Life with Jack and Jane: Part II Jane, "Queen of Queens"

I gave a little character description of Uncle Jack in Part I of Life with Jack and Jane (read: http://thebrandywinechronicles.blogspot.com/2017/03/life-with-jack-and-jane-part-1-moving.html). Jane, Aunt Jane, Uncle Jack’s common law spouse, was in complete contrast to my Uncle Jack. My Uncle Jack was 100% Irish Catholic. Jane was 100% Jewish. Uncle Jack, six foot something plus, Jane, four foot eleven on a good day. Jack was a comedian, never to be taken too seriously. He drank and ate too much and did other stuff too much. He even cussed. Jane did not. She laughed all the time, mostly at Jack, but she had not a comedic bone in her tiny frame.

Speaking of her tiny frame, Jane was one round ball from head to toe. She ate like a bird but looked like a hippo. There were no lines stopping to define where her head met her chin all the way to her ankles meeting her feet. Her hair was a frizzy, mousy brown, cut short with big, dark rimmed glasses, sallow skin that makeup may have addressed, and a really large gap in her two front teeth. She smelled like lilacs and intense body odor with maybe a hint of moth balls and soot she picked up from living with Jack.

Appearances don’t matter when you are the sweetest "Queen of Queens."

Jane was one of the finest people I have ever known. Not only was she lacking a funny, comedic bone but she also was missing a mean bone. I never heard her speak a bad word about anyone or anything. She always saw the best in everything. She was also extremely respectful of everyone, she never judged, her manners and taste were impeccable. She was dainty and polite.

Generous and thoughtful with Jane were a given. She minded her business and never got in anyone’s way. I honestly do not think she ventured much past Queens other than to travel to work. Maybe she took the occasional trip to New Jersey to visit her sisters or our family. But other than that, I really don’t think she left Queens. She may not have been a worldly queen but she guarded and preserved her territory like any great ruler.

That’s why I crown Jane "Queen of Queens!"

Jane, a native Jew from Queens, was married once before to another native Queens Jewish man whose parents escaped a Nazi concentration camp, or were rescued by the Americans from a camp at the end of the war. Whatever the specific details of the story, that’s how they ended up in America. They were Holocaust survivors that went on to live the American dream. They built a fortune in American in, if memory serves me, the steel industry. They had a son, Jane’s husband. Jane and her husband had a child named Jill.

Jane and I would spend countless hours talking, mostly every Friday evening when she would end her work week at the United Nations and mine at Simon and Schuster publishing firm. We’d commence the long week by ordering Chinese, sitting at her traditionally appointed mahogany dining table, eating our broccoli with chicken and brown sauce. We would talk and talk while Uncle Jack, um, hmm... tended to his plants.

I often wondered what happened in her marriage and why she and my Uncle Jack after all these years of committing to one another had never married. I began to inquire, like any novice investigative reporter, in a very nonchalant, quasi manipulative manner. Knowing such an answer to my question would require her to delve much past the point of my inquiry’s origin I proceeded to ask, "How did you and Jack meet?"

In her Minnie Mouse voice, in contrast to my Uncle Jack’s Frosty the Snowman loud, husky diction, she told me Jack had just returned from Vietnam and she was recently a widow.

“Yes, I was told your husband had passed away. How did it happen if I may ask?”

Now one thing about Jane, "Queen of Queens," she was so sweet she put a sugary spin on everything. She never would say a single bad word about anyone or anything. In her thick Queens’s accent she began to tell me her story, “Oh, he was verwee, verwee sick. He was in horwible pain. He had, sorwt of like a brwain tuma, you know like a big mass in his brwain, cawsed him terrwible, terrwible pain. It got werse, and werse and he eventually died."

I’m thinking he had a brain tumor and that’s what killed him. No, that’s not what happened. She continued with her story, “He shot himself in the head from the tuma. I trwied to take the gun frwom him but he pointed it towards me and my little gurl and luckily we were fine but he shot himself.”

I continued to listen. “It wasn’t his fawlt ya know, he was verwee, verwee sick. He hearwd voices and stuff so he didn’t know any better. And so I was verwee, verwee sad. My little gurl, she was verwee young. But he died. He had a lot of demons in his head that herwt him so I can’t blame him. He had no choice.”

"My little gurl and I ran to the closet. We were vewry scaed. I was worried. Ya know, back then we didn't have cawdless phones so I could cawl anyone. We just waited and hearwd the gun and well, he died. We came out of the closet and he was on the flowa and he must have been in so much pain from the tuma, I can only imagine. He was suffering so much he had to do it. He was vewry sick."

I didn't know what to say so I said nothing. I felt I had pried too much, perhaps overstepped boundaries for her to share such a painful memory over Chinese food, on a Friday, after a long work week. But Jane was happy to continue down memory lane.

“I met yaw Uncle Jack on the street one day. He stopped to tawk to me. Yaw Uncle Jack was so sweet to me and my little gurl. And he was so vewry handsome. And chaming. And from there the rest is histowry.” She ended with a little giggle, covering her mouth as her body jiggled from laughter.

Handsome and charming? I was startled, “Uncle Jack, handsome?" I said.

"Oh yes, vewry handsome." She covered her mouth again as she giggled a body jiggle. She was so proud and glowing as she spoke of him. "Heyr, let me show you some pictchas." She pulled out some pictures of her and Uncle Jack, circa 1970 something, with bell bottoms and platform shoes, hairy chests sprouting from collared polyester shirts. My Uncle Jack was, to put it in a non-weird niece way, hot! Tall, tan, golden, blond hair, no mustache, no oversized tie-dye t-shirt, muscular, obviously carrying the confidence of someone who feels the world is their oyster and they are young and invincible. Jane likewise was hot! Slender, curvaceous, stylish, well-coiffed hair, accessorized, beautiful makeup, just drop dead gorgeous.

“Who were these people and what happened to them?” I asked myself.

Upon viewing the photos I began to string together my own answers to my curiosity about Jack and Jane. It was like “Bizarro World” out of the movie Superman, reenacted in the popular sitcom of the times “Seinfeld” nothing was as it seemed but it all made sense.

They had both been to battle and were survivors, living with their scars, keeping them tucked away in a compartment, occasionally recounting them in a soliloquy for the young and stupid like me. 

I was given a glimpse into my future. Who I am today may not be who I am tomorrow. Of course we're always changing and growing but to an unrecognizable point? Yes, quite possibly, what happens today will catch up with my tomorrows and over power my yesteryears. Today I have youthful exuberance glowing from my naïve and untested soul.  Years from now I could become a vestige of my former self, unrecognizable to me but judged by strangers for my imperfections carved by life’s trials, in what form, in what story, I yet to know will present themselves but I know they're waiting.

I was haunted, once again.