Love Story (7 page)

I put Ray Stratton in charge of Phil.
I mean, just to keep him as loose as possible. Not that Stratton was
all that calm! The pair of them stood there, looking tremendously
uncomfortable, each silently reinforcing the other’s preconceived
notion that this ‘do-it-yourself wedding’ (as Phil referred to
it) was going to be (as Stratton kept predicting) ‘an incredible
horror show.’ Just because Jenny and I were going to address a few
words directly to one another! We had actually seen it done earlier
that spring when one of Jenny’s musical friends, Marya Randall,
married a design student named Eric Levenson. It was a very beautiful
thing, and really sold us on the idea, ‘Are you two ready?’ asked
Mr. Blauvelt.

‘Yes,’ I said for both of us.

‘Friends,’ said Mr. Blauvelt to
the others, ‘we are here to witness the union of two lives in
marriage. Let us listen to the words they have chosen to read on this
sacred occasion.’

The bride first. Jenny stood facing
me and recited the poem she had selected. It was very moving, perhaps
especially to me, because it was a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett: When
our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent,
drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire
…

From the corner of my eye I saw Phil
Cavilleri, pale, slack-jawed, eyes wide with amazement and adoration
combined.

We listened to Jenny finish the
sonnet, which was in its way a kind of prayer for

A place to stand and love in for a
day, With darkness and the death’ hour rounding it.

Then it was my turn. It had been hard
finding a piece of poetry I could read without blushing. I mean, I
couldn’t stand there and recite lace-doily phrases. I couldn’t.
But a section of Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road, though kind
of brief, said it all for me: … I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than
money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me
yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long
as we live?

I finished, and there was a wonderful
hush in the room. Then Ray Stratton handed me the ring, and Jenny and
I - ourselves - recited the marriage
vows, taking each other, from that day forward, to love and cherish,
till death do us part.

By the authority vested in him by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Mr. Timothy Blauvelt pronounced us man
and wife.

Upon reflection, our ‘post-game
party’ (as Stratton referred to it) was pretentiously
unpretentious. Jenny and I had absolutely rejected the champagne
route, and since there were so few of us we could all fit into one
booth, we went to drink beer at Cronin’s. As I recall, Jim Cronin
himself set us up with a round, as a tribute to ‘the greatest
Harvard hockey player since the Cleary brothers.’

‘Like hell,’ argued Phil
Cavilleri, pounding his fist on the table. ‘He’s better than all
the Clearys put together.’ Philip’s meaning, I believe (he had
never seen a Harvard hockey game), was that however well Bobby or
Billy Cleary might have skated, neither got to marry his lovely
daughter. I mean, we were all smashed, and it was just an excuse for
getting more so.

I let Phil pick up the tab, a
decision which later evoked one of Jenny’s rare compliments about
my intuition (‘You’ll be a human being yet, Preppie’). It got a
little hairy at the end when we drove him to the bus, however. I
mean, the wet-eyes bit. His, Jenny’s, maybe mine too; I don’t
remember anything except that the moment was liquid.

Anyway, after all sorts of blessings,
he got onto the bus and we waited and waved until it drove out of
sight. It was then that the awesome truth started to get to me.

‘Jenny, we’re legally married!’

‘Yeah, now I can be a bitch.’

If a single word can describe our daily life during those first
three years, it is ‘scrounge.’ Every waking moment we were
concentrating on how the hell we would be able to scrape up enough
dough to do whatever it was we had to do. Usually it was just break
even. And there’s nothing romantic about it, either. Remember the
famous stanza in Omar Khayyam? You know, the book of verses
underneath the bough, the loaf of bread, the jug of wine and so
forth? Substitute Scott on Trusts for that book of verses and see how
this poetic vision stacks up against my idyllic existence. Ah,
paradise? No, bullshit. All I’d think about is how much that book
was (could we get it secondhand?) and where, if anywhere, we might be
able to charge that bread and wine. And then how we might ultimately
scrounge up the dough to pay off our debts.

Life changes. Even the simplest
decision must be scrutinized by the ever vigilant budget committee of
your mind.

‘Hey, Oliver, let’s go see Becket
tonight’

‘Listen, it’s three bucks.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean a buck fifty for you and a
buck fifty for me.’

‘Does that mean yes or no?’

‘Neither. It just means three
bucks.’

Our honeymoon was spent on a yacht
and with twenty-one children. That is, I sailed a thirty-six-foot
Rhodes from seven in the morning till whenever my passengers had
enough, and Jenny was a children’s counselor. It was a place called
the Pequod Boat Club in Dennis Port (not far from Hyannis), an
establishment that included a large hotel, a marina and several dozen
houses for rent. In one of the tinier bungalows, I have nailed an
imaginary plaque: ‘Oliver and Jenny slept here - when they weren’t
making love.’ I think it’s a tribute to us both that after a long
day of being kind to our customers, for we were largely dependent on
their tips for our income, Jenny and I were nonetheless kind to each
other. I simply say ‘kind,’ because I lack the vocabulary to
describe what loving and being loved by Jennifer Cavilleri is like.
Sorry, I mean Jennifer Barrett.

Before leaving for the Cape, we found
a cheap apartment in North Cambridge. I called it North Cambridge,
although the address was technically in the town of Somerville and
the house was, as Jenny described it, ‘in the state of disrepair.’
It had originally been a two-family structure, now converted into
four apartments, overpriced even at its’ ‘cheap’ rental. But
what the hell can graduate students do? It’s a seller’s market.

‘Hey, Ol, why do you think the fire
department hasn’t condemned the joint?’ Jenny asked.

‘They’re probably afraid to walk
inside,’ I said.

‘So am I.’

‘You weren’t in June,’ I said.

(This dialogue was taking place upon
our reentry in September.)

‘I wasn’t married then. Speaking
as a married woman, I consider this place to be unsafe at any speed.’

‘What do you intend to do about
it?’

‘Speak to my husband,’ she
replied. ‘He’ll take care of it.’

‘Hey, I’m your husband,’ I
said.

‘Really? Prove it.’

‘How?’ I asked, inwardly
thinking, Oh no, in the street?

‘Carry me over the threshold,’
she said.

‘You don’t believe in that
nonsense, do you?’

‘Carry me, and I’ll decide
after.’

Okay. I scooped her in my arms and
hauled her up five steps onto the porch.

‘Why’d you stop?’ she asked.

‘Isn’t this the threshold?’

‘Negative, negative,’ she said.

‘I see our name by the bell.’

‘This is not the official goddamn
threshold. Upstairs, you turkey!’

It was twenty-four steps up to our
‘official’

homestead, and I had to pause about
halfway to catch my breath.

‘Why are you so heavy? ‘ I asked
her.

‘Did you ever think I might be
pregnant?’ she answered.

This didn’t make it easier for me
to catch my breath.

‘Are you?’ I could finally say.

‘Hah! Scared you, didn’t I?’

‘Nah.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Preppie.’

‘Yeah. For a second there, I
clutched.’

I carried her the rest of the way.

This is among the precious few
moments I can recall in which the verb ‘scrounge’ has no
relevance whatever.

My illustrious name enabled us to
establish a charge account at a grocery store which would otherwise
have denied credit to students. And yet it worked to our disadvantage
at a place I would least have expected: the Shady Lane School, where
Jenny was to teach.

‘Of course, Shady Lane isn’t able
to match the public school salaries,’ Miss Anne Miller Whitman, the
principal, told my wife, adding something to the effect that Barretts
wouldn’t be concerned with ‘that aspect’ anyway. Jenny tried to
dispel her illusions, but all she could get in addition to the
already offered thirty-five hundred for the year was about two
minutes of ‘ho ho ho’s. Miss Whitman thought Jenny was being so
witty in her remarks about Barretts having to pay the rent just like
other people.

When Jenny recounted all this to me,
I made a few imaginative suggestions about what Miss Whitman could do
with her - ho ho ho - thirty-five hundred. But then Jenny asked if I
would like to drop out of law school and support her while she took
the education credits needed to teach in a public school. I gave the
whole situation a big think for about two seconds and reached an
accurate and succinct conclusion: ‘Shit.’

‘That’s pretty eloquent,’ said
my wife.

‘What am I supposed to say, Jenny -
‘ho ho ho’?’

‘No. Just learn to like spaghetti.’

I did. I learned to like spaghetti,
and Jenny learned every conceivable recipe to make pasta seem like
something else. What with our summer earnings, her salary, the income
anticipated from my planned night work in the post office during
Christmas rush, we were doing okay. I mean, there were a lot of
movies we didn’t see (and concerts she didn’t go to), but we were
making ends meet.

‘Of course, about all we were
meeting were ends. I mean, socially both our lives changed
drastically. We were still in Cambridge, and theoretically Jenny
could have stayed with all her music groups. But there wasn’t time.
She came home from Shady Lane exhausted, and there was dinner yet to
cook (eating out was beyond the realm of maximum feasibility).
Meanwhile my own friends were considerate enough to let us alone. I
mean, they didn’t invite us so we wouldn’t have to invite them,
if you know what I mean.

We even skipped the football games.

As a member of the Varsity Club, I
was entitled to seats in their terrific section on the fifty-yard
line. But it was six bucks a ticker, which is twelve bucks.

‘It’s not,’ argued Jenny, ‘it’s
six bucks. You can go without me. I don’t know a thing about
football except people shout ‘Hit ‘em again,’ which is what you
adore, which is why I want you to goddamn go!’

‘The case is closed,’ I would
reply, being after all the husband and head of household. ‘Besides,
I can use the time to study.’ Still, I would spend Saturday
afternoons with a transistor at my ear, listening to the roar of the
fans, who, though geographically but a mile away, were now in another
world.

I used my Varsity Club privileges to
get Yale game seats for Robbie Wald, a Law School classmate. When
Robbie left our apartment, effusively grateful, Jenny asked if I
wouldn’t tell her again just who got to sit in the V. Club section,
and I once more explained that it was for those who, regardless of
age or size or social rank, had nobly served fair Harvard on the
playing fields.

‘On the water too?’ she asked.

‘Jocks are jocks,’ I answered,
‘dry or wet.’

‘Except you, Oliver,’ she said.
‘You’re frozen.’

I let the subject drop, assuming that
this was simply Jennifer’s usual flip repartee, not wanting to
think there had been any more to her question concerning the athletic
traditions of Harvard University. Such as perhaps the subtle
suggestion that although Soldiers Field holds 45,000 people, all
former athletes would be seated in that one terrific section. All.
Old and young. Wet, dry - and even frozen. And was it merely six
dollars that kept me away from the stadium those Saturday afternoons?

No; if she had something else in
mind, I would rather not discuss it.

Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Barrett III

request the pleasure of your company
at a dinner in celebration of

Mr. Barrett’s sixtieth birthday

Saturday, the sixth of March

at seven o’clock

Dover House, Ipswich, Massachusetts
R.s.v.p.

‘Well?’ asked Jennifer.

‘Do you even have to ask?’ I
replied. I was in the midst of abstracting The State v. Percival, a
crucial precedent in criminal law. Jenny was sort of waving the
invitation to bug me.

‘I think it’s about time,
Oliver,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For you know very well what,’
she answered. ‘Does he have to crawl here on his hands and knees?’

I kept working as she worked me over.

‘Ollie - he’s reaching out to
you!’

‘Bullshit, Jenny. My mother
addressed the envelope.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t
look at it!’ she sort of yelled.

Okay, so I did glance at it earlier.
Maybe it had slipped my mind. I was, after all, in the midst of
abstracting The State v. Percival, and in the virtual shadow of
exams. The point was she should have stopped haranguing me.

‘Ollie, think,’ she said, her
tone kind of pleading now. ‘Sixty goddamn years old. Nothing says
he’ll still be around when you’re finally ready for the
reconciliation.’

I informed Jenny in the simplest
possible terms that there would never be a reconciliation and would
she please let me continue my studying. She sat down quietly,
squeezing herself onto a corner of the hassock where I had my feet.

Although she didn’t make a sound, I
quickly became aware that she was looking at me very hard. I glanced
up.