Saving Jane
Ron Savage

In memory of E.R.B.

Jane. What does Jane think of it all, her life in the jungle, those lonely years bound to the castle. It's 1983 now, Venice and her finale; what does Jane say? My husband's death never stopped him from seeing to my needs. She tells this to the male nurse who is tucking a white and pink afghan about her legs. Then Jane says, He loved playing the hero, my husband, always saving and protecting me. Personally, I think the man didn't know how to relax. Not that I'm ungrateful, mind you.

Jane guides her electric wheelchair onto the balcony of the Palazzo Tuccio. Her nursing care, the new home, everything has been provided through her husband's will. The last of the autumn afternoon is cool on her face. She can see the Rialto Bridge from here. Orange sunlight sparkles the surface of the Grand Canal. A vaporetto packed with tourists is motoring slowly beneath the bridge while two black and gold gondolas roll to its wake. Jane closes her eyes and breathes in the city, a mix of ancient stone and brick and the Adriatic. Next to her beloved Africa, this heavenly ruin is her favorite place on earth.

She didn't believe him, of course, even at nineteen. His mother was an ape, that's what her future husband first told her. She wondered if his father was nearsighted. Later he confessed to a far more English and aristocratic past, the son of Lord and Lady X. And he added, But I was raised by apes.

Jane was on safari with her father and her soon to be ex-fiancé when she met her future husband. She had wandered off, becoming lost amid the cries of birds, the draped vines, the trees that blocked the sun. Monkeys raced along dark branches, mostly squirrel and macaque, following her. The air felt thick and had a damp wood smell.

He lay on the grassy shoreline of a stream. Naked, that's what Jane had thought. Then she saw the small animal pelt that covered him. He was wounded on his right side, claw marks cascaded his ribs and leg. Morning light glistened the raw wet flesh. And he held a bloody knife in his hand. Jane glanced up and saw the hindquarters of a lion disappear into the leafy brush.

He had saved her life. Unbelievable. This was something no one had ever done or had needed to do. He will save her life on other occasions, many occasions. He will save her from the Nazis and the Japanese and the communists. Perhaps she had been saved too many times. Was there such a thing? Can you save a person too much? He just never got it. What her husband should have saved her from was this seemingly endless life without him.

Jane opens her eyes. The sun is a large orange sphere descending slowly into the Adriatic. She feels chilled now on the balcony and arranges the white and pink afghan about her waist. Tourists are taking photographs of each other on the Rialto Bridge. Jane watches them, the Dutch, the Germans, the English, the Americans. What in God's name do they do with those pictures?

Her son died at 62, the one her husband called "Boy." Her oldest grandson, Boy's boy, Eddie, just celebrated his 48th birthday. Eddie the grandson has a boy of his own, that one with his third and most recent wife. His name is Copelin, and he's six. Copelin will tell you he's six whether you want to know or not and he won't use his fingers. He begins all his conversations that way.

Copelin is visiting his Grand Jane for an entire week while Copelin's mom and dad, both anthropologists, attend a symposium in Rome on the bath houses of Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus. The nanny Jane hired to help for the week is coming tomorrow.

I'm six! yells Copelin. He yells this behind Jane's wheelchair.

Jane feels her heart do an out of sync flip and thinks, Dear Jesus, let's not die in front of the boy. She takes a breath to quiet herself then pats her lap with the flat of both hands. Copelin grins, all small white teeth and pink gums. He climbs onto the afghan and settles himself, his head against Grand Jane's chest. The child reminds Jane of her dead son when he was this age, floppy blond hair, angular features. Copelin's left knee even has a quarter-sized scab. She is closer to the boy than to his father, Eddie, her own grandson. Being the mother of a young boy was what she had done best.

Can I have a fire tonight, Grand Jane? says Copelin. His room has a fireplace. He's been asking the same question since his arrival this morning.

It'll be cold enough, says Jane and kisses his forehead.

She misses Africa and the tree house her husband built above the jungle. Yellow sunlight would appear between the leaves and the dark branches, light that dappled the wood floor. Birds had perched on the safety railings, exotic colorful creatures with oddly shaped bills, Goshawks, Macaws, African Grays, Cockatoos. Monkeys would crouch in nearby trees to watch her cook.

When Jane considers those days, she feels ashamed of her earlier criticisms. Why fault her husband, why the exasperation over his heroics? The jungle is dangerous. How wonderful that he was always there to protect her and the baby.

You should have called me, her husband had said. He was holding the boy in the crook of his big arm. The boy's head rested on his father's shoulder, a child soaked and shivering, that wet blond hair, that wet brown skin. Her husband had fetched their son from the river. He had turned the boy on his stomach and pushed the water from his lungs. Their son must have been five or six then.

I didn't have time to find you, Jane told him. She was wet, too, her hair matted to the sides of her face.

The river's too strong, her husband said.

I had to try, she said. He's my baby, too. What do you expect, I'm a mother.

You call me, he said. I expect that.

You expect too much, she said.

Jane's chance to save her boy had gone miserably wrong. She and her husband ranted against her ineptitude. Or perhaps it was only her doing the ranting. Her husband hadn't been the ranting type. He was a man of few words, loving but stoic, a man who preferred action to discussion. No, that was definitely her. Jane chides herself for being a chronic ranter.

Copelin and Grand Jane have reached a bedtime compromise. Copelin has promised to immediately go to sleep if Grand Jane will light the logs in the large gray tile fireplace. She does this now from her wheelchair with a long wooden match and a squirt of lighter fluid. The fire is a warm bright yellow and cuts the shadows. Then Grand Jane guides her electric wheelchair to the opposite side of the room, closing the shutters of the three windows that face the canal.

Two fluffed pillows prop Copelin high enough to watch the fire. The double bed has a white laced canopy. It's from the 16th century, and six year old Copelin, snuggled down to his chin, looks microscopic in it. Grand Jane parks her wheelchair beside him, leans over, and kisses his cheek.

We don't use this fireplace much, she says.

Doesn't anybody sleep here? Copelin says. Before she can answer, the boy is saying, I mean if nobody sleeps here, can it be my room? You know, when I have to visit and all?

We'll put your name on the door, she says and brushes a strand of blond hair from his forehead with her fingertips. Then Copelin tells her he's thirsty. Grand Jane pours water into a paper cup from the blue porcelain pitcher on his nightstand. She says, I'll be right across the hall if you need me, okay?

Tonight Jane dreams of when she and her husband left the jungle and traveled back to England and the family castle. He despised getting old. In the dream Jane tells him, Look, hon, you're sixty-eight, you crack a hip and it's all over. Whoever heard of a sixty-eight year old man swinging on vines. Are you insane? Her husband becomes despondent. He roams the castle at night. He sleeps during the day. The dream isn't that far removed from what really happened.

In real life their physician had prescribed Miltown and switched to Librium a few years later. This reduced restlessness and adjusted his sleeping schedule. But the drugs shifted his agitated depression to a non-agitated depression, and the anti-depressants available then didn't seem to help. Her husband was also self-medicating with alcohol and food, specifically vodka, sweets, and pasta. Jane tried persuading him to diet and to stop his drinking. There were many such talks and many diets. His resolution with a diet lasted no more than two weeks, maybe a month; the same with drinking. He died eight years after his return to England. A coronary, the physician said.

Jane raises herself on an elbow and glances about the dark bedroom. Stupid dreams, she thinks. I'm forever the damsel in distress, she thinks. A sliver of white moonlight goes through a crack in the wooden shutters and across the marble floor. A layer of mist hovers just above her, perhaps from the canal. Jane smells something familiar. She sniffs the air. It's the scent of autumn and burning leaves.

A lifetime has passed since she buried her husband. Jane still believes his death was a suicide, a slow one but a suicide. All those times he had rescued her, saved her life, and she couldn't reciprocate. What argument does a person used to stop madness? What magic? Jane remembers standing by his grave and doing the usual, ranting at her ineptitude. If only this, if only that. She would have preferred dying first. She hadn't wanted to survive this life and these lonely years without him.

Miss Jane? Hello? The male nurse is calling to her from the hallway. He knocks on the door and says, Miss Jane, you all right? We've got the fumo, the smoke, out here. Hello?

Jane is neither asleep or awake but in that nebulous spot of stringy thoughts and comfort. The word "smoke" brings Copelin and the fireplace to mind. Now she feels a hard pulse at the sides of her neck. As Jane slides herself into the wheelchair she tells the nurse to go and ring up the fire department.

Smoke is everywhere, layers packed together in the hall like a floor to ceiling wall. Jane has her right hand over her mouth and nose, her left hand guiding the electric wheelchair. She is shouting Copelin's name between her open fingers and he finally shouts back.

Lay down on the floor! Jane yells. Her eyes have started to tear and burn from the smoke. She inhales through her mouth. Immediately, she knows she has done the wrong thing and coughs. Then Jane yells, Keep your face to the floor, hon, okay? Can you hear me? Copelin?

He doesn't answer.

Twenty seconds pass while she feels around for the doorknob. Copelin is laying face down in the far corner of the room. Gray smoke billows from the fireplace like large escaping balloons. Jane grabs the blue pitcher on the nightstand and tosses water across the logs. A loud noise hisses at her as if the logs are annoyed by the intrusion. But there are no flames; nothing but smoke, really. Jane now circles about the foot of the canopy bed, the electric wheelchair humming its way toward Copelin.

Come on, hon, Jane says and pats her lap.

The boy's face is red from coughing and the heat. He has a worried, scared expression. He squints, trying to look through the smoke. His eyes search Grand Jane's face to see if everything will be all right.

Listen, Copelin, says Grand Jane, we got ourselves a clogged chimney. Why don't you get up here and take a ride with me, okay? The boy climbs onto her lap and presses his warm face to her chest. Jane kisses the top of his head and can smell the smoke in his blond hair. She says, How old are you, again?

I'm six, says Copelin but doesn't yell it.

Pretty brave for six, says Grand Jane.

The wheelchair travels a straight line along the edge of the room. Jane unhooks and opens the three pairs of wood shutters. Smoke curls out the windows in rhythmic, lazy breaths, dissipating over the canal, fogging the cool night air.

At the end of the week the anthropologists are back from Rome. Grandson Eddie and his wife Brenda are lounging on the balcony with six year old Copelin and Grand Jane. Everyone is having cappuccino and almond macaroons except for Copelin who is sipping a mug of hot chocolate. They're watching the tourists pose for pictures on the Rialto Bridge. Jane has been feeling anxious since Eddie and Brenda arrived. Only a second or two after they walked through the door, Copelin was telling them everything and sparing no detail, the clogged chimney, the smoke, Grand Jane scooping him up in her electric wheelchair, everything. Jane saw the fright come and go in Brenda's eyes. But she couldn't figure her grandson, why he had smiled to himself. Eddie, the amused; Eddie, the mysterious. Her grandson and Brenda resemble one another. They are tall and blond and thin enough to see bones poking around under their clothes.

The conversation had simply moved on, leaving Jane barricaded inside herself, waiting for her own ranting thoughts to quit. Again, Jane? What is this fondness you have for disaster, this kinship? You should have died first. You two were so perfect together: He, the hero; and you, his catastrophe.

I have to apologize, Jane says. She is staring down at her cappuccino, steam drifting and coiling from the white cup. I didn't examine the flue, she says. And she adds, It's absolutely inexcusable, I know.

Yes, it is, Brenda says.

Eddie stops Brenda, his hand touching her arm. My wife, she doesn't know you, Eddie says. She never heard my father's stories. I grew up listening to them. Hell, I was hungry for them. Africa, all those adventures, the animals, your home in the trees. My father let me see all that. He took me with him. My bedtime stories never came from books, grandma. They came from your son.

Boy.

Boy had told his boy.

These were new stories to her. About her husband and a woman she didn't know. This woman could tell you what plant reduced a fever or cured an infection or quieted an upset stomach. This woman could charm a wild Macaw into taking food from her hand. This woman could quiet a thunder storm by putting her arm around you. This woman could tell you how brave you were, and you believed her.

Copelin interrupts, wanting to know if Grand Jane has more hot chocolate. Grand Jane says she doesn't know but maybe they should go to the kitchen and see. She pats the white and pink afghan, and Copelin wriggles his way onto her lap. As Grand Jane guides the wheelchair toward the kitchen, she circles her arm about the boy, and automatically, perhaps instinctively, Copelin leans his head against her chest.