CHAPTER 4

 

 

"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

'Cliffle 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?"

Iliked 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 blase 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

father 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?"

Itried 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.