'We graduate and we go our separate ways. You'll go to Law school — '
'Wait a minute — what are you talking about?'
Now she looked me in the eye. And her face was sad.
'Ollie, you're a preppie millionaire, and I'm a social zero.'
I was still holding onto her shoulders.
'What the hell does that have to do with separate ways? We're together now, we're happy.'
'Ollie, don't be stupid,' she repeated. 'Harvard is like Santa's Christmas bag. You can stuff any crazy kind of toy into it. But when the holiday's over, they shake you out … ' She hesitated.
' … and you gotta go back where you belong.'
'You mean you're going to bake cookies in Cranston, Rhode Island?'
I was saying desperate things.
'Pastries,' she said. 'And don't make fun of my fatter.'
'Then don't leave me, Jenny. Please.'
'What about my scholarship? What about Paris, which I've never seen in my whole goddamn life?'
'What about our marriage?'
It was I who spoke those words, although for a split second I wasn't sure I really had.
'Who said anything about marriage?'
'Me. I'm saying it now.'
'You want to marry me?'
'Yes.'
She tilted her head, did not smile, but merely inquired:
'Why?'
I looked her straight in the eye.
'Because,' I said.
'Oh,' she said. 'That's a very good reason.'
She took my arm (not my sleeve this time), and we walked along the river. There was nothing more to say, really.
7
Ipswich, Mass., is some forty minutes from the Mystic River Bridge, depending on the weather and how you drive. I have actually made it on occasion in twenty-nine minutes. A certain distinguished Boston banker claims an even faster time, but when one is discussing sub thirty minutes from Bridge to Barretts', it is difficult to separate fact from fancy. I happen to consider twenty-nine minutes as the absolute limit. I mean, you can't ignore the traffic signals on Route I, can you?
'You're driving like a maniac,' Jenny said.
'This is Boston,' I replied. 'Everyone drives like a maniac.' We were halted for a red light on Route I at the time.
'You'll kill us before your parents can murder us.'
'Listen, Jen, my parents are lovely people.'
The light changed. The MG was at sixty in under ten seconds.
'Even the Sonovabitch?' she asked.
'Who?'
'Oliver Barrett III.'
'Ah, he's a nice guy. You'll really like him.'
'How do you know?'
'Everybody likes him,' I replied.
'Then why don't you?'
'Because everybody likes him,' I said.
Why was I taking her to meet them, anyway? I mean, did I really need Old Stonyface's blessing or anything? Part of it was that she wanted to ('That's the way it's done, Oliver') and part of it was the simple fact that Oliver III was my banker in the very grossest sense: he paid the goddamn tuition.
It had to be Sunday dinner, didn't it? I mean, that's comme il faut, right? Sunday, when all the lousy drivers were clogging Route I and getting in my way. I pulled off the main drag onto Groton Street, a road whose turns I had been taking at high speeds since I was thirteen.
'There are no houses here,' said Jenny, 'just trees.'
'The houses are behind the trees.'
When traveling down Groton Street, you've got to be very careful or else you'll miss the turnoff into our place. Actually, I missed the turnoff myself that afternoon. I was three hundred yards down the road when I screeched to a halt.
'Where are we?' she asked.
'Past it,' I mumbled, between obscenities.
Is there something symbolic in the fact that I backed up three hundred yards to the entrance of our place? Anyway, I drove slowly once we were on Barrett soil. It's at least a half mile in from Groton Street to Dover House proper. En route you pass other … well, buildings. I guess it's fairly impressive when you see it for the first time.
'Holy shit!' Jenny said.
'What's the matter, Jen?'
'Pull over, Oliver. No kidding. Stop the car.'
I stopped the car. She was clutching.
'Hey, I didn't think it would be like this.'
'Like what?'
'Like this rich. I mean, I bet you have serfs living here.'
I wanted to reach over and touch her, but my palms were not dry (an uncommon state), and so I gave her verbal reassurance.
'Please, Jen. It'll be a breeze.'
'Yeah, but why is it I suddenly wish my name was Abigail Adams, or Wendy WASP?'
We drove the rest of the way in silence, parked and walked up to the front door. As we waited for the ring to be answered, Jenny succumbed to a last-minute panic.
'Let's run,' she said.
'Let's stay and fight,' I said.
Was either of us joking?
The door was opened by Florence, a devoted and antique servant of the Barrett family.
'Ah, Master Oliver,' she greeted me.
God, how I hate to be called that! I detest that implicitly derogatory distinction between me and Old Stonyface.
My parents, Florence informed us, were waiting in the library. Jenny was taken aback by some of the portraits we passed. Not just that some were by John Singer Sargent (notably Oliver Barrett II, sometimes displayed in the Boston Museum), but the new realization that not all of my forebears were named Barrett. There had been solid Barrett women who had mated well and bred such creatures as Barrett Winthrop, Richard Barrett Sewall and even Abbott Lawrence Lyman, who had the temerity to go through life (and Harvard, its implicit analogue), becoming a prize-winning chemist, without so much as a Barrett in his middle name!
'Jesus Christ,' said Jenny. 'I see half the buildings at Harvard hanging here.'
'It's all crap,' I told her.
'I didn't know you were related to Sewall Boat House too,' she said.
'Yeah. I come from a long line of wood and stone.'
At the end of the long row of portraits, and just before one turns into the library, stands a glass case. In the
