Erich Segal: Love Story

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 ticket, 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.

'Someday,' she said, 'when you're being bugged by Oliver V — '

'He won't be called Oliver, be sure of that!' I snapped at her. She didn't raise her voice, though she usually did when I did.

'Lissen, Ol, even if we name him Bozo the Clown, that kid's still gonna resent you 'cause you were a big Harvard jock. And by the time he's a freshman, you'll probably be in the Supreme Court!'

I told her that our son would definitely not resent me. She then inquired how I could be so certain of that. I couldn't produce evidence. I mean, I simply knew our son would not resent me, I couldn't say precisely why. As an absolute non sequitur, Jenny then remarked:

'Your father loves you too, Oliver. He loves you just the way you'll love Bozo. But you Barretts are so damn proud and competitive, you'll go through life thinking you hate each other.'

'If it weren't for you,' I said facetiously.

'Yes,' she said.

'The case is closed,' I said, being, after all, the husband and head of household. My eyes returned to The State v. Percival and Jenny got up. But then she remembered:

'There's still the matter of the RSVP.'

I allowed that a Radcliffe music major could probably compose a nice little negative RSVP without professional guidance.

'Listen, Oliver,' she said, 'I've probably lied or cheated in my life. But I've never deliberately hurt anyone. I don't think I could.'

Really, at that moment she was only hurting me, so I asked her politely to handle the RSVP in whatever manner she wished, as long as the essence of the message was that we wouldn't show unless hell froze over. I returned once again to The State v. Percival.

'What's the number?' I heard her say very softly. She was at the telephone.

'Can't you just write a note?'

'In a minute I'll lose my nerve. What's the number?'

I told her and was instantaneously immersed in Percival's appeal to the Supreme Court. I was not listening to Jenny. That is, I tried not to. She was in the same room, after all.

'Oh — good evening, sir,' I heard her say. Did the Sonovabitch answer the phone? Wasn't he in Washington during the week? That's what a recent profile in The New York Times said. Goddamn journalism is going downhill nowadays.

How long does it take to say no?

Somehow Jennifer had already taken more time than one would think necessary to pronounce this simple syllable.

'Ollie?'

She had her hand over the mouthpiece.

'Ollie, does it have to be negative?'

The nod of my head indicated that it had to be, the wave of my hand indicated that she should hurry the hell up.

'I'm terribly sorry,' she said into the phone. 'I mean, we're terribly sorry, sir …'

We're! Did she have to involve me in this? And why can't she get to the point and hang up?

'Oliver!'

She had her hand on the mouthpiece again and was talking very loud.

'He's wounded, Oliver! Can you just sit there and let your father bleed?'