The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic

  Grace had been stunned. This was big news. A feature slot with the Tribune was the Holy Grail of journalism. She knew people who had been pitching ideas to them for months and hadn’t even had a response.

  “Wow,” she’d gushed, her cheeks flaming scarlet. “Um, wow. Thank you. Thank you very much. That’s amazing.”

  “Yes, it is. So, send them the best two-thousand-word feature you can possibly write, and if Bill likes it, he’ll run it this summer. Get this right, Grace, and you will almost certainly be guaranteed an internship with them, if not a job when you graduate.”

  She’d spent the next week researching ideas in the library, sitting for hours at the battered teak desk in her dorm room, typing up her handwritten notes on the typewriter she’d been given as a Christmas present the previous year, only to tear the pages from the machine, crumple them up, and throw them into the wastebasket. The college dorm rooms were small: just big enough to fit two single beds (her roommate, Ella Jackson, was at home sick with mono), two desks, two dressers with mirrors, and a small window. Thank God for the window, Grace remembered thinking as she unpacked her case on the first day of the term. The boxy little room with its stark white walls, flimsy furniture, and cold vinyl flooring felt like a cage to a girl who was used to roaming along hedgerows and swinging on the front porch drinking homemade lemonade.

  In the days before the Thanksgiving vacation, she gazed out of that small window for hours at a time, hoping that inspiration would strike her. The Pope’s recent visit to the United States? Anti-nuclear demonstrations in New York? The gay rights march in Washington? These were all big news stories that dwarfed Grace’s confidence and caused her to doubt her ability to do them justice. She needed to find something more personal, a story ordinary people could relate to, a story that, above all else, she felt compelled to write. Professor Andrews always told his students that “great news journalists write with their heads, great features journalists write with their hearts.” She needed to find a story that touched her heart, and she was failing to do so.

  It bothered her over Thanksgiving and continued to bug her through the holiday season. Although she enjoyed the time at home with her family, catching up with Art, who was back, briefly, from traveling around India; relishing her mom’s home cooking; and savoring the late-night conversations with her dad, she was distracted and couldn’t wait to get back to the city and college life. A few weeks into the new year and the start of the spring semester, she still hadn’t found her story.

  “Why can’t I do this, Jimmy?” she complained as they lay on her dormitory bed, their legs vertical, resting against the wall. Grace often lay like this, enjoying the sensation of the blood flowing down her veins, pulled by the force of gravity. It made her feel weightless, as if she were floating in water.

  Jimmy turned to face her, pushing her hair gently from her forehead. “You will find your story, Gracie,” he told her, his smooth, velvety voice captivating her as always. “Don’t force it, babe. Stop panicking. Something will come to you, it always does.” He leaned toward her and kissed her gently on the cheek to reinforce his certainty. They gazed at each other for a moment, and as her eyes fell across the familiar contours of his face, she wondered what the future held for them, whether their relationship would continue, or whether, like so many college-bred romances she had seen, it would fall apart outside the familiarity and security an academic institution provided.

  As she considered this, Macy Johnson, the dorm monitor, knocked on her door to tell Grace that her mother was on the phone. Her father had been involved in a serious accident. All thoughts of her feature, and her future with Jimmy, were forgotten.

  Jimmy drove as quickly as he could while Grace sat motionless in the passenger seat of his blue Ford Mustang. She gazed at the light winter fog that shrouded the tops of the higher buildings in downtown Chicago. She noticed odd things, like the last of the recent snowfall still clinging to the curbs like moss, and she remarked on the new digital time and temperature display on one of the buildings. She did anything she could to silence the voice inside her head which spoke her worst fears.

  They reached the hospital at 7:32 P.M. Nine minutes too late. Her father had been pronounced dead at 7:23. By the time Grace got to his bedside, a frightening array of tubes and drips hung listlessly from the machines around him. They had failed to stop the internal bleeding; failed to keep him alive. He’d been hit head-on by a truck on a blind bend just outside their farm. The truck was traveling way too fast for the road conditions and had lost control. Her father, sensible and practical as always, had been on his way to get salt to grit the roads because he knew they were dangerous to drive on.

  Grace stood in front of her father’s lifeless body, stunned into silence. All she could do was entwine her fingers tightly around her mother’s careworn hands—her mother, who was only forty-one years old and already a widow. She’d barely had a chance to put away the gifts from the wedding anniversary they had recently celebrated. Mother and daughter didn’t speak. Together they wept desperate, relentless tears.

  The hours, days, and weeks that followed were a blur, within which Grace suppressed her own grief in the knowledge that her mother’s was far greater. Jimmy returned to campus five days after the funeral. She hardly remembered him leaving.

  She made the phone call to Professor Andrews exactly two weeks after Macy Johnson had knocked on her dorm door. Sitting on the bottom stair in her family home, tracing the abstract spiderweb carpet pattern with her toes, she dialed the numbers carefully on the old rotary-dial telephone. The circular dial seemed to move in slow motion as it rewound to the start position after each digit; her heart thumped as she listened to the hypnotic whir of the internal mechanism. She hoped Professor Andrews wouldn’t pick up. He did.

  Twisting the gray telephone cord anxiously around her fingers, she explained quietly what had happened and that as a result she would be dropping out of college to remain at home with her mother for the time being. She went on to explain how her mother suffered from multiple sclerosis and how she was worried about her mother’s condition worsening under the stress of her father’s death. She spoke for a long time as Professor Andrews listened silently, waiting patiently until Grace had finished before speaking himself. He told her he understood entirely and supported her decision and was extremely sorry for the terrible situation that had forced it upon her. Sensitive to her grief, he hesitantly mentioned the feature.

  “I hate to raise this now, Grace, but is this something you think you can still work toward? It really is such an outstanding opportunity for you, and I’m sure Bill would wait awhile, given the circumstances.”

  “I’m so sorry to let you down, Professor Andrews,” Grace replied, speaking softly into the receiver, her words concise and measured, “but please can you pass the opportunity to someone else? I’m just too distracted to write at the moment. For now, I have to put my career to one side and be here for my mom.”

  Although she would never know it, her professor was so moved by her sense of duty to care for her mother, by the maturity she displayed for a nineteen-year-old girl, that he shed a tear himself when he replaced the receiver.

  Two years later, she still hadn’t been able to let go of that sense of duty to her mother, and that was why Grace Butler stood there now, celebrating her birthday in the small kitchen of her family home, the same wallpaper with the repeating patterns of barnyard chickens providing the backdrop to her birthday photographs, just as it had done since she was a little girl. The sense of loss—not only of her father but of her own life, her hopes and dreams—suddenly enveloped Grace, and she stepped out of the kitchen onto the back porch, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  While the rest of the guests had gathered around Grace to watch her blow out her candles, Maggie, her eighty-seven-year-old great-grandmother, had been sitting quietly on the back porch watching the celebrations from a distance, the faintest whisper of a smile playing across her paper-thin lips. She saw G
race step out of the kitchen, watched the tears tumbling down her face, and called her over.

  “Come here,” the old lady whispered, patting the seat next to her on the porch swing. “What has you all upset on your big day?”

  Grace walked over, the hum of conversation fading slightly as she moved away from the main gathering of guests.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Maggie. Old age, probably!” Grace always used Maggie’s first name, at her great-grandmother’s insistence. Great-Grandmother. Great-Nana. It all makes me sound so old!, she’d said. Maggie will do just fine.

  “Just ignore me,” Grace continued, dabbing at her tears with a tissue. “I’ll be okay in a minute. Here, I brought you a slice of cake. It’s your favorite—chocolate sponge with fresh cream and Aunt Martha’s homemade raspberry jam.”

  The back porch was lightly scented by the fragrant camellia bushes that grew in the garden. Grace loved the smell and inhaled deeply as she handed over the birthday cake. The old lady took the plate from her, the involuntary shaking of her hands causing the silver dessert fork to rattle on the avocado green plate. It was part of a wedding anniversary present that had never been out of the box until today. Grace had watched her mother wash and dry each plate, cup, and saucer with great care, especially for the occasion, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed by anybody that the simple act of opening that box of dinnerware was as much a symbolic gesture of her mother moving on in her life as it was a practical response to the need for more plates.

  “You’re a very kind girl,” Maggie said, with a slight nod. “Birthdays always bring out the emotions, don’t you think? I should know. I’ve had my fair share of them!”

  Grace noticed that Maggie’s distinctive duck-egg blue eyes seemed lost in distant thoughts as small pools of water gathered at the corners. It struck her how fragile Maggie looked recently, particularly since James, Grace’s great-grandfather, had died a few years ago. She seemed so frail and diminutive, her skin almost translucent, her tired body unable to function without the assistance of medication and a cane. It was hard to believe that this same woman had started the four generations of the family that was gathered here now; that it was this almost insignificant old lady who, as a girl of only seventeen, had made the difficult journey from Ireland to America in the hope of starting a new and better life.

  “Did I ever tell you that it snowed the day you were born?”

  Grace laughed through her tears. “You did, Maggie. Just a few times!”

  Maggie often told the story: the soft white flakes mingling with the pink cherry blossoms that fell in a blizzard from the trees outside the hospital, dancing and whirling in the brisk breeze and drifting around the cars parked outside. Maggie had a particular fascination with the annual spectacle of the cherry trees bursting into life with their colorful blooms; she loved to watch the flowers fall. “Like the prettiest snowflakes,” she would comment, “or a bride’s confetti.” She said it reminded her. Nobody knew what it reminded her of.

  “Now, you wipe away those tears. I’ve something to talk to you about.”

  “What is it?” Grace asked. “Do you want another slice of cake?”

  Maggie slapped her playfully on the wrist. “No, I do not want another slice of cake. I want to tell you something. Something important.” She had Grace’s full attention now. “Are you still writing those stories of yours?”

  Grace looked down at her feet, almost guilty about her response. “Well, not so much. Not since Dad died, really. Everyone’s been too sad, and I’ve been too busy with Mom to write anything.”

  “And what about that college you were enjoying so much, and that boyfriend of yours? When are you going back to them?”

  Grace was surprised. Maggie had never really spoken to her about any of this before. She didn’t think her great-grandmother would even remember Jimmy, it was so long since she’d mentioned him, or since anyone from the family had seen him.

  Since her father’s accident, Grace and Jimmy had drifted apart. They’d kept in touch for a while, but as the months had passed they had spoken on the phone and exchanged letters less and less frequently. Grace had eventually written to tell him that while she still loved him, she realized that she couldn’t expect him to wait for her. It was the hardest letter she had ever written. She thought about Jimmy often, had wanted to get in touch with him so badly, but something had stopped her. Now she simply blocked him out of her mind and tried to forget him.

  “I don’t know, Maggie. Maybe I’ll go back to college and to Jimmy . . . one day.”

  The old lady studied her intently. “You know, I left my home when I was around your age. I left people I loved and cared about, but I had no choice. I had to leave, had to come here to find a better life. Your mom doesn’t want you moping around here forever. I think you’ve done a wonderful thing staying here to care for her, but she can make arrangements, you know—for nurses to come in. And your aunts are around to help out. Maybe you should pick up that notebook of yours and your boyfriend’s phone number and go get on with your life.”

  This was said as much as an order as a hypothetical possibility. Grace knew Maggie was right. She’d been trying to find the right time to talk to her mother about the possibility of returning to college, but the moment never seemed to come.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’m not sure I can still write a good story, though; it’s been so long. And good stories are very hard to find.”

  “Well,” Maggie continued, “if it’s a good story you’re looking for, I’ve one to get you writing again.” She paused then, to take a bite from her cake. Grace waited patiently, conscious of the fact that the guests were starting to leave. “Do you know what the date is today, Grace?”

  Grace chuckled, nudging her great-grandmother gently on the arm. “It’s my birthday. April fifteenth.”

  “Ah, yes, but do you know what else happened on this day? A long time ago?”

  Grace thought for a moment. Had she missed someone’s birthday, or a significant anniversary? She couldn’t think of anything. “I don’t know. What?”

  Maggie paused again. She took a deep breath. Something about her expression had changed, her shaking hands stilled, her eyes staring deeply into those of her great-granddaughter.

  “Did I ever tell you about Titanic, Grace?”

  Grace put her glass down on the floor, sensing the significance in Maggie’s tone.

  “No, Maggie. You didn’t. You never speak to anyone about Titanic. Why?”

  “It sank seventy years ago today, you know.”

  “Really? What, actually today? April fifteenth? So I was born on the anniversary of Titanic sinking? Wow! I didn’t realize that.” She was just about to call over her mother to share this revelation when Maggie put her hand firmly on Grace’s arm.

  “And you know how I remember the date so well, Grace, don’t you?”

  Grace stared intently into Maggie’s glassy eyes. The very air around them seemed to still. The hairs stood up on the back of Grace’s neck. “Yes, Maggie. I know.”

  “I was there. I was on Titanic.” Maggie paused. The relief of saying the words out loud after so many years of refusing to talk about it clearly unsettled her.

  Grace remembered her mother once telling her and Art about Maggie’s Titanic connection. That she had sailed to America on Titanic, but that she never spoke about it and they were never to ask her about it.

  Grace took hold of Maggie’s hands as the old lady continued to speak in a near whisper, as if afraid to let the words leave her mouth. “Fourteen of us from our small parish in Ireland boarded that magnificent ship,” she continued. “Fourteen of us. I was only seventeen years old. Just a girl.” She looked down at the floor then, unable to look her great-granddaughter in the eye. “Over fifteen hundred people died on that ship, you know. And many were just children. Innocent young children. I was one of the lucky ones. I got the last seat on the last lifeboat thanks to a man who helped me. I often wonder what happened to him.
”

  Grace watched Maggie closely, seeing something different in her; a sense of loss, of fear that she hadn’t noticed before.

  “And what about the other thirteen? What happened to them?” she asked tentatively.

  The scent of camellias washed over the porch as the breeze strengthened. Maggie looked at Grace and took a long, deep breath.

  CHAPTER 5

  Private Journal of Maggie Murphy

  Queenstown, Co. Cork

  April 10, 1912

  At last we are arrived in Queenstown. At times I thought we would never get here, the journey across the Windy Gap in the traps seeming to take forever and then the endless train journey from Castlebar—Lord! I lost count of how many times we changed trains at this station and that station—it’s a wonder we didn’t lose any of our luggage on the way, we were in and out of so many carriages. We nearly did lose cousin Pat—he’d fallen asleep what with the rocking motion and all, and nearly didn’t get off at Limerick. Thanks to Maura Brennan’s quick counting up and noticing we were one short, or God only knows where he would be by now!

  Other than that, nothing much happened on the train journey, except a lot of weeping and sniffling, the girls missing their mammies and all. We didn’t talk to each other much, which was a strange thing as we’d usually never be short of a joke or a story or a song. We was all too busy thinking our private thoughts and watching the fields fly past the windows. I saw a hare dart across one field, startled by the noise of the engine, and a hawk hovering above another. I wonder whether they have hares and hawks in America.