Love Story (5 page)

‘Ah,’ said my father.

To which, all the time wondering if
they had caught Jenny’s humor, I could but add: ‘Ah?’

Mother and Jenny shook hands, and
after the usual exchange of banalities from which one never
progressed in my house, we sat down. Everybody was quiet. I tried to
sense what was happening. Doubtless, Mother was sizing up Jennifer,
checking out her costume (not Boho this afternoon), her posture, her
demeanor, her accent. Face it, the Sound of Cranston was there even
in the politest of moments. Perhaps Jenny was sizing up Mother. Girls
do that, I’m told. It’s supposed to reveal things about the guys
they’re going to marry. Maybe she was also sizing up Oliver III.
Did she notice he was taller than I? Did she like his cashmere
jacket?

Oliver III, of course, would be
concentrating his fire on me, as usual.

‘How’ve you been, son?’

For a goddamn Rhodes scholar, he is
one lousy conversationalist.

‘Fine, sir. Fine.’

As a kind of equal - rime gesture,
Mother greeted Jennifer.

‘Did you have a nice trip down?’

‘Yes,’ Jenny replied, ‘nice and
swift.’

‘Oliver is a swift driver,’
interposed Old Stony.

‘No swifter than you, Father,’ I
retorted.

What would he say to that?

‘Uh - yes. I suppose not.’

You bet your ass not, Father.

Mother, who is always on his side,
whatever the circumstances, turned the subject to one of more
universal interest - music or art, I believe. I wasn’t exactly
listening carefully. Subsequently, a teacup found its way into my
hand.

‘Thank you,’ I said, then added,
‘We’ll have to be going soon.’

‘Huh?’ said Jenny. It seems they
had been discussing Puccini - or something, and my remark was
considered somewhat tangential. Mother looked at me (a rare event).

‘But you did come for dinner,
didn’t you?’

‘Uh - we can’t,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ Jenny said, almost
at the same rime.

‘I’ve gotta get back,’ I said
earnestly to Jen.

Jenny gave me a look of ‘What are
you talking about?’

Then Old Stonyface pronounced:

‘You’re staying for dinner.
That’s an order.’

The fake smile on his face didn’t
make it any less of a command. And I don’t take that kind of crap
even from an Olympic finalist.

‘We can’t, sir,’ I replied.

‘We have to, Oliver,’ said Jenny.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because I’m hungry,’ she said.

We sat at the table obedient to the
wishes of Oliver III.

He bowed his head. Mother and Jenny
followed suit. I tilted mine slightly.

‘Bless this food to our use and us
to Thy service, and help us to be ever mindful of the needs and wants
of others.

This we ask in the name of Thy Son
Jesus Christ, Amen.’

Jesus Christ, I was mortified.
Couldn’t he have omitted the piety just this once? What would Jenny
think?

God, it was a throwback to the Dark
Ages.

‘Amen,’ said Mother (and Jenny
too, very softly).

‘Play ball!’ said I, as kind of a
pleasantry.

Nobody seemed amused. Least of all
Jenny. She looked away from me. Oliver III glanced across at me.

‘I certainly wish you would play
ball now and then, Oliver.’

We did not eat in total silence,
thanks to my mother’s remarkable capacity for small talk.

‘Mostly. My mother was from Fall
River.’

‘The Barrens have mills in Fall
River,’ noted Oliver III.

‘Where they exploited the poor for
generations,’ added Oliver IV.

‘In the nineteenth century,’
added Oliver III.

My mother smiled at this, apparently
satisfied that her Oliver had taken that set. But not so.

‘What about those plans to automate
the mills?’ I volleyed back.

There was a brief pause. I awaited
some slamming retort.

‘What about coffee?’ said Alison
Forbes Tipsy Barrett.

We withdrew into the library for what
would definitely be the last round. Jenny and I had classes the next
day, Stony had the bank and so forth, and surely Tipsy would have
something worthwhile planned for bright and early.

‘Sugar, Oliver?’ asked my mother.

‘Oliver always takes sugar, dear,’
said my father.

‘Not tonight, thank you,’ said I.
‘Just black, Mother.’

Well, we all had our cups, and we
were all sitting there cozily with absolutely nothing to say to one
another.

So I brought up a topic.

‘Tell me, Jennifer,’ I inquired.
‘What do you think of the Peace Corps?’

She frowned at me, and refused to
cooperate.

‘Oh, have you told them, Ollie.?’
said my mother to my father.

‘It isn’t the time, dear,’ said
Oliver III, with a land of fake humility that broadcasted, ‘Ask me,
ask me.’ So I had to.

‘What’s this, Father?’

‘Nothing important, son.’

‘I don’t see how you can say
that,’ said my mother, and turned toward me to deliver the message
with full force (I said she was on his side): ‘Your father’s
going to be director of the Peace Corps.’

‘Oh.’

Jenny also said, ‘Oh,’ but in a
different, kind of happier tone of voice.

My father pretended to look
embarrassed, and my mother seemed to be waiting for me to bow down or
something. I mean, it’s not Secretary of State, after all!

‘Congratulations, Mr. Barrett.’
Jenny took the initiative.

‘Yes. Congratulations, sir.’

Mother was so anxious to talk about
it.

‘I do think it will be a wonderful
educational experience,’ she said.

‘Oh, it will,’ agreed Jenny.

‘Yes,’ I said without much
conviction. ‘Uh - would you pass the sugar, please.’

‘Jenny, it’s not Secretary of State, after all!’

We were finally driving back to
Cambridge, thank God.

‘Still, Oliver, you could have been
more enthusiastic.’

‘I said congratulations.’

‘It was mighty generous of you.’

‘What did you expect, for
chrissake?’

‘Oh, God,’ she replied, ‘the
whole thing makes me sick.’

‘That’s two of us,’ I added.

We drove on for a long time without
saying a word. But something was wrong.

‘What whole thing makes you sick,
Jen?’ I asked as a long afterthought.

‘The disgusting way you treat your
father.’

‘How about the disgusting way he
treats me?’

I had opened a can of beans. Or, more
appropriately, spaghetti sauce. For Jenny launched into a full -
scale offense on paternal love. That whole Italian-Mediterranean
syndrome. And how I was disrespectful.

‘You bug him and bug him and bug
him,’ she said.

‘It’s mutual, Jen. Or didn’t
you notice that?’

‘I don’t think you’d stop at
anything, just to get to your old man.’

‘It’s impossible to ‘get to’
Oliver Barrett III.’

There was a strange little silence
before she replied:

‘Unless maybe if you marry Jennifer
Cavilleri …’

I kept my cool long enough to pull
into the parking lot of a seafood diner. I then turned to Jennifer,
mad as hell.

‘Is that what you think?’ I
demanded.

‘I think it’s part of it,’ she
said very quietly.

‘Jenny, don’t you believe I love
you?’ I shouted.

‘Yes,’ she replied, still
quietly, ‘but in a crazy way you also love my negative social
status.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say
but no. I said it several times and in several tones of voice. I
mean, I was so terribly upset, I even considered the possibility of
there being a grain of truth to her awful suggestion.

But she wasn’t in great shape,
either.

‘I can’t pass judgment, Ollie. I
just think it’s part of it. I mean, I know I love not only you
yourself. I love your name. And your numeral.’

She looked away, and I thought maybe
she was going to cry. But she didn’t; she finished her thought:

‘After all, it’s part of what you
are.’

I sat there for a while, watching a
neon sign blink

‘Clams and Oysters.’ What I had
loved so much about Jenny was her ability to see inside me, to
understand things I never needed to carve out in words. She was still
doing it. But could I face the fact that I wasn’t perfect? Christ,
she had already faced my imperfection and her own. Christ, how
unworthy I felt!

I didn’t know what the hell to say.

‘Would you like a clam or an
oyster, Jen?’

‘Would you like a punch in the
mouth, Preppie?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She made a fist and then placed it
gently against my cheek. I kissed it, and as I reached over to
embrace her, she straight-armed me, and barked like a gun moll: ‘Just
drive, Preppie. Get back to the wheel and start speeding!’

I did. I did.

My father’s basic comment concerned
what he considered excessive velocity. Haste. Precipitousness. I
forget his exact words, but I know the text for his sermon during our
luncheon at the Harvard Club concerned itself primarily with my going
too fast. He warmed up for it by. suggesting that I not bolt my food.
I politely suggested that I was a grown man, that he should no longer
correct - or even comment upon - my behavior. He allowed that even
world leaders needed constructive criticism now and then. I took this
to be a not-too-subtle allusion to his stint in Washington during the
first Roosevelt Administration. But I was not about to set him up to
reminisce about F.D.R., or his role in U.S. bank reform. So I shut
up.

We were, as I said, eating lunch in
the Harvard Club of Boston. (I too fast, if one accepts my father’s
estimate.) This means we were surrounded by his people. His
classmates, clients, admirers and so forth. I mean, it was a put-up
job, if ever there was one. If you really listened, you might hear
some of them murmur things like, ‘There goes Oliver Barrett.’

Or ‘That’s Barrett, the big
athlete.’

It was yet another round in our
series of nonconversations. Only the very nonspecific nature of the
talk was glaringly conspicuous.

‘Father, you haven’t said a word
about Jennifer.’

‘What is there to say? You’ve
presented us with a fait accompli, have you not?’

‘But what do you think, Father?’

‘I think Jennifer is admirable. And
for a girl from her background to get all the way to Radcliffe …’

With this pseudo-melting-pot
bullshit, he was skirting the issue.

‘Get to the point, Father!’

‘The point has nothing to do with
the young lady,’ he said, ‘it has to do with you.’

‘Ah?’ I said.

‘Your rebellion,’ he added. ‘You
are rebelling, son.’

‘Father, I fail to see how marrying
a beautiful and brilliant Radcliffe girl constitutes rebellion. I
mean, she’s not some crazy hippie - ‘

‘She is not many things.’

Ah, here we come. The goddamn nitty
gritty.

‘What irks you most, Father - that
she’s Catholic or that she’s poor?’

He replied in kind of a whisper,
leaning slightly toward me.

‘What attracts you most? ‘

I wanted to get up and leave. I told
him so.

‘Stay here and talk like a man,’
he said.

As opposed to what? A boy? A girl? A
mouse? Anyway, I stayed.

The Sonovabitch derived enormous
satisfaction from my remaining seated. I mean, I could tell he
regarded it as another in his many victories over me.

‘I would only ask that you wait
awhile,’ said Oliver Barrett III.

‘Define ‘while,’ please.’

‘Finish law school. If this is
real, it can stand the test of time.’

‘It is real, but why in hell should
I subject it to some arbitrary test?’

My implication was clear, I think. I
was standing up to him. To his arbitrariness. To his compulsion to
dominate and control my life.

‘Oliver.’ He began a new round.
‘You’re a minor - ‘

‘A minor what?’ I was losing my
temper, goddammit.

‘You are not yet twenty-one. Not
legally an adult.’

‘Screw the legal nitpicking,
dammit!”

Perhaps some neighboring diners heard
this remark. As if to compensate for my loudness, Oliver III aimed
his next words at me in a biting whisper: ‘Marry her now, and I
will not give you the time of day.’ Who gave a shit if somebody
overheard.

‘Father, you don’t know the time
of day.’

I walked out of his life and began my
own.

There remained the matter of Cranston, Rhode Island, a city slightly
more to the south of Boston than Ipswich is to the north. After the
debacle of introducing Jennifer to her potential in-laws (‘Do I
call them outlaws now?’ she asked), I did not look forward with any
confidence to my meeting with her father. I mean, here I would be
bucking that lotsa love Italian-Mediterranean syndrome, compounded by
the fact that Jenny was an only child, compounded by the fact that
she had no mother, which meant abnormally close ties to her father. I
would be up against all those emotional forces the psych books
describe.

Plus the fact that I was broke.

I mean, imagine for a second Olivero
Barretto, some nice Italian kid from down the block in Cranston,
Rhode Island. He comes to see Mr. Cavilleri, a wage-earning pastry
chef of that city, and says, ‘I would like to marry your only
daughter, Jennifer.’ What would the old man’s first question be?
(He would not question Barretto’s love, since to know Jenny is to
love Jenny; it’s a universal truth.) No, Mr.

Cavilleri would say something like,
‘Barretto, how are you going to support her?’

Now imagine the good Mr. Cavilleri’s
reaction if Barretto informed him that the opposite would prevail, at
least for the next three years: his daughter would have to support
his son-in-law! Would not the good Mr. Cavilleri show Barretto to the
door, or even, if Barretto were not my size, punch him out?