When Jane and I started going out, she was a pack-a-day smoker. My parents both smoked, so I was accustomed to it, but I didn’t like it. I could never get used to that awful, acrid smell. One morning before we went to work, Jane announced, “I’m not going to smoke anymore. I’m done with that filthy habit. I’m finished.” She was going to do it cold turkey too.
To celebrate, I cooked dinner that night. To put it mildly, I’m not the greatest cook, but I prepared what was, for me, a gourmet meal. I got out Jane’s good silver, lit half a dozen candles, the whole romantic shebang. It was a big dinner for us: roast chicken, haricots verts, mashed potatoes, gravy, even a chocolate cake made from scratch—my grandmother’s recipe.
We sat down at the table, and Jane’s smile lit up the room. This was perfect!
She took one bite of the chicken and burst into tears. I turned white and started apologizing. How had I screwed up roast chicken so badly? Jane dashed across the living room and grabbed her purse. She lit up a cigarette. “I thought I could. I thought I was ready. I’m so sorry, Jimmy.”
Two weeks later, she did quit, and she stayed with it. Jane never smoked again.
One Saturday morning not long after that, Jane and I went out to breakfast near where we lived on the West Side of New York. After coffee, bagels, and eggs, we stopped at the post office on Columbus, the Ansonia Station.
Once we were inside, Jane fell to the floor and started shaking terribly. She was in great pain. We both thought she was dying. A nurse happened to be in the post office. She rushed over to help Jane. “I think your”—I don’t know if she said wife or friend—“is having a seizure.”
Jane finally stopped shaking and she managed to sit up on the floor, but we were both terrified. And totally mystified. We started consulting doctors around New York. We found out that Jane had a brain tumor.
She had surgery at New York Hospital, one of the best places in the world for cancer treatment. They removed most of the tumor, but they couldn’t get it all. We were told that Jane was going to die, probably within the next year. She was thirty-six.
She never complained, never shook her fist at the heavens, never once asked, Why me? She spent weeks and sometimes months in the hospital during the two and a half years that she lived. She had lots and lots of visitors and she never wanted to bring her friends and family down, not even while she was getting chemo and her hair was falling out. She had a collection of funny, goofy-looking hats that she’d wear. A different hat almost every day. The hat-of-the-day never failed to get her visitors laughing and then Jane would laugh too. That’s just who she was.
I had never been more in love with anybody. I was wildly in love with this woman who had to use a walker or wheelchair and had clumps of hair sprouting all over her head. It taught me something about the importance we tend to put on physical appearance. Imagine going on a blind date, and the person who shows up is using a walker and losing her hair. Not too many of us would have a second date. But during those days, I was more in love with Jane than I’d ever been. She was my best friend, the love of my life up to that point, and she was a saint.
During that time, I was running the Burger King business, which was the biggest account at J. Walter Thompson. After Jane got sick with that hellacious disease, I refused to travel. I wouldn’t go on film shoots. I wouldn’t go to Miami for meetings at Burger King headquarters. I convinced them that the business ran best with me staying in the ad factory, making sure that the work was as good as it could possibly be. The Burger King folk—especially Kyle Craig and Jeff Campbell—were good clients, good people. Besides that, they all loved Jane too.