“He comes right on back up and is reunited with Rose.” It wasn’t until late into my teenage years, after making an offhand reference to Titanic 2 in front of a group of stoned friends, choking on smoky laughter, that I realized the lie I’d been living.ĭeath and the ocean beguile Julia Armfield’s debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea, a work that plumbs with striking subtlety what it feels like to live with the mystery of both. “Jack isn’t actually dead, it turns out” she explained in a syrupy Southern accent. Witnessing my meltdown, a well-intentioned flight attendant told me a white lie: there was a sequel to the film. It confirmed what I thought I’d known, but somehow only knew for sure at the moment of watching Jack’s descent: death was not an if but a when. The scene sent me into an unmediated existential panic. Then it got to the part where Rose watches Jack sink to the bottom of the ocean. Titanic didn’t strike me as a strange selection at the time, given our parallel transatlantic voyage. I surreptitiously plugged my headphones in and sat, swaddled in my micro fleece blanket, transfixed by the drama. This was during the late 1990s, back when all passengers were subjected to one single projection. I was six years old on a flight from New York to London on which Titanic was the onboard movie. MY FIRST PANIC attack happened in the air.
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