Unsinkable

Forthcoming in Pinstripe Fedora, Winter 2010

It was my mom’s idea to go to the museum. My stepdad didn’t care about the Titanic, so it was just Mom and me. I like it when it’s only Mom and me—when we’re alone I can usually make her laugh, and that’s what I was doing when we walked into the museum and I saw a recovered chunk of that little cupid statue that once stood at the bottom of the Titanic’s grand staircase. I got a feeling in my stomach like I was going to be sick. I grabbed Mom’s hand, something I don’t do any more, and held it tightly as we followed the lines deeper into the bowels of the exhibit.

The museum was so crowded, this was the last weekend, lines were bunching up behind each glass box. I pressed my forehead against the display case and saw a gold chain link purse. It had been the style that year—all the ladies had one. But this one was mine; I almost expected to see my handkerchief inside. Next to my purse were spectacles like Manny used to wear, the same bent rims. And china with the blue and gold pattern for the first class passengers, with the words “White Star Lines” at the bottom of each teacup.

“Are you okay?” my mom asked, noticing my quick breathing. I nodded. I wanted to tell her that I drank tea every day from one of those teacups, watching the endless blue amidst the shuffleboard games, the chess games, the strolling parasol feathered rustled corseted derby-hatted oblivion, but I didn’t know how.

Mom and I zig-zagged past cases filled with recovered iron work and candelabras and combs and shaving kits and even paper money and stamps, letters, attaché cases and silver hand mirrors and combs and upholstered footstools like the one I had in my room and tiny diamond cufflinks and a set of shoes I swear I could step in and wear right now. Lining the walls of the exhibit were the black and white photographs of passengers and crew—Captain Smith was always so handsome with his white beard. The first time I met him he complemented me on the perfume I had purchased in Cherbourg before boarding. My aunt was ill in Denver and Titanic was the soonest ship leaving for the U.S. I didn’t care so much about all the hoopla but I can’t say I was disappointed to be on her maiden voyage among the Astors and the Vanderbilts. I know what they said about me. A bunch of floozies in their ostrich feather hats is what they were—they didn’t even care that they couldn’t vote.

The exhibit wound us through a replica of the first class dining room that didn’t look at all like the first class dining room. Where were all the gorgeous windows? The dining room had been my favorite room--bright, as if you were in heaven itself. My mom was looking at cooking dishes barely rusted and servings spoons and glass decanters, and I wanted to tell her how rich the roast beef was that last night, how amazing the pink sherry that I sipped out of a cup just like that one. But I didn’t know how to tell her that, so instead we amused ourselves with the Titanic trivia: Did you know there were 40 tons of potatoes on board? Fifty-thousand eggs? And Mom is trying to explain to me how much is a ton and all I’m thinking is that I’m sure that the coconut sandwich was not on the menu that night, I would have remembered it.

Toward the end of the exhibit was a cooled, darkened room with an imitation starry sky and I remembered looking down on water churning so far below, all that blue, white foam pirouetting in perfect trailing ribbons where the iron sliced the sea. But what I remember most were the people screaming to death all around us in the dark, in that living, writhing amoeba of blue-black that was freezing their insides into solid blocks before it finally swallowed them whole. And then there was the great silence that followed the screaming, which was even worse.

The final piece of the exhibit was the passenger list divided into two categories: survived and perished. I didn’t have to look; I was thinking about that great silence when I saw my picture, the picture Manny took in our living room in Denver, the one I hated and he loved. They called me “Unsinkable.” It made me cry because I didn’t deserve it.

As we left the exhibit I asked Mom if we could buy a souvenir but she said we had already spent too much money. I wanted so badly a replica teacup, the cobalt blue stripe with the gold swirled inlay and the words “White Star Lines” on the bottom; I wanted to drink hot cocoa from it and remember the sun setting and how glorious was the wind on my arms and how white foam pirouetted in perfect ribbons where the iron sliced the sea. In the end she bought me a children’s book called S.O.S Titanic. I wanted to tell her I was too old for pop-up books but I felt too sad to say anything.