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.
10
Mr. William F. Thompson, Associate Dean of the Harvard Law School, could not believe his ears.
