Love Story

'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, Ollie?' said my mother to my father.

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

'What's this, Father?'

'Nothing important, son.'

'I don't see how you can say that,' said my mother, and turned toward me to deliver the message with full force (I said she was on his side):

'Your father's going to be director of the Peace Corps.'

'Oh.'

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

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

'Congratulations, Mr. Barrett.' Jenny took the initiative.

'Yes. Congratulations, sir.'

Mother was so anxious to talk about it.

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

'Oh, it will,' agreed Jenny.

'Yes,' I said without much conviction. 'Uh — would you pass the sugar, please.'

8

'Jenny, it's not Secretary of State, after all!'

We were finally driving back to Cambridge, thank God.

'Still, Oliver, you could have been more enthusiastic.'

'I said congratulations.'

'It was mighty generous of you.'

'What did you expect, for chrissake?'

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

'That's two of us,' I added.

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

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

'The disgusting way you treat your father.'

'How about the disgusting way he treats me?'

I had opened a can of beans. Or, more appropriately, spaghetti sauce. For Jenny launched into a 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 molclass="underline"

'Just drive, Preppie. Get back to the wheel and start speeding!'

I did. I did.

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