Love Story (3 page)

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘it’s
certainly better than the War Corps.’

We were even. I didn’t know what he
meant and vice versa. Was that it for the topic? Would we now discuss
other current affairs or government programs? No. I had momentarily
forgotten that our quintessential theme is always my plans.

‘I would certainly have no
objection to your joining the Peace Corps, Oliver.’

‘It’s mutual, sir,’ I replied,
matching his own generosity of spirit. I’m sure Old Stony never
listens to me anyway, so I’m not surprised that he didn’t react
to my quiet little sarcasm.

‘But among your classmates,’ he
continued, ‘what is the attitude there?’

‘Sir?’

‘Do they feel the Peace Corps is
relevant to their lives?’

I guess my father needs to hear the
phrase as much as a fish needs water: ‘Yes, sir.’

Even the apple pie was stale.

At about eleven-thirty, I walked him
to his car.

‘Anything I can do, son?’

‘No, sir. Good night, sir.’

And he drove off.

Yes, there are planes between Boston
and Ithaca, New York, but Oliver Barrett III chose to drive. Not that
those many hours at the wheel could be taken as some kind of parental
gesture. My father simply likes to drive. Fast. And at that hour of
the night in an Aston Martin DBS you can go fast as hell. I have no
doubt that Oliver Barrett III was out to break his Ithaca-Boston
speed record, set the year previous after we had beaten Cornell and
taken the title. I know, because I saw him glance at his watch.

I went back to the motel to phone
Jenny.

It was the only good part of the
evening. I told her all about the fight (omitting the precise nature
of the casus belli) and I could tell she enjoyed it. Not many of her
wonky musician friends either threw or received punches.

‘Did you at least total the guy
that hit you?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Totally. I creamed him.’

‘I wish I coulda seen it. Maybe
you’ll beat up somebody in the Yale game, huh?’

‘Yeah.’

I smiled. How she loved the simple
things in life.

‘Jenny’s on the downstairs phone.’

This information was announced to me
by the girl on bells, although I had not identified myself or my
purpose in coming to Briggs Hall that Monday evening. I quickly
concluded that this meant points for me. Obviously the ‘Cliffie who
greeted me read the Crimson and knew who I was.

Okay, that had happened many times.
More significant was the fact that Jenny had been mentioning that she
was dating me.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait
here.’

‘Too bad about Cornell. The Crime
says four guys jumped you.’

‘Yeah. And I got the penalty. Five
minutes.’

‘Yeah.’

The difference between a friend and a
fan is that with the latter you quickly run out of conversation.

‘Jenny off the phone yet? ‘

She checked her switchboard, replied,
‘No.’

Who could Jenny be talking to that
was worth appropriating moments set aside for a date with me? Some
musical wonk? It was not unknown to me that Martin Davidson, Adams
House senior and conductor of the Bach Society orchestra, considered
himself to have a franchise on Jenny’s attention. Not body; I don’t
think the guy could wave more than his baton. Anyway, I would put a
stop to this usurpation of my time.

‘Where’s the phone booth?’

‘Around the corner.’ She pointed
in the precise direction.

I ambled into the lounge area. From
afar I could see Jenny on the phone. She had left the booth door
open. I walked slowly, casually, hoping she would catch sight of me,
my bandages, my injuries in toto, and be moved to slam down the
receiver and rush to my arms. As I approached, I could hear fragments
of conversation.

‘Yeah. Of course! Absolutely. Oh,
me too, Phil. I love you too, Phil.’

I stopped ambling. Who was she
talking to? It wasn’t Davidson - there was no Phil in any part of
his name. I had long ago checked him out in our Class Register:
Martin Eugene Davidson, 70 Riverside Drive, New York, High School of
Music and Art. His photo suggested sensitivity, intelligence and
about fifty pounds less than me. But why was I bothering about
Davidson?

Clearly both he and I were being shot
down by Jennifer Cavilleri, for someone to whom she was at this
moment (how gross!) blowing kisses into the phone!

I had been away only forty-eight
hours, and some bastard named Phil had crawled into bed with Jenny
(it had to be that!).

‘Yeah, Phil, I love you too. ‘Bye.’

As she was hanging up, she saw me,
and without so much as blushing, she smiled and waved me a kiss. How
could she be so two-faced?

She kissed me lightly on my unhurt
cheek.

‘Hey - you look awful.’

‘I’m injured, Jen.’

‘Does the other guy look worse?’

‘Yeah. Much. I always make the
other guy look worse.’

I said that as ominously as I could,
sort of implying that I would punch-out any rivals who would creep
into bed with Jenny while I was out of sight and evidently out of
mind. She grabbed my sleeve and we started toward the door.

‘Night, Jenny,’ called the girl
on bells.

‘Night, Sara Jane,’ Jenny called
back.

When we were outside, about to step
into my MG, I oxygenated my lungs with a breath of evening, and put
the question as casually as I could.

‘Say, Jen … ‘

‘Yeah?’

‘Uh - who’s Phil?’

She answered matter-of-factly as she
got into the car:

‘My father.’

I wasn’t about to believe a story
like that.

‘You call your father Phil?’

‘That’s his name. What do you
call yours?’

Jenny had once told me she had been
raised by her father, some sort of a baker type, in Cranston, Rhode
Island.

When she was very young, her mother
was killed in a car crash. All this by way of explaining why she had
no driver’s license. Her father, in every other way ‘a truly good
guy’ (her words), was incredibly
superstitious about letting his only daughter drive. This was a real
drag during her last years of high school, when she was taking piano
with a guy in Providence. But then she got to read all of Proust on
those long bus rides.

‘What do you call yours?’ she
asked again.

I had been so out of it, I hadn’t
heard her question.

‘My what?’

‘What term do you employ when you
speak of your progenitor?’

I answered with the term I’d always
wanted to employ.

‘Sonovabitch.’

‘To his face?’ she asked.

‘I never see his face.’

‘He wears a mask?’

‘In a way, yes. Of stone. Of
absolute stone.’

‘Go on - he must be proud as hell.
You’re a big Harvard jock.’

I looked at her. I guess she didn’t
know everything, after all.

‘So was he, Jenny.’

‘Bigger than All-Ivy wing?’

I liked the way she enjoyed my
athletic credentials.

Too bad I had to shoot myself down by
giving her my father’s.

‘He rowed single sculls in the 1928
Olympics.’

‘God,’ she said. ‘Did he win?’

‘No,’ I answered, and I guess she
could tell that the fact that he was sixth in the finals actually
afforded me some comfort.

There was a little silence. Now maybe
Jenny would understand that to be Oliver Barrett IV doesn’t just
mean living with that gray stone edifice in Harvard Yard. It involves
a kind of muscular intimidation as well. I mean, the image of
athletic achievement looming down on you. I mean, on me.

‘But what does he do to qualify as
a sonovabitch?’

Jenny asked.

‘Make me,’ I replied.

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Make me,’ I repeated.

Her eyes widened like saucers. ‘You
mean like incest?’

she asked.

‘Don’t give me your family
problems, Jen. I’ve got enough of my own.’

‘Like what, Oliver?’ she asked,
‘like just what is it he makes you do?’

‘The ‘right things,” I said.

‘What’s wrong with the ‘right
things’?’ she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.

I told her how I loathed being
programmed for the Barrett Tradition - which she should have
realized, having seen me cringe at having to mention the numeral at
the end of my name. And I did not like having to deliver x amount of
achievement every single term.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Jenny with broad
sarcasm, ‘I notice how you hate getting A’s, being All-Ivy - ‘

‘What I hate is that he expects no
less!’ Just saying what I had always felt (but never before spoken)
made me feel uncomfortable as hell, but now I had to make Jenny
understand it all. ‘And he’s so incredibly blasé when I do come
through.

I mean he just takes me absolutely
for granted.’

‘But he’s a busy man. Doesn’t
he run lots of banks and things?’

‘Jesus, Jenny, whose side are you
on?’

‘Is this a war?’ she asked.

‘Most definitely,’ I replied.

‘That’s ridiculous, Oliver.’

She seemed genuinely unconvinced. And
there I got my first inkling of a cultural gap between us. I mean,
three and a half years of Harvard-Radcliffe had pretty much made us
into the cocky intellectuals that institution traditionally produces,
but when it came to accepting the fact that my rather was made of
stone, she adhered to some atavistic Italian-Mediterranean notion of
papa-loves-bambinos, and there was no arguing otherwise.

I tried to cite a case in point. That
ridiculous nonconversation after the Cornell game. This definitely
made an impression on her. But the goddamn wrong one.

‘He went all the way up to Ithaca
to watch a lousy hockey game?’

I tried to explain that my father was
all form and no content. She was still obsessed with the fact that he
had traveled so far for such a (relatively) trivial sports event.

‘Look, Jenny, can we just forget
it?’

‘Thank God you’re hung up about
your father,’ she replied. ‘That means you’re not perfect.’

‘Oh - you mean you are?’

‘Hell no, Preppie. If I was, would
I be going out with you?’

Back to business as usual.

I
would like to say a word about our physical relationship.

For a strangely long while there
wasn’t any. I mean, there wasn’t anything more significant than
those kisses already mentioned (all of which I still remember in
greatest detail). This was not standard procedure as far as I was
concerned, being rather impulsive, impatient and quick to action. If
you were to tell any of a dozen girls at Tower Court, Wellesley, that
Oliver Barrett IV had been dating a young lady daily for three weeks
and had not slept with her, they would surely have laughed and
severely questioned the femininity of the girl involved. But of
course the actual facts were quite different.

I didn’t know what to do.

Don’t misunderstand or take that
too literally. I knew all the moves. I just couldn’t cope with my
own feelings about making them. Jenny was so smart that I was afraid
she might laugh at what I had traditionally considered the suave
romantic (and unstoppable) style of Oliver Barrett IV. I was afraid
of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the
wrong reasons. What I am fumbling to say is that I felt different
about Jennifer, and didn’t know what to say or even who to ask
about it. (‘You should have asked me,’ she said later.) I just knew I had
these feelings. For her.

For all of her.

‘You’re gonna flunk out, Oliver.’

We were sitting in my room on a
Sunday afternoon, reading.

‘Oliver, you’re gonna flunk out
if you just sit there watching me study.’

‘I’m not watching you study. I’m
studying.’

‘Bullshit. You’re looking at my
legs.’

‘Only once in a while. Every
chapter.’

‘.’That book has extremely short
chapters.’

‘Listen, you narcissistic bitch,
you’re not that great-looking! ‘

‘I know. But can I help it if you
think so?’

I threw down my book and crossed the
room to where she was sitting.

‘Jenny, for Christ’s sake, how
can I read John Stuart Mill when every single second I’m dying to
make love to you?’

She screwed up her brow and frowned.

I was crouching by her chair. She
looked back into her book.

‘Jenny - ‘

She closed her book softly, put it
down, then placed her hands on the sides of my neck.

‘Oliver - wouldja please.’

It all happened at once. Everything.

Our first physical encounter was the
polar opposite of our first verbal one. It was all so unhurried, so
soft, so gentle. I had never realized that this was the real Jenny -

the soft one, whose touch was so
light and so loving. And yet what truly shocked me was my own
response. I was gentle, I was tender. Was this the real Oliver
Barrett IV?

As I said, I had never seen Jenny
with so much as her sweater opened an extra button. I was somewhat
surprised to find that she wore a tiny golden cross. On one of those
chains that never unlock. Meaning that when we made love, she still
wore the cross. In a resting moment of that lovely afternoon, at one
of those junctures when everything and nothing is relevant, I touched
the little cross and inquired what her priest might have to say about
our being in bed together, and so forth. She answered that she had no
priest.

‘Aren’t you a good Catholic
girl?’ I asked.

‘Well, I’m a girl,’ she said.
‘And I’m good.’

She looked at me for confirmation and
I smiled. She smiled back.

‘So that’s two out of three.’

I then asked her why the cross,
welded, no less. She explained that it had been her mother’s; she
wore it for sentimental reasons, not religious. The conversation
returned to ourselves.