She knew that if her parents found out
they would not think her worthy
of their money, so she cut herself
off- applied to law school without telling anyone.
She got in, won a fellowship, and went.
Despite her misgivings about the profession
(Lawyers are a breed-detestable at times, she wrote)
she threw herself into her work. The Ann Arbor News
later wrote, “Students at the law school described [Jane]
as a serious, studious person who liked to talk about school
but not about her personal life.” Both Jane and Phil
shielded each other from their parents; neither family
would have accepted the union of Gentile and Jew.
She must have been madly in love with you, I say
to Phil. Oh, he smiles, I don’t know about that.
Well, I say, madly enough to consider
spending the rest of her life with you.
Oh that, he laughs. That’s just plain mad.
PHIL’S PHOTOS
1. Motel
Where Jane’s journals end
these photos begin, and
they are unlike any of her
I have ever seen. I can’t explain
the difference—I think it’s just
that she looks so happy.
As in this one, taken
in a motel. She’s wearing
long underwear and tucking in
the sheets of a double bed.
She smiles up at the camera,
her hair a total mess.
It was probably in a motel
like this one, Phil says,
that she lost her virginity.
He doesn’t recall it being
a big deal to her. Was it hard
to get away together? I ask.
It was just like it is now, he says.
All you need is time and money.
And, he winks, I had a car.
2. Wisconsin
In the spring of ’68, Jane and Phil went to Wisconsin
to campaign for Eugene McCarthy.
Jane was passionately against the war.
They were sent to Waukesha, a small, industrial town
where they lived with a family, and campaigned door-to-door.
Here she is in a navy pea coat, a McCarthy button
pinned to the lapel, a pile of fliers in her arms.
She stands in front of a dark building, the words Ballroom Dancing
on its awning, her brown hair whipping around
a baby-blue headband. Further behind her
lies an abandoned roller coaster, a snaking scaffold
of white bones. The Wisconsin light is
cold and ashy, the parking lot empty
except for some scattered twigs and a flattened can
of Coke. Looking more closely, I can also make out
one car, obscured by a shadow.
3. Silver Lake
And here she is
at Silver Lake, in
a two-piece
swim-suit, navy blue
with white stripes
up the side. She’s sitting
on a pink blanket, along
with several books
and a pair of wet
moccasins. Phil’s body
makes a shadow in
the lower left corner;
it’s clear that to take the picture
he must be standing
in the water. The space
he vacated on the blanket
is wet with blobs of
body-shaped wetness,
the beach so narrow
that the water is flooding
them, flooding Jane’s feet
and calves, flooding
the pink blanket.
The whole photo
is dreamy, as if washed
in milk, Jane’s skin
a pale apricot and
glowing. And I love it,
this lush, fuzzy sliver
in which two people
once spread out
on damp sand
and loved one another.
(1960)
There is so much now that yesterday doesn’t matter.
I have so much and am so lucky, who could ask for more?
I am happy. Tomorrow I may not be, yesterday I wasn’t
but I am NOW and that’s all that matters. Now!
I must remember that and never forget it!
ORDER OF EVENTS
LAW QUADRANGLE, SECTION C, SECOND FLOOR
A mallard-green glass lamp stands dark over a square of red felt.
On Wednesday night, there had been the sound of a typewriter, the rattle of a mind in motion.
On Thursday night, there was no sound from the room at all, just the ringing of an unanswered phone.
It was the start of spring break.
She had her reasons; she wanted to go home alone.
THE PLAN
She was going home alone
to announce that she and Phil
were engaged.
Phil had been offered
a job at NYU; Jane
would leave Michigan
and start law school
there too. But
she feared
fury from
her folks,
a scene blunt
as dead
sticks.
Was it because
he was
Jewish? Was it
because he was
a Marxist?
Or was it
just because
he would take her
to a world far removed
from their own?
She hashed it out with her sister
for hours on the phone.
The plan: a night
at home, alone,
to weather the storm;
Phil to join her
in a few days.
Just trust me on this one, Barb,
trust me
was the last thing
to her sister
that Jane would say.
THE RIDE BOARD
In the basement of the Student Union
hangs a framed map of the United States,
the land divided into numbered regions.
Each region is a faded pink or gray.
Below the map is a cherry-wood shelf
of numbered cubbies, and a supply of slips
of orange and blue paper. It’s a good system—
you write your name and number on a slip
along with where and when you need to go,
then stick it in the slot for that region.
Would appreciate hearing from anyone
who might be driving to Muskegon
any time Thursday (3/20/69) was the note Jane left.
Someone who called himself David Johnson
gave her a call. Apparently he was late
to pick her up on Thursday; she left
a phonebook on her desk open to the page of Johnsons,
a check mark by his name. Later on, a guy
at a frat house where a David Johnson lived
told the police
that a girl had called shortly after 6:30 p.m.
asking for him, saying
he was supposed to give her a lift home.
They told her she must have the wrong numbertheir
David Johnson starred in a play every night,
and had no plans to drive to Muskegon at all.
Was she confused? Did she feel for a moment
that something wasn’t quite right? Just then
a honk comes from a car outside:
she grabs her bags, runs downstairs, gets in the car
and drives off into the night.
I-96
That ribbon of highway stretches from one side of the
mittenshaped state to the ot
her,
across tracts of flat fields, dark and bald in a March night.
When Jane didn’t arrive home, her father went out looking for her.
He felt sure there had been an accident that hadn’t yet been reported.
He headed out alone on I-96, around ten or eleven at night.
Somewhere on the other end of that ribbon, Jane was probably still
alive.
His eyes searched the shoulder until Lansing, where
he turned around, drove home, and called the police.
I don’t know if he played the radio.
I don’t know if there was a moon, or if he could see it from the road.
THE GIFT
The next morning, about fourteen miles outside Ann Arbor,
a boy found a bag on the gravel road by his brick house
on his way to school.
There was a gift in the bag, along with a folder
thick with typewritten pages.
Dearest Mom-Sorry I’m late for your birthday, but
in one hundred years, you’ll never know
the difference, read the card
on the gift. The boy brought it in
to his mother, who noticed blood
on the side of the bag. She went outside
to look around, and soon spotted
what looked like a body
propped up on a grave
in the little cemetery across the way.
Inside the box was a pair of fluffy blue slippers.
But who opened it later? Was it
a policeman who read
I love you, Janie
then undid
the ribbon on the gift?
POSITION
Right arm stretched above her head,
left arm over her eyes.
One shoe on her abdomen, one shoe set beside.
Her raincoat laid out over her body, her head on a stranger’s grave.
Some later called it “a reverential display.”
“Nothing could be more crushing to any family than to have a police officer appear at the front door and grimly announce that a beloved child has been taken. Jeanne Holder had been just twenty-three. She’d graduated in 1968 from the University of Michigan in the top ten percent of her class and a week ago she’d been admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. She’d always wanted to be a great lawyer. But now-she’d been not only taken, but destroyed. How could any father and mother, wondered Lieutenant Baker, ever be prepared to defend against such horror?
“And yet, after reeling from the first shock, Dr. and Mrs. Holder managed to make Lieutenant Baker’s job easier. Somehow they collected themselves; seeming to draw reserve strength from one another, they regrouped and retained control. It happened in a matter of seconds, before the policeman’s eyes, and it was marvelous.”
-Edward Keyes, The Michigan Murders, a “true crime” account in which names have been changed
DIGNITY
They knew how to mourn
with dignity,
my mother says.
It’s the Calvinist way.
As if keening on your knees
were somehow obscene
As if there were a control
so marvelous
you could teach it
to eat pain.
AFTERNOON EDITION
After their three-hour drive to Ypsilanti,
the police waited to show them the body.
First they sequestered them in a small room
and showed them photos of sex offenders,
asking if they recognized any of the faces.
After two hours of this, my grandfather asked
if they could step across the street
to get something to eat. At the restaurant
they saw the paper, the afternoon edition
that comes out late in the day.
University Coed Found Slain, the headline read
and below it, a photo of Jane.
SKIN
A stocking was knotted so tightly around her neck that it was no longer visible. It journeyed into the skin that far.
Skin is soft; it takes what you do to it.
SHOCK
When they came home from identifying the body,
my grandfather was confused about something.
He asked Barb repeatedly,
Had Janie dyed her hair red recently?
No, Barb kept answering.
She had not.
(1966)
I can become a very tragic figure in my own mind if I don’t make an effort to be gay.
Treating things lightly is indeed the answer to so much.
OPEN CASKET
Her mother insisted on having an open casket,
to show everyone Jane was still whole.
Hundreds of people saw her. It was Jane, but her neck
was puffy, and her body was waxy, not cold.
It was the one thing my mother had argued against,
and she fainted at the funeral home.
THEFUNERAL
The police told
them: Look
carefully
at everyone
at the funeral,
even those
you think you
know. Then
when it’s over,
scour the pages
of the guestbook
for names
you’ve never
seen. The chance
that the killer
will be there
is much greater
than you’d think.
ORDER OF EVENTS
The autopsy report confirmed
that all strangulation occurred
after she was already dead
from two shots in the head.
I don’t know how they know.
Part of me thinks they just tell you so
so you don’t split off-charred
flakes starting to drift
in a bone-black madness
CRANK CALLS
Apparently they’re quite common
after an uncommon death. Just
bored college kids, calling after
getting high, or local high school boys
made bold by youth and cruelty. Strangely
enough, the one who called most often
was a woman, a disembodied female voice
fake-crying in a kind of falsetto
Where’s Jane, boo-hoo-hoo
Where’s Janie, boo-hoo-hoo
The police insisted
the family answer each call.
I imagine my grandfather
in the middle of the night
Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull ShortLit) Page 4