Chapter Two

Jack followed Ruth up the stairs, his suitcase in his hand. She looked back once to be sure he was following, then started down a long hallway with doors on each side. She stopped between two doors, thinking, then opened the door on the left and escorted him inside.

“This was one of the guestrooms, but it will be your room from now on. Mrs. di Rossi will help you set it up to your liking once your belongings arrive, but it should be adequate for now.” She paused, glancing at the suitcase in his hand. “We’re having a dinner party tonight with a number of important guests. Since you are now a member of this household, I expect you to attend. Do you have proper clothing?”

Jack wasn’t sure what kind of clothes were considered proper for a dinner party for important people, but he answered, “I have a suit.”

“May I see it?”

Jack set the suitcase on the bed and opened it. The suit was folded on top of the other clothes to keep it from getting too wrinkled. He unfolded it and showed it to her. “It’s this.”

Ruth frowned, looking at the simple brown suit and blue tie. It wasn’t exactly appropriate attire for a formal dinner, even for a child, but she supposed it would have to do. There wasn’t time to get anything else for him.

“Go ahead and get dressed,” she told him. “The guests should be arriving by 7:30, and dinner will begin at eight o’clock. You’ll be sitting at the children’s table…just follow Rose and the twins.”

She hurried out the door, closing it firmly behind her and leaving Jack staring after her. He walked around the room before he got dressed, opening doors and looking out the window at the expanse of autumn-brown lawn and leafless trees in the backyard. A trellis that was undoubtedly covered in vines during the summer months extended to just below his windowsill, the vines long since cut back. Briefly, he wondered if it would be strong enough to climb.

The room was as large as the living room at his old home in Chippewa Falls, with a dresser and a closet so big he wondered how anyone could have enough clothes to fill them, though he was sure his mother would have liked to have tried. He even had his own bathroom, with a combination bathtub/shower, fresh, soft towels, and enough fancy soaps and shampoos to keep a person clean for years, or so it seemed to him.

He perched on the edge of the bed for a moment, then sprang to his feet, going to the window and looking out before pacing back to his suitcase. It was nice enough, he supposed, but he still didn’t feel comfortable there. The very opulence of the house made him feel out of place and left him longing for the simplicity of his old life in Wisconsin, though he had often longed to see more of the world when he was there.

A glance at the clock on the bedside table told him that it was past seven. He needed to hurry and get dressed, lest he be late and give the Bukaters more reason to wish he wasn’t there.

Ten minutes later, he emerged from the room, dressed as neatly as he could be in the suit he had once worn to church and special occasions in Chippewa Falls. It was too small now—something he had been acutely aware of at his family’s funeral earlier that week—but there was nothing he could do about it except try to not to bend his knees or elbows too much, to avoid putting too much strain on the fabric.

Jack looked around the empty hallway, wondering if he was supposed to go downstairs, or if he should wait and go down with the others—if they weren’t already downstairs. He was about to go to the top of the stairs to take a look when one of the twins emerged from a room across the hall, wearing a pink satin dress and makeup that looked ridiculous on her.

Far from being embarrassed at his staring at her, she looked him over disdainfully and asked, “Why aren’t you dressed right?”

Jack looked at her hands, trying to determine which twin it was, but she hid her hands behind her back and smirked at him.

The other twin emerged from the room next to her sister’s, wearing an identical dress and slightly less heavy makeup. Jack got a look at her hands and then turned to glare at the girl who had spoken to him—Julie—with all the disdain a fifteen-year-old boy could muster.

At that moment, Ruth and Tom came out of a room down the hall, both dressed formally. Tom saw the three children staring each other down and sighed, going to see what the problem was.

Julie was quick to speak up. “Dad…he isn’t dressed right.”

“Neither are you, Julie,” Ruth interjected. “Or you, Lucy,” she added. “Go wash off that makeup.”

“But Mom…”

“Go wash it off.”

“But Rose gets to wear makeup.”

“And when you’re fifteen like Rose, you can wear it, too. Wash it off. Now.”

The twins exchanged looks of disgust and marched back into their rooms. Jack looked at Ruth with new respect—his mother had had the same rule for Betsy, and Betsy, too, had complained and done everything she could to get around it. At least some things were familiar.

Ruth looked at Jack critically, wincing at the sight of the too-short pants and sleeves of his jacket. In spite of his best efforts, his knees and elbows were straining at the fabric, and the buttons of the jacket threatened to pop off if he breathed deeply.

Jack knew that it was too small, but he didn’t have anything else to wear. His mother had been planning to take him and Betsy shopping for new clothes the previous Saturday—the day after the accident—though Jack had complained and thought of every excuse possible to get out of it. He had hated shopping for clothes with his mother and sister. They could spend hours poring over clothes, shoes, and fabric—though Betsy’s idea of nice clothing was different from their mother’s—while he hung as far back from them as he could, pretending he didn’t know them. Still, he wished there had been time to get a new suit—he’d had a growth spurt over the summer and most of his clothes no longer fit quite right.

Ruth shook her head, considering. She thought about lending him something belonging to her son, Tom Jr., but realized that it would be even worse. Tom Jr. was taller than his father by two inches—and Jack was shorter than Tom Sr. by a good six inches. Anything he borrowed from either of them would be much too long and too big. He would just have to wear what he had on.

For a moment, she considered asking him to eat in the kitchen instead of attending the dinner, but she knew her husband would never allow it. In spite of his insistence that he had taken the boy in because the will had stipulated he do so, she knew there was more to it than that. If he hadn’t wanted to take him in, he would have had his lawyers working on the case, looking for a way out of the duty he had been assigned. No, she knew that he had brought the boy home because he could never break a friend’s trust or leave him out in the cold—and that extended to his orphaned son.

“It’ll have to do,” she told Jack, who was trying to suck his stomach in and make the suit appear a better fit. “We’ll get you some new clothes soon…but that will have to do for tonight.”

The door to the left of Jack’s room opened and Rose emerged, clad in an elegant white dress. The streak of blue paint was gone from her face, though a slight redness showed where she had scrubbed at it. Ruth looked at her to be sure the paint was gone, then nodded approvingly.

Rose looked at Jack and smiled slightly, her hand moving self-consciously to the spot where the paint had been. She knew it was gone, but she still felt slightly embarrassed at meeting him that way.

“You look nice,” he assured her, earning a sharp look from Ruth and a giggle from Lucy, who had emerged from her room with her face clean.

Ruth glanced at her younger daughter, then said, “Go see what’s taking Julie so long.”

Lucy re-emerged from Julie’s room a moment later, her twin in tow. Ruth looked at Julie, finally nodding in approval.

“Let’s go downstairs. The guests should begin arriving momentarily.”

When they reached the living room where Jack had first been introduced to the members of the family, Jack stood uncomfortably, not sure what he was supposed to do. The twins sat down on a loveseat and giggled when he moved uncertainly towards them, not knowing what else to do.

Rose finally came to his rescue just as the doorbell rang to announce the arrival of the first guests.

“This is really Mom and Dad’s party. There probably won’t be anyone our age. We should just stand back and say polite things if anyone speaks to us.”

Jack watched, wide-eyed, as a parade of elegantly dressed men and women came through the door. He knew they were supposed to be important people, but he had no idea who most of them were. One man looked slightly familiar, as if he had seen him somewhere—maybe on television—but most were completely unfamiliar.

Rose pointed some of them out to him. Gesturing to the man who looked vaguely familiar, she whispered, “That’s Robert McNamara. He’s the Secretary of Defense for this country.”

Jack nodded, realizing now that he had indeed seen the man before. “I think I’ve seen him on TV.”

“Me, too,” Rose said, “but now you get to see him in person. My brother decided to join the Navy after talking to him—it broke Mom and Dad’s hearts. They wanted him to go to Harvard like Dad did, but he said his country needed him more than the business world did.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m never joining the military. I’m going to go to college.”

Rose nodded. “So am I. I want to be an artist.” She turned as another couple walked into the room, leaning towards Jack and whispering, “There’s Richardson Dilworth, the mayor of Philadelphia.” She lowered her voice further. “Rumor has it he’s going to run for governor.”

Jack looked at him, not particularly impressed. “I met the mayor of Chippewa Falls several times…my dad was on the city council for a few years. He was in the supper club my parents belonged to.”

Rose had never heard of Chippewa Falls before. “Where’s that?”

“Where’s what?”

“Chippewa Falls.”

“It’s in Wisconsin.”

“Oh.” Rose was silent for a moment. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s where I’m from.”

“I guessed that.” She looked around, nodding to someone else and leaning over to Jack to whisper, “That’s Richard Schweiker. He just got elected to Congress.”

Jack nodded, trying not to appear impressed by the people Rose was pointing out. He had never met a congressman before, nor anyone else as high up government as those he was meeting tonight.

The guests mingled, chatting with their hosts and occasionally paying attention to the kids. Jack saw Tom Bukater gesture to him a number of times and suspected he was telling his guests about the boy who had suddenly been added to his family. A few guests nodded to him, some looking him over critically, and one woman said to her husband, within earshot of Jack and Rose, “How very charitable of Tom to take that boy in. He certainly looks in need of help, doesn’t he?”

Rose turned and looked at Jack upon hearing this. His jaw was set stubbornly and he was glaring at the woman, wishing he had the courage to tell her how rude he thought she was.

“Don’t listen to her,” Rose whispered. “She’s well-known for saying the wrong thing…she’s only on the guest list because her husband is one of Dad’s business partners. Mom avoids her whenever possible.”

Jack didn’t look convinced, but just then a woman in an apron emerged from the dining room and quietly made her way to Ruth. She whispered something to her, then retreated back into the dining room.

Ruth clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Sophia has just informed me that dinner is ready. If you will follow me…”

Jack trailed after Rose as she and her sisters hurried into the dining room. They went to a small table set up some distance from the long main table.

“This is the children’s table,” Rose informed him. “This is where we’ll be sitting.”

Jack sat down awkwardly, the tight suit making it difficult to sit comfortably. When he was finally seated, he looked at his place setting, eyes widening in dismay at the amount of silverware.

“Are all these for me?” he asked Rose.

The twins giggled, earning a look of disdain from Rose. “You don’t always use the right silverware,” she told her sisters loftily. “Don’t laugh at him.” She turned to Jack. “Each piece of silverware is for a different course, more or less,” she explained. “There’s the soup spoon, and the salad fork, and…”

Jack looked at the silverware, trying to keep up with what Rose was saying. Rose saw his confusion and whispered, “Just start from the outside and work your way in.” She took her napkin from the table and unfolded it on her lap. Jack followed suit, realizing that he should have known that much. His mother had always insisted on proper table manners, including putting napkins on the lap. He recognized some of the silverware, too, from his parents’ supper parties, but those had never been as elaborate as this, and he had rarely been allowed to attend those parties anyway, instead going to see friends or going into town to eat hamburgers and see a movie with his sister. His parents had considered those to be grown-up events, and had sent the kids to places where they could have fun and not be disruptive.

Several uniformed women came in carrying dishes and trays and began serving the guests. Jack looked up as the woman whom he had seen speaking to Mrs. DeWitt-Bukater earlier came to their table and began serving them, setting bowls of some kind of thin soup in front of them.

“Thank you, Mrs. di Rossi,” Rose told her, waiting until the others were served before picking up her soup spoon. She saw her mother watching from the adults’ table and gave her sisters a look, reminding them to remember their manners before their mother got angry.

The twins chorused a thank you, and Jack mumbled the same to the woman, who looked at him curiously before returning to the kitchen.

“That’s Mrs. di Rossi,” Rose told him. “She’s the housekeeper and the main servant here. There’s a few others who come two or three times a week, but she’s the one in charge of them. She’s in charge of the caterers, too, for things like this. You’ll like her. She’s nice. She’s got a son, Fabrizio, who works as a gardener here—he’s in high school, too, but he doesn’t go to our school. You’ll probably meet him soon—he also repairs things, and he’s still getting the yard ready for winter.”

Jack just nodded, taking a spoonful of soup—he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. The soup was good, and he began to hope that, in spite of how awkward he felt, he would at least be able to enjoy the food.

The next course, however, brought him up short. He stared at the plate Mrs. di Rossi had set before him, his appetite disappearing as he realized that this particular delicacy was a garden pest his mother had once paid him and his sister a penny apiece to collect and smash—escargot, the garden snail.

He looked up at the other diners, seeing that the adults were eating the delicacy with a special fork and apparently enjoying it—though if he had looked more closely, he would have observed that a few of them gulped the escargot down very quickly and took large swallows of wine to wash the taste out of their mouths.

“Ew!”

Jack looked up to see Lucy making a face at Julie, who had pulled a snail from its shell and was eating it with a great show of enjoyment—though he soon suspected that Julie didn’t enjoy it as much as she appeared to when Lucy tried to push her portion of escargot onto her sister’s plate and immediately had it returned.

“Girls!” Ruth admonished from the adults’ table before the twins could begin to squabble.

Jack looked back at the snails, reaching the fork hesitantly towards them, then stopping. There was no way he could bring himself to eat the slimy things—the very thought made him feel sick.

Rose nudged him, keeping an eye out for her mother. “Take them out of the shells and wrap them in your napkin. You can feed them to the dog, Nettie, later. She’ll eat anything.”

Jack followed her example, removing the snails from their shells and discreetly dropping them into his napkin. Lucy did the same—of the DeWitt-Bukater girls, only Julie could stand escargot, and even she was only willing to eat it in small quantities.

Jack had almost finished hiding the snails when Ruth looked over and caught him. “Jack Dawson!” she shouted, startling him so much he almost dropped the napkin.

He whirled around to look at her, seeing her coming toward him angrily. She snatched the napkin from his hand and shook the snails from it, dropping them on the plate and tossing the napkin on the table.

The room had gone silent. Jack looked around, his face flaming, and saw that Rose and Lucy were looking at the table, avoiding his eyes and their mother’s angry gaze.

“I…um…they’re snails,” he said, wondering if she would force him to eat the things.

Someone at the adults’ table laughed, quickly trying to cover it with a cough, but Ruth had heard and had grown even more angry.

“They’re escargot,” she corrected, “and they’re a fine delicacy. One would think your parents would have taught you better manners than to throw away good food, but I suppose not.”

Jack opened his mouth to correct her assumption about his parents and to point out that two of her daughters were doing to same thing, then closed it, thinking better of it. At the moment, he wasn’t sure he could discuss his parents in front of a roomful of strangers without breaking down, and he wouldn’t tattle on the two girls to their mother—he didn’t want them getting the same treatment.

“Um…I’m sorry…” he finally managed to get out, his voice cracking. He half-expected to hear giggles from the twins, but they continued to stare silently at the table.

Ruth shook her head. “You should have thought of that before you tried to throw these away. Since you obviously aren’t hungry, you can go to your room. I hope you’ll be more respectful next time.”

Jack glanced at Tom Bukater, half-hoping that he would say something in his defense, but quickly decided that he would get no help from him. He wasn’t going to publicly confront his wife over her treatment of the boy.

As Ruth stared down at him angrily, Jack pushed back his chair and stood, trying to look dignified in spite of his red face and the people staring at him. Straightening his back, he walked stiffly from the room and headed for the stairs.

Chapter Three