The Explorer's Apprentice

35:Grandmother's Advice

I still don't own these people....

Rose Dewitt Bukater

“You’re a strange woman, Rose. A very strange woman, indeed.”

Rose sits slouched over and stares blankly into her cup, absentmindedly rolling a tiny teaspoon onto the foam of her coffee. It’s amazing, all of the different shapes and faces one can create with coffee foam, especially when caught in a daydream and too anxious to consume anything edible.

She draws a smiley-face. “You’re a very strange man.”

“I didn’t mean that as a compliment.”

Rose yawns. “Neither did I.”

Sunlight bathes the little room in warmth, but Cal casts her a long, icy look from across the table. His tone reeks of vexation. Rose doesn’t even look up. “You have yet to learn your place, Rose, and I’m getting very tired of your recklessness. It’s going to stop. I’ll see to it that it does.”

While such words would usually make Rose’s skin crawl with resentment, today her thoughts are far beyond Cal and the breakfast room. It’s as if her fiancé is nothing but a trivial figment of her imagination— one that can be blocked out if she tries hard enough. After all, Rose can only focus on one thing, one person—only one face.

Cal clears his throat and straightens. “I had hoped you would come to me last night.”

Last night….A strange, warm sensation brews within the pit of Rose’s stomach, and makes her want to giggle. She draws another smiley face right next to the first, and they’re so close that their little heads touch. Rose gives the second face eye-lashes and lips. And when she swirls her spoon in the foam around them, it looks like the smiley-faces are dancing.

Cal sighs.

“I was tired.” She answers him simply, annoyed at his interruption of her daydream.

“Your exertions below deck were no doubt exhausting.”

Now Rose does look up.

Her level of awareness sparks as her eyes meet two black, beady daggers. She lowers her cup to her sternum and sighs as a cold shiver runs down her spine. And suddenly, almost out of no where, memories come rolling back to her like an ancient tumbleweed. Because the day she met Caledon Hockley was just like this one. It was an unusually cold spring morning, and tension hung in the air like with the deadliness of the pneumonic plague. Rose wore her best dress—a pleasantly turquoise sundress that hugged her curves nicely but somewhat uncomfortably, and she wore her mother’s best, ruby red lipstick.

“Oh you’re going to love him darling, just love him. He’s so charming and smart and…and everything you would like in a man! Now, remember to be very polite, and stand up straight. Are you wearing the silver necklace? Are you nervous?”

“No mother, stop fretting. Of course I’m not nervous.” Even though I was. But only a little.  “Either we like each other or we don’t—if we do, great. If we don’t, then nomat—“

“Don’t speak like that, Rose! He is the one! He is! I can feel it!” Even though what Mother really felt was the weight of her future pocketbook— filled to the brim with Hockley money say Cal and I did work out. “Now let me brush that wild mane of yours back, dear, and remember to be polite. First impressions are more important than any, after all!”

“And…mother,” I lowered my voice to a whisper and spoke in a tone I hardly ever use with her, or anyone. My voice trembled at the edges. “I will…like him… right? You really think we’ll get along?”