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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
"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