Love Story

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.

9

There remained the matter of Cranston, Rhode Island, a city slightly more to the south of Boston than Ipswich is to the north. After the debacle of introducing Jennifer to her potential in-laws ('Do I call them outlaws now?' she asked), I did not look forward with any confidence to my meeting with her father. I mean, here I would be bucking that lotsa love Italian-Mediterranean syndrome, compounded by the fact that Jenny was an only child, compounded by the fact that she had no mother, which meant abnormally close ties to her father. I would be up against all those emotional forces the psych books describe.

Plus the fact that I was broke.

I mean, imagine for a second Olivero Barretto, some nice Italian kid from down the block in Cranston, Rhode Island. He comes to see Mr. Cavilleri, a wage-earning pastry chef of that city, and says, 'I would like to marry your only daughter, Jennifer.' What would the old man's first question be? (He would not question Barretto's love, since to know Jenny is to love Jenny; it's a universal truth.) No, Mr. Cavilleri would say something like, 'Barretto, how are you going to support her?'

Now imagine the good Mr. Cavilleri's reaction if Barretto informed him that the opposite would prevail, at least for the next three years: his daughter would have to support his son-in-law! Would not the good Mr. Cavilleri show Barretto to the door, or even, if Barretto were not my size, punch him out?

You bet your ass he would.

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

'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.

'Oh.'

'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 189A Hamilton Avenue.

It was an awkward moment.

I just stood there as Jenny said, 'This is my father.' And Phil Cavilleri, a roughhewn (say 5'9", 165-pound) Rhode Island type in his late forties, held out his hand.