Love Story

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 '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 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?'

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.