Tabloid Dreams (15 page)

It was that way on the
Titanic
. As soon as I stepped onto the deck, though almost no one knew what I knew and they were going about their lives, I could smell that same smell. To feel those things on my skin and in my lungs when I was a child, and to watch, as I did, the women of that mining town clutching each other, helpless: I don't think the world was the same for me after that. But I didn't speak of that to the man on the promenade deck. I just told him about the mine disaster and what I smelled and that I smelled it again. For almost any man, this would not convince him at all. He would use those very intuitions against me. But he listened, and then he said he was sorry. He actually apologized, and I knew he meant it. And he didn't try to reassure me anymore. That struck me as wonderful.

And yet I left him. There was some other man, I think, come from the bow of the ship with ice in his drink that had fallen on the deck from the iceberg. My man—what a phrase to come to my lips now, though I mean it only to distinguish him from the other man; I knew neither of their names—my man was quietly disapproving of the other man, who was acting like a fool, it's true, and for a moment, there was a connection between us—my man, yes mine, and me—we heard the foolishness of this outsider together, we were of one mind about this. Then the other was gone, and my stiff Englishman who respected me, clearly, was silently watching the sea, aware of me, I knew. And then something collapsed in me, as sudden and rock-heavy as the coal mine in Mingo County. It was too late for me. For this man, as well. For all of us. All these odd and sweet feelings I was having turned then into bitterness. I couldn't bear to look at him anymore. I slipped away without a word. As quietly as the great ship going under. For the
Titanic
was quiet, in its last plunge.

I stand up from this bed in this cold room and I am still wearing my long skirt and my high-necked linen shirtwaist. I wouldn't let them take these clothes from me, though I know I must yield eventually, but these things on my bed seem little more than a shadowed nakedness. I wandered the ship for a long while and I was among other people but I spoke not another word. To my shame, perhaps. I did not look at the others. I was dead already, it seemed to me. Then I found a place where I could stand and watch the sea, with no one nearby. A high place. Near the wheelhouse, I think, and, unintentionally, on a deck with lifeboats. The orchestra was still playing. As time went on, there were sounds of people rushing, crying out. I braced my mind so as not to hear. I stood looking beyond the bow, far into the slick dark sea, lit bright by the moon, and the air was cold and I began to shiver, but only from the cold, I knew, not from fear. I did not fear death.

My father had died the year before. He was a good man. I sat beside him and the bed was so neat all about him, my mother had tucked him in and folded the covers rightly across his chest, a straight, orderly fold, and there were flowers in a vase beside his bed, and his pajama shirt was starched, and she had done all that she knew to do, so she was weeping hard in another room. I sat beside my father and I touched his hand and his breathing was difficult now, but he turned his face to me.

He did not tell me to be brave. He simply said, “I'm proud of you, Margaret.”

I laid my cheek against the back of his hand and wept awhile and I knew he would not misinterpret the tears. They were from gratitude, as much as anything else. Then he slept. And I crept from his room and when I woke in the night, from the touch of the doctor's hand, it was to find that my father had left his body.

As I stood on the boat deck of the
Titanic,
I thought of him. I wondered if he'd had as little use for his body as I had for mine. Of course we never spoke of this. But he seemed to understand so much about me, and he slipped quietly away in the dark, and he was always a man of the mind and the mind's energy surely crackled on beyond the body, it never needed the body. All this fluttered about in me as I stood watching the ocean creep onto the bow, and though they were a little disorganized, these thoughts made me feel it would be all right if this night ended for me as it clearly seemed it would. I even decided to go below and lie in my bed and read. There were only a few pages left to the book I was reading about a man married to a shrewish woman and in love with the wife's cousin and instead of touching each other, the two lovers decide to kill themselves. A woman wrote this book, Mrs. Edith Wharton, and there were things she seemed to understand, and it was sad, I thought, that I would not be able to seek her out and speak with her when I reached New York.

I was about to turn and go. But an image held me. The sea had finally crept over the bow of the ship, a thin cover now, and the moon and stars were there and I thought of Venice, and once again I was planning simply to return to my room and read and it was at that moment I heard his voice, the simplest hello.

I turned to him. His eyes were clearer in the glare of the electric light from the bridge and even the harshness of Mr. Edison's illumination could not take away the softness there.

“I was about to go below and read,” I said.

“Nonsense,” he said. “You've known all the while what's happening. You must go into a lifeboat now.”

“I don't know why,” I said. These words came to my lips as quickly as an urge to kiss. This was an act of intimacy, I felt that right away, to tell this man I did not wish to live anymore. I didn't fully understand the feeling myself, really. I didn't even know how long I'd had it, perhaps only a few moments, perhaps years. And, of course, in that context, he could easily have taken it another way. Not as an independent feeling in me but as an expression of the hopelessness of the situation aboard the
Titanic,
for hopeless it was. But dear God, he knew what I meant. Instantly. He knew my heart. I know he knew. And there was only one answer for him to give, a wildly impertinent answer, an answer only a lover could give, and he spoke it to me. I told him I did not know why I should live and he said, “Because I ask you to.”

I wanted to say yes I will live, yes, I will receive this desire from you and perhaps in so doing I'll even apprehend at last what that actually means, to live, for this body of mine must surely have something more to do with it than I've so far discerned. And I was quite acutely aware of my body at that moment, though I could not have said what part, and his eyes held me and he seemed very calm. I was intensely aware of him, the physical presence of him, and then I realized he had changed from his tweeds into a tuxedo. Regrettably, this was an easier thing to speak of.

“You've dressed up,” I said.

“To see you off,” he said.

I don't think I spoke another word to him after that. Words are the language of the mind, aren't they? Perhaps not for Mrs. Edith Wharton or some others. But for me. He had dressed up to see me off, he had adorned his body for the occasion of offering me life, and I took that life from him, accepted it as I would a kiss from him or a caress or more, and so the language of my mind failed me. And I find myself now walking around and around this room at the end of the twentieth century and I am frantic with regret, for on that night I could find no other language with which to speak. My hand moved, it's true, my right hand rose as if by its own intent and it came out toward him and I ached to put that hand on some part of his body, to touch him—it is my ache now, too—touch his hand, at least, perhaps even his cheek, but I could not. Instead my hand found his white tie, slightly askew, and I straightened it, the gesture of a wife of many years with her husband, just before going out the front door of our town house and into a carriage and off to a play or an opera and he is always doing this, tying his tie and leaving it crooked, and it's touching, really, for me, for his wife, because his mind, which respects me and listens to me and considers me its equal, is so often filled with ideas that he neglects his body, even in the tying of a white tie around his neck.

I straightened his tie and my hand was trembling, but its will was weak, or perhaps simply unpracticed, and it fell once more beside me, though neither it nor I wanted that, and he said, “Please hurry.”

And if I were the woman my mind had always aspired to and even believed I was, I should have taken the initiative there, should have touched him. I should have taken his face in my two hands and pulled him to me and I should have kissed him, for there was a kiss yearning on my lips even then, though at the time I did not clearly recognize it for what it was. I can recognize it only now. Nearly a century later.

I did hurry. I turned and we walked together toward a lifeboat very nearby. No more than half a dozen steps altogether, and yet I was very conscious of walking with him, a familiar act, an intimate act, our bodies moving beside each other, we'd let the carriage go and we were walking down Broadway and there were bright lights all around and we were talking about the play, about the flow of Mr. Ibsen's ideas, and then we were before the boat and a hissing came from the sky and a pop and suddenly there was orange light all around, like the lights of Broadway. I looked at him and I wanted to take him in my arms, but I did not, I could not, I was being a lady, God forgive me, and I wanted him to take me in his arms but he did not—though I felt that he wished to, I felt it on my skin just as I'd felt the presence of death—but he was being a gentleman.

And he said something to a ship steward and it was this man's hand who took mine and I was in the boat and I looked about me and I did not remember stepping in and I turned to look at my man but he was just then retreating into the shadows and the lifeboat began to descend and then I was on the sea in a boat full of women, our lives spared because of our sex, and I was ashamed, and all I wanted was to be on that deck beside him, and I sank down and my mind was empty of all ideas and my body was empty of any intent and after a while the bow of the
Titanic
disappeared and the stern lifted up and I did not let myself think where he might be and as the stern lifted, there came a great and awful noise from the ship and I realized it was from the silver and the pianos and the porcelain and the couches and the chairs and the steamer trunks and the wine bottles and the books—every loose object on the ship was crashing forward and breaking—and then all the lights suddenly blinked into darkness and a last tremendous noise rose, the ship cracking in two, and then the stern settled back for a moment as if it might sail off on its own and I thought of him once more, imagined him on this half-ship, sailing away to safety, but quickly the section began again to rise, a dark shadow against the bright night sky, and this time there was a terrible silence. No. There were voices all around, in the water, crying out. But from where I sensed him to be, there was only silence. The stern stood upright for what felt like a very long time and then it began to slide quietly downward, disappearing, faster, faster, and it was gone, and I might as well have been beside him, for I dropped at once into a sleep as dreamless as death.

And have I truly awakened, even now? I stand motionless in the center of this room. There is no sound, except the soft slip of the air. Perhaps I died in the very moment he did. Perhaps this is the purgatory I've been assigned to for my betrayal, a place to show me that the words must be made flesh.

I feel the weight of my clothes upon me and the burden of my breath. It is many years too late but I unfasten my dress and I slip from it and from all the layers of garments beneath, I shed them quickly, tearing at them, throwing them aside, and at last I am standing naked, and I call to him, I cast the words of my mind out to the distant sea. Look at me, I say.

I stand for a long while in the center of this room, praying that his spirit has found its way to me and is gazing on this vessel of my body, bright with lights and holding him.

I am no longer afraid. I move in my nakedness to this other room and I bend to the tub and by my own hands now I let the water rush in and soon this hard white sea is filled and I step in. The water is cold. It takes my breath away. No matter. I sit and it rises up my thighs, my hips, my sides, and it is over my breasts, and it is beneath my chin, and it ripples there, like kisses. He is nearby. I slide quietly beneath the water. I will find him and we will touch.