:





     What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?
     That she was beautiful.  And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach.
And the  Beatles. And me. Once, when she specifically Jumped  me with  those
musical  types, I asked  her  what the order was,  and she replied, smiling,
"Alphabetical." At the  time I smiled too. But  now I sit and wonder whether
she was listing me by my first name-in which case I would trail Mozart-or by
my  last  name, in  which case  I would edge  n  there between Bach  and the
Beatles. Either way I don't come first, which for some stupid reason bothers
hell out of me,  having grown  up  with  the notion that I always had to  be
number one. Family heritage, don't you know?

     In the fall of my senior year, I got into the habit of studying  at the
Radcliffe library. Not just to eye the cheese, although I admit that I liked
to look. The place was  quiet,  nobody knew  me, and  the reserve books were
less in demand. The day before one  of my history hour exams, I still hadn't
gotten around  to  reading the first book on  the  list, an endemic  Harvard
disease.  I ambled  over  to the  reserve desk to  get one of the tomes that
would bail me out  on the morrow. There  were two girls working there. One a
tall  tennis-anyone type, the other  a  bespectacled mouse type. I opted for
Minnie Four-Eyes.
     "Do you have The Waning of the Middle Ages?"
     She shot a glance up at me.
     "Do you have your own library?" she asked.
     "Listen, Harvard is allowed to use the Radcliffe library."
     "I'm not talking legality, Preppie, I'm talking  ethics.  You guys have
five million books. We have a few lousy thousand."
     Christ,  a superior-being  type! The kind who think since the ratio  of
Radcliffe to Harvard is  five to one, the girls must be five times as smart.
I  normally cut these types  to ribbons, but  just  then I badly needed that
goddamn book.
     "Listen, I need that goddamn book."
     "Wouldja please watch your profanity, Preppie?"
     "What makes you so sure I went to prep school?"
     "You look stupid and rich," she said, removing her glasses.
     "You're wrong," I protested. "I'm actually smart and poor.
     "Oh, no, Preppie. i'm smart and poor."
     She was staring straight at me. Her eyes were brown. Okay, maybe I look
rich, but I wouldn't  let some  'Cliffie-even  one  with pretty eyes-call me
dumb.
     "What the hell makes you so smart?" I asked.
     "I wouldn't go for  coffee with you," she  answered. "Listen-I wouldn't
ask you."
     "That," she replied, "is what makes you stupid."

     Let me  explain why I took her for coffee. By shrewdly capitulating  at
the  crucial  moment-i.e., by pretending  that I suddenly wanted to-I got my
book. And since she couldn't leave until the library closed, I had plenty of
time to absorb some pithy phrases about the  shift  of royal dependence from
cleric to lawyer in the late eleventh century. I got an A minus on the exam,
coincidentally  the same grade I  assigned  to Jenny's  legs  when she first
walked from behind that desk. I can't say I gave her costume an honor grade,
however; it was a bit too Boho for my taste. I especially ~gthed that Indian
thing she carried for a handbag.  Fortunately  I didn't mention  this,  as I
later discovered it was of her own design.
     We  went  to the Midget  Restaurant,  a  nearby sandwich  joint  which,
despite its name, is  not restricted to people  of small stature.  I ordered
two coffees and a brownie with ice cream (for her).
     "I'm Jennifer Cavilleri," she said, "an American of Italian descent."
     As if I wouldn't have known. "And a music major," she added.
     "My name is Oliver," I said.
     "First or last?" she asked.
     "First," I answered, and then confessed that  my entire name was Oliver
Barrett. (I mean, that's most of

     "Oh," she said. "Barrett, like the poet?"
     "Yes," I said. "No relation."
     In the pause that ensued, I gave  thanks that  she hadn't come  up with
the usual distressing question:
     "Barrett, like  the hall?" For it is my special albatross to be related
to the  guy that built Barrett  Hall, the largest and  ugliest structure  in
Harvard Yard, a colossal  monument to my family's money, vanity and flagrant
Harvardism.
     After that, she was pretty quiet. Could we have run out of conversation
so quickly? Had I turned her off by not being related to the poet? What? She
simply sat there, semi-smiling at me. For something to do, I checked out her
notebooks. Her  handwriting was curious-small  sharp little letters with  no
capitals  (who did she think  she was, e. e. cummings?). And she  was taking
some pretty snowy courses: Comp. Lit. 105, Music 150, Music
     201- "Music 201? Isn't that a graduate course?"
     She nodded yes, and was not very good at masking her pride.
     "Renaissance polyphony."
     "What's polyphony?"
     "Nothing sexual, Preppie."
     Why was I putting up with this?  Doesn't she read the Crimson?  Doesn't
she know who I am?
     "Hey, don't you know who I am?"
     "Yeah," she  answered with kind of disdain. "You're  the guy  that owns
Barrett Hall."
     She didn't know who I was.
     "I don't own Barrett Hall," I quibbled. "My great- grandfather happened
to give it to Harvard."
     "So his not-so-great grandson would be sure to get

     That was the limit.
     "Jenny, if you're so  convinced I'm a  loser, why  did  you bulldoze me
into buying you coffee?"
     She looked me straight in the eye and smiled. "I like  your  body," she
said.

     Part of being a  big winner is the ability to be a good  loser. There's
no paradox involved. It's a distinctly Harvard thing to be able to  turn any
defeat into victory.
     "Tough luck, Barrett. You played a helluva  game." "Really, i'm so glad
you fellows took it. I mean, you people need to win so badly."
     Of course, an out-and-out triumph is better. I  mean, if  you  have the
option, the last-minute  score is preferable. And as  I walked Jenny back to
her dorm, I had not despaired of ultimate victory over this snotty Radcliffe
bitch.

     "Listen, you snotty Radcliffe  bitch, Friday  night  is  the  Dartmouth
hockey game"
     "So?".
     "So I'd like you to come."
     She replied with the usual Radcliffe reverence for sport:
     "Why the hell should I come to a lousy hockey game?"
     I answered casually:
     "Because I'm playing."
     There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.
     "For which side?" she asked.




     Oliver Barrett IV
     Ipswich, Mass.
     Age 20
     Major: Social Studies
     Dean's List: '60,, '62 '63
     All-ivy First Team: '62, '63;
     Career Aim: Law
     Senior
     Phillips Exeter
     5'11" 185 lbs.

     By now Jenny had  read my bio in the program.  I made  triple sure that
Vic Claman, the manager, saw that she got one.
     "For Christ's sake, Barrett, is this your first date?"
     "Shut up, Vic, or you'll be chewing your teeth."
     As we warmed up  on the ice, I didn't wave to her (how uncool!) or even
look her way. And yet I think she thought I was glancing at her. I mean, did
she remove her glasses during the National  Anthem out  of respect  for  the
flag?
     By the middle of the second period, we were beating Dartmouth o-o. That
is, Davey  Johnston  and  I were about  to perforate  their  nets. The Green
bastards  sensed  this, and began to play rougher. Maybe  they could break a
bone or two before  we broke them open. The  fans were already screaming for
blood. And in hockey this literally means blood or, failing that, a goal. As
a kind of noblesse oblige, I have never denied them either.
     Al  Redding,  Dartmouth  center,  charged  across  our blue  line and I
slammed into  him, stole  the  puck  and  started  down-ice. The  fans  were
roaring. I could see Davey Johnston on  my  left, but I thought I would take
it all the way, their  goalie being a slightly chicken type I had terrorized
since he played for Deerfield. Before I could  get  off  a  shot, both their
defensemen .were on me, and I had to skate around their nets to keep hold of
the  puck. There were three of us, flailing away against the boards and each
other. It had always been my policy, in pile-ups like this, to lash mightily
at anything wearing enemy colors. Somewhere beneath our skates was the puck,
but for the moment we were  concentrating  on beating the  shit out of  each
other.
     A ref blew his whistle.
     "You-two minutes in the box!"
     I looked up. He was  pointing at me. Me? What  had I  done to deserve a
penalty?
     "Come on, ref, what'd I do?"
     Somehow he wasn't interested in further dialogue. He was calling to the
officials' desk-"Number seven, two minutes -and signaling with his arms.
     Iremonstrated  a  bit, but  that's  de  rigueur. The  crowd  expects  a
protest, no matter how flagrant the offense.  The ref waved me off. Seething
with  frustration,  I  skated  toward the  penalty  box.  As I  climbed  in,
listening to the click of my skate blades  on the wood of the floor, I heard
the bark of the PA system:
     "Penalty. Barrett of Harvard. Two minutes. Holding."
     The crowd booed;  several Harvards impugned the vision and integrity of
the referees. I sat, trying to catch my breath,  not  looking up or even out
onto the ice, where Dartmouth outmanned us.
     "Why are you sitting here when all your friends are out playing?"
     The  voice  was Jenny's.  I  ignored  her,  and exhorted  my  teammates
instead.
     "C'mon, Harvard, get that puck!"
     "What did you do wrong?"
     I turned and answered her. She was my date, after

     "I tried too hard."
     And I went  back to watching  my teammates try to hold off Al Redding's
determined efforts to score.
     "Is this a big disgrace?"
     "Jenny, please, I'm trying to concentrate!"
     "On what?"
     "On how I'm gonna total that bastard Al Redding!"
     I looked out onto the ice to give moral support to my colleagues.
     "Are you a dirty player?"
     My eyes were riveted on our  goal,  now swarming with Green bastards. I
couldn't wait to get out there again. Jenny persisted.
     "Would you ever 'total' me?"
     I answered her without turning.
     "I will right now if you don't shut up.
     "I'm leaving. Good-bye."
     By  the time I turned,  she  had disappeared.  As I stood  up  to  look
further, I  was  informed that my two-minute sentence was  up. I leaped  the
barrier, back onto the ice.
     The crowd welcomed my  return. Barrett s on wing, all's  right with the
team. Wherever  she  was hiding, Jenny would  hear the big enthusiasm for my
presence. So who cares where she is.
     Where is she?
     Al Redding slapped a  murderous  shot, which our  goalie  deflected off
toward Gene  Kennaway,  who then  passed  it down-ice in my  vicinity.  As I
skated after the puck, I thought I had a split  second to glance  up at  the
stands to search for Jenny. I did. I saw her. She was there.
     The next thing I knew I was on my ass.
     Two  Green bastards  had slammed into me, my ass was on the ice, and  I
was-Christ!--embarrassed  beyond  belief. Barrett  dumped!  I could hear the
loyal  Harvard  fans  groaning for  me  as  I  skidded.  I  could  hear  the
bloodthirsty Dartmouth fans chanting.
     "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again!"
     What would Jenny think?
     Dartmouth  had  the  puck around our goal again,  and  again our goalie
deflected  their shot. Kennaway pushed it at Johnston, who rifled it down to
me (I had stood  up by this time). Now the crowd  was wild. This had to be a
score. I  took the  puck and sped all out across Dartmouth's blue  line. Two
Dartmouth defensemen were coming straight at me.
     "Go, Oliver, go! Knock their heads off!"
     I  heard Jenny's  shrill scream  above the  crowd.  It  was exquisitely
violent. I faked out one defenseman, slammed the other so  hard he  lost his
breath and then
     -instead of  shooting off balance-I passed off to  Davey  Johnston, who
had come up the right side. Davey slapped it into the nets. Harvard score!
     In an  instant, we were hugging and kissing. Me  and Davey Johnston and
the other  guys. Hugging and kissing and  back slapping and  jumping up  and
down  (on skates). The crowd was screaming. And the  Dartmouth guy I hit was
still on his ass. The  fans threw programs  onto the ice.  This really broke
Dartmouth's back.  (That's a metaphor;  the defenseman got up when he caught
his breath.) We creamed them 7-0.

     If I  were a sentimentalist, and cared enough about  Harvard to hang  a
photograph on the wall,  it  would  not be of Winthrop House, or Mem Church,
but of  Dillon.  Dillon Field  House. If I had a  spiritual home at Harvard,
this was it. Nate Pusey may revoke my diploma for  saying this, but  Widener
Library means far less to me than Dillon. Every afternoon of my college life
I walked into that place, greeted my buddies with friendly obscenities, shed
the trappings  of civilization and  turned into a jock. How great to  put on
the pads and the good old number ~ shirt (I had dreams of them retiring that
number; they  didn't), to take the  skates  and walk out toward  the  Watson
Rink.
     The return to Dillon would be even better. Peeling off the sweaty gear,
strutting naked to the supply desk to get a towel.
     "How 'd it go today, Ollie?"
     "Good, Richie. Good, Jimmy."
     Then into the showers to listen to who did what to whom how  many times
last Saturday night. "We got these pigs  from  Mount Ida, see . . . ?" And I
was privileged  to enjoy a private place of meditation. Being blessed with a
bad knee (yes, blessed: have you seen my draft card?), I had to give it some
whirlpool after playing. As I sat and watched the rings run round my knee, I
could catalog my  cuts and bruises (I  enjoy them,  in  a way),  and kind of
think about anything or nothing.  Tonight I could think of a goal, an assist
and virtually locking up my third consecutive All-Ivy.
     "Taking' some whirly-pooly, Ollie?"
     It was Jackie Felt, our trainer and self-appointed spiritual guide.
     "What does it look like I'm doing, Felt, beating off?"
     Jackie chortled and lit up with an idiot grin.
     "Know what's wrong with yer knee, Ollie? Diya know?"
     I'd been to every orthopedist in the East, but Felt knew better.
     "Yer not eatin' right."
     Ireally wasn't very interested.
     "Yer not eatin' enough salt."
     Maybe if I humor him he'll go away.
     "Okay, Jack, I'll start eating more salt."
     Jesus,  was  he  pleased!  He  walked  off with  this amazing  look  of
accomplishment on  his idiot face. Anyway, I was alone again. I let my whole
pleasantly aching body slide into the whirlpool, closed my eyes and just sat
there, up to my neck in warmth. Ahhhhhhh.
     Jesus! Jenny  would be  waiting outside. I hope! Still! Jesus! How long
had I lingered in that  comfort  while she was  out  there  in the Cambridge
cold? I set a  new record for getting dressed. I wasn't even quite dry  as I
pushed open the center door of Dillon.
     The cold air hit me. God, was it freezing. And  dark. There was still a
small cluster of fans.  Mostly old hockey faithfuls, the grads who've  never
mentally shed  the pads. Guys  like  old  Jordan Jencks, who  come  to every
single game, home or  away.  How  do they  do it? I  mean,  Jencks  is a big
banker. And why do they do it?
     "Quite a spill you took, Oliver."
     "Yeah, Mr. Jencks. You know what kind of game they play."
     I was looking everywhere for 4enny. Had she left and walked all the way
back to Radcliffe alone?
     "Jenny?"
     I took  three or four steps away from the  fans, searching desperately.
Suddenly she  popped out from behind  a bush, her face swathed  in a  scarf,
only her eyes showing.
     "Hey, Preppie, it's cold as hell out here." Was I glad to see her!
     "Jenny!"
     Like instinctively, I kissed her lightly on the forehead.
     "Did I say you could?" she said.
     "What?"
     "Did I say you could kiss me?"
     "Sorry. I was carried away.
     "I wasn't."
     We were pretty much all alone  out there, and it was dark and cold  and
late.  I  kissed her  again. But  not on the forehead, and  not lightly.  It
lasted a long nice time. When we stopped  kissing, she  was still holding on
to my sleeves.
     "I don't like it," she said.
     "What?"
     "The fact that I like it."
     As  we walked all the way back (I have  a car, but she wanted to walk),
Jenny held on to my sleeve. Not my arm, my sleeve. Don't ask  me  to explain
that. At the doorstep of Briggs Hall, I did not kiss her good night.
     "Listen, Jen, I may not  call you for a few months." She was silent for
a moment. A few moments.
     Finally she asked, "Why?"
     "Then again, I may call you as soon as I get to my room."
     I turned and began to walk off.
     "Bastard!" I heard her whisper.
     I pivoted again and scored from a distance of twenty feet.
     "See, Jenny, you can dish it out, but you can't take it"
     I  would like  to have seen the  expression  on her face, but  strategy
forbade my looking back.

     My roommate, Ray Stratton, was  playing poker with two football buddies
as I entered the room.
     "Hello, animals."
     They responded with appropriate  grunts.  "Whatja  get tonight, Ollie?"
Ray asked. "An assist and a goal," I replied. "Off Cavilleri."
     "None of your business," I replied.
     "Who's this?" asked  one of the  behemoths. "Jenny Cavilleri," answered
Ray. "Wonky music type."
     "I know that one," said another.  "A real  tight-ass." I ignored  these
crude and horny bastards  as  I untangled  the phone and started to take  it
into my bedroom.
     "She plays piano with the Bach Society," said Stratton.
     "What does she play with Barrett?"
     "Probably hard to get!"
     Oinks, grunts and guffaws. The animals were laughing.
     "Gentlemen," I announced as I took leave, "up yours."
     I closed my door on another wave of subhuman noises, took off my shoes,
lay back on the bed and dialed Jenny's number.
     We spoke in whispers.
     "Hey, Jen..
     "Yeah?"
     "Jen... what would you say if I told you.. I hesitated. She waited.
     "I ~hink... I'm in love with you."
     There was a pause. Then she answered very softly.
     "I would say. . . you were full of shit." She hung up.
     I wasn't unhappy. Or surprised.




     I got hurt in the Cornell game.
     It  was  my  own  fault,  really.  At  a heated  juncture,  I made  the
unfortunate error of referring to  their center  as  a  "fucking Canuck." My
oversight  was  in not  remembering that four  members of  their  team  were
Canadians-all,  it  turned out, extremely patriotic, well-built  and  within
earshot.  To add  insult to  injury, the penalty was called on me. And not a
common one, either:
     five minutes  for fighting. You should have heard the Cornell fans ride
me when it was announced! Not many Harvard rooters had come way the  hell up
to Ithaca, New York, even though the Ivy title was at stake. Five minutes! I
could see our coach tearing his hair out, as I climbed into the box.
     Jackie Felt came scampering over. It was only then
     I realized that the whole right side of my face was a
     a bloody mess. "Jesus Christ," he kept repeating as
     he worked me over with a styptic pencil. "Jesus, Ollie." I sat quietly,
staring blankly ahead. I was ashamed
     to look onto  the  ice,  where my  worst  fears were  quickly realized;
Cornell scored. The Red fans screamed  and bellowed and hooted. It was a tie
now. Cornell  could very possibly win the game-and  with it, the Ivy  title.
Shit-and I had barely gone through half my penalty.
     Across the rink, the  minuscule Harvard contingent was grim and silent.
By now  the fans for both sides had forgotten me.  Only one  spectator still
had his  eyes  on the  penalty box. Yes,  he  was there. "if  the conference
breaks in  time, i'll  try to get  to  Cornell." Sitting  among  the Harvard
rooters-but not rooting, of course- was Oliver Barrett III.
     Across  the  gulf  of ice,  Old  Stonyface  observed  in expressionless
silence as the last bit of blood on the face  of his only son was stopped by
adhesive papers. What was he thinking, do you think? Tch tch tch-or words to
that effect?
     "Oliver, if you like  fighting so much, why  don't you go out  for  the
boxing team?"
     "Exeter doesn't have a boxing team, Father."
     "Well, perhaps 1 shouldn't come up to your hockey games."
     "Do you think 1 fight for your benefit, Father?"
     "Well, I wouldn't say 'benefit.'"
     But of course, who  could tell what he was thinking? Oliver Barrett III
was a walking, sometimes talking Mount Rushmore. Stonyface.
     Perhaps Old Stony was indulging in his usual self- celebration: Look at
me, there are extremely few  Harvard spectators here this evening, and yet I
am  one of them. I, Oliver Barrett III,  an extremely busy man with banks to
run and so forth, I have taken the time  to  come up to Cornell for a  lousy
hockey game. How wonderful. (For whom?)
     The  crowd roared again,  but  really  wild this time.  Another Cornell
goal.  They  were  ahead.  And  I had two minutes  of  penalty to  go! Davey
Johnston skated up-ice, red-faced, angry. He passed  right  by me without so
much as  a glance.  And did I  notice tears in his eyes? I mean,  okay,  the
title was at  stake, but Jesus- tears! But then Davey, our captain, had this
incredible  streak  going  for him: seven  years and he'd never played on  a
losing side, high school  or college. It was like a minor legend. And he was
a senior. And this was our last tough game.
     Which we lost, 6-3.

     After the game, an X ray determined that no bones were broken, and then
twelve stitches were sewn  into my cheek by Richard Seizer, M.D. Jackie Felt
hovered  around  the  med  room, telling  the Cornell physician how I wasn't
eating right and that all  this  might  have been averted had I  been taking
sufficient  salt pills. Seizer  ignored  Jack, and gave  me  a stern warning
about my nearly  damaging "the floor of my  orbit"  (those  are  the medical
terms) and that not to play for a week would be the wisest thing. I  thanked
him. He  left,  with Felt dogging him to  talk more of nutrition. I was glad
to. be alone.
     I showered slowly,  being careful not to wet my sore face. The Novocain
was  wearing off  a  little, but  I was somehow happy  to feel pain. I mean,
hadn't I really fucked up? We'd blown  the title, broken our own streak (all
the seniors had been undefeated) and  Davey  Johnston's too. Maybe the blame
wasn't totally mine, but right then I felt like it was.
     There was  nobody in the locker  room. They must  all have been at  the
motel  already. I supposed no one wanted to see me or speak to me. With this
terrible bitter taste in my mouth-I felt so bad  I could taste it- I  packed
my  gear  and walked outside. There were  not many Harvard fans out there in
the wintry wilds of upstate New York.
     "How's the cheek, Barrett?"
     "Okay, thanks, Mr. Jencks."
     "You'll probably want a steak," said another familiar voice. Thus spake
Oliver Barrett III. How typical of him to suggest the old-fashioned cure for
a black eye.
     "Thank you, Father," I said. "The doctor took care of it." I  indicated
the gauze pad covering Seizer's twelve stitches.
     "I mean for your stomach, son.

     At   dinner,   we  had  yet  another  in   our  continuing  series   of
nonconversations, all of which commence with "How've you been?" and conclude
with "Anything I can do?"
     "How've you been, son?"
     "Fine, sir."
     "Does your face hurt?"
     "No, sir.
     It was beginning to hurt like hell.
     "I'd like Jack Wells to look at it on Monday."
     "Not necessary, Father."
     "He's a specialist-"
     "The Cornell  doctor wasn't exactly a veterinarian," I said,  hoping to
dampen my  father's usual snobbish enthusiasm for  specialists, experts, and
all other "top people."
     "Too bad," remarked Oliver Barrett III,  in what  I  first took to be a
stab at humor, "you did get a beastly cut."
     "Yes sir," I said. (Was I supposed to chuckle?)
     And  then  I  wondered  if my  father's  quasi-witticism had  not  been
intended as some sort of implicit reprimand for my actions on the ice.
     "Or were you implying that I behaved like an animal this evening?"
     His  expression suggested some pleasure at the fact  that I  had  asked
him. But he simply replied, "You were  the one who mentioned veterinarians."
At this point, I decided to study the menu.
     As the main  course was served, Old Stony launched  into another of his
simplistic sermonettes, this  one, if I recall-and  I try  not to-concerning
victories and defeats.  He noted that we had lost the title  (very sharp  of
you, Father), but after all, in sport what really counts is  not the winning
but the  playing. His remarks sounded suspiciously close to  a paraphrase of
the Olympic motto,  and I sensed this was the overture to a put-down of such
athletic trivia as Ivy titles. But  I was not about to  feed him any Olympic
straight lines, so I gave him his quota of "Yes sir"s and shut up.
     We ran the usual conversational gamut, which centers around Old Stony's
favorite nontopic, my plans.
     "Tell me, Oliver, have you heard from the Law School?"
     "Actually, Father, I haven't definitely decided on law school."
     "I was merely asking if law school had definitely decided on you."
     Was this another witticism? Was I supposed to smile at my father's rosy
rhetoric?
     "No sir. I haven't heard."
     "I could give Price Zimmermann a ring-"
     "No!" I interrupted as an instant reflex. "Please don't, sir".
     "Not to influence," O.B. III said very uprightly "just to inquire."
     "Father, I want to get the , letter with everyone else
     Please."
     "Yes. Of course. Fine."
     "Thank you, sir."
     "Besides there  really  isn't much  doubt  about  your getting in,"  he
added.
     Idon't  know why, but  O.B. III  has a way of disparaging me even while
uttering laudatory phrases.
     "It's no cinch," I replied. "They don't have a hockey team, after all."
     I  have no idea why I was putting myself down. Maybe it  was because he
was taking the opposite view.
     "You have other  qualities," said Oliver  Barrett III,  but declined to
elaborate. (I doubt if he could have.)
     The meal was  as  lousy as the conversation, except that  I  could have
predicted the staleness of the rolls even before they arrived, whereas I can
never predict what subject my father will set blandly before me.
     "And  there's always the Peace  Corps," he  remarked, completely out of
the blue.
     "Sir?" I asked, not  quite sure whether he was  making  a statement  or
asking a question.
     "I think the Peace Corps is a fine thing, don't you?" he said.
     "Well," I replied, "it's certainly better than the War Corps."
     We were even. I didn't know what  he meant and vice versa. Was that  it
for the  topic?  Would we now discuss  other current  affairs  or government
programs?  No. I had momentarily forgotten that our  quintessential theme is
always my plans.
     "I would certainly  have no objection to your joining the Peace  Corps,
Oliver."
     "It's  mutual, sir," I  replied, matching his own generosity of spirit.
I'm sure Old Stony never listens  to me anyway, so I'm not surprised that he
didn't react to my quiet little sarcasm.
     "But among  your  classmates,"  he  continued,  "what is  the  attitude
there?"
     "Sir?"
     "Do they feel the Peace Corps is relevant to their lives?"
     I guess my father  needs  to  hear the  phrase as  much as a fish needs
water: "Yes sir."
     Even the apple pie was stale.

     At about eleven-thirty, I walked him to his car.
     "Anything I can do, son?"
     "No, sir. Good night, sir."
     And he drove off.
     Yes,  there are planes between Boston and Ithaca, New York,  but Oliver
Barrett III  chose to drive. Not that those many hours at the wheel could be
taken as some kind  of  parental gesture. My father  simply likes to  drive.
Fast. And at that hour  of the night in an  Aston Martin DBS you can go fast
as  hell. I have  no  doubt  that Oliver Barrett  III was out  to  break his
Ithaca- Boston  speed record, set the  year  previous  after  we had  beaten
Cornell and taken the title. I know, because I saw him glance at his watch.
     I went back to the motel to phone Jenny.
     It  was  the only good  part of  the evening. I told  her all about the
fight (omitting the precise  nature of the casus belli) and I could tell she
enjoyed it. Not many of  her wonky musician friends either threw or received
punches.
     "Did you at least total the guy that hit you?" she asked.
     "Yeah. Totally. I creamed him."
     "I wish  I coulda seen  it. Maybe you'll  beat up  somebody in the Yale
game, huh?"
     "Yeah."
     I smiled. How she loved the simple things in life.





     "Jenny's on the downstairs phone."
     This information was announced  to me by the girl  on bells, although I
had not identified myself or my purpose in coming to Briggs Hall that Monday
evening. I quickly concluded  that this meant  points  for me. Obviously the
'Cliffle who greeted me read the Crimson and knew who  I was. Okay, that had
happened  many  times. More  significant was  the fact  that Jenny  had been
mentioning that she was dating me.
     "Thanks," I said. "I'll wait here."
     "Too bad about Cornell. The Crime says four guys jumped you."
     "Yeah. And I got the penalty. Five minutes.
     "Yeah."
     The difference  between a friend and a  fan is that with the latter you
quickly run out of conversation.
     "Jenny off the phone yet?"
     She checked her switchboard, replied, "No."
     Who could Jenny be  talking to that was worth appropriating moments set
aside for a  date with me? Some musical wonk? It was not unknown to me  that
Martin  Davidson,  Adams  House  senior and conductor  of the  Bach  Society
orchestra, considered himself  to have a franchise on Jenny's attention. Not
body; I don't think the guy could wave more  than his baton. Anyway, I would
put a stop to this usurpation of my time.
     "Where's the phone booth?"
     "Around the corner." She pointed in the precise direction.
     I ambled  into the lounge area. From afar I  could  see  Jenny  on  the
phone. She  had left the booth  door open. I walked slowly, casually, hoping
she would  catch sight of me, my bandages, my injuries in Toto, and be moved
to slam down the receiver and rush to my arms. As I approached, I could hear
fragments of conversation.
     "Yeah. Of course! Absolutely. Oh, me too, Phil. I love you too, Phil."
     I stopped ambling. Who was she talking to? It wasn't
     Davidson-there was no Phil in any part of his name.
     I had long ago checked him out in our Class Register:
     Martin Eugene Davidson, 70 Riverside Drive, New
     York.  High School of Music and  Art.  His photo suggested sensitivity,
intelligence and  about  fifty pounds less than me. But why  was I bothering
about  Davidson?  Clearly both  he  and  I  were being shot down by Jennifer
Cavilleri, for someone to whom she  was at this moment  (how gross!) blowing
kisses into the phone!
     I had been away only forty-eight hours, and some bastard named Phil had
crawled into bed with Jenny (it had to be that!).
     "Yeah, Phil, I love you too. 'Bye."
     As she was hanging up, she saw me, and without so much as blushing, she
smiled and waved me a kiss. How could she be so two-faced?
     She kissed me lightly on my unhurt cheek.
     "Hey-you look awful."
     "I'm injured, Jen."
     "Does the other guy look worse?"
     "Yeah. Much. I always make the other guy look worse."
     I  said  that  as ominously as I  could, sort of implying  that I would
punch-out any rivals  who would creep into bed with Jenny while I was out of
sight and evidently out of mind. She grabbed my sleeve and we started toward
the door.
     "Night, Jenny," called the girl on bells.
     "Night, Sara Jane," Jenny called back.
     When we were outside, about to step  into my  MG, I oxygenated my lungs
with a breath of evening, and put the question as casually as I could.
     "Say, Jen . .
     "Yeah?"
     "Uh-who's Phil?"
     She answered matter-of-factly as she got into the car:
     "My father."

     I wasn't about to believe a story like that.
     "You call your father Phil?"
     "That's his name. What do you call  yours?" Jenny had  once told me she
had been raised by her father, some sort of a baker type, in Cranston, Rhode
Island. When she  was very young, her mother was killed in a car crash.  All
this  by way of explaining why she had no driver's license.  Her  father, in
every other way "a truly good guy" (her words), was incredibly superstitious
about letting his  only daughter drive. This was a real drag during her last
years of  high  school, when  she was taking piano with a guy in Providence.
But then she got to read all of Proust on those long bus rides.
     "What do you call yours?" she asked again.
     I had been so out of it, I hadn't heard her question.
     "My what?"
     "What term do you employ when you speak of your progenitor?"
     I answered with the term I'd always wanted to employ.
     "Sonovabitch."
     "To his face?" she asked.
     "I never see his face."
     "He wears a mask?"
     "In a way, yes. Of stone. Of absolute stone."
     "Go on-he must be proud as hell. You're a big Harvard jock."
     I looked at her. I guess she didn't know everything, after all.
     "So was he, Jenny."
     "Bigger than All-Ivy wing?"
     Iliked  the way she enjoyed  my athletic credentials.  Too bad I had to
shoot myself down by giving her my father's.
     "He rowed single sculls in the 1928 Olympics."
     "God," she said. "Did he win?"
     "No," I answered, and I guess she could tell that the  fact that he was
sixth in the finals actually afforded me some comfort.
     There was a little silence. Now maybe Jenny would understand that to be
Oliver Barrett IV doesn't just mean living  with  that gray stone edifice in
Harvard Yard. It involves  a kind  of muscular intimidation as well. I mean,
the image of athletic achievement looming down on you. I mean, on me.
     "But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?" Jenny asked.
     "Make me," I replied.
     "Beg pardon?"
     "Make me," I repeated.
     Her eyes widened like saucers. "You mean like incest?" she asked.
     "Don't give me your family problems, Jen. I've got enough of my own."
     "Like what, Oliver?" she asked, "like just what is it he makes you do?"
     "The 'right things'" I said.
     "What's wrong  with the 'right things'?" she asked,  delighting in  the
apparent paradox.
     I   told  her  how  I   loathed   being  programmed  for  the   Barrett
Tradition-which she should have realized, having seen me cringe at having to
mention the  numeral  at  the end  of  my name. And I did not like having to
deliver x amount of achievement every single term.
     "Oh  yeah,"  said Jenny  with broad sarcasm,  "I  notice how  you  hate
getting A's, being All-Ivy-"
     "What I hate is that he expects no less!" Just saying what I had always
felt (but never before spoken) made me feel uncomfortable as hell, but now I
had to make Jenny understand it all. "And he's so incredibly blase when I do
come through. I mean he just takes me absolutely for granted."
     "But he's a busy man. Doesn't he run lots of banks and things?"
     "Jesus, Jenny, whose side are you on?"
     "Is this a war?" she asked.
     "Most definitely," I replied.
     "That's ridiculous, Oliver."
     She seemed genuinely unconvinced. And there I got my first inkling of a
cultural gap between us. I mean, three and a half years of Harvard-Radcliffe
had pretty  much made us  into  the  cocky  intellectuals  that  institution
traditionally  produces,  but when it came  to  accepting  the  fact that my
father    was   made   of   stone,    she   adhered    to   some   atavistic
Italian-Mediterranean  notion  of  papa-loves-bambinos,  and  there  was  no
arguing otherwise.
     I tried to cite a case in point. That ridiculous  nonconversation after
the Cornell game. This definitely made an impression on her. But the goddamn
wrong one.
     "He went all the way up to Ithaca to watch a lousy hockey game?"
     Itried to explain that my  father was all  form and no content. She was
still obsessed  with  the fact  that he  had  traveled  so  far for  such  a
(relatively) trivial sports event.
     "Look, Jenny, can we just forget it?"
     "Thank God you're hung  up about your father," she replied. "That means
you're not perfect."
     "Oh-you mean you are?"
     "Hell no, Preppie. If I was, would I be going out with you?"
     Back to business as usual.





     I would like to say a word about our physical relationship.
     For  a strangely long  while there  wasn't  any.  I mean, there  wasn't
anything more significant than those kisses already mentioned (all of  which
I still remember in greatest detail). This was not standard procedure as far
as  I was concerned, being rather impulsive, impatient and quick  to action.
If you were to  tell  any of a dozen  girls at Tower Court, VJellesley, that
Oliver Barrett IV had been dating a young lady daily for three weeks and had
not  slept with her, they would surely have laughed and  severely questioned
the femininity of the girl involved.  But  of  course the actual  facts were
quite different.
     1 didn't know what to do.
     Don't misunderstand or take that too literally. I knew all the moves. I
just  couldn't cope  with  my own feelings  about making  them. Jenny was so
smart that I  was  afraid  she  might laugh  at  what  I  had  traditionally
considered the suave romantic (and  unstoppable) style of Oliver Barrett IV.
I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for
the wrong reasons. What I am fumbling to say is that I  felt different about
Jennifer, and  didn't  know  what to say or even who to ask about  it. ("You
should have asked me," she  said later.) I just knew  I had  these feelings.
For her. For all of her.
     "You're gonna flunk out, Oliver."
     We were sitting in my room on a Sunday afternoon, reading.
     "Oliver,  you're  gonna  flunk  out if you just  sit there watching  me
study."
     "I'm not watching you study. I'm studying."
     "Bullshit. You're looking at my legs."
     "Only once in a while. Every chapter."
     ''That book has extremely short chapters.
     "Listen, you narcissistic bitch, you're not that great- looking!"
     "I know. But can I help it if you think so?"
     I threw down my book and crossed the room to where she was sitting.
     "Jenny, for Christ's sake, how  can I read John Stuart  Mill when every
single second I'm dying to make love to you?"
     She screwed up her brow and frowned.
     "Oh, Oliver, wouldja please?"
     I was crouching by her chair. She looked back into her book.
     "Jenny-"
     She closed her  book softly, put it down, then placed her  hands on the
sides of my neck.
     "Oliver-wouldja please."
     It all happened at once. Everything.

     Our first physical encounter was the polar opposite of our first verbal
one. It was all so unhurried,  so soft, so gentle. I had never realized that
this was  the  real  Jenny-the soft  one, whose touch  was  so light  and so
loving. And yet what truly shocked me  was my own  response. I was gentle. I
was tender. Was this the real Oliver Barrett IV?
     As I said, I had never seen Jenny with so much as her sweater opened an
extra  button. I was  somewhat surprised to find that she wore a tiny golden
cross. On  one of those chains that never unlock. Meaning  that when we made
love,  she  still  wore  the  cross.  In  a  resting moment of  that  lovely
afternoon,  at  one  of  those  junctures  when  everything  and nothing  is
relevant, I touched the little cross and inquired what her priest might have
to say about our being in bed together, and so  forth. She answered that she
had no priest.
     "Aren't you a good Catholic girl?" I asked.
     "Well, I'm a girl," she said. "And I'm good."
     She looked at me for confirmation and I smiled. She smiled back.
     "So that's two out of three."
     I then asked her why the cross,  welded, no less. She explained that it
had  been her mother's; she  wore it for sentimental reasons, not religious.
The conversation returned to ourselves.
     "Hey, Oliver, did I tell you that I love you?" she said.
     "No, Jen."
     "Why didn't you ask me?"
     "I was afraid to, frankly."
     "Ask me now."
     "Do you love me, Jenny?"
     She looked at me and wasn't being evasive when she answered:
     "What  do  you  think?"  "Yeah.  I guess. Maybe."  I  kissed her  neck.
"Oliver?"
     "Yes?"
     "I don't just love you . .  Oh, Christ, what was this? "I love you very
much, Oliver"





     I love Ray Stratton.
     He may not be a genius  or a great football player (kind of slow at the
snap), but he was always a good roommate and loyal friend. And how that poor
bastard suffered through most of our senior year. Where  did he go to  study
when he  saw the tie  placed on the  doorknob of our  room (the  traditional
signal for  "action within")? Admittedly, he  didn't study that much, but he
had  to sometimes. Let's say he used the House library, or  Lamont,  or even
the  Pi Eta Club. But where did he sleep on those Saturday nights when Jenny
and  I  decided to  disobey  parietal  rules and stay  together? Ray  had to
scrounge for places to  sack in-neighbors' couches, etc., assuming they  had
nothing going for them. Well, at least it was after the football season. And
I would have done the same thing for him.
     But what  was Ray's reward? In days of  yore I had  shared with him the
minutest  details of my amorous triumphs.  Now he was not only  denied these
inalienable roommate's  rights, but I never even came  out and admitted that
Jenny and I were  lovers. I would just indicate when we would be needing the
room, and so forth. Stratton could draw what conclusion he wished.
     "I mean, Christ, Barrett, are you making it or not?" he would ask.
     "Raymond, as a friend I'm asking you not to ask."
     "But  Christ,  Barrett,  afternoons,  Friday  nights,  Saturday nights.
Christ, you must be making it."
     "Then why bother asking me, Ray?"
     "Because it's unhealthy."
     "What is?"
     "The  whole situation, 01.  I mean, it. was  never like this before.  I
mean,  this  total freeze-out  on  details  for  big  Ray.  I mean, this  is
unwarranted. Unhealthy. Christ, what does she do that's so different?"
     "Look, Ray, in a mature love affair-"
     "Love?"
     "Don't say it like it's a dirty word."
     "At your age? Love? Christ, I greatly fear, old buddy."
     "For what~ My sanity?"
     "Your bachelorhood. Your freedom. Your life!" Poor Ray. He really meant
it.
     "Afraid you're losing a roommate, huh?"
     "Shit, in a way I've gained one, she spends so much time here."
     Iwas dressing for  a concert, so  this dialogue would shortly come to a
close.
     "Don't sweat, Raymond. We'll have that apartment in New York. Different
babies every night. We'll do it all."
     "Don't tell me not to sweat, Barrett. That girl's got you.
     "It's all  under control," I replied.  "Stay loose." I was adjusting my
tie and heading for the door. Stratton was somehow unconvinced.
     "Hey, Ollie?"
     "Yeah?"
     "You are making it, aren't you?"
     "Jesus Christ, Stratton!"

     I was not  taking Jenny to this  concert; I was watcbing her in it. The
Bach  Society was doing the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto at Dunster House, and
Jenny  was harpsichord soloist. I had heard her play many times, of  course,
but never with  a group  or in  public. Christ, was I proud. She didn't make
any mistakes that I could notice.
     "I can't believe how great you were," I said after the concert.
     "That shows what you know about music, Preppie."
     "I know enough."
     We were in  the Dunster courtyard. It was one of those April afternoons
when you'd  believe  spring  might  finally  reach  Cambridge.  Her  musical
colleagues  were  strolling  nearby  (including  Martin  Davidson,  throwing
invisible  hate  bombs  in  my  direction),  so  I  couldn't  argue keyboard
expertise with her.
     We crossed Memorial  Drive to walk along the river. "Wise up,  Barrett,
wouldja  please.  I  play  okay. Not great. Not  even 'All-Ivy.' Just  okay.
Okay?"
     How could I argue when she wanted to put herself down?
     "Okay. You play okay. I just mean you should always keep at it."
     "Who said I wasn't going to keep at it, for God's sake? I'm gonna study
with Nadia Boulanger, aren't I?"
     What the hell was she talking about? From the  way she immediately shut
up, I sensed this was something she had not intended to mention.
     "Who?" I asked.
     "Nadia Boulanger. A  famous music teacher.  In  Paris." She  said those
last two words rather quickly.
     "In Paris?" I asked, rather slowly.
     "She  takes  very  few  American pupils.  I  was  lucky. I got  a  good
scholarship too."
     "Jennifer-you are going to Paris?"
     "I've never seen Europe. I can hardly wait."
     I grabbed her by the shoulders. Maybe I was too rough, I don't know.
     "Hey-how long have you known this?"
     For once in her life, Jenny couldn't look me square in the eye.
     "Ollie, don't be stupid," she said. "It's inevitable."
     "What's inevitable?"
     "We graduate and we go our separate ways. You'll go to law school-"
     "Wait a minute-what are you  talking  about?" Now  she looked me in the
eye. And her face was sad.
     "Ollie, you're a preppie millionaire, and I'm a social zero."
     I was still holding onto her shoulders.
     "What the hell does that have to do with separate ways?  We're together
now, we're happy."
     "Ollie, don't be  stupid,"  she  repeated.  "Harvard  is  like  Santa's
Christmas bag.  You can stuff any  crazy kind of  toy  into it. But when the
holiday's over, they shake you out.. ." She hesitated.
     "...and you gotta go back where you belong."
     "You mean you're going to bake cookies in Cranston, Rhode Island?"
     I was saying desperate things.
     "Pastries," she said. "And don't make fun of my father."
     "Then don't leave me, Jenny. Please."
     "What about my scholarship? What about  Paris, which I've never seen in
my whole goddamn life?"
     "What about our marriage?"
     It was I  who spoke those  words, although for a  split second I wasn't
sure I really had.
     "Who said anything about marriage?"
     "Me. I'm saying it now."
     "You want to marry me?"
     "Yes."
     She tilted her head, did not smile, but merely inquired:
     "Why?"
     I looked her straight in the eye.
     "Because," I said.
     "Oh," she said. "That's a very good reason.
     She  took  my arm (not  my sleeve this time),  and we walked along  the
river. There was nothing more to say, really.





     Ipswich, Mass.,  is some  forty  minutes  from the Mystic River Bridge,
depending  on the  weather  and how  you  drive. I have  actually made it on
occasion  in  twenty- nine minutes.  A  certain distinguished  Boston banker
claims an even faster  time, but when one is  discussing sub thirty  minutes
from Bridge to  Barretts', it  is difficult  to separate fact from fancy.  I
happen to consider twenty-nine  minutes  as the absolute limit. I mean,  you
can't ignore the traffic signals on Route I, can you?
     "You're driving like a maniac," Jenny said.
     "This is  Boston," I  replied. "Everyone drives like a maniac." We were
halted for a red light on Route I at the time.
     "You'll kill us before your parents can murder us."
     "Listen, Jen, my parents are lovely people."
     The light changed. The MG was at sixty in under ten seconds.
     "Even the Sonovabitch?" she asked.
     "Who?"
     "Oliver Barrett III."
     "Ah, he's a nice guy. You'll really like him."
     "How do you know?"
     "Everybody likes him," I replied.
     "Then why don't you?"
     "Because everybody likes him," I said.
     Why  was  I taking her to meet them,  anyway? I mean, did I really need
Old  Stonyface's blessing or  anything? Part of it was  that  she  wanted to
("That's the way it's done, Oliver") and part of it was the simple fact that
Oliver III  was my banker  in  the very grossest sense:  he paid the goddamn
tuition.
     It  had  to be Sunday  dinner, didn't it? I mean, that's comme il faut,
right? Sunday, when all the lousy drivers  were clogging Route i and getting
in my way. I pulled off the main drag onto Groton Street, a road whose turns
I had been taking at high speeds since I was thirteen.
     "There are no houses here," said Jenny, "just trees."
     ''The houses are behind the trees.~~
     When traveling  down Groton  Street, you've got to  be very careful  or
else you'll miss the turnoff into our place. Actually, I  missed the turnoff
myself  that  afternoon. I  was three  hundred yards  down the  road when  I
screeched to a halt.
     "Where are we?" she asked.
     "Past it," I mumbled, between obscenities.
     Is there something symbolic in  the fact that I backed up three hundred
yards  to the entrance  of our place? Anyway, I drove slowly once we were on
Barrett soil. It's at least a half mile in from Groton Street to Dover House
proper. En route  you pass other .  . . well, buildings. I guess it's fairly
impressive when you see it for the first time.
     "Holy shit!" Jenny said.
     "What's the matter, Jen?"
     "Pull over, Oliver. No kidding. Stop the car." I stopped the  car.  She
was clutching.
     "Hey, I didn't think it would be like this."
     "Like what?"
     "Like this rich. I mean, I bet you have serfs living here."
     I wanted to  reach over and  touch her, but my palms were  not dry  (an
uncommon state), and so I gave her verbal reassurance.
     "Please, Jen. It'll be a breeze."
     "Yeah,  but why  is  it I suddenly wish  my name was Abigail Adams,  or
Wendy WASP?"
     We drove the rest  of the way in silence, parked  and walked  up to the
front door. As we waited  for  the ring to be answered, Jenny succumbed to a
last-minute panic.
     "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  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, 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."

     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 Christ sake?"
     "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. Precipitous ness. 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?
     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.
     "Tell it to me again, Jen."
     Patience was not one of  Jenny's virtues, and she refused to bolster my
confidence by repeating the answers to all the stupid questions I had asked.
     "Just one more time, Jenny, please."
     "I called him. I told him. He said okay. In English, because, as I told
you and you don't seem to want to believe, he doesn't know a goddamn word of
Italian except a few curses."
     "But what does 'okay' mean?"
     "Are you implying that Harvard Law  School has accepted a man who can't
even define 'okay'?"
     "It's not a legal term, Jenny."
     She  touched my  arm. Thank  God,  I  understood  that.  I still needed
clarification, though. I had to know what I was in for.
     "'Okay' could also  mean  'I'll suffer  through  it.'"  She  found  the
charity  in  her  heart  to  repeat  for  the nth  time  the details  of her
conversation with her father.  He was happy. He 'was. He had never expected,
when  he sent her off to  Radcliffe,  that she  would return  to Cranston to
marry the boy next door (who by the way had asked her just before she left).
He  was  at  first  incredulous that  her intended's  name was really Oliver
Barrett  IV.  He had then warned his daughter not  to violate  the  Eleventh
Commandment.
     "Which one is that?" I asked her.
     "Do not bullshit thy father," she said.

     "And that's all, Oliver. Truly."
     "He knows I'm poor?"
     "Yes."
     "He doesn't mind?"
     "At least you and he have something in common."
     "But he'd be happier if I had a few bucks, right?"
     "Wouldn't you?"
     I shut up for the rest of the ride.
     Jenny lived on a street  called Hamilton Avenue, a  long line of wooden
houses with many children in front of them, and a few scraggly trees. Merely
driving  down  it,  looking for  a parking  space,  I  felt like  in another
country.  To  begin with, there were so many  people.  Besides  the children
playing, there were entire families sitting on their porches with apparently
nothing better to do this Sunday afternoon than to watch me park my MG.
     Jenny leaped out first. She had  incredible reflexes in  Cranston, like
some quick little grasshopper. There was all but an organized cheer when the
porch watchers  saw who my passenger was.  No less than the great Cavilleri!
When I heard  all the greetings for her, I was almost ashamed  to get out. I
mean,  I could not  remotely  for a moment pass for the hypothetical Olivero
Barretto.
     "Hey, Jenny!" I heard one matronly type shout with great gusto.
     "Hey, Mrs. Capodilupo," I heard Jenny bellow back. I climbed out of the
car. I could feel the eyes on me.
     "Hey-who's  the  boy?" shouted  Mrs. Capodilupo. Not  too subtle around
here, are they?
     "He's nothing!" Jenny called back. Which did wonders for my confidence.
     "Maybe," shouted Mrs. Capodilupo in  my  direction, "but the girl  he's
with is really something!"
     "He knows," Jenny replied.
     She then turned to satisfy neighbors on the other side.
     "He knows," she told a whole new group of her fans. She took my hand (I
was a  stranger in  paradise),  and  led me  up the stairs to  165A Hamilton
Avenue.

     It was an awkward moment.
     I  just  stood there  as Jenny  said, "This  is  my  father." And  Phil
Cavilleri, a roughhewn (say  5'6"  165-pound) Rhode  Island type in his late
forties, held out his hand.
     We shook and he had a strong grip.
     "How do you do, sir?"
     "Phil," he corrected me, "I'm Phil."
     "Phil, sir,"  I replied, continuing to shake  his  hand. It  was also a
scary moment. Because then,  just as  he let go  of my  hand,  Mr. Cavilleri
turned to his daughter and gave this incredible shout:
     "Jennifer!"
     For a split second nothing happened. And then they were hugging. Tight.
Very tight. Rocking  to and  fro. All Mr. Cavilleri  could  offer by way  of
further comment was the (now  very soft)  repetition of his daughter's name:
"Jennifer." And  all  his graduating- Radcliffe-with-honors  daughter  could
offer by way of reply was: "Phil."
     I was definitely the odd man out.

     One thing about my couth upbringing helped me out that afternoon. I had
always  been lectured about  not talking with my mouth full.  Since Phil and
his daughter kept conspiring to fill that orifice, I didn't have to speak. I
must have eaten a record quantity of Italian
     pastries.  Afterward I discoursed at some length  on which ones  I  had
liked  best (I ate  no  less than  two  of  each  kind,  for fear  of giving
offense), to the delight of the two Cavilleris.
     "He's okay," said Phil Cavilleri to his daughter.
     What did that mean?
     I didn't need  to have "okay" defined;  I merely wished to know what of
my few and circumspect actions had earned for me that cherished epithet.
     Did I like the right cookies? Was my handshake strong enough? What?
     "I told you he was okay, Phil," said Mr. Cavilleri's daughter.
     "Well,  okay," said her father, "I still had to see  for myself.  Now I
saw. Oliver?"
     He was now addressing me.
     "Yes, sir?"
     "Phil."
     "Yes, Phil, sir?"
     "You're okay."
     "Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Really I do.  And you know how I feel
about your daughter, sir. And you, sir."
     "Oliver,"  Jenny  interrupted, "will you stop  babbling  like  a stupid
goddamn preppie, and-"
     "Jennifer," Mr. Cavilleri  interrupted, "can you avoid  the  profanity?
The sonovabitch is a guest!"

     At dinner (the pastries turned out to be merely a  snack) Phil tried to
have a serious talk with me about  you-can-guess-what. For some crazy reason
he thought he could effect a rapprochement between Olivers III and IV.
     "Let me speak to him on the phone, father to father," he pleaded.
     "Please, Phil, it's a waste of time."
     "I can't sit here and allow a parent to reject a child. I can't."
     "Yeah. But I reject him too, Phil."
     "Don't ever let me hear you talk like that," he said, getting genuinely
angry. "A father's love is to be cherished and respected. It's rare."
     "Especially in my family," I said.
     Jenny was getting up and down  to  serve,  so she was not involved with
most of this.
     "Get him on the phone," Phil repeated. "I'll take care of this."
     "No, Phil. My father and I have installed a cold line."
     "Aw, listen, Oliver, he'll thaw. Believe me when I tell you he'll thaw.
When it's time to go to church-"
     At this moment Jenny, who was handing out dessert plates,  directed  at
her father a portentous monosyllable.
     "Phil . . .
     "Yeah, Jen?"
     "About the church bit..
     "Yeah?"
     "Uh-kind of negative on it, Phil."
     "Oh?"  asked  Mr.  Cavilleri. Then,  leaping  instantly  to  the  wrong
conclusion, he turned apologetically toward me.
     "I-uh-didn't mean necessarily Catholic Church,
     Oliver.  I  mean,  as Jennifer  has  no doubt told  you, we are of  the
Catholic faith. But, I mean,  your church, Oliver. God will bless this union
in any church, I swear I looked at Jenny, who had obviously  failed to cover
this crucial topic in her phone conversation.
     "Oliver," she explained, "it  was just too goddamn much to hit him with
at once."
     'What's this?" asked  the ever affable Mr.  Cavilleri. "Hit me, hit me,
children. I want to be hit with everything on your minds."
     Why is it  that at this precise moment my eyes hit upon  the  porcelain
statue of the Virgin Mary on a shelf in the Cavilleris' dining room?
     "It's about the  God-blessing bit, Phil," said Jenny, averting her gaze
from him.
     "Yeah,  Jen, yeah?" asked Phil, fearing the worst. "Uh-kind of negative
on it, Phil," she said, now  glancing at me for support-which my  eyes tried
to give her.
     "On God? On anybody's God?"
     Jenny nodded yes.
     "May I explain, Phil?" I asked.
     "Please."
     "We neither of us believe, Phil. And we won't be hypocrites."
     I  think  he took it because it came from me. He might  maybe have  hit
Jenny. But now he was the odd  man out, the foreigner. He  couldn't  look at
either of us.
     "That's  fine,"  he  said after a  very  long  time. "Could I  just  be
informed as to who performs the ceremony?"
     "We do," I said.
     He looked at  his daughter for  verification. She  nodded. My statement
was correct.
     After another long silence, he again said, "That's  fine." And  then he
inquired of me, in as much as I was planning a career in law, whether such a
kind of marriage is-what's the word?-legal?
     Jenny explained that the ceremony we had in mind would have the college
Unitarian chaplain preside ("Ah, chaplain," murmured Phil) while the man and
woman address each other.
     "The  bride  speaks  too?"   he  asked,  almost  as  if  this-  of  all
things-might be the coup de grace.
     "Philip," said his  daughter, "could you imagine any situation in which
I would shut up?"
     "No,  baby," he replied, working up  a tiny  smile. "I  guess you would
have to talk."

     As we drove back to  Cambridge, I  asked Jenny  how she thought  it all
went.
     "Okay," she said.






     Mr. William  F. Thompson,  Associate Dean  of  the  Harvard Law School,
could not believe his ears.
     "Did I hear you right, Mr. Barrett?"
     "Yes, sir, Dean Thompson."
     It had not been easy to say  the first time. It was no easier repeating
it .
     "I'll need a scholarship for next year, sir." "Really?"
     "That's why I'm here, sir. You  are in  charge of Financial Aid, aren't
you, Dean Thompson?"
     "Yes, but it's rather curious. Your father"
     "He's no longer involved, sir."
     "I  beg your pardon?" Dean Thompson took  off his glasses and began  to
polish them with his tie.
     "He and I have had a sort of disagreement."
     The  Dean put  his glasses back on, and looked at  me with that kind of
expressionless expression you have to be a dean to master.
     "This is very unfortunate, Mr. Barrett," he said. For whom? I wanted to
say. This guy was beginning to piss me off.
     "Yes, sir," I said. "Very unfortunate. But that's why I've come to you,
sir. I'm getting  married next month. We'll both be working over the summer.
Then Jenny
     -that's my wife-will be teaching in a private school.  That's a living,
but it's still not tuition. Your tuition is pretty steep, Dean Thompson."
     "Uh-yes," he replied. But  that's all. Didn't this guy get the drift of
my conversation? Why in hell did he think I was there, anyway?
     "Dean Thompson, I would like a scholarship." I said  it straight out. A
third time. "I have absolutely zilch in the bank, and I'm already accepted."
     "Ah, yes," said Mr. Thompson, hitting upon the technicality. "The final
date for financial-aid applications is long overdue."
     What would  satisfy this  bastard?  The  gory details,  maybe?  Was  it
scandal he wanted? What?
     "Dean Thompson, when I applied I didn't know this would come up.
     "That's  quite right, Mr.  Barrett, and I  must tell you that I  really
don't  think  this office  should enter  into  a  family  quarrel.  A rather
distressing one, at that."
     "Okay,  Dean," I said, standing up. "I can  see what you're driving at.
But I'm still  not gonna kiss my father's ass so  you can get a Barrett Hall
for the Law School."
     As I turned to leave, I heard Dean Thompson mutter, "That's unfair."
     I couldn't have agreed more.





     Jennifer was awarded  her  degree on Wednesday.  All sorts of relatives
from  Cranston,  Fall  River-and  even  an  aunt from  Cleveland-flocked  to
Cambridge to attend the ceremony. By prior arrangement, I was not introduced
as her  fiance, and Jenny wore no ring:  this so that none would be offended
(too soon) about missing our wedding.
     "Aunt  Laura ,  this is  my boyfriend  Oliver," Jenny would say, always
adding, "He isn't a college graduate."
     There was plenty of rib poking, whispering and even  open  speculation,
but the  relatives  could pry  no specific information  from either of us-or
from Phil,  who I guess  was happy  to avoid  a discussion of love among the
atheists.
     On Thursday, I became  Jenny's academic equal, receiving my degree from
Harvard-like her own, magna cum laude. Moreover, I was Class Marshal, and in
this capacity got  to lead the graduating seniors to their seats. This meant
walking ahead of  even the summas, the super-superbrains. I was almost moved
to tell these  types that my  presence  as their leader decisively proved my
theory  that an hour in Dillon Field House is worth two  in Widener Library.
But I refrained. Let the joy be universal.
     I  have  no  idea whether Oliver Barrett III  was  present.  More  than
seventeen thousand people jam into Harvard Yard on Commencement morning, and
I certainly was not scanning the rows with binoculars. Obviously, I had used
my allotted parent tickets for Phil and Jenny. Of course, as an alumnus, Old
Stony- face  could enter and sit with the Class of '26.  But then why should
he want to? I mean, weren't the banks open?

     The wedding was that Sunday. Our reason for excluding Jenny's relatives
was out  of  genuine concern that  our omission of  the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost would make the occasion  far too trying for unlapsed Catholics. It was
in Phillips Brooks House, old building in the north of Harvard Yard. Timothy
Blauvelt, the college Unitarian  chaplain, presided. Naturally, Ray Stratton
was there,  and I also invited  Jeremy Nahum, a good friend from the  Exeter
days,  who  had taken Amherst over  Harvard. Jenny asked a girl  friend from
Briggs  Hall  and-maybe for sentimental reasons-hertall, gawky  colleague at
the reserve book desk. And of course Phil.
     I put Ray Stratton in charge of Phil. I mean, just to keep him as loose
as  possible. Not that Stratton was all that calm!  The pair  of  them stood
there,  looking tremendously  uncomfortable,  each silently  reinforcing the
other's preconceived notion  that  this  "do-it-yourself wedding"  (as  Phil
referred to it) was going to be (as Stratton kept predicting) "an incredible
horror  show."  Just because Jenny and I were going  to address  a few words
directly  to one another! We had actually seen  it done  earlier that spring
when one of Jenny's musical friends, Marya Randall, married a design student
named Eric Levenson. It  was a very beautiful thing, and  really sold us  on
the idea.
     "Are you two ready?" asked Mr. Blauvelt.
     "Yes," I said for both of us.
     "Friends," said Mr. Blauvelt to the others, "we are here to witness the
union of two lives  in marriage. Let us listen to the words they have chosen
to read on this sacred occasion.
     The  bride first. Jenny  stood facing me  and recited the poem  she had
selected. It was  very moving,  perhaps especially  to me, because it  was a
sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett:

     When our  two souls  stand up erect  and strong, Face to face,  silent,
drawing high and higher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire...

     From the corner of my eye I saw Phil Cavilleri, pale, slack-jawed, eyes
wide with amazement and adoration
     combined. We  listened to Jenny finish the sonnet, which was in its way
a kind of prayer for

     A place to stand and love in for a day,
     With darkness and the death hour rounding it.

     Then it was my turn. It had been hard finding a piece of poetry I could
read without blushing. I mean, I couldn't stand there and  recite lace-doily
phrases. I couldn't. But a section  of Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road,
though kind of brief, said it all for me:

      . . I give you my hand!
     I give you my love more precious than money,
     I give you myself before preaching or law;
     Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
     Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

     I finished,  and  there  was a wonderful  hush  in  the  room. Then Ray
Stratton handed me the ring, and Jenny and I-ourselves-recited the  marriage
vows, taking  each  other,  from that day forward, to love and cherish, till
death do us part.
     By the  authority vested in  him by  the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
Mr. Timothy Blauvelt pronounced us man and wife.

     Upon reflection, our "post-game party" (as Stratton referred to it) was
pretentiously  unpretentious.  Jenny  and  I  had  absolutely  rejected  the
champagne route, and since there were so few of us we could all fit into one
booth,  we went to drink beer  at Cronin's. As I recall, Jim Cronin  himself
set us up with a round, as a tribute to "the  greatest Harvard hockey player
since the Cleary brothers."
     "Like  hell,"  argued Phil Cavilleri,  pounding  his fist on the table.
"He's better than all the Clearys put together." Philip's meaning, I believe
(he had never seen a Harvard  hockey  game), was that however  well Bobby or
Billy Cleary might have skated,  neither got to marry his lovely daughter. I
mean, we were all smashed, and it was just an excuse for getting more so.
     I  let  Phil  pick  up the tab,  a  decision which later  evoked one of
Jenny's  rare compliments about my intuition ("You'll be a human being  yet,
Preppie"). It got a little hairy at the end when  we drove him  to  the bus,
however. I  mean,  the wet-eyes bit. His,  Jenny's, maybe  mine too; I don't
remember anything except that the moment was liquid.
     Anyway, after all sorts of blessings, he got onto the bus and we waited
and waved until  it  drove out of sight. It was then that the  awesome truth
started to get to me.
     "Jenny, we're legally married!"
     "Yeah, now I can be a bitch."




     If a single  word can describe our daily life during those  first three
years, it  is "scrounge." Every  waking moment we were concentrating  on how
the hell we would be able to scrape up enough money to do whatever it was we
had  to do.  Usually  it was just  break even.  And there's nothing romantic
about  it, either. Remember the famous stanza in Omar Khayam? You  know, the
book of verses underneath the bough, the loaf of bread, the  jug of wine and
so forth? Substitute  Scott  on  Trusts  for that book of verses and see how
this poetic vision stacks up against my idyllic existence. Ah, paradise? No,
bullshit. All I'd  think about is  how much that  book was  (could we get it
secondhand?) and where,  if anywhere, we might be able to charge  that bread
and wine. And then how we might ultimately scrounge up the dough  to pay off
our debts.
     Life changes. Even the simplest  decision  must  be scrutinized  by the
ever vigilant budget committee of your mind.
     "Hey, Oliver, let's go see Becket tonight." "Lissen, it's three bucks."
     "What do you mean?"
     "1 mean a buck fifty for you and a buck fifty for me"
     "Does that mean yes or no?"
     "Neither. It just means three bucks."

     Our honeymoon was spent on  a yacht and with twenty-one  children. That
is, I  sailed  a  thirty-six-foot  Rhodes  from  seven  in  the morning till
whenever my passengers had enough,  and Jenny was a children's counselor. It
was  a place called  the  Pequod Boat Club  in  Dennis  Port (not  far  from
Hyannis), an establishment that included a large hotel, a marina and several
dozen houses for rent.  In one of  the  tinier  bungalows,  I have nailed an
imaginary  plaque: "Oliver and Jenny  slept  here-when  they weren't  making
love." I think it s a tribute to us both that after a long day of being kind
to  our customers, for  we  were largely  dependent  on their tips  for  our
income,  Jenny and  I  were  nonetheless kind to  each other.  I simply  say
"kind,"  because  I  lack the vocabulary to describe  what  loving and being
loved by Jennifer Cavilleri is like. Sorry, I mean Jennifer Barrett.

     Before  leaving  for the Cape,  we found  a  cheap apartment  in  North
Cambridge. I called it North Cambridge, although the address was technically
in the town of Somerville  and the house was, as Jenny described it, "in the
state of  disrepair." It had  originally been a two- family  structure,  now
converted into four apartments,  overpriced even at its "cheap" rental.  But
what the hell can graduate students do? It's a seller's market.
     "Hey, 01, why do you  think  the  fire department hasn't condemned  the
joint?" Jenny asked.
     "They're probably afraid to walk inside," I said.
     "So am I."
     "You weren't in June," I said.
     (This dialogue was taking place upon our reentry in September.)
     "I  wasn't married then. Speaking  as a married woman, I consider  this
place to be unsafe at any speed."
     "What do you intend to do about it?"
     "Speak to my husband," she replied. "He'll take care of it."
     "Hey, I'm your husband," I said.
     "Really? Prove it."
     "How?" I asked, inwardly thinking, Oh no, in the Street?
     "Carry me over the threshold," she said.
     "You don't believe in that nonsense, do you?"
     "Carry me, and I'll decide after."
     Okay.  I scooped her in my arms and hauled her up  five steps onto  the
porch.
     "Why'd you stop?" she asked.
     "Isn't this the threshold?"
     "Negative, negative," she said.
     "I see our name by the bell."
     "This is not the official goddamn threshold. Upstairs, you turkey!"
     It was twenty-four  steps  up to our "official" homestead, and I had to
pause about halfway to catch my breath.
     "Why are you so heavy?" I asked her.
     "Did you ever think I might be pregnant?" she answered.
     This didn't make it easier for me to catch my breath.
     "Are you?" I could finally say.
     "Hah! Scared you, didn't I?"
     "Nah."
     "Don't bullshit me, Preppie."
     "Yeah. For a second there, I clutched."
     I carried her the rest of the way.
     This  is among the precious few moments I can  recall in which the verb
"scrounge" has no relevance whatever.

     My illustrious name  enabled  us to  establish a  charge  account at  a
grocery store which  would otherwise have denied credit to students. And yet
it worked to our disadvantage at a place I would least have expected:
     the Shady Lane School, where Jenny was to teach.
     "Of course, Shady Lane isn't able to match the public school salaries,"
Miss Anne Miller Whitman, the principal, told  my wife, adding  something to
the  effect that Barretts wouldn't be concerned  with  "that aspect" anyway.
Jenny tried  to dispel her  illusions,  but all she could get in addition to
the already offered  thirty-five hundred for the year was  about two minutes
of "ho ho ho"s. Miss Whitman thought Jenny was being so witty in her remarks
about Barretts having to pay the rent just like other people.
     When  Jenny  recounted  all  this  to me,  I  made  a  few  imaginative
suggestions about what  Miss Whitman could do with her-ho ho  ho-thirty-five
hundred. But then Jenny asked if I would like to drop out  of law school and
support her while she took the education credits needed to teach in a public
school. I gave the whole situation  a big think for  about two  seconds  and
reached an accurate and succinct conclusion:
     "Shit."
     "That's pretty eloquent," said my wife.
     "What am I supposed to say, Jenny-'ho ho ho'?"
     "No. Just learn to like spaghetti."

     I did. I learned to like spaghetti, and Jenny learned every conceivable
recipe  to  make pasta  seem  like  something  else.  What  with  our summer
earnings, her  salary, the income anticipated from  my planned night work in
the  post office during  Christmas  rush, we were doing okay. I mean,  there
were a lot of movies we didn't see (and concerts she  didn't  go to), but we
were making ends meet.
     Of course, about all we were  meeting were ends. I mean, socially  both
our lives changed drastically. We were still in Cambridge, and theoretically
Jenny could have  stayed with  all her music groups.  But there wasn't time.
She came home from Shady Lane exhausted,  and there was dinner yet  to  cook
(eating out was beyond the  realm of maximum feasibility). Meanwhile  my own
friends were  considerate enough to let us alone. I mean, they didn't invite
us so we wouldn't have to invite them, if you know what I mean.
     We even skipped the football games.
     As a  member  of the  Varsity  Club, I was entitled to seats  in  their
terrific  section  on the  fifty-yard  line. But it was  six bucks a ticket,
which is twelve bucks.
     "It's  not," argued Jenny,  "it's six  bucks. You can  go without me. I
don't know a thing about football except people shout 'Hit 'em again,' which
is what you adore, which is why I want you to goddamn go!"
     "The case is closed,"  I would reply, being after  all  the husband and
head of household. "Besides, I can  use the  time to study." Still, I  would
spend Saturday afternoons with a transistor at my ear, listening to the roar
of the fans, who, though geographically but a mile away, were now in another
world.
     I  used  my Varsity Club privileges to get Yale game  seats for  Robbie
Wald,  a Law  School  classmate. When  Robbie left our apartment, effusively
grateful, Jenny asked if  I wouldn't  tell  her again just who got to sit in
the V. Club section, and I once more  explained that  it  was for those who,
regardless of  age or size or social rank, had nobly served  fair Harvard on
the playing fields.
     "On the water too?" she asked.
     "Jocks are jocks," I answered, "dry or wet."
     "Except you, Oliver," she said. "You're frozen."
     I let the subject  drop, assuming that this was simply Jennifer's usual
flip repartee, not wanting to think  there had been any more to her question
concerning  the  athletic  traditions of Harvard University. Such as perhaps
the subtle suggestion that although Soldiers Field holds 45,000 people,  all
former athletes would be seated  in  that one terrific section. All. Old and
young. Wet, dry-and even frozen. And was it merely six  dollars that kept me
away from the stadium those Saturday afternoons?
     No; if she had something else in mind, I would rather not discuss it.





     Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Barrett III
     request the pleasure of your company
     at a dinner in celebration of Mr. Barrett's sixtieth birthday Saturday,
the sixth of March
     at seven o'clock
     Dover House, Ipswich, Massachusetts
     R.s.v.p.

     "Well?" asked Jennifer.
     "Do you even have to ask?" I replied. I was in the midst of abstracting
The State  v. Percival, a crucial precedent in criminal  law. Jenny was sort
of waving the invitation to bug me.
     "I think it's about time, Oliver," she said.
     "For what?"
     "For you know very well what,"  she answered.  "Does  he  have to crawl
here on his hands and knees?"
     I kept working as she worked me over.
     "Ollie-he's reaching out to you!"
     "Bullshit, Jenny. My mother addressed the envelope."
     "I thought you said you didn't look at it!" she sort of yelled.
     Okay, so I did  glance at it earlier. Maybe it had slipped my  mind.  I
was, after all, in the midst of abstracting The  State  v. Percival, and  in
the virtual  shadow  of  exams.  The  point  was  she  should  have  stopped
haranguing me.
     "Ollie, think," she said, her tone kind of pleading now. "Sixty goddamn
years old. Nothing says he'll still be around when  you're finally ready for
the reconciliation.
     Informed Jenny in the simplest possible terms that there would never be
a reconciliation and would she please let  me  continue my studying. She sat
down  quietly, squeezing herself onto a corner of the hassock where I had my
feet.  Although she didn't make a sound, I quickly became aware that she was
looking at me very hard. I glanced up.
     "Someday," she said, "when you're being bugged by Oliver V-"
     "He won't  be  called Oliver, be sure of that!" I snapped  at  her. She
didn't raise her voice, though she usually did when I did.
     "Lissen, Ol, even if we name him Bozo the Clown, that kid's still gonna
resent  you 'cause  you  were a big  Harvard jock.  And by  the time  he's a
freshman, you'll probably be in the Supreme Court!"
     I told  her that our  son  would definitely  not  resent  me.  She then
inquired how I  could be so certain of  that. I couldn't produce evidence. I
mean, I  simply knew our  son would not resent me, I couldn't  say precisely
why. As an absolute non sequitur, Jenny then remarked:
     "Your father  loves you too, Oliver. He loves  you just the  way you'll
love  Bozo. But you Barretts are so damn proud  and competitive,  you'll  go
through life thinking you hate each other."
     "If it weren't for you," I said facetiously.
     "Yes," she said.
     "The case is closed," I said, being, after all, the husband and head of
household. My  eyes returned to The State v. Percival  and Jenny got up. But
then she remembered:
     "There's still the matter of the RSVP."
     I  allowed that a Radcliffe music major could probably  compose a  nice
little negative RSVP without professional guidance.
     "Lissen, Oliver," she said, "I've probably lied or  cheated in my life.
But I've never deliberately hurt anyone. I don't think I could."
     Really, at that moment she was only hurting me, so I asked her politely
to handle the RSVP in whatever manner she wished, as  long as the essence of
the message was that we wouldn't show unless hell froze over.
     I returned once again to The State v. Percival.
     "What's  the  number?" I heard  her say  very  softly.  She  was at the
telephone.
     "Can't you just write a note?"
     "In a minute I'll lose my nerve. What's the number?"
     I told her and was instantaneously immersed in Percival's appeal to the
Supreme Court. I was not listening to Jenny.  That  is, I tried not to.  She
was in the same room, after all.
     "Oh-good evening, sir," I heard her say. Did the Sonovabitch answer the
phone? Wasn't he in Washington during the week? That's what a recent profile
in The New York Times said. Goddamn journalism is going downhill nowadays.
     How long does it take to say no?
     Somehow  Jennifer  had already taken  more time  than one  would  think
necessary to pronounce this simple syllable.
     "Ollie?"
     She had her hand over the mouthpiece.
     "Ollie, does it have to be negative?"
     The nod of my head indicated that  it  had to be, the wave  of my  hand
indicated that she should hurry the hell up.
     "I'm terribly sorry," she said into the phone.  "I mean, we're terribly
sorry, sir....
     We're! Did she have to involve me in this? And why can't she get to the
point and hang up?
     "Oliver!"
     She had her hand on the mouthpiece again and was talking very loud.
     "He's  wounded, Oliver!  Can you just sit there  and  let  your  father
bleed?"
     Had she  not  been in  such an emotional state, I  could have explained
once again  that  stones  do not  bleed,  that  she should  not  project her
Italian-Mediterranean misconceptions about parents onto  the  craggy heights
of Mount Rushmore. But she was very upset. And it was upsetting me too.
     "Oliver," she pleaded, "could you just say a word?"
     To him? She must be going out of her mind!
     "I mean, like just maybe 'hello'?"
     She was offering the phone to me. And trying not to cry.
     "I will never talk to him. Ever," I said with perfect calm.
     And  now she was crying.  Nothing audible, but tears pouring  down  her
face. And then she-she begged.
     "For me, Oliver. I've never asked you for anything. Please."
     Three  of  us. Three of us just standing (I somehow imagined  my father
being there as well) waiting for something. What? For me?
     1 couldn't do it.
     Didn't Jenny understand  she  was asking  the impossible? That I  would
have  done absolutely  anything else?  As I looked at  the floor, shaking my
head  in adamant refusal and extreme  discomfort, Jenny addressed me with  a
kind of whispered fury I had never heard from her:
     "You  are a  heartless  bastard,"  she  said.  And then she  ended  the
telephone  conversation  with my father, saying: "Mr.  Barrett,  Oliver does
want you to know that in his own special way...
     She paused for breath. She had been  sobbing, so it wasn't easy.  I was
much  too  astonished to  do  anything  but await  the  end  of  my  alleged
"message."
     "Oliver loves you very much," she said, and hung up very quickly.
     There is  no rational  explanation  for my actions  in  the  next split
second. I  plead temporary insanity.  Correction:  I  plead  nothing. I must
never be forgiven for what I did.
     I ripped the phone from her hand,  then  from the  socket-and hurled it
across the room.
     "God damn you, Jenny! Why don't you get the hell out of my life!"
     I  stood  still, panting like the animal I had suddenly  become.  Jesus
Christ! What the hell had happened to me? I turned to look at Jen.
     But she was gone.
     I mean absolutely gone,  because  I  didn't  even hear footsteps on the
stairs.  Christ, she must have dashed  out the instant I grabbed the  phone.
Even her coat and scarf were still there. The pain of not knowing what to do
was exceeded only by that of knowing what I had done.
     I searched everywhere.
     In  the Law  School library,  I prowled the  rows of grinding students,
looking  and  looking.  Up and  back, at least half a dozen times. Though  I
didn't utter a sound, I  knew my glance was so intense, my face so fierce, I
was disturbing the whole fucking place. Who cares?
     But Jenny wasn't there.
     Then all through Harkness  Commons, the  lounge,  the cafeteria. Then a
wild sprint  to look around Agassiz Hall  at Radcliffe. Not there, either. I
was running everywhere  now, my legs trying to catch up with  the pace of my
heart.
     Paine Hall? (Ironic goddamn name!) Downstairs are piano practice rooms.
I know Jenny. When she's angry, she pounds the fucking keyboard.  Right? But
how about when she's scared to death?
     It's  crazy  walking down the corridor, practice  rooms on either side.
The sounds of Mozart and Bartok,  Bach and Brahms  filter out from the doors
and blend into this weird infernal sound.
     Jenny's got to be here!
     Instinct made me  stop at a  door  where I heard the pounding  (angry?)
sound  of  a  Chopin  prelude.  I  paused  for  a  second. The  playing  was
lousy-stops  and starts and many mistakes. At  one  pause I heard  a  girl's
voice mutter, "Shit!" It had to be Jenny. I flung open the door.
     A  Radcliffe  girl   was  at  the   piano.  She  looked  up.  An  ugly,
big-shouldered hippie Radcliffe girl, annoyed at my invasion.
     "What's the scene, man?" she asked.
     "Bad, bad," I replied, and closed the door again.
     Then I tried Harvard Square.  The  Cafe Pamplona, Tommy's Arcade,  even
Hayes Bick-lots of artistic types go there. Nothing.
     Where would Jenny have gone?
     By now  the  subway  was  closed,  but if she had  gone straight to the
Square she could have caught a train to Boston. To the bus terminal.

     It  was almost i  A.M.  as  I  deposited a quarter and two dimes in the
slot. I was in one of the booths by the kiosk in Harvard Square.
     "Hello, Phil?"
     "Hey.. ." he said sleepily. "Who's this?"
     "It's me-Oliver."
     "Oliver!" He sounded scared. "Is Jenny  hurt?" he asked  quickly. If he
was asking me, did that mean she wasn't with him?
     "Uh-no, Phil, no.
     "Thank Christ. How are you, Oliver?"
     Once  assured of his daughter's safety, he was casual and  friendly. As
if he had not been aroused from the depths of slumber.
     "Fine, Phil, I'm great. Fine. Say, Phil, what do you hear from Jenny?"
     "Not enough, goddammit," he answered in a strangely calm voice.
     "What do you mean, Phil?"
     "Christ, she should call more often, goddammit. I'm not a stranger, you
know."
     If you can  be relieved and  panicked at the  same time,  that's what I
was.
     "Is she there with you?" he asked me.
     "Huh?"
     "Put Jenny on; I'll yell at her myself."
     "I can't, Phil."
     "Oh, is she asleep? If she's asleep, don't disturb her."
     "Yeah," I said.
     "Listen, you bastard," he said.
     "Yes, sir?"
     "How goddamn  far  is Cranston that you  can't  come down  on a  Sunday
afternoon? Huh? Or I can come up, Oliver."
     "Uh-no, Phil. We'll come down."
     "'When?"
     "Some Sunday."
     "Don't  give me that 'some' crap. A loyal child  doesn't say 'some,' he
says 'this.' This Sunday, Oliver."
     "Yes, sir. This Sunday."
     "Four o'clock. But drive carefully. Right?"
     "Right."
     "And next time call collect, goddammit." He hung up.
     I just stood there, lost on that island in the dark  of Harvard Square,
not knowing where to go or what to do next. A colored guy approached  me and
inquired  if I was in need of a fix. I kind  of absently replied, "No, thank
you, sir."
     I wasn't  running now. I mean, what was the rush to return to the empty
house? It was very late and I was numb-more with fright than  with the  cold
(although it wasn't  warm, believe me). From several  yards off, I thought I
saw someone sitting on the top of the steps. This had  to be my eyes playing
tricks, because the figure was motionless.
     But it was Jenny.
     She was sitting on the top step.
     I was too  tired to  panic, too relieved to speak. Inwardly I hoped she
had some blunt instrument with which to hit me.

     "Ollie?"
     We  both  spoke so quietly,  it  was impossible  to take  an  emotional
reading.
     "I forgot my key," Jenny said.
     I stood  there at the bottom of the steps,  afraid to  ask how long she
had been sitting, knowing only that I had wronged her terribly.
     "Jenny, I'm sorry-"
     "Stop!" She cut off my apology, then said very quietly, "Love means not
ever having to say you're sorry."
     I climbed up the stairs to where she was sitting.
     "I'd like to go to sleep. Okay?" she said.
     "Okay."
     We walked  up to  our apartment.  As we  undressed,  she looked  at  me
reassuringly.
     "I meant what I said, Oliver."
     And that was all.






     It was July when the letter came.
     It had been  forwarded  from Cambridge to Dennis Port, so I guess I got
the news a day or so late. I charged over to where Jenny was supervising her
children  in a  game of kickball (or something), and  said in my best Bogart
tones:
     "Let's go."
     "Huh?"
     "Let's go," I repeated, and with such obvious  authority that she began
to follow me as I walked toward the water.
     "What's going on, Oliver? Wouldja tell me, please, for God sake?"
     I continued to stride powerfully onto the dock.
     "Onto the boat, Jennifer," I ordered, pointing to it with the very hand
that held the letter, which she didn't even notice.
     "Oliver, I have children  to take  care of," she  protested, even while
stepping obediently on board.

     "Goddammit, Oliver, will  you explain what's  going  on?" We were now a
few hundred yards from shore. "I have something to tell you," I said.
     "Couldn't you have told it on dry land?" she yelled. "No, goddammit," I
yelled back (we were neither of us angry, but there was lots of wind, and we
had to shout to be heard).
     "I wanted to be alone with you. Look what I have." I waved the envelope
at her. She immediately recognized the letterhead.
     "Hey-Harvard Law School! Have you been kicked out?"
     "Guess  again,  you optimistic bitch," I yelled. "You were first in the
class!"  she  guessed.  I was now  almost ashamed to  tell her. "Not  quite.
Third."
     "Oh," she said. "Only third?"
     "Listen-that still means I make the goddamn Law Review," I shouted.
     She just sat there with an absolute no-expression expression.
     "Christ, Jenny," I kind of whined, "say something!"
     "Not until I meet numbers one and two," she said.
     I looked at her, hoping she would  break  into the smile I knew she was
suppressing.
     "C'mon, Jenny!" I pleaded.
     "I'm  leaving. Good-bye,"  she  said,  and jumped immediately into  the
water. I  dove right in after  her and the next  thing I knew we  were  both
hanging on to the side of the boat and giggling.
     "Hey," I said  in  one of my wittier  observations, "you went overboard
for me."
     "Don't be too cocky," she replied. "Third is still only third."
     "Hey, listen, you bitch," I said.
     "What, you bastard?" she replied.
     "I owe you a helluva lot," I said sincerely.
     "Not true, you bastard, not true," she answered.
     "Not true?" I inquired, somewhat surprised.
     "You owe me everything," she said.
     That night we blew twenty-three  bucks on  a lobster  dinner at a fancy
place  in Yarmouth. Jenny was still reserving judgment until she could check
out the two gentlemen who had, as she put it, "defeated me."

     Stupid as it sounds, I  was so in love with her that  the moment we got
back to Cambridge, I rushed to find out  who  the first two guys were. I was
relieved to discover that the top man, Erwin Blasband, City College '64, was
bookish, bespectacled,  nonathletic and not her type, and the number-two man
was  Bella  Landau,  Bryn  Mawr  '64,  a  girl.  This was all to  the  good,
especially since Bella Landau was rather cool looking (as  lady law students
go), and I could twit Jenny a bit with  "details" of what  went on in  those
late-night hours at Gannett House, the Law Review building. And Jesus, there
were late nights. It was not unusual for me to come home  at two or three in
the morning. I mean, six courses, plus editing the Law Review, plus the fact
that  I actually authored an article in one of the issues ("Legal Assistance
for the  Urban Poor: A Study of Boston's Roxbury District" by Oliver Barrett
IV, HLR, March, 1966, pp. 861-9o8).
     "A good piece. A really good piece."
     That's all Joel Fleishman,  the senior editor, could  repeat  again and
again. Frankly, I had expected a more articulate compliment from the guy who
would next year clerk for Justice Douglas, but that's all  he kept saying as
he checked over my final draft. Christ, Jenny had  told me it was "incisive,
intelligent and really well written." Couldn't Fleishman match that?
     "Fleishman called it a good piece, Jen."
     "Jesus, did I  wait up so late just to hear that?" she said. "Didn't he
comment on your research, or your style, or anything?"
     "No, Jen. He just called it 'good.'"
     "Then what took you all this long?"
     I gave her a little wink.
     "I had some stuff to go over with Bella Landau," I said.
     "Oh?" she said.
     I couldn't read the tone.
     "Are you jealous?" I asked straight out.
     "No; I've got much better legs," she said.
     "Can you write a brief?"
     "Can she make lasagna?"
     "Yes,~~ I answered. "Matter of fact, she  brought some  over to Gannett
House tonight. Everybody said they were as good as your legs."
     Jenny nodded, "I'll bet."
     "What do you say to that?" I said.
     "Does Bella Landau pay your rent?" she  asked. "Damn,"  I replied, "why
can't I ever quit when I'm ahead?"
     "Because, Preppie," said my loving wife, "you never are."




     We finished in that order.
     I mean, Erwin,  Bella  and myself were the top three  in the Law School
graduating class. The time  for triumph was at hand. Job interviews. Offers.
Pleas.  Snow jobs. Everywhere I  turned somebody seemed  to be waving a flag
that read: "Work for us, Barrett!"
     But I  followed only the green  flags. I mean, I  wasn't totally crass,
but  I eliminated the prestige alternatives, like clerking  for a judge, and
the  public service alternatives, like  Department of Justice, in favor of a
lucrative  job that would  get the dirty word "scrounge"  out of our goddamn
vocabulary.
     Third though I was, I enjoyed one inestimable ad-
     vantage in competing for  the best legal spots. I was  the only guy  in
the top ten  who wasn't Jewish.  (And anyone who says it doesn't  matter  is
full  of it.) Christ, there are dozens of  firms  who will kiss the ass of a
WASP  who can  merely pass the bar.  Consider the  case of  yours truly: Law
Review, All-Ivy, Harvard  and you  know  what  else.  Hordes of people  were
fighting to get my  name  and numeral  onto  their stationery. I felt like a
bonus baby-and I loved every minute of it.
     There was  one especially intriguing offer  from a firm in Los Angeles.
The recruiter, Mr. (why risk a lawsuit?), kept telling me:
     "Barrett baby, in our territory we get  it all the time. Day and night.
I mean, we can even have it sent up to the office!"
     Not that we were  interested in California, but I'd  still like to know
precisely what Mr. was discussing. Jenny and I came up with some pretty wild
possibilities,  but for  L.A. they probably weren't  wild enough. (I finally
had to get Mr. off my back by telling him that I really didn't care for "it"
at all. He was crestfallen.)
     Actually, we  had made up  our minds to stay  on the East  Coast. As it
turned out, we still had dozens of fantastic  offers from Boston,  New  York
and Washington. Jenny  at  one time thought  D.C. might be good  ("You could
check out the White House, Ol"), but I leaned toward New York. And so,  with
my wife's blessing, I finally  said yes  to the firm of Jonas  and Marsh,  a
prestigious office  (Marsh  was  a  former Attorney General) that  was  very
civil-liberties  oriented  ("You can do good  and  make good at once,"  said
Jenny).  Also,  they really snowed me. I  mean,  old  man  Jonas came  up to
Boston, took us to dinner at Pier Four and sent Jenny flowers the next day.
     Jenny went around for a week sort of singing a jingle that went "Jonas,
Marsh  and  Barrett." I  told her not so fast and she told  me  to  go screw
because  I  was  probably  singing the same tune in my head. I don't have to
tell you she was right.
     Allow  me to mention, however, that Jonas and Marsh paid Oliver Barrett
IV  $11 ,8oo,  the  absolute  highest salary  received by any  member of our
graduating class.
     So you see I was only third academically.





     CHANGE OF ADDRESS
     From July 1,1967

     Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Barrett IV

     263 East 63rd Street

     New York, N.Y. 10021

     "It's so nouveau riche," complained Jenny.  "But we are nouveau riche,"
I insisted.
     What  was adding to my overall feeling of euphoric triumph was the fact
that the monthly rate for my  car was  damn near as much  as we had paid for
our entire  apartment in Cambridge!  Jonas and Marsh was an easy  ten-minute
walk  (or strut-I preferred the latter gait),  and  so were  the fancy shops
like  Bonwit's  and  so  forth  where  I insisted that my  wife,  the bitch,
immediately open accounts and start spending.
     "Why, Oliver?"
     "Because, goddammit, Jenny, I 'want to be taken advantage of!"
     I  joined the Harvard Club  of  New York, proposed  by Raymond Stratton
'64,  newly  returned  to civilian life  after having  actually shot at some
Vietcong ("I'm not positive it was VC, actually. I heard noises, so I opened
fire at the  bushes"). Ray and I  played squash at least three times a week,
and I made a mental note, giving myself three years to become Club champion.
Whether  it was merely because  I  had resurfaced in Harvard  territory,  or
because  word of my Law  School  successes had gotten  around (I didn't brag
about  the  salary, honest),  my  "friends" discovered me once more.  We had
moved  in at the height of the  summer (I had to take a  cram course for the
New York bar exam), and the first invitations were for weekends.
     "Fuck  'em, Oliver. I  don't want to waste two days bullshitting with a
bunch of vapid preppies."
     "Okay,  Jen, but  what  should  I  tell  them?" "Just say I'm pregnant,
Oliver."
     "Are you?" I asked.
     "No, but if we stay home this weekend I might be."

     We had  a name  already picked out.  I mean, I had,  and I  think I got
Jenny to agree finally.
     "Hey-you won't laugh?" I said to her, when first broaching the subject.
She was  in the kitchen at the time (a  yellow  color-keyed thing  that even
included a dishwasher).
     "What?" she asked, still slicing tomatoes.
     "I've really grown fond of the name Bozo," I said.
     "You mean seriously?" she asked.
     "Yeah. I honestly dig it."
     "You  would  name our  child Bozo?"  she  asked  again.  "Yes.  Really.
Honestly, Jen, it's the name of a super- jock."
     "Bozo Barrett." She tried it on for size.
     "Christ,  he'll  be an  incredible bruiser,"  I  continued,  convincing
myself  further  with  each word I  spoke.  "'Bozo  Barrett,  Harvard's huge
All-Ivy tackle.'"
     "Yeah-but,  Oliver,"  she asked,  "suppose-just  suppose-the kid's  not
coordinated?"
     "Impossible, Jen, the genes are too good. Truly." I meant it sincerely.
This  whole Bozo business had gotten to be a frequent  daydream of mine as I
strutted to work.
     I pursued the matter at dinner. We had bought great Danish china.
     "Bozo will be a very well-coordinated bruiser," I told Jenny. "In fact,
if he has your hands, we can put him in the backfield."
     She  was  just smirking at  me,  searching  no  doubt  for  some sneaky
put-down to  disrupt  my  idyllic vision. But  lacking  a truly  devastating
remark, she merely cut  the  cake  and gave  me  a piece. And she  was still
hearing me out.
     "Think  of  it,  Jenny," I  continued,  even  with my mouth  full, "two
hundred and forty pounds of bruising finesse."
     "Two hundred and forty pounds?" she said. "There's nothing in our genes
that says two hundred and forty pounds, Oliver."
     "We'll  feed   him  up,   Jen.   Hi-Proteen,   Nutrament,   the   whole
diet-supplement bit."
     "Oh, yeah? Suppose he won't eat, Oliver?"
     "He'll  eat, goddammit," I said, getting slightly pissed off already at
the kid who would soon be sitting at our table not cooperating with my plans
for his athletic triumphs. "He'll eat or I'll break his face."
     At which point Jenny looked me straight in the eye and smiled.
     "Not if he weighs two forty, you won't.~~
     "Oh," I replied,  momentarily set back, then quickly realized,  "But he
won't be two-forty right away!"
     "Yeah, yeah,"  said Jenny, now shaking an  admonitory spoon at me, "but
when he is, Preppie, start running!" And she laughed like hell.
     It's really comic, but  while she was laughing I had  this  vision of a
two-hundred-and-forty-pound  kid in a  diaper  chasing after  me in  Central
Park,  shouting, "You  be nicer to my  mother,  Preppie!"  Christ, hopefully
Jenny would keep Bozo from destroying me.





     It is not all that easy to make a baby.
     I mean, there is a certain irony involved when guys who spend the first
years of their sex lives preoccupied with  not getting  girls  pregnant (and
when I first started, condoms were still in) then reverse their thinking and
become obsessed with conception and not its contra.
     Yes, it can become  an obsession.  And it can divest  the most glorious
aspect  of a happy married life of  its naturalness and spontaneity. I mean,
to  program  your thinking  (unfortunate  verb,  "program";  it  suggests  a
machine)-to program  your thinking about the act of love in  accordance with
rules, calendars, strategy
     ("Wouldn't it  be  better  tomorrow morning, 01?") can be a  source  of
discomfort, disgust and ultimately terror.
     For when you see that your  layman's knowledge and (you  assume) normal
healthy efforts are  not  succeeding in the matter of increase-and-multiply,
it can bring the most awful thoughts to your mind.
     "I'm  sure you understand, Oliver, that 'sterility' would  have nothing
to do  with 'virility.'" Thus Dr.  Mortimer Sheppard to  me during the first
conversation,  when  Jenny  and  I  had  finally  decided  we needed  expert
consultation.
     "He  understands, doctor," said Jenny  for me,  knowing without my ever
having  mentioned it  that the  notion of  being sterile-of  possibly  being
sterile-was devastating to me. Didn't her voice even suggest that she hoped,
if an insufficiency were to be discovered, it would be her own?
     But the doctor  had merely been spelling it all out for us,  telling us
the worst, before going on to say that  there was still  a great possibility
that both of us  were  okay, and that we might soon be proud parents. But of
course  we  would both undergo a battery of  tests.  Complete physicals. The
works.  (I don't want  to repeat the  unpleasant  specifics of this  kind of
thorough investigation.)
     We went  through the tests on a Monday. Jenny during  the  day, I after
work (I was fantastically immersed in the legal  world). Dr. Sheppard called
Jenny in again  that  Friday explaining that his nurse had screwed up and he
needed to  check  a few things again. When Jenny told me  of the  revisit, I
began to suspect that perhaps he had found the..,  insufficiency with her. I
think she suspected the same. The nurse-screwing-up alibi is pretty trite.
     When Dr. Sheppard called me at Jonas and Marsh,  I was  almost certain.
Would I please drop by his office on the way home? When I heard this was not
to be a three-way conversation ("I spoke to Mrs. Barrett earlier today"), my
suspicions were  confirmed.  Jenny could not have children.  Although, let's
not phrase it in the  absolute,  Oliver; remember Sheppard  mentioned  there
were things like corrective surgery and so forth. But I couldn't concentrate
at  all,  and it  was  foolish to wait it  out  till five o'clock. I  called
Sheppard back and  asked if he  could see me in the early afternoon. He said
okay.
     "Do you know whose fault it is?" I asked, not mincing any words.
     "I really wouldn't say 'fault,' Oliver," he replied.
     "Well, okay, do you know which of us is malfunctioning?"
     "Yes. Jenny."
     I had been more or less prepared for this, but the finality with  which
the doctor pronounced it still threw me. He wasn't saying anything more,  so
I assumed he wanted a statement of some sort from me.
     "Okay, so we'll adopt kids. I mean, the important thing is that we love
each other, right?"
     And then he told me.
     "Oliver, the problem is more serious than that. Jenny is very sick."
     "Would you define 'very sick,' please?"
     "She's dying."
     "That's impossible," I said.
     And I waited for the doctor to tell me that it was all a grim joke.
     "She is, Oliver," he said. "I'm very sorry to have to tell you this."
     I insisted  that he had made some  mistake-perhaps that idiot  nurse of
his  had screwed up  again  and given him the wrong X rays  or something. He
replied with as much compassion as he could that Jenny's blood test had been
repeated three times.  There was absolutely no question about the diagnosis.
He would  of course have to refer us-me-Jenny to a hematologist. In fact, he
could suggest- I waved my hand to cut him off. I wanted silence for
     a minute. Just silence to let  it all sink in. Then  a thought occurred
to me.
     "What did you tell Jenny, doctor?"
     "That you were both all right."
     "She bought it?"
     "I think so."
     "When do we have to tell her?"
     "At this point, it's up to you.
     Up to me! Christ, at this point I didn't feel up to breathing.
     The doctor  explained that what  therapy they had for Jenny's  form  of
leukemia was merely palliative-it  could relieve, it might  retard,  but  it
could not reverse.  So at  that point it was  up to me.  They could withhold
therapy for a while.
     But at  that  moment all I  really could think  of was how  obscene the
whole fucking thing was.
     "She's  only twenty-four!"  I  told  the  doctor, shouting, I think. He
nodded,   very  patiently,  knowing   full  well  Jenny's  age,   but   also
understanding what agony this was for me. Finally I realized that I couldn't
just sit in this man's office forever. So I asked him what  to  do. I  mean,
what I should do.  He  told me to act as normal  as possible for  as long as
possible. I thanked him and left.
     Normal! Normal!




     I began to think about God.
     I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep
into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to
punch Him  out for what He was about to do to me-to Jenny, that  is. No, the
kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite. Like when I woke up
in  the  morning and Jenny was there. Still  there.  I'm sorry,  embarrassed
even, but I  hoped there was a God I could say  thank you to. Thank  you for
letting me wake up and see Jennifer.
     I was  trying like hell  to act  normal, so  of course  I let  her make
breakfast and so forth.
     "Seeing Stratton today?" she asked,  as I was having a  second bowl  of
Special K.
     "Who?" I asked.
     "Raymond  Stratton  '64," she said,  "your best  friend. Your  roommate
before me."
     "Yeah. We were supposed to play squash. I think I'll cancel it "
     "Bullshit."
     "What Jen?"
     "Don't  go  canceling squash  games, Preppie.  I don't  want  a  flabby
husband, dammit!"
     "Okay," I said, "but let's have dinner downtown."
     "Why?" she asked.
     "What do you mean,  'why'?" I yelled,  trying to work up my normal mock
anger. "Can't I take my goddamn wife to dinner if I want to?"
     "Who is she, Barrett? What's her name?" Jenny asked.
     "What?"
     "Listen," she explained.  "When you have to take your wife to dinner on
a weekday, you must be screwing someone!"
     "Jennifer!" I bellowed,  now  honestly hurt. "I will not have that kind
of talk at my breakfast table!"
     "Then get your ass home to my dinner table. Okay?" ''Okay."

     And  I  told this God, whoever and wherever  He  might be, that I would
gladly settle for the status quo. I don't mind  the agony, sir, I don't mind
knowing as long as  Jenny doesn't know. Did you  hear me, Lord, sir? You can
name the price.

     "Oliver?"
     "Yes, Mr. Jonas?"
     He had called me into his office.
     "Are you familiar with the Beck affair?" he asked.
     Of course I was.  Robert  L. Beck, photographer for Life  magazine, had
the shit kicked out of him by the Chicago police, while trying to photograph
a riot. Jonas considered this one of the key cases for the firm.
     "I  know the cops punched him out, sir," I  told Jonas,  lightheartedly
(hah!).
     "I'd like you to handle it, Oliver," he said.
     "Myself?" I asked.
     "You can take along one of the younger men," he replied.
     Younger  men?  I was  the youngest guy  in the  office. But I  read his
message:  Oliver, despite your chronological age, you are already one of the
elders of this office. One of us, Oliver.
     "Thank you, sir," I said.
     "How soon can you leave for Chicago?"  he asked. I had resolved to tell
nobody, to shoulder the entire  burden myself. So I gave old man  Jonas some
bullshit, I  don't  even remember exactly what,  about how I  didn't feel  I
could leave New York at this time, sir. And I hoped he would understand. But
I  know he  was disappointed at my reaction  to what  was  obviously a  very
significant gesture.  Oh, Christ,  Mr.  Jonas, when  you find  out  the real
reason!
     Paradox:  Oliver Barrett IV  leaving  the  office earlier, yet  walking
homeward more slowly. How can you explain that?
     I had gotten into the habit of window shopping on Fifth Avenue, looking
at  the wonderful and silly  extravagant things I would have bought Jennifer
had I not wanted to keep up that fiction of . . . normal.
     Sure, I was afraid  to go home. Because now, several weeks after I  had
first learned the true facts, she was beginning to lose weight. I mean, just
a little and she herself probably didn't notice. But I, who knew, noticed.
     I would window shop the airlines: Brazil, the Carribbean,  Hawaii ("Get
away  from it all-fly into the sunshine!") and so  forth. On this particular
afternoon, TWA  was  pushing Europe in the off season: London  for shoppers,
Paris for lovers .
     "What about my scholarship? What about  Paris, which i've never seen in
my whole goddamn life?"
     "What about our marriage?"
     "Who said anything about marriage?" "Me. I'm saying it now.
     "You want to marry me?"
     "Yes."
     "Why?"

     I  was such a  fantastically  good  credit risk that I  already owned a
Diners Club card. Zip! My signature on the dotted line and  I  was the proud
possessor of two tickets (first class, no less) to the City of Lovers.
     Jenny looked  kind of  pale and  gray when I got home,  but  I hoped my
fantastic idea would put some color in those cheeks.
     "Guess what, Mrs. Barrett," I said.
     "You got fired," guessed my optimistic wife.
     "No. Fired  up,"  I replied, and pulled  out  the tickets.  "Up, up and
away," I said. "Tomorrow night to Paris."
     "Bullshit, Oliver," she  said. But  quietly,  with  none  of her  usual
mock-aggression.  As  she  spoke  it  then,  it was  a kind  of  endearment:
"Bullshit, Oliver."
     "Hey, can you define 'bullshit' more specifically, please?"
     "Hey, Ollie," she said softly, "that's not the way we're gonna do it."
     "Do what?" I asked.
     "I  don't want Paris. I don't need Paris. I just want you- "That you've
got, baby!" I interrupted, sounding falsely merry.
     "And I want time," she continued, "which you can't give me."
     Now I looked into her eyes.  They were ineffably sad. But  sad in a way
only I understood. They were saying she was sorry. That is, sorry for me.
     We  stood  there  silently  holding  one another. Please, if one  of us
cries, let both of us cry. But preferably neither of us.
     And  then Jenny explained how she had been feeling "absolutely  shitty"
and gone back to Dr. Sheppard, not for consultation, but confrontation: Tell
me what's wrong with me, dammit. And he did.
     I felt strangely guilty at not having been the one to break it to  her.
She sensed this, and made a calculatedly stupid remark.
     "He's a Yalie, Ol."
     "Who is, Jen?"
     "Ackerman. The hematologist. A total Yalie. College and Med School."
     "Oh,~~ I said, knowing that  she was trying to inject some  levity into
the grim proceedings.
     "Can he at least read and write?" I asked.
     "That  remains to be seen," smiled Mrs. Oliver  Barrett, Radcliffe '64,
"but I know he can talk. And I wanted to talk."
     "Okay, then, for the Yalie doctor," I said.
     "Okay," she said.





     Now at least I wasn't afraid to go home,  I wasn't seared about "acting
normal." We were once again sharing  everything,  even  if  it was the awful
knowledge that our days together were every one of them numbered.
     There  were things we  had to  discuss,  things not usually broached by
twenty-four-year-old couples.
     "I'm counting on you to be strong, you hockey jock," she said.
     "I will, I will," I answered, wondering if  the always knowing Jennifer
could tell that the great hockey jock was frightened.
     "I mean, for Phil," she continued. "It's gonna be hardest for him. You,
after all, you'll be the merry widower."
     "I won't be merry," I interrupted.
     "You'll be merry, goddammit. I want you to be merry. Okay?"
     ''Okay.
     "Okay."

     It was about a month later, right after dinner. She was still doing the
cooking; she  insisted  on it. I had finally persuaded her to  allow  me  to
clean up (though she gave me  heat about it not being "man's work"), and was
putting away the dishes  while she played Chopin  on the piano.  I heard her
stop in mid-Prelude, and  walked immediately  into the living room. She  was
just sitting there.
     "Are  you okay,  Jen?"  I  asked, meaning it in a  relative sense.  She
answered with another question.
     "Are you rich enough to pay for a taxi?" she asked.
     "Sure," I replied. "Where do you want to go?"
     "Like-the hospital," she said.
     I was aware, in  the swift flurry of motions that followed,  that  this
was it. Jenny was going to walk out of our apartment and never come back. As
she just sat there while I  threw  a few things together for her, I wondered
what was crossing her mind. About the apartment, I mean. What would she want
to look at to remember?
     Nothing. She just sat still, focusing on nothing at all.
     "Hey," I said, "anything special you want to take along?"
     "Uh uh." She nodded no, then added as an afterthought, "You."

     Downstairs it was tough to  get  a cab, it  being theater hour and all.
The doorman  was blowing his whistle and  waving his  arms  like a wild-eyed
hockey referee. Jenny just leaned against me, and I  secretly  wished  there
would be no taxi, that she would just keep leaning on me. But we finally got
one. And  the  cabbie  was-just our luck-a jolly  type. When  he heard Mount
Sinai Hospital on the double, he launched into a whole routine.
     "Don't worry,  children, you are in experienced hands.  The stork and I
have been doing business for years.
     In  the back seat, Jenny  was cuddled up against me.  I was kissing her
hair.
     "Is this your first?" asked our jolly driver.
     I guess Jenny  could  feel I was about  to  snap at  the  guy,  and she
whispered to me:
     "Be nice, Oliver. He's trying to be nice to us."
     "Yes, sir," I told him. "It's the first,  and my wife  isn't feeling so
great, so could we jump a few lights, please?"
     He got us to Mount Sinai in nothing flat. He was very nice, getting out
to open the door for us and  everything. Before taking off again,  he wished
us all sorts of good fortune and happiness. Jenny thanked him.

     She seemed unsteady on  her feet and I wanted  to carry her in, but she
insisted,  "Not  this  threshold, Preppie." So  we  walked  in and  suffered
through that painfully nit-picking process of checking in.
     "Do you have Blue Shield or other medical plan?"

     (Who  could  have thought  of such  trivia?  We were  too  busy  buying
dishes.)
     Of course, Jenny's  arrival  was not unexpected.  It  had earlier  been
foreseen and was now being supervised by Bernard Ackerman, M.D., who was, as
Jenny predicted, a good guy, albeit a total Yalie.
     "She's  getting  white  cells  and  platelets," Dr.  Ackerman  told me.
"That's what she needs most at the moment.  She doesn't want antimetabolites
at all."
     "What does that mean?" I asked.
     "It's a treatment that slows  cell  destruction," he explained, "but-as
Jenny knows-there can be unpleasant side effects."
     "Listen,  doctor"-I  know I was  lecturing him  needlessly-"Jenny's the
boss. Whatever she says goes. Just you  guys do  everything you possibly can
to make it not hurt."
     "You can be sure of that," he said.
     "I don't care what it costs, doctor." I think I was raising my voice.
     "It could be weeks or months," he said.
     "Screw the cost," I said. He  was very patient with  me. I mean,  I was
bullying him, really.
     "I was simply saying," Ackerman explained,  "that there's really no way
of knowing how long-or how short-she'll linger."
     "Just remember, doctor," I commanded him, "just remember I want her  to
have the very best.  Private room. Special nurses.  Everything. Please. I've
got the money.





     It is impossible to drive from  East Sixty-third Street, Manhattan,  to
Boston, Massachusetts,  in less than three hours and twenty minutes. Believe
me, I have  tested the outer limits on this track, and I am certain  that no
automobile,  foreign  or domestic, even  with some Graham  Hill type at  the
wheel,  can make it faster. I had the MG  at a hundred and five on the  Mass
Turnpike.
     I  have this  cordless  electric razor  and  you can  be sure I  shaved
carefully, and changed my  shirt in  the car, before entering those hallowed
offices  on State  Street. Even at 8 A.M.  there were  several distinguished
looking Boston  types  waiting to see  Oliver Barrett III. His secretary-who
knew me-didn't blink twice when she spoke my name into the intercom.
     My father did not say, "Show him in."
     Instead, his door opened and he appeared in person. He said, "Oliver."
     Preoccupied  as I  was with  physical  appearances, I noticed  that  he
seemed a bit pale, that his hair had grown grayish (and perhaps  thinner) in
these three years.
     ''Come in,  son,~~  he said. I  couldn't read  the tone.  I just walked
toward his office.
     I sat in the "client's chair."
     We looked at one another, then  let  our gazes drift onto other objects
in the room.  I let mine  fall among the items on  his desk:  scissors in  a
leather case, letter opener with a leather handle, a photo  of  Mother taken
years ago. A photo of me (Exeter graduation).
     "How've you been, son?" he asked.
     "'Well, sir," I answered.
     "And how's Jennifer?" he asked.
     Instead  of lying to  him,  I evaded the  issue-although  it  'was  the
issue-by blurting out the reason for my sudden reappearance.
     "Father, I need to borrow five thousand dollars. For a good reason."
     He looked at me. And sort of nodded, I think.
     "Well?" he said.
     "Sir?" I asked.
     "May I know the reason?" he asked.
     "I can't tell you, Father. Just lend me the dough. Please."
     I had  the feeling-if  one  can actually receive feelings  from  Oliver
Barrett  111-that he  intended to give me the money.  I also  sensed that he
didn't want to give me any heat. But he did want to... talk.
     "Don't they pay you at Jonas and Marsh?" he asked.
     "Yes, sir.
     I was tempted to tell  him how much, merely  to let him  know it was  a
class record, but then I thought if he knew where I worked, he probably knew
my salary as well.
     "And doesn't she teach too?" he asked.
     Well, he doesn't know everything.
     "Don't call her 'she,'" I said.
     "Doesn't Jennifer teach?" he asked politely.
     "And please leave her out of this, Father. This is a personal matter. A
very important personal matter."
     "Have  you  gotten  some  girl in trouble?"  he asked, but  without any
deprecation in his voice.
     "Yeah," I said, "yes, sir. That's it. Give me the dough. Please."
     I don't  think for a moment  he believed my reason. I  don't  think  he
really wanted to know. He had questioned me merely, as I said  before, so we
could talk.
     He reached into his  desk drawer and took out a  checkbook bound in the
same cordovan leather as the handle of his  letter  opener and the case  for
his scissors. He opened it slowly. Not to torture me, I don't  think, but to
stall for time. To find things to say. Nonabrasive things.
     He finished  writing  the check, tore it from the book and then held it
out toward me. I was maybe a split  second  slow in realizing I should reach
out my hand to meet his. So  he got embarrassed (I think), withdrew his hand
and  placed the check  on  the  edge of  his desk.  He looked  at me now and
nodded. His expression seemed to say, "There  it is, son." But all he really
did was nod.
     It's  not that I wanted to  leave,  either. It's  just  that  I  myself
couldn't think of anything neutral to say.  And we couldn't just  sit there,
both of us willing to talk and yet unable even to look the other straight in
the face.
     I  leaned over and picked  up  the check.  Yes, it said  five  thousand
dollars,  signed  Oliver  Barrett  III.  It  was  already  dry.  I folded it
carefully and put  it into  my shirt  pocket as I  rose and shuffled  to the
door. I should at least have said something  to  the effect that I knew that
on my account very important Boston dignitaries (maybe even Washington) were
cooling their heels in his outer office,  and  yet if we had  more to say to
one  another  I  could even  hang around your office, Father, and you  would
cancel your luncheon plans and so forth.
     I stood there with the door half open, and summoned the courage to look
at him and say:
     "Thank you, Father."




     The task of  informing Phil Cavilleri fell to me. Who  else? He did not
go to pieces as  I feared he might, but calmly  closed the house in Cranston
and came  to live  in our apartment. We  all have our idiosyncratic  ways of
coping  with  grief. Phil's was to clean the place. To  wash, to  scrub,  to
polish. I don't really understand his thought processes, but Christ, let him
work.
     Does he cherish the dream that Jenny will come home?
     He does, doesn't he? The poor bastard. That's why he's cleaning  up. He
just won't accept things  for what  they are. Of course, he won't admit this
to me, but I know it's on his mind.
     Because it's on mine too.

     Once she was in the hospital, I called old  man  Jonas and let him know
why I couldn't be  coming to work.  I pretended that I  had to hurry off the
phone because  I know  he was pained  and wanted  to say  things he couldn't
possibly  express.  From  then  on,  the  days were  simply  divided between
visiting  hours and  everything  else.  And  of  course everything else  was
nothing. Eating without hunger,  watching  Phil clean the apartment (again!)
and not sleeping even with the prescription Ackerman gave me.
     Once  I  overheard  Phil  mutter to himself,  "I  can't  stand it  much
longer."  He was in the  next room, washing  our  dinner dishes (by hand). I
didn't  answer  him, but I  did think to myself,  I can. Whoever's Up  There
running the show,  Mr. Supreme  Being, sir, keep it up,  I can  take this ad
infinitum. Because Jenny is Jenny.
     That evening, she kicked me out of the room. She wanted to speak to her
father "man to man.
     "This meeting is restricted only  to Americans of Italian descent," she
said, looking as white as her pillows, "so beat it, Barrett."
     "Okay," I said.
     "But  not too far," she said when I reached the door. I went  to sit in
the lounge. Presently Phil appeared. "She says to get your ass in there," he
whispered hoarsely,  like the whole inside of him was hollow. "I'm gonna buy
some cigarettes."
     "Close  the  goddamn door,"  she  commanded as  I entered  the  room. I
obeyed, shut the door  quietly,  and as  I went  back to sit  by her  bed, I
caught  a fuller view  of her. I mean,  with  the tubes going into her right
arm, which she would keep under the covers. I always liked to sit very close
and just look at her face, which,  however pale,  still had her eyes shining
in it.
     So I quickly sat very close.
     "It doesn't hurt,  Ollie, really,"  she said. "It's like falling off  a
cliff in slow motion, you know?"
     Something  stirred  deep in my gut. Some shapeless thing that was going
to  fly into my throat and make me cry. But I wasn't going to. I never have.
I'm a tough bastard, see? I am not gonna cry.
     But if I'm not gonna cry, then I can't open my mouth. I'll  simply have
to nod yes. So I nodded yes.
     "Bullshit," she said.
     "Huh?" It was more of a grunt than a word.
     "You  don't know  about falling off cliffs,  Preppie," she  said.  "You
never fell off one in your goddamn life."
     "Yeah," I said, recovering the power of speech. "When I met you."
     "Yeah," she  said, and  a smile crossed her face. " 'Oh, what a falling
off was there.' Who said that?"
     "I don't know," I replied. "Shakespeare."
     "Yeah,  but who?" she said kind of plaintively. "I can't remember which
play, even. I went to Radcliffe, I should remember things. I  once  knew all
the Mozart Kochel listings."
     "Big deal," I said.
     "You bet it was," she  said, and then screwed up her forehead,  asking,
"What number is the C Minor Piano Concerto?"
     "I'll look it up," I said.
     I knew  just where. Back in the apartment, on  a shelf by  the piano. I
would look it up and tell her first thing tomorrow.
     "I used to know," Jenny said, "I did. I used to know."
     "Listen," I said, Bogart style, "do you want to talk music?"
     "Would you prefer talking funerals?" she asked.
     "No,"  I said,  sorry for having  interrupted her. "I discussed it with
Phil. Are you listening, Ollie?" I had turned my face away.
     "Yeah, I'm listening, Jenny."
     "I told him he could have a Catholic service, you'd say okay. Okay?"
     "Okay," I said.
     "Okay," she replied.
     And  then  I  felt slightly  relieved, because  after all, whatever  we
talked of now would have to be an improvement.
     I was wrong.
     "Listen,  Oliver," said  Jenny, and it was  in her angry voice,  albeit
soft. "Oliver, you've got to stop being sick!"
     "Me?"
     "That  guilty  look on your face, Oliver, it's sick." Honestly, I tried
to change my expression, but my facial muscles were frozen.
     "It's nobody's fault, you preppie  bastard," she was saying. "Would you
please stop blaming yourself!"
     I wanted to keep looking at  her because I wanted to never take my eyes
from her, but still I had to lower my eyes. I was so  ashamed that  even now
Jenny was reading my mind so perfectly.
     "Listen, that's the  only goddamn thing I'm asking, Ollie. Otherwise, I
know you'll be okay."
     That thing in my gut was stirring again, so I  was afraid to even speak
the word "okay." I just looked mutely at Jenny.
     "Screw Paris," she said suddenly.
     "Huh?"
     "Screw Paris and music and all the crap you think you stole from me.  I
don't care, you sonovabitch. Can't you believe that?"
     "No," I answered truthfully.
     "Then  get the  hell  out of here," she said.  "I don't want you  at my
goddamn deathbed."
     She meant it.  I could tell  when  Jenny really  meant  something. So I
bought permission to stay by telling a lie:
     "I believe you," I said.
     "That's  better,"  she  said.  "Now  would  you  do  me a favor?"  From
somewhere  inside me  came  this  devastating  assault to make me cry. But I
withstood. I  would  not  cry.  I would merely indicate  to  Jennifer-by the
affirmative nodding of my  head-that I  would be  happy to do  her any favor
whatsoever.
     "Would you please hold me very tight?" she asked. I  put my hand on her
forearm-Christ, so thin-and gave it a little squeeze.
     "No, Oliver," she  said, "really hold  me.  Next to  I  was  very, very
careful-of the tubes and things- as I  got onto the bed with her  and put my
arms around her.
     "Thanks, Ollie."

     Those were her last words.




     Phil Cavilleri  was in the solarium, smoking  his nth cigarette, when I
appeared.
     "Phil?" I said softly.
     "Yeah?" He looked up and  I think he already knew. He obviously  needed
some kind of physical comforting. I walked  over and  placed my hand  on his
shoulder. I was afraid he might cry. I was pretty sure I wouldn't. Couldn't.
I mean, I was past all that.
     He put his hand on mine.
     "I  wish," he  muttered, "I  wished  I  hadn't  He  paused there, and I
waited. What was the hurry, after all?
     "I wish I hadn't promised Jenny to be strong for you. And, to honor his
pledge, he patted my hand very gently.
     But I had to be alone. To breathe air. To take a walk, maybe.

     Downstairs, the hospital  lobby was  absolutely still. All I could hear
was the click of my own heels on the linoleum.
     ''Oliver.
     I stopped.
     It was my father.  Except for the woman at the  reception  desk we were
all by  ourselves there.  In fact,  we were among the few people in New York
awake at that hour.
     I couldn't face him. I went straight  for the revolving door. But in an
instant he was out there standing next to me.
     "Oliver," he said, "you should have told me."
     It was very cold, which in a way was good because I was numb and wanted
to feel something. My father continued  to  address  me, and I continued  to
stand still and let the cold wind slap my face.
     "As soon as I found out, I jumped into the car."
     I had forgotten my  coat; the chill was starting to make me ache. Good.
Good.
     "Oliver," said my father urgently, "I want to help."
     "Jenny's dead," I told him.
     "I'm sorry," he said in a stunned whisper.
     Not  knowing  why, I  repeated what  I  had long  ago  learned from the
beautiful girl now dead.
     "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.

     And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much  less in his
arms. I cried.


Last-modified: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 15:25:41 GMT
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