Jane was to serve as chaperone for her sister, with whom she really didn’t get along. But she wasn’t about to object, for this was an opportunity for Jane to see a little of the world. She had a dream of traveling, of being a writer, and of living in a thatched-roof cottage in Devon, England.
And it wouldn’t have been proper for Mona to travel alone, since there would have been the potential for people to gossip as to her behavior and moral character.
This was serious business.
Mona needed to find a mate on this “singles cruise,” although no one dared call it that. Time was running out, and Mona’s future—and the future of Jane and her sister Miriam—teetered in the balance.
The cruise was designed so that there would be interaction among the many single men and women on the ship. At the first cruise dinner Jane and Mona were assigned to the captain’s table.
Herbert Doff, who was a dapper, good-looking twenty-four-year-old—the same age as Mona—was also seated at the table. He was five foot eight, with dark, wavy hair and sparkling, brown eyes full of playful mischief, a little pudgy from overindulgence of wine and food, but generally fit and physically strong.
***
A brilliant scientist, Herbert had seemed headed toward a promising career as a professional chemist. But an explosion in the chemistry lab at Union Carbide had left him partially deaf and required him to take a six-month, paid leave of absence from the lab. During that time Herbert spent his time going to ball games, dating curvaceous young women, and generally attending to the necessities of life—such as renewing his driver’s license.
This last activity had led to a turning point in his career.
Herbert observed that driving test booklets were in short supply and, having time on his hands, took it upon himself to print copies and sell them to prospective drivers.
Since a fair number of people failed the written exam of the driver’s test and were forced to reapply, he hired a secretary to type up and mimeograph one hundred copies of the booklet, with the answers to the multiple-choice questions included.
Herbert then presented himself at the entrance to the license bureau of Manhattan and quickly sold every single booklet—for a dollar a copy. He printed thousands more of the booklets and recruited friends and students to sell them all over New York City, for which they each would receive a quarter for every copy sold.
This arrangement continued for several months, with Herbert accumulating a profit of several thousand dollars a week—which was very good money in the mid-1930s and far more than he could ever hope to make as a chemist.
Unemployment was still high as the country struggled to come out of the Great Depression. Military service at that time was not a requirement, but rather a privilege and a solution to unemployment. The Army inductee’s level of pay and opportunity for continuing education was determined by his performance on the Armed Forces Entrance Examination. Since the examination—just like the driver’s manual—was a public-domain document produced at the taxpayers’ expense, Herbert saw another opportunity to make money while helping others.
He completed what were for the most part basic math and English questions, then duplicated the exam paper, and thus was born the booklet titled “Practice for the Armed Forces Test.” And Herbert was on the way to making his first $1 million.
In 1938 $1 million was practically a fortune and certainly more money than a single man could spend without getting into mischief—something at which Herbert excelled. He loved the high life—lavish meals, good wine, the company of beautiful women—the latter being the reason he was on the cruise.
He had been dating Lisa, a voluptuous, blue-eyed blonde for six months, and she was expecting him to place an engagement ring on her finger, guaranteeing her a life of comfort and pleasure. Even though he was fond of Lisa, Herbert didn’t want to marry her.
First of all, he wasn’t ready for marriage. And besides, while she was a fun party girl, she wasn’t someone with whom Herbert saw himself settling down and having children.
Yet he couldn’t seem to summon up the courage to look her in the eye and tell her that, so he decided to disappear. It was the cowardly route, but he believed that his absence would heal Lisa’s desire for marital bliss—at least with him—and he would continue to play the field.
So, he told her he had to go to Havana on business and prepared a quantity of pre-written postcards that would be sent to her from Cuba for six full months, detailing the ever-more-complex business entanglements he would encounter, preventing his return.
Herbert would, of course, be back in New York and hoped that, by the end of six months, Lisa would have given up on him and found another man.
Thus he found himself at the captain’s table, and the moment he sat down at the captain’s table next to Mona and Jane, he fell madly, hopelessly, completely, and forever in love . . . with Jane.
Her beauty was overwhelming, and while she seemed to know that she was beautiful, she didn’t flaunt it. However, it did cause her to emanate a sense of confidence and comfort that automatically drew him to her. During the course of dinner, he learned her age and realized that she was too young to enter into a courtship with him. He subsequently paid more attention to the age-appropriate Mona, who was clearly delighted with his charm.
When the ship docked in Havana, newly matched couples strolled down the streets and visited the beaches and casinos of the sultry capital. Herbert arranged for the sisters to accompany him on horse-drawn carriage rides through the city. He took them to shows, treated them to dinners, and bought them flowers and gifts. They were an inseparable threesome throughout the stay and resumed their position at the captain’s table on the return trip, Herbert seated firmly between the two sisters, being ever attentive to Mona.
Upon their return, the Lefkowitz family was regaled by their two daughters with tales of a potential suitor for Mona. Thus, it came as a shock when Herbert came calling and asked permission to court Jane.
Neither Gladys Lefkowitz nor Mona ever forgave Herbert for rejecting Mona. Even years later, when Mona was married and had two children, Herbert was considered a scandalous cad who had misused her to gain access to her young and beautiful sibling.
As she got older, Jane became more stunningly beautiful. In 1953, when she was already the mother of three children, she and Herbert were dining at La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. Winston Churchill was sitting at a nearby table and couldn’t take his eyes off her. He finally invited Jane and Herbert to join him, a gesture she took in stride. Although she had enjoyed a simple upbringing, she was comfortable around people of any stature.
She had a gentle soul and an uncanny, almost telepathic empathy that gave her the ability to put people at ease, no matter who they were. Such was the case with the elder statesman. They talked as if they’d known each other for years, while Herbert sat back and glowed with pride.
***
It all ended for Jane on June 16, 1963, at 4:22 in the afternoon on Sleepy Hollow Drive in Sleepy Hollow, New York, about twenty miles north of New York City.
She was driving Louis to pick up refreshments for the party that would celebrate Max’s graduation from eighth grade. Max had been chosen to give the valedictorian’s address to the students and their parents the following day, and since both the upper and lower schools of the private Hackley School would be in attendance, there would be hundreds of people in the audience. Jane felt she should make some gesture of acknowledgment to Max for his striking academic success.
Max was home preparing his speech. Jane stopped her white station wagon at a stop sign where three roads intersected. A brown Chevy approached, driven by Mrs. Allison Broadstreet.
Jane had the right of way, but she hesitated.
Instead of coming to a full stop, Mrs. Broadstreet mistakenly confused the accelerator with the brake, thrusting the car full throttle and reaching a speed of forty miles per hour—which thankfully would not be fast enough to kill Jane and Louis, but would
be enough to throw Louis from the car and leave his mother with wounds to the head and face.
They were rushed to the hospital, and Jane required forty-three stitches to close the wound above her left eye. According to the doctors, the only other result was a concussion.
Max went ahead and gave his speech the following day, as planned, at the Hackley School commencement ceremony. His brother, Louis, unhurt by the accident, was the only family member in attendance since he, too, was a Hackley student and was required to be there.
Herbert chose to stay at the bedside of Jane. She returned home shortly and was still as beautiful as ever to her husband and indeed to all others, but not, unfortunately, to herself.
Jane was afflicted with a minor flaw—the inability to control the nerves on the left side of her face. She still had her smile, but it had changed, and she was unable to ignore this anomaly in her features. She had never been vain and almost took her beauty for granted. Life had been good to her. She’d been blessed with Herbert, her children, a comfortable home, friends, and abundance.
She had always felt nurtured, loved, and living in a perpetual state of grace. In the aftermath of her accident, however, all that disappeared. She became despondent and lost her zest for life.
Forty-one at the time of the accident, Jane began to doubt her worth. Her dream of England remained unfulfilled. Her identity was inextricably linked to Herbert, whom she loved dearly, but living in the shadow of this powerful and successful man had given her a sense of inferiority, and she began to resent him.
She lost all belief in herself. She had never been religious and harbored doubts that God existed, especially as a result of the accident. As feelings of regret and disappointment rolled over and over in her mind, she began to chain-smoke cigarettes and drink vodka to numb her pain.
***
Her primary physician was Dr. Howard Gray. His children also went to Hackley School, and Howard and his wife, Zelda, often dined and met socially with Herbert and Jane. Since this friendship had been of many years’ standing, it seemed only natural that when Jane returned from the hospital and was diagnosed with clinical depression, Howard would be called upon for advice and assistance.
When she was a young girl, Jane spent two weeks every summer at the Jersey shore. She loved those outings, and as a young mother she would always arrange the summer holidays for herself, Herbert, and the children on Cape Cod, Long Island Sound, or even Martha’s Vineyard—anywhere she could spend hours staring at the waves. It didn’t matter what time of day or night, the hypnotic trance of the sea—its sounds, its swelling, rushing water, its retreat, its constant movement—engulfed Jane and placed her in a state bordering on bliss.
Thus, when he heard the diagnosis of depression, Howard Gray wisely recommended that Jane rent a cottage for a month and enjoy her love affair with the ocean.
Jane agreed on the condition that no one would see her in what she felt was her “defective” state, afflicted by her nerve-damaged smile and her depression. She didn’t want any visitors—not her children, not Herbert, not even a cleaning woman. She wanted to be completely alone, with no one checking on her.
But Dr. Gray did check on her from time to time. He indicated that as much as Jane needed rest and the sea, the isolation she had insisted upon was not healthy for her. Since he was also providing her with painkillers and sleeping pills, he made the trip to see her every weekend.
At first he stayed in a nearby beach motel, but soon he took to staying Saturday nights at the cottage, taking Jane out for meals and walking with her on the beach. He slowly influenced her to interact once again with people, enabling her to realize that she was still beautiful and still worthy of the love that had always filled her life.
The inevitable occurred, and Howard fell in love with Jane. Love blossomed into a spontaneous state of arousal that neither he nor she could resist—nor did they desire to do so. Howard was unhappily married, but with two children and family responsibilities, he wasn’t the kind of man to have affairs or abuse the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship.
He justified what they were doing as an act of healing, a way to reaffirm to Jane in the most intimate way that the accident had not diminished her beauty. She was still a vibrant, sexy woman who needed reassurance—even love—from a man other than Herbert, who, until that summer, had been the only man with whom she’d made love. Howard would have left his wife and children had Jane desired him to. Yet she did not. Her love for Herbert was not diminished. Her love of her children was not diminished.
But Jane’s love for herself was diminished. Her affair with Howard was over at summer’s end—a hot and sultry Indian summer that lasted from September until mid-October. A healing of sorts had taken place in her, and she returned to normal life, although life was never really the same for her again. She was never again as much a part of her own family, and with Max in particular there was a distance that hadn’t been there before.
The cigarette smoking, the heavy drinking, and the loss of wonder and of living in a state of grace changed Jane in ways that were observable to all—especially to Max. The strong bond he and his mother had shared was gone, leaving a lonely void.
***
When their mother returned, Max and Louis knew only that something had changed.
Their mother took up knitting, and she produced all shapes and sizes of hats and mittens, even sweaters, which more often than not were somewhat imperfect, but always warm and full of love.
Dr. Gray continued to attend to the Doffs, and to the boys he was smart and always making witty comments. He was the kind of family doctor who was well-acquainted with the medical history of every family member. He made house calls at a time when few doctors still did.
Then on February 19, 1965, Max suffered from a severe case of the flu, with bronchial symptoms that made his every breath painful. He had been held out of school for three days, but his symptoms were getting worse, not better. The juices, soups, and pills were not helping.
“You’d better bring him in,” Dr. Gray said, when Jane called on that fateful afternoon. It was exactly 2:44 p.m. when she and Max entered the waiting room to the doctor’s office.
Sick as he was, Max’s senses seemed heightened, and as he sat there he noticed every detail—the reproduction on the wall of George Washington crossing the Potomac River with his men, the National Geographic magazines, with their yellow covers, the brown table on which they lay, the green chairs on which he and his mother sat for what seemed like hours, but were only minutes, and the fresh white uniform of nurse Ethel who greeted Max warmly as she led him into the doctor’s office.
It took only a few minutes for Dr. Gray to examine him. He held a stethoscope to Max’s chest and asked him to breathe. Max wheezed and then coughed in pain.
Nurse Ethel took his temperature and noted that the fever was only moderate.
Dr. Gray decided to give Max a penicillin-based shot that he had been using on patients with similar symptoms. It had been able to knock out the flu in at most two days, he explained. Then he asked Max to roll up the sleeve of his shirt.
Max hated shots but was tired of the pain in his throat, and so he resigned himself to the needle in his arm.
There was a prick, pain, and then it was done.
“Sit here,” Dr. Gray told Max. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
Max had no idea how long Dr. Gray was gone, or if he ever left the examining room at all. What Max remembered was that he was suddenly in a state of bliss.
He experienced a sense that he was a creature of pure light, floating with other light beings in the brightest glow he’d ever known. His body pulsated with feelings of love, and every pulse brought even more light around and within him.
He entered a state of complete euphoria.
Suddenly, through the bright light came an array of beautiful colors, vibrating and floating around him, like individual objects. As the color vibrations became stronger, Max saw a person’s name emb
edded within each one of them. He counted twelve colors and twelve names—none of which were known to him.
Then, just as quickly as the names and colors had appeared, they receded, and the pure white light returned. With the change Max had a sense of beings he had known long ago, who surrounded him with love and greeted him as if he were a dear friend or a relative now returned home.
It was a state of quiet calm, euphoric yet still, gentle yet pulsating with joy—active and effortless movement without constriction of any kind—a sense of self, but without a physical body.
And thus Max died.
Chapter Three
Max Lives
1965
MAX DOFF MOVED ENTHUSIASTICALLY TOWARD THE TUNNEL
of light.
As he did, his floating consciousness was distracted by a series of loud noises, and his attention was drawn to a man flushed with emotion and fear. The man was speaking loudly.
He was on his knees with his hands pressed against a body that lay on the floor of a small room. Max wondered why the man was so upset, then realized that the man was a doctor, and he was distressed because the body wasn’t responding to his words or attempts to resuscitate.
Then Max saw that it was his own body that lay there. Disturbed by the doctor’s anxious state, he made a conscious decision to return.
So, in a courageous act of selflessness, he turned away from the tunnel of light that offered what seemed a familiar and comfortable world and returned to the human drama of being Max.
As he reentered his corporeal form, he opened his eyes, and the fear and panic subsided in Dr. Gray’s face.
“I thought we had lost you,” Dr. Gray said, and he had no idea of the sacrifice Max had made out of compassion for the doctor.
Yet the doctor’s pain wasn’t the only thing that had motivated Max. More than ever, he was propelled by something even bigger—by a mission of greater importance . . . and one that required him to live.
The Twelve Page 2