard an old woman swear before?"

"Not very often." Sarah laughed, but then she became serious. "But, wait. My mother tried to kill herself?"

"Yes, but someone did pull her back after she slipped."

"Who?"

"A young man named Jack Dawson. He was about the same age as your mother, maybe a little older. To tell you the truth, I never learned his exact age. Well, since he saved her life, we invited him to dinner, which I was vehemently against."

"Why?"

"He was a third class passenger without a dime to his name, and Rose took quite a liking to him. He was a very good artist, apparently, although I never got to see any of his work. At dinner, I made it a point to insult him, challenge him, and try to make him a fool in my daughter’s eyes, but he was no fool, nor any sort of ruffian, for that matter. He was nice-looking boy, too. Tall, blonde, if not a little skinny."

"Did he wear his regular clothes?"

"No, he borrowed a nice tuxedo from a Mrs. Margaret Brown. Have you heard of her?"

"Would that be the unsinkable Molly Brown?"

"Yes, it would. She took a liking to the boy, too, but not nearly as much as Rose did."

"I think I see where this is going."

"You’re right. That’s exactly where this is going. After dinner, she disappeared with Jack for most of the night. Worried us to death, but she came back in one piece…Jack was a threat to me. He could take my daughter from me, have her living on the streets—without Rose married to Cal, I would be out on the streets."

"Wait a minute. You’re only talking about what? A few days? How could anything happen?"

"Everything can happen in a few days. And anything can happen in a matter of seconds. She went back to see him the next day. She was gone from the late afternoon until close to midnight. She returned to the cabin to warn us of the iceberg. She came in hand in hand with Jack, not moving from his side. That image of the two of them standing there…it hurt. I knew there would be problems. We needed that marriage to survive. There would be nothing left of the DeWitt Bukaters. But if Cal still accepted her after it was obvious what she had done, she would never be happy again. Before Jack, I deluded myself into thinking Rose would one day learn to love Cal. I fell out of love for her father, but at least I had loved him once. At first I felt like I was denying the chance that I had had. But she had found it, and it was clear to me she intended to keep it no matter what Cal or I had to say."

"Never underestimate Mom."

"Well, where words won’t work, action takes over. Cal, I later found out, had slipped the…" She paused and walked over to the spilled contents of Sarah’s suitcase. "…had slipped this into young Jack’s coat pocket." She bent down and picked it up.

Sarah had to explain herself. "Yeah, I don’t know what came over me. I just saw it and…I think I’ve turned into Charlie. That’s my little brother. He’s a bit on the wild side, but anyway. It’s like I’m a kleptomaniac. I see something pretty and I take it."

"Where did you find it?"

"When I was cleaning up the attic. It was in this old trunk. I was just fascinated by it, that and this picture of Mom with Pancho Villa. Which is still a mystery to me, too. I didn’t expect my parents to own anything like that. Unless it’s fake."

"Oh, it’s not fake."

"What is it, a sapphire or something?"

"No, it’s a diamond. A very rare diamond. Actually, it’s quite a famous one, too. It was first owned by Louis the Sixteenth, and then once he lost his head, so to speak, it was cut into the shape you see it in now, and made into a necklace. Nathan bought it for Cal to give to Rose as an engagement present." Ruth placed the diamond into Sarah’s hand.

"Wow."

"It’s even got a name, you know. Le Coeur de la Mer. The Heart of the Ocean."

Sarah and Ruth both went back to their respective seats. Sarah fiddled with the diamond. "This must be worth more than my parents ever made in their lifetimes."

"What I want to know is how on Earth did your mother get her hands on it?"

"Didn’t Cal give it to her, you said?"

"Yes, but he took it back after that."

"That’s right! What happened to Jack?"

"Well, they had him arrested and taken down the Master-at-Arms. It was on E Deck, I believe."

"Did you think Jack stole it? When it first happened, I mean?"

"I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was thinking about Rose. What she had done. What I remember most was what Cal said to her. At first she tried to defend Jack, telling us there was no way he could have stolen it, that she was with him the whole time, and then his exact words were: ‘Maybe he did it while you were putting your clothes back on, dear.’ How dare he talk that way to her! And in front of me, no less, though he was probably worse when I wasn’t around. I remember the way he used to look at her sometimes. He would smile as if he were assessing something. He would just look so damned pleased with himself. God knows what sort of disgusting thoughts he was thinking about my daughter. It was different from the way Jack looked at her. He was very attracted to her, yes, but it was different. He saw what I saw. He saw the potential in her that I was afraid to let loose. He wanted to let it loose. He loved her. Sometimes I wish I had gotten to know him better. I knew she loved him, too. The way they looked at each other. I thought a little time after that my daughter’s innocence, not her physical innocence, but you know what I mean, would have been safer with Jack. He was certainly more age appropriate, I thought."

"How old was Cal?"

"Not old. Thirty. Rose was very grown up, and though she may have been sheltered all her life, she was not naïve. Jack was the one who carried the air of innocence. But she was still a child. She was my child."

"What happened to Jack?"

"They took him away. Then Cal took us up to the lifeboats. Rose refused to get in, after she realized Cal had framed Jack. She was furious. She left to go save the man she loved. The last thing she ever spoke to me, she was very calm. Just ‘Good-bye, Mother,’ and she was gone. I was already in the lifeboat, and I couldn’t stop her. The Hounds of Hell could not stop her. I screamed for her, but she never came back. That was the last time I ever saw her."

"Oh, God." Sarah desperately wanted to know everything, and was on the edge of her chair, but this story made her sad, not so much empathetically, either. This story was part of her life, even though it occurred twelve years before she was born. She looked sad the way Rose did, Ruth thought.

"They never found either of them. I always had the little bit of hope that maybe she survived. I always wondered and prayed. Now I know it’s true."

"I guess so."

"As for Jack, I assume he didn’t make it. Poor boy. But maybe some memory of him is still within your mother."

"I think it is." Sarah thought about her boyfriend. Jack. And his mother’s maiden name. Dawson. There were more questions to be answered.

"What does Rose do now?"

"Now she runs the Children’s Theater in our hometown. Union, Maine. And she works as the school nurse at the elementary school."

"She’s a nurse?"

"Yeah. She said she always wanted to have an education, that it gives you freedom of the mind, so she put herself through nursing school after she was working on and off in Hollywood. She was an actress. But then, right after she got her degree, she put it to work."

"So she started a career as a nurse? Where did she go to work?" Now that she knew that her daughter was alive, she wanted to know absolutely everything about her life. Her Rose was alive!

"France. She was a nurse during the war. My dad was there, too. He already knew her by then, but he said she had the magic touch. She knew how to really heal people, and he said she carried this young kid who was twice her size to safety. Dad was the one who had all the medals and decorations, but he always said she was the real hero."

"The war? She was in the war?" It had been over for a good quarter of a century now, but it still worried her.

"Yes, she was Nurse Dawson."

Nurse Dawson. Nurse Rose Dawson, Ruth kept repeating to herself.

Her daughter was alive. She was a mother. A mother whose children loved her and admired her. Jack, the boy she had loved, was gone, but she had married a good man. A man that had fathered this intelligent and beautiful young woman, who stood before her now. Her granddaughter. She thought she’d never see grandchildren. Here was one right now. She had two grandchildren. Sarah, and Charlie was the boy. Sarah looked so much like Rose, it was uncanny. It was the same face.

"How old is your brother? Tell me about him."

"He’s nineteen. He goes to Bowdoin. He’s a really smart little bastard. Pain in the butt, though. He the best piano player I’ve ever heard, and I’m not saying that because he’s my brother. The kid has talent like I’ve never seen. But he thinks and acts like he’s ten. But he’s funny, like my dad. Mom’s pretty funny, too, but not quite as funny as Dad. But don’t tell her that."

Ruth couldn’t wait to not tell her that. But she remembered Rose as a girl. She was the only person with a sense of humor who was witty enough to use it correctly. Ruth hated when good things were used badly. Rose knew how to be funny.

"What does your father do? What’s his name, for starters?"

"Dad." She laughed. Her grandmother joined her, after a beat, once she realized she was kidding. "My dad’s name is George. Used to be with the police. He was a detective. He used to bust up the speaks back in the twenties and deal with other forms of organized crime. Yeah, Mom was one of his spies. That’s when they fell in love, I think. Now, he’s a carpenter. Has his own business."

Ruth was in a daze. She had mothered the twentieth century Renaissance woman.

After several moments, she spoke again. "What do you do, Sarah?"

Sarah wasn’t terribly self-centered, by any stretch of the imagination, but she loved it when people asked her that. She loved talking baseball.

"I’m a ball player."

"A ball player?"

"I’m in the A.A.G.B.L. I play center field for the South Bend Blue Sox."

"Dear Lord."

"Not very ladylike, is it?"

"No, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad." If, thirty-two years ago, Rose had told her she wanted to be a professional baseball player, she might have had a heart attack.

Sarah laughed. She glanced over to the window. It was closed over, but she could see that the gray light was no longer seeping through the crack. She would have to be at Ann’s soon, but she didn’t care now. She wanted to stay with her grandmother. Her grandmother…

Both grandmother and granddaughter sat still in the room, never moving from their respective seats, but the Earth itself could not spin fast enough to catch up with the thoughts circling in their minds.

Chapter Four
Stories