Love Story (10 page)

‘She’s only twenty-four!’ I
told the doctor, shouting, I think. He nodded, very patiently,
knowing full well Jenny’s age, but also understanding what agony
this was for me.

Finally I realized that I couldn’t
just sit in this man’s office forever. So I asked him what to do. I
mean, what I should do. He told me to act as normal as possible for
as long as possible. I thanked him and left.

Normal! Normal!

I began to think about God.

I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being
existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not
because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what
He was about to do to me - to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of
religious thoughts I had were just the opposite.

Like when I woke up in the morning
and Jenny was there. Still there. I’m sorry, embarrassed even, but
I hoped there was a God I could say thank you to. Thank you for
letting me wake up and see Jennifer.

I was trying like hell to act normal,
so of course I

‘Seeing Stratton today?’ she
asked, as I was having a second bowl of Special K.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Raymond Stratton ‘64,’ she
said, ‘your best friend.

Your roommate before me.’

‘Yeah. We were supposed to play
squash. I think I’ll cancel it.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘What, Jen?’

‘Don’t go canceling squash games,
Preppie. I don’t want a flabby husband, dammit!’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but let’s
have dinner downtown.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean, ‘why’?’ I
yelled, trying to work up my normal mock anger. ‘Can’t I take my
goddamn wife to dinner if I want to?’

‘Who is she, Barrett? What’s her
name?’ Jenny asked.

‘What?’

‘Listen,’ she explained. ‘When
you have to take your wife to dinner on a weekday, you must be
screwing someone!’

‘Jennifer!’ I bellowed, now
honestly hurt. ‘I will not have that kind of talk at my breakfast
table!’

‘Then get your ass home to my
dinner table. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

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

‘Oliver?’

‘Yes, Mr. Jonas?’

He had called me into his office.

‘Are you familiar with the Beck
affair?’ he asked.

Of course I was. Robert L. Beck,
photographer for Life magazine, had the shit kicked out of him by the
Chicago police, while trying to photograph a riot. Jonas considered
this one of the key cases for the firm.

‘I know the cops punched him out,
sir,’ I told Jonas, lightheartedly (hah!).

‘I’d like you to handle it,
Oliver,’ he said.

‘Myself?’ I asked.

‘You can take along one of the
younger men,’ he replied.

Younger men? I was the youngest guy
in the office. But I read his message: Oliver, despite your
chronological age, you are already one of the elders of this office.
One of us, Oliver.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.

‘How soon can you leave for
Chicago?’ he asked.

I had resolved to tell nobody, to
shoulder the entire burden myself. So I gave old man Jonas some
bullshit, I don’t even remember exactly what, about how I didn’t
feel I could leave New York at this time, sir. And I hoped he would
understand. But I know he was disappointed at my reaction to what was
obviously a very significant gesture. Oh, Christ, Mr. Jonas, when you
find out the real reason!

Paradox: Oliver Barrett IV leaving
the office earlier, yet walking homeward more slowly. How can you
explain that?

I had gotten into the habit of window
shopping on Fifth Avenue, looking at the wonderful and silly
extravagant things I would have bought Jennifer had I not wanted to
keep up that fiction of … normal.

Sure, I was afraid to go home.
Because now, several weeks after I had first learned the true facts,
she was beginning to lose weight. I mean, just a little and she
herself probably didn’t notice. But I, who knew, noticed.

I would window shop the airlines:
Brazil, the Carribbean, Hawaii (‘Get away from it all - fly into
the sunshine!’) and so forth. On this particular afternoon, TWA was
pushing Europe in the off season: London for shoppers, Paris for
lovers …

‘What about my scholarship? What
about Paris, which I’ve never seen in my whole goddamn life?’

”What about our marriage?’

‘Who said anything about marriage?’

‘Me. I’m saying it now’

‘You want to marry me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

I was such a fantastically good
credit risk that I already owned a Diners Club card. Zip! My
signature on the dotted line and I .Was the proud possessor of two
tickets (first class, no less) to the City of Lovers.

Jenny looked kind of pale and gray
when I got home, but I hoped my fantastic idea would put some color
in those cheeks.

‘Guess what, Mrs. Barrett,’ I
said.

‘You got fired,’ guessed my
optimistic wife.

‘No. Fired up,’ I replied, and
pulled out the tickets.

‘Up, up and away,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow night to Paris.’

‘Bullshit, Oliver,’ she said. But
quietly, with none of her usual mock-aggression. As she spoke it
then, it was a kind of endearment: ‘Bullshit, Oliver.’

‘Hey, can you define ‘bullshit’
more specifically, please?’

‘Hey, Ollie,’ she said softly,
‘that’s not the way we’re gonna do it.’

‘Do what? ‘I asked.

‘I don’t want Paris. I don’t
need Paris. I just want you - ‘

‘That you’ve got, baby!’ I
interrupted, sounding falsely merry.

‘And I want time,’ she continued,
‘which you can’t give me.’

Now I looked into her eyes. They were
ineffably sad.

But sad in a way only I understood.
They were saying she was sorry. That is, sorry for me.

We stood there silently holding one
another. Please, if one of us cries, let both of us cry. But
preferably neither of us.

And then Jenny explained how she had
been feeling ‘absolutely shitty’ and gone back
to Dr. Sheppard, not for consultation, but confrontation: Tell me
what’s wrong with me, dammit. And he did.

I felt strangely guilty at not having
been the one to break it to her. She sensed this, and made a
calculatedly stupid remark.

‘He’s a Yalie, Ol’

‘Who is, Jen?’

‘Ackerman. The hernatologist. A
total Yalie. College and Med School.’

‘Oh,’ I said, knowing that she
was trying to inject some levity into the grim proceedings.

‘Can he at least read and write?’
I asked.

‘That remains to be seen,’ smiled
Mrs. Oliver Barrett, Radcliffe ‘64, ‘but I know he can talk. And
I wanted to talk.’

‘Okay, then, for the Yalie doctor,’
I said.

‘Okay,’ she said.

Now at least I wasn’t afraid to go home, I wasn’t 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.’

‘Just remember, doctor,’ I
commanded him, ‘just remember I want her to have the very best.
Private room.

Special nurses. Everything. Please.
I’ve got the money.’

It is impossible to drive from East Sixty-third Street, Manhattan,
to Boston, Massachusetts, in less than three hours and twenty
minutes. Believe me, I have tested the outer limits on this track,
and I am certain that no automobile, foreign or domestic, even with
some Graham Hill type at the wheel, can make it faster. I had the MG
at a hundred and five on the Mass Turnpike.

I have this cordless electric razor
and you can be sure I shaved carefully, and changed my shirt in the
car, before entering those hallowed offices on State Street. Even at
8 A.M. there were several distinguished - looking Boston types
waiting to see Oliver Barrett III. His secretary - who knew me -
didn’t blink twice when she spoke my name into the intercom.

My father did not say, ‘Show him
in.’

Instead, his door opened and he
appeared in person. He said, ‘Oliver.’

Preoccupied as I was with physical
appearances, I noticed that he seemed a bit pale, that his hair had
grown grayish (and perhaps thinner) in these three years.

‘Come in, son,’ he said. I
couldn’t read the tone. I just walked toward his office.

I sat in the ‘client’s chair.’

We looked at one another, then let
our gazes drift onto other objects in the room. I let mine fall among
the items on his desk: scissors in a leather case, letter opener with
a leather handle, a photo of Mother taken years ago. A photo of me
(Exeter graduation).

‘How’ve you been, son?’ he
asked.

‘Well, sir,’ I answered.

‘And how’s Jennifer?’ he asked.

Instead of lying to him, I evaded the
issue - although it was the issue - by blurting out the reason for my
sudden reappearance.

‘Father, I need to borrow five
thousand dollars. For a good reason.’

He looked at me. And sort of nodded,
I think.

‘Well? ‘he said.

‘Sir?’ I asked.

‘May I know the reason?’ he
asked.

‘I can’t tell you, Father. Just
lend me the dough.

Please.’

I had the feeling - if one can
actually receive feelings from Oliver Barrett III - that he intended
to give me the money. I also sensed that he didn’t want to give me
any heat. But he did want to … talk.