Love Story

9

There remained the matter of Cranston, Rhode Island, a city slightly more to the south of Boston than Ipswich is to the north. After the debacle of introducing Jennifer to her potential in-laws ('Do I call them outlaws now?' she asked), I did not look forward with any confidence to my meeting with her father. I mean, here I would be bucking that lotsa love Italian-Mediterranean syndrome, compounded by the fact that Jenny was an only child, compounded by the fact that she had no mother, which meant abnormally close ties to her father. I would be up against all those emotional forces the psych books describe.

Plus the fact that I was broke.

I mean, imagine for a second Olivero Barretto, some nice Italian kid from down the block in Cranston, Rhode Island. He comes to see Mr. Cavilleri, a wage-earning pastry chef of that city, and says, 'I would like to marry your only daughter, Jennifer.' What would the old man's first question be? (He would not question Barretto's love, since to know Jenny is to love Jenny; it's a universal truth.) No, Mr. Cavilleri would say something like, 'Barretto, how are you going to support her?'

Now imagine the good Mr. Cavilleri's reaction if Barretto informed him that the opposite would prevail, at least for the next three years: his daughter would have to support his son-in-law! Would not the good Mr. Cavilleri show Barretto to the door, or even, if Barretto were not my size, punch him out?

You bet your ass he would.

This may serve to explain why, on that Sunday afternoon in May, I was obeying all posted speed limits, as we headed southward on Route 95. Jenny, who had come to enjoy the pace at which I drove, complained at one point that I was going forty in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone. I told her the car needed tuning, which she believed not at all.

'Tell it to me again, Jen.'

Patience was not one of Jenny's virtues, and she refused to bolster my confidence by repeating the answers to all the stupid questions I had asked.

'Just one more time, Jenny, please.'

'I called him. I told him. He said okay. In English, because, as I told you and you don't seem to want to believe, he doesn't know a goddamn word of Italian except a few curses.'

'But what does 'okay' mean?'

'Are you implying that Harvard Law School has accepted a man who can't even define 'okay'?'

'It's not a legal term, Jenny.'

She touched my arm. Thank God, I understood that. I still needed clarification, though. I had to know what I was in for.

' 'Okay' could also mean 'I'll suffer through it.' '

She found the charity in her heart to repeat for the nth time the details of her conversation with her father. He was happy. He was. He had never expected, when he sent her off to Radcliffe, that she would return to Cranston to marry the boy next door (who by the way had asked her just before she left). He was at first incredulous that her intended's name was really Oliver Barrett IV. He had then warned his daughter not to violate the Eleventh Commandment.

'Which one is that?' I asked her.

'Do not bullshit thy father,' she said.

'Oh.'

'And that's all, Oliver. Truly.'

'He knows I'm poor?'

'Yes.'

'He doesn't mind?'

'At least you and he have something in common.'

'But he'd be happier if I had a few bucks, right?'

'Wouldn't you?'

I shut up for the rest of the ride.

Jenny lived on a street called Hamilton Avenue, a long line of wooden houses with many children in front of them, and a few scraggly trees. Merely driving down it, looking for a parking space, I felt like in another country. To begin with, there were so many people. Besides the children playing, there were entire families sitting on their porches with apparently nothing better to do this Sunday afternoon than to watch me park my MG.

Jenny leaped out first. She had incredible reflexes in Cranston, like some quick little grasshopper. There was all but an organized cheer when the porch watchers saw who my passenger was. No less than the great Cavilleri! When I heard all the greetings for her, I was almost ashamed to get out. I mean, I could not remotely for a moment pass for the hypothetical Olivero Barretto.

'Hey, Jenny!' I heard one matronly type shout with great gusto.

'Hey, Mrs. Capodilupo,' I heard Jenny bellow back. I climbed out of the car. I could feel the eyes on me.

'Hey — who's the boy?' shouted Mrs. Capodilupo. Not too subtle around here, are they?

'He's nothing!' Jenny called back. Which did wonders for my confidence.

'Maybe,' shouted Mrs. Capodilupo in my direction, 'but the girl he's with is really something!'

'He knows,' Jenny replied.

She then turned to satisfy neighbors on the other side.

'He knows,' she told a whole new group of her fans. She took my hand (I was a stranger in paradise), and led me up the stairs to 189A Hamilton Avenue.

It was an awkward moment.

I just stood there as Jenny said, 'This is my father.' And Phil Cavilleri, a roughhewn (say 5'9", 165-pound) Rhode Island type in his late forties, held out his hand.

We shook and he had a strong grip.

'How do you do, sir?'

'Phil,' he corrected me, 'I'm Phil.'

'Phil, sir,' I replied, continuing to shake his hand.

It was also a scary moment. Because then, just as he let go of my hand, Mr. Cavilleri turned to his daughter and gave this incredible shout:

'Jennifer!'

For a split second nothing happened. And then they were hugging. Tight. Very tight. Rocking to and fro. All Mr. Cavilleri could offer by way of further comment was the (now very soft) repetition of his daughter's name: 'Jennifer.' And all his graduating-Radcliffe-with-honors daughter could offer by way of reply was: 'Phil.'

I was definitely the odd man out.

One thing about my couth upbringing helped me out that afternoon. I had always been lectured about not talking with my mouth full. Since Phil and his daughter kept conspiring to fill that orifice, I didn't have to speak. I must have eaten a record quantity of Italian pastries. Afterward I discoursed at some length on which ones I had liked best (I ate no less than two of each kind, for fear of giving offense), to the delight of the two Cavilleris.

'He's okay,' said Phil Cavilleri to his daughter.

What did that mean?

I didn't need to have 'okay' defined; I merely wished to know what of my few and circumspect actions had earned for me that cherished epithet.

Did I like the right cookies? Was my handshake strong enough? What?

'I told you he was okay, Phil,' said Mr. Cavilleri's daughter.

'Well, okay,' said her father, 'I still had to see for myself. Now I saw. Oliver?'

He was now addressing me.

'Yes, sir?'

'Phil.'

'Yes, Phil, sir?'

'You're okay.'

'Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Really I do. And you know how I feel about your daughter, sir. And you, sir.'

'Oliver,' Jenny interrupted, 'will you stop babbling like a stupid goddamn preppie, and — '

'Jennifer,' Mr. Cavilleri interrupted, 'can you avoid the profanity? The sonovabitch is a guest!'

At dinner (the pastries turned out to be merely a snack) Phil tried to have a serious talk with me about you-can-guess-what. For some crazy reason he thought he could effect a rapprochement between Olivers III and IV.

'Let me speak to him on the phone, father to father,' he pleaded.

'Please, Phil, it's a waste of time.'

'I can't sit here and allow a parent to reject a child. I can't.'

'Yeah. But I reject him too, Phil.'

'Don't ever let me hear you talk like that,' he said, getting genuinely angry. 'A father's love is to be cherished and respected. It's rare.'

'Especially in my family,' I said.

Jenny was getting up and down to serve, so she was not involved with most of this.

'Get him on the phone,' Phil repeated. 'I'll take care of this.'

'No, Phil. My father and I have installed a cold line.'

'Aw, listen, Oliver, he'll thaw. Believe me when I tell you he'll thaw. When it's time to go to church — '

At this moment Jenny, who was handing out dessert plates, directed at her father a portentous monosyllable.

'Phil …?'

'Yeah, Jen?'

'About the church bit …'

'Yeah?'

'Uh — kind of negative on it, Phil.'

'Oh?' asked Mr. Cavilleri. Then, leaping instantly to the wrong conclusion, he turned apologetically toward me.

'I — uh — didn't mean necessarily Catholic Church, Oliver. I mean, as Jennifer has no doubt told you, we are of the Catholic faith. But, I mean, your church, Oliver. God will bless this union in any church, I swear.'

I looked at Jenny, who had obviously failed to cover this crucial topic in her phone conversation.

'Oliver,' she explained, 'it was just too goddamn much to hit him with at once.'

'What's this?' asked the ever affable Mr. Cavilleri. 'Hit me, hit me, children. I want to be hit with everything on your minds.'

Why is it that at this precise moment my eyes hit upon the porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary on a shelf in the Cavilleris' dining room?

'It's about the God-blessing bit, Phil,' said Jenny, averting her gaze from him.

'Yeah, Jen, yeah?' asked Phil, fearing the worst.

'Uh — kind of negative on it, Phil,' she said, now glancing at me for support — which my eyes tried to give her.

'On God? On anybody's God?'

Jenny nodded yes.

'May I explain, Phil?' I asked.

'Please.'

'We neither of us believe, Phil. And we won't be hypocrites.'

I think he took it because it came from me. He might maybe have hit Jenny. But now he was the odd man out, the foreigner. He couldn't look at either of us.

'That's fine,' he said after a very long time. 'Could I just be informed as to who performs the ceremony?'

'We do,' I said.

He looked at his daughter for verification. She nodded. My statement was correct.

After another long silence, he again said, 'That's fine.' And then he inquired of me, inasmuch as I was planning a career in law, whether such a kind of marriage is — what's the word? — legal?

Jenny explained that the ceremony we had in mind would have the college Unitarian chaplain preside ('Ah, chaplain,' murmured Phil) while the man and woman address each other.

'The bride speaks too?' he asked, almost as if this — of all things — might be the coup de grace.

'Philip,' said his daughter, 'could you imagine any situation in which I would shut up?'

'No, baby,' he replied, working up a tiny smile. 'I guess you would have to talk.'

As we drove back to Cambridge, I asked Jenny how she thought it all went.

'Okay,' she said.