Jane

When I was younger, I used to know an older couple called Helen and Richard, who were the acme of Los Angeles sophistication. Helen was a high-flying film journalist, Richard a successful entertainment lawyer; they lived in an airily elegant house in Cheviot Hills, hung out with actors, writers and politicians, and would give dinner parties where martinis would be served before the meal, bons mots would flow as freely as the wine throughout, and Helen – who knew everyone and had a never-ending stream of anecdotes that grew steadily more wicked as the evening progressed – was the shining and adored queen of the table.

Photo by Tinky 天奇 on Unsplash

Helen and Richard had just the one child, a daughter of around my age called Jane, who was what an earlier generation would have described as not quite right in the head. I never knew exactly what Jane’s condition was, and it was certainly not the sort of question you could ask; but it was immediately apparent on meeting her that she was different. She had staring eyes that never quite met your own and a vacantly beatific smile; the obsessively religious child of two fashionably agnostic parents, she would perform blessings over the fruit bowl and genuflect in the hallway, and once asked me, brightly and somewhat to the surprise of Gabrielle Mary Teresa Donnelly, whether I had ever met any other Catholics besides her. God love her, she had a damaged brain and not a shred of a sense of humor, and would sit through her parents’ dinners with a faraway smile and her rosary beads clutched reassuringly in her fist, making no contribution to the conversation but to shout “God bless you!” at random intervals, and occasionally swoop down to issue a stern rebuke to her mother if her stories should chance to veer from the merely wicked and into the possibly risqué: Jane made it pikestaff-plain that she did not approve of R-rated material, and I slightly grumpily suspected that in order to spare Jane’s sensibilities, some of Helen’s best stories would go with her to the grave.

Helen and Richard, who were an impeccably class act, loved their daughter unconditionally, and never saw reason either to apologize for or to explain her to their sophisticated friends, none of whom I ever saw be anything but unreservedly kind to Jane. But I also saw heartache as well as love, particularly in Helen’s eyes, and always thought how hard it must have been for this woman who so loved society to have a daughter who could neither understand her conversation nor make any but the most basic of her own, and how lonely for Jane, too, adrift in her own little world of who knew what might be filling it, to sit through so many hours of repartee that sailed so far above her unkempt, impenetrable head.

Helen and Richard died when their time came, and Jane was taken to live in an upscale assisted living facility. I didn’t feel I knew her well enough to visit her there, but the friend we had in common, Nancy, would look in to see her occasionally, and would report that Jane was still her manically smiling self, blessing coffee mugs and genuflecting in front of bulletin boards with all the loopy enthusiasm of old. My heart always hurt a little when I thought of Jane, out there in the world and unprotected by her parents, and I hoped that the other people in the facility would find a way to be as kind to her as Helen and Richard’s friends had been. From the handful of other people I knew who were neurodivergent, I had learned that they could be brutally frank; and, although I knew the staff at the facility would look after her – Helen and Richard would never have allowed her to end in a place where the nursing care was less than stellar – I was, frankly, not so sure about her fellow residents. I hoped that at least she wasn’t being bullied.

Jane died, suddenly, of a heart attack, one crisp winter morning. She was cremated quickly in private, and since her own particular interpretation of Catholicism didn’t include such niceties as church attendance, there was to be no funeral; but there was a memorial at the facility, which I attended with Nancy. It was the least I could do, I thought, to pay respect to a lonely departed soul; and if – as I more than half anticipated – Nancy and I were to be the only people there, then how much more important it would be that we show up in solidarity. I’d even prepared a few words I could say, in case no one else spoke up for poor Jane’s memory – if nothing else, it would be what Helen and Richard would have wanted.

The room where the memorial was to take place was surprisingly full, I thought, trying not to cast cynical eyes at the coffee urn and the plates of pastries laid enticingly out for after the ceremony. The event had been organized by the director of the facility, a tall matron with majestically understated make-up and a diligently modulated voice. This was clearly not her first time at the task: she seemed like a nice woman, and spoke affectionately of Jane, but with all the professional expertise at her large, crimson-manicured fingertips, she was unable to extend her speech for longer than was barely respectable. Jane had had no career, no passions beyond her religion, no family of her own. She had lived with her parents and then she had lived at the facility – what more was there to say? My heart sank in embarrassment as, all too soon, the director wrapped up her address; it sank further as she invited other friends of Jane’s to speak. Well, I had my own words prepared and I, at least, would say something even if no one else would.

And then … well, and then, the other residents of the facility started to talk about Jane. They talked about the radiance of her smile. They talked about the profound spirituality which had so touchingly guided her life. They talked about her refreshing lack of tolerance for salty talk. A sweet-faced woman with a mass of iron grey pre-Raphaelite curls said that Jane’s “God bless you” had brightened her entire day. A crusty man in a frayed sweatshirt called her an angel. The tributes poured in – tributes of admiration; tributes of respect; tributes of love. Jane, it seemed, once set among her own eccentric kind, had turned into the shining and adored queen of her own dining table.

Me, I listened and learned. I learned that not everyone in the world regards sophistication – or indeed neurotypicality – as a quality to be either valued or even particularly desired. I learned that there are those who see even the most outlandish manifestations of spirituality as expressions of the same spirit that had guided Gandhi or St. Thomas Aquinas. I learned that there was a community of people living right on my doorstep, who regarded poor strange Jane not only without pity, but with active acclaim. I learned that the way most of society looked at Jane was not by any means the way that everyone looked at her.

By the end of the service, I was feeling just a little small and more than a little ashamed. And I think I had every reason to feel so.