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More Than a Friend
Then, in my early 20s, I took a coveted job on a Wisconsin newspaper and had to start work every day at 5 a.m. Spent and challenged, I didn't get home often enough to see Jeanine through the terror she felt when her beloved father learned that he, too, had cancer. And when he died, I was too new at my job to take time off for his funeral. The last words Jeanine spoke to me, for four years, were "You betrayed me."
I said thousands of words, through the crack under her apartment door, in letters, in cards, pleading with Jeanine to understand. But she was stubborn and wouldn't forgive me.
When I married for real, Jeanine was not there. When my beloved firstborn son arrived, she wasn't there to be his godmother, as I was to Gemma. And when my second and third sons were born after my struggles with infertility, Jeanine wasn't there either.
But when cancer came to the door again, this time to claim my husband, Dan, Jeanine came, too, unbidden. We didn't talk about the lapse in our friendship until much later. Suffering through hellish grief, I was simply staggered by gratitude.
I kept thinking, If Jeanine is with me, I can live through this. I can be okay. If Jeanine is holding me, helping me, I am home.
I would never let her go again.
We resumed our marathon phone sessions, dissecting jobs, life, her dates, my lack of them. When others called me foolish, she told me to go ahead, to write my first novel during the two years after Dan died instead of taking a real job. You can do this, she said. All I wanted was to show my sons that no matter the size of the hole life drove through you, you still had permission to live large.
In the end, my novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, became the first book ever chosen by Oprah's Book Club. Jeanine cheered—as she did two years later when I married my husband, Chris. And after Jeanine graduated from college with a degree in theater, I cheered for her as she became a sought-after voice and acting teacher, winning roles onstage and in commercials.
Before Jeanine even turned 40, her legs began to hurt. Deep into my aerobics period, I teased her: "It's because you're such a weenie."
She wouldn't work out, but she did stretch, try massage therapy and take vitamins. Then an e-mail from a friend broke the news that Jeanine had been too devastated to speak: She had multiple sclerosis.
MS eats away at the myelin coating surrounding the nerves and can disturb balance, vision and cognitive ability. People may end up using a wheelchair or remain mobile into their 90s. Although it affects more women than men, it typically affects women less seriously, so we didn't think it would be so bad. It was, though. Jeanine was diagnosed with primary progressive MS, a rare form characterized by an almost continuous worsening of the disease, without relapses or remissions.
Four years ago, I realized that my fierce, beloved friend, dedicated actress that she was, had never seen a Broadway show. Together we went—Jeanine pushing her walker, the two of us wearing our fanciest sequined skirts—to see her favorite musical, Man of La Mancha. When Brian Stokes Mitchell sang of the impossible dream, the unbeatable foe, I had a brainstorm: I could use my small measure of new celebrity to raise money for something, and for someone. Jeanine had helped me craft the heroine of my sixth novel, The Breakdown Lane, a dancer who in one harrowing year loses her husband and develops MS. I would donate a portion of the book's sales, and go from there.
Last spring, at an MS fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., I was about to sign books when I heard the old Bill Withers song "Lean on Me." I looked up. There on the screen, larger than life, was a photo of me with my head leaning on Jeanine's shoulder. The coordinator read a letter Jeanine had written: "Jackie was popular; I was the little caboose. But she chose me, included me, and when she learned I had MS, she jumped in to help me beat this disease. She's more than a friend. She's my heart."
That goes for me too. Jeanine has to lean on my arm when we walk. But I have to lean on her a hundred times a year, when I turn to her with problems no one else understands, problems no one else can see me through. As she describes them, they're like locational humor: To get it, you had to be there.
She always was.
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