This Is a Love Story

Jane leaves the house for the first time in months to pick up some groceries. She feels disoriented. She doesn’t buy what she needs and drops the groceries several times. Back at home, Max is sleeping, so Jane rests, too. Abe wakes her later from a dream where she is a bird.

Jane continues to feel distant from Max. One day, the neighbor stops over to see if everything is okay because Max hasn’t stopped crying. Meanwhile, Bubbe continues coming over. Jane sometimes tries to dress like Bubbe and use her scents, but still, she can’t comfort Max.

She lies in bed, remembering how trapped her mother was in her marriage. If her mother hadn’t gotten sick, maybe she and Jane would’ve been able to leave. Jane also remembers the day her mother encouraged her to start drawing, suggesting that she “[d]raw love” (187). Her mother died not long after, and Jane wasn’t herself afterward. She wishes that her mother were here now.

As Max grows up, Jane spends more time with him. Sometimes, they draw together, but Jane often worries that she’s going to hurt him and doesn’t trust herself alone with him. Meanwhile, Abe’s writing career takes off. One night, they leave Max alone at home while they go out for drinks to celebrate his most recent success. Jane hopes that he is okay but knows that she’d be worse off if they didn’t leave the house.

Fourteen months after Max’s birth, Jane returns to her studio for the first time. Bubbe comes over several days in a row to give Jane personal time. She sits in the studio, unable to work. Finally, one day, she starts drawing some birds outside the windows. Eventually, she starts making drawings about motherhood. She hopes that things will be different now.

When Max is five, Jane starts to have fainting episodes. She hasn’t been eating well and has also been bleeding for months. Her career is doing better again, so she doesn’t go to the doctor as Abe suggests. She and Abe have been distant anyway. A few months later, she finally visits the doctor and learns that she has cervical cancer.

Unsure of what to do afterward, she visits the Museum of Natural History. A young woman follows her around the museum until Jane greets her, and the woman flees. On the way home, Jane remembers that Abe wanted to have dinner together so that they could talk. At dinner, she interrupts the conversation to ask if they can walk instead.

At Central Park, Jane considers telling Abe about her diagnosis, wondering if he already knows. Instead, he tells her about his relationship with Alice. She’s stunned and furious. That night, after Abe is asleep, she finds Alice’s manuscript in Abe’s office. She makes a cut on the page of the story that references her photo and writes two lines at the end.

The third-person narrator describes more scenes from Central Park. Despite how healing the park can be for some people, it can’t cure all woes.

The narrative shifts back to Abe’s perspective in the present. He and Jane continue remembering their lives. They remember when Abe told Jane about Alice. Jane didn’t tell him about her diagnosis then because she was upset with him. Later, she finally realized that it was time. They hoped that she’d be okay, but she had to start treatment.

Abe tells her how he remembers this period, reminding her that Bubbe and Max supported her throughout. Jane shares her perspective, too. She admits that she worried that she caused Abe’s affair because she had depression. Abe assures her that neither of them was to blame.

Abe tells Jane that he ended his relationship with Alice before it really began. She is understanding, and they continue to share memories from the start of Jane’s sickness. She and Abe became closer again during that era. They began making plans to move to Orient after spending a weekend there with Jane’s best friend, Bea. Not long after, Abe’s father died. Max grew up, and Bea moved away.

Days pass, and Abe and Jane drift in and out of sleep and remembrance. Sometimes, Abe isn’t sure if they’ve really stopped talking or if he’s just stopped typing. Sometimes, he continues remembering aloud after Jane is asleep.

Abe and Jane continue remembering the next day. They discuss Alice, Max, and their artistic careers. As Jane’s cancer advanced, she began to regret things that she hadn’t accomplished even as she continued making and showing her work. Jane shares memories of her mother as she drifts into sleep. Abe begs her not to leave him.

The couple remembers Max leaving home for college and watching him grow up and start working in the art world. Jane admits that she never felt like she was allowed to be proud of him because she wasn’t the mother she wanted to be. They share their last memories of Bubbe and the art that Jane made about mothers. They continue talking until Jane falls asleep.

Abe and Jane remember their favorite things about the city and their favorite things about Orient when they first moved. They also remember the two times that Jane went into remission, only for the cancer to come back. Max grew distant, but they never blamed him.

When Jane gets tired, Abe makes her food. He watches her closely as she eats and falls asleep.

As the couple keeps remembering, Jane grows weaker. Abe takes over so that she doesn’t have to talk.

Abe lists everything that Jane doesn’t remember, including the moment she breathes her last breath. He realizes that their remembering has helped her stay alive. He doesn’t want to stop now but knows it’s an ending.

The narrative shifts into the third-person perspective. After Jane dies, Abe goes to Central Park and eats an ice cream cone. He gives half of it to a dog named Jane.

The narrative shifts into the past. Jane goes to Central Park after she’s diagnosed with cervical cancer. She thinks about her mother as she walks. She watches a mother and her child, longing for that closeness. She thinks about motherhood and art and realizes that she may have spent too much time working instead of with her family. She races home to see them. Love, she now understands, is most important.