Erich Segal: Oliver's Story

'Maybe. For a while I guess I did. But basically my anger was against myself. For all the things I should have done while she was still alive.'

There was a pause and Dr London said, 'Such as?'

I talked again of my estrangement from my family. How I had let the circumstances of my marriage to a girl of slightly (hugely!) different social background be a declaration of my independence. Watch, Big Daddy Rich-with-Bucks, I'll make it on my goddamn own.

Except one thing. I made it rough on Jenny. Not just emotionally. Though that was bad enough, considering her passion when it came to honoring your parents. But even worse was my refusal to take anything from them. To me this was a source of pride. But shit, to Jenny, who'd grown up in poverty, what could be new and wonderful about not having money in the bank?

'And just to serve my arrogance, she had to make so many sacrifices.

'Do you think she thought of them as sacrifices?' asked London, probably intuiting that Jenny never once complained.

'Doctor, what she may have thought no longer is the point.'

He looked at me.

For half a second I was frightened I might … cry.

'Jenny's dead and only now I see how selfishly I acted.'

There was a pause.

'How?' he asked.

'We were graduating. Jenny had this scholarship to France. When we decided to get married there was never any question. We just knew we'd stay in Cambridge and I'd go to law school. Why?'

There was another silence. Dr London did not speak. So I continued ranting.

'Why the hell did that appear the only logical alternative? My goddamn arrogance! To just assume my life was more important!'

'There were things you couldn't know,' said Dr London. It was a gauche attempt to mollify my guilt.

'Still I knew — goddammit — that she'd never been to Europe! Couldn't I have gone with her and been a lawyer one year later?'

Maybe he might think this was some ex post facto guilt from reading women's lib material. It wasn't that. I didn't hurt so much from stopping Jenny's 'higher studies', but for keeping her from tasting Paris. Seeing London. Feeling Italy. 'Do you understand?' I asked. There was another pause.

'Are you prepared to spend some time on this?' he asked.

'That's why I came.'

'Tomorrow, five o'clock?'

I nodded. And he nodded. I left.

I walked along Park Avenue to get myself together. And to gear myself for what would lie ahead. Tomorrow we would start the surgery. Incisions in the soul I knew would hurt. I was prepared for that.

I only wondered what the hell I'd find.

It took about a week to get to Oedipus.

Who has a palace on the Harvard campus: Barrett Hall.

'My family donated it to buy respectability.'

'Why?' Dr London asked.

'Because our money isn't clean. Because my ancestors were pioneers in sweatshop labor. Our philanthropy is just a recent hobby.'

Curious to say, I learned this not from any book about the Barretts, but … at Harvard.

When I was a college senior, I needed distribution credits. Hence along with hordes of others I took Soc. Sci. 108, American Industrial Development. The teacher was a so-called radical economist named Donald Vogel. He had already earned a place in Harvard history by interweaving all his data with obscenities. Furthermore, his course was famed because it was a total gut.

('I don't believe in blanking blanking blank examinations,' Vogel said. The masses cheered.) It would be an understatement to report the hall was packed. It overflowed with lazy jocks and zealous pre-med students, all in quest of lack of work.

Usually, despite Don Vogel's indigo vocabulary, most of us would get some extra zzz's or read the Crimson. Then one day, unfortunately, I tuned in. The subject was the early U.S. textile industry, a likely soporific.

'Blank, when it comes to textiles, many blanking "noble" Harvard names played very sordid roles. Take, for instance, Amos Brewster Barrett, Harvard class of 1794 … '

Holy shit — my family! Did Vogel know that I was out there listening? Or did he give this lecture to his mob of students every year?

I scrunched down in my seat as he continued.

'In 1814, Amos and some other Harvard cronies joined forces to bring the industrial revolution to Fall River, Massachusetts. They built the first big textile factories. And "took care" of all their workers. It's called paternalism. For morals' sake, they housed the girls recruited from the distant farms in dormitories. Of course the company deducted half their meager pay for food and lodging.

'The little ladies worked an eighty-hour week. And naturally the Barretts taught them to be frugal. "Put your money in the bank, girls." Guess who also owned the banks?'

I longed to metamorphose into a mosquito, just to buzz away.

Orchestrated by an even more than usual cascade of epithets, Don Vogel chronicled the growth of Barrett enterprise. He continued for the better (or the worse) part of an hour.

In the early nineteenth century, half the workers in Fall River were mere children. Some as young as five. The kids took home two bucks a week, the women three, the men a princely seven and a half.

But not all cash, of course. Part was paid to them in coupons. Valid only in the Barrett stores. Of course.

Vogel gave examples of how bad conditions were. For instance, in the weaving room, humidity improves the quality of cloth. So owners would inject more steam into their plants. And in the peak of summer, windows were kept closed to keep the warp and filling damp. This did not endear the Barretts to the workers.

'And dig this blanking blanking fact,' Don Vogel fumed. 'It wasn't bad enough with all the squalor and the filth — or all those accidents not covered by the slightest compensation — but their blanking pay went down! The Barrett profits soared and yet they cut the blanking workers' pay!

'Cause each new wave of immigrants would work for even less!

'Blank blank blanking blanking blank!'

Later that semester I was grinding in the Radcliffe Library. There I met a girl. Jenny Cavilleri, '64. Her father was a pastry chef from Cranston. Her late mother, T'resa Verna Cavilleri, was the daughter of Sicilians who had emigrated to … Fall River, Massachusetts.

'Now can you understand why I resent my family?'

There was a pause.

'Five o'clock tomorrow,' Dr London said.

I ran.

When I left the doctor's office I felt much more angry and confused than when I had begun. And thus the only therapy for therapy seemed to be running hard in Central Park. Since our chance reunion I had managed to con Simpson into working out with me. So whenever hospital commitments gave him time, we'd meet and circumambulate the reservoir.

Happily, he never asked me if I ever followed up with Miss Joanna Stein. Did she ever tell him?

Had she diagnosed me too? Anyway, the subject was conspicuously absent from our dialogues.

Frankly, I think Steve was satisfied that I was talking to humanity again. I never bullshit with my friends and so I told him I had started seeing a psychiatrist, I didn't offer details and he didn't ask.

This afternoon, my session with the doctor had me very agitated and unwittingly I ran too fast for Steve. After just a single lap, he had to stop.

'Hey, man, you go this one alone,' he puffed. 'I'll pick you up on number three.'