Love Story

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.

19

Now at least I wasn't afraid to go home, I wasn't scared 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're 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?'

'No.'

(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.'