JANE'S CANDY DISH

"Sometimes I imagine she’s still in the Brooklyn brownstone she and her beloved husband, Thor, restored themselves."

Jane was my buddy in the English department at the New York City girls’ school where we taught together for 20 years. Linked by a love of books and teaching and unfazed by our 20-year age gap, we were confidantes and co-conspirators and she became my champion. Sometimes I imagine she’s still in the Brooklyn brownstone she and her beloved husband, Thor, restored by themselves over decades. I picture her still reading essays in her chair tucked under the stairs, tending herbs in her tiny serpentine garden, tying a hostess apron around her waist before welcoming our whole department for a sumptuous celebratory supper.

To look at Jane, dignified in muted olive or plum or navy dresses, you wouldn’t guess she’d once smuggled arugula seedlings from Italy to take root in Carroll Gardens. She was both meticulous and orderly and unexpectedly bold. Long before most private schools thought about diversifying the canon, Jane added The Color Purple and Beloved. We once sat on her living room floor reinventing our entire American Lit curriculum. “Why must it be chronological?” we asked—then ditched the grim Puritan texts that typically started the course and skipped ahead two centuries to focus on themes of optimism and idealism.

Jane’s students pored over her looping cursive comments on their papers, her insights guiding them to sharpen theirs. They loved drinking tea from her samovar when she taught Russian Lit. One winter we took the whole tenth grade on an overnight, during which each girl shared an assignment based on Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Some had written poetry or painted or made collages. Jane laced up her ice skates and danced a solo by moonlight.

In the years when my husband and I longed for a baby, Jane listened deeply to my grieving. As one miscarriage followed the next, Jane lent me her hankie as I wept. When our daughter finally was born, Jane brought her own baby spoon and fork to give to our girl. 

Every season, she and Thor seemed to see every play and concert and exhibit. They came to my plays, too, at school, and each Monday after the theater productions I directed, I’d discover a handwritten note from Jane in my mailbox, detailing the moments she and Thor had particularly enjoyed. When I confided that I wanted to be a headmistress, Jane encouraged me. Even after I left New York, she sent me long emails about the books she was reading and the titles I needed to get from the library. 

Jane died five years ago in the third week of July. None of us were expecting it. She’d had a health scare a few weeks earlier—breathing trouble, swollen ankles—but she had rallied. I had just sent her a copy of Lisa Halliday’s novel, Asymmetry, and she’d called to express her delight. I was planning to drive to New York that week to see her. But early one morning the phone rang, and Jane’s beloved former student Maggie told me Jane was gone. 

A few weeks later, a group of us went to the Brooklyn brownstone to choose keepsakes. In the living room, glowing in the afternoon light, was this dish—part of Jane’s collection of carnival glass, so named because in the early 20th century, pieces were given as prizes at fairs. Carnival glass was first sold under the trade name Iridill. When I hold the dish, I think how Jane would have savored that word, seeing in it iris, Greek for rainbow. How I miss her love of words. How I miss her. “My friend Jane died,” I said when I stopped at the bookstore, dazed after Maggie’s call. “Who will tell me what to read next?”

—Ann V. Klotz

Jane (right) and Ann at Field Day circa 1990, after enjoying Jane’s famous lemon squares and some spirited croquet.

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Ann V. Klotz is a writer in Shaker Heights, OH, where she leads Laurel School.
Jane’s restored Brooklyn brownstone was featured in this New York Times article.

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