CHAPTER 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 Christ sake?"

"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 moll:

"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. Precipitous ness. 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.

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.