Love Story

  “Let’s run,” she said.

  “Let’s stay and fight,” I said.

  Was either of us joking?

  The door was opened by Florence, a devoted and antique servant of the Barrett family.

  “Ah, Master Oliver,” she greeted me.

  God, how I hate to be called that! I detest that implicitly derogatory distinction between me and Old Stonyface.

  My parents, Florence informed us, were waiting in the library. Jenny was taken aback by some of the portraits we passed. Not just that some were by John Singer Sargent (notably Oliver Barrett II, sometimes displayed in the Boston Museum), but the new realization that not all of my forebears were named Barrett. There had been solid Barrett women who had mated well and bred such creatures as Barrett Winthrop, Richard Barrett Sewall and even Abbott Lawrence Lyman, who had the temerity to go through life (and Harvard, its implicit analogue), becoming a prize-winning chemist, without so much as a Barrett in his middle name!

  “Jesus Christ,” said Jenny. “I see half the buildings at Harvard hanging here.”

  “It’s all crap,” I told her.

  “I didn’t know you were related to Sewall Boat House too,” she said.

  “Yeah. I come from a long line of wood and stone.”

  At the end of the long row of portraits, and just before one turns into the library, stands a glass case. In the case are trophies. Athletic trophies.

  “They’re gorgeous,” Jenny said. “I’ve never seen ones that look like real gold and silver.”

  “They are.”

  “Jesus. Yours?”

  “No. His.”

  It is an indisputable matter of record that Oliver Barrett III did not place in the Amsterdam Olympics. It is, however, also quite true that he enjoyed significant rowing triumphs on various other occasions. Several. Many. The well-polished proof of this was now before Jennifer’s dazzled eyes.

  “They don’t give stuff like that in the Cranston bowling leagues.”

  Then I think she tossed me a bone.

  “Do you have trophies, Oliver?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a case?”

  “Up in my room. Under the bed.”

  She gave me one of her good Jenny-looks and whispered:

  “We’ll go look at them later, huh?”

  Before I could answer, or even gauge Jenny’s true motivations for suggesting a trip to my bedroom, we were interrupted.

  “Ah, hello there.”

  Sonovabitch! It was the Sonovabitch.

  “Oh, hello, sir. This is Jennifer—”

  “Ah, hello there.”

  He was shaking her hand before I could finish the introduction. I noted that he was not wearing any of his Banker Costumes. No indeed; Oliver III had on a fancy cashmere sport jacket. And there was an insidious smile on his usually rocklike countenance.

  “Do come in and meet Mrs. Barrett.”

  Another once-in-a-lifetime thrill was in store for Jennifer: meeting Alison Forbes “Tipsy” Barrett. (In perverse moments I wondered how her boarding-school nickname might have affected her, had she not grown up to be the earnest do-gooder museum trustee she was.) Let the record show that Tipsy Forbes never completed college. She left Smith in her sophomore year, with the full blessing of her parents, to wed Oliver Barrett III.

  “My wife Alison, this is Jennifer—”

  He had already usurped the function of introducing her.

  “Calliveri,” I added, since Old Stony didn’t know her last name.

  “Cavilleri,” Jenny added politely, since I had mispronounced it—for the first and only time in my goddamn life.

  “As in Cavalleria Rusticana?” asked my mother, probably to prove that despite her drop-out status, she was still pretty cultured.

  “Right.” Jenny smiled at her. “No relation.”

  “Ah,” said my mother.

  “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-time 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 time.

  “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.

  “So your people are from Cranston, Jenny?”

  “Mostly. My mother was from Fall River.”

  “The Barretts 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 int
o 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, O.B.?” said my mother to my father.

  “It isn’t the time, dear,” said Oliver III, with a kind 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.”

  8

  “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 fullscale 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 wa
s 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.

  9

  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?

  You bet your ass he would.

  This may serve to explain why, on that Sunday afternoon in May, I was obeying all posted speed limits, as we headed southward on Route 95. Jenny, who had come to enjoy the pace at which I drove, complained at one point that I was going forty in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone. I told her the car needed tuning, which she believed not at all.