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thought:
'After all, it's part of what you are.'
I sat there for a while, watching a neon sign blink 'Clams and Oysters.' What I had loved so much
about Jenny was her ability to see inside me, to understand things I never needed to carve out in
words. She was still doing it. But could I face the fact that I wasn't perfect? Christ, she had already
faced my imperfection and her own. Christ, how unworthy I felt!
I didn't know what the hell to say.
'Would you like a clam or an oyster, Jen?'
'Would you like a punch in the mouth, Preppie?'
'Yes,' I said.
She made a fist and then placed it gently against my cheek. I kissed it, and as I reached over to
embrace her, she straight-armed me, and barked like a gun moll:
'Just drive, Preppie. Get back to the wheel and start speeding!'
I did. I did.
My father's basic comment concerned what he considered excessive velocity. Haste.
Precipitousness. I forget his exact words, but I know the text for his sermon during our luncheon at
the Harvard Club concerned itself primarily with my going too fast. He warmed up for it by.
suggesting that I not bolt my food. I politely suggested that I was a grown man, that he should no
longer correct - or even comment upon - my behavior. He allowed that even world leaders needed
constructive criticism now and then. I took this to be a not-too-subtle allusion to his stint in
Washington during the first Roosevelt Administration. But I was not about to set him up to reminisce
about F.D.R., or his role in U.S. bank reform. So I shut up.
We were, as I said, eating lunch in the Harvard Club of Boston. (I too fast, if one accepts my
father's estimate.) This means we were surrounded by his people. His classmates, clients, admirers
and so forth. I mean, it was a put-up job, if ever there was one. If you really listened, you might hear
some of them murmur things like, 'There goes Oliver Barrett.' Or 'That's Barrett, the big athlete.'
It was yet another round in our series of nonconversations. Only the very nonspecific nature of
the talk was glaringly conspicuous.
'Father, you haven't said a word about Jennifer.'
'What is there to say? You've presented us with a fait accompli, have you not?'
'But what do you think, Father?'
'I think Jennifer is admirable. And for a girl from her background to get all the way to Radcliffe . .
.'
With this pseudo-melting-pot bullshit, he was skirting the issue.
'Get to the point, Father!'
'The point has nothing to do with the young lady,' he said, 'it has to do with you.'
'Ah?' I said.
'Your rebellion,' he added. 'You are rebelling, son.'
'Father, I fail to see how marrying a beautiful and brilliant Radcliffe girl constitutes rebellion. I
mean, she's not some crazy hippie - '
'She is not many things.'
Ah, here we come. The goddamn nitty gritty.
'What irks you most, Father - that she's Catholic or that she's poor?'
He replied in kind of a whisper, leaning slightly toward me.
'What attracts you most? '
I wanted to get up and leave. I told him so.
'Stay here and talk like a man,' he said.
As opposed to what? A boy? A girl? A mouse? Anyway, I stayed.
The Sonovabitch derived enormous satisfaction from my remaining seated. I mean, I could tell he
regarded it as another in his many victories over me.
'I would only ask that you wait awhile,' said Oliver Barrett III.
'Define 'while,' please.'
'Finish law school. If this is real, it can stand the test of time.'
'It is real, but why in hell should I subject it to some arbitrary test?'
My implication was clear, I think. I was standing up to him. To his arbitrariness. To his
compulsion to dominate and control my life.
'Oliver.' He began a new round. 'You're a minor - '
'A minor what?' I was losing my temper, goddammit.
'You are not yet twenty-one. Not legally an adult.'
'Screw the legal nitpicking, dammit!''
Perhaps some neighboring diners heard this remark. As if to compensate for my loudness,
Oliver III aimed his next words at me in a biting whisper:
'Marry her now, and I will not give you the time of day.' Who gave a shit if somebody overheard.
'Father, you don't know the time of day.'
I walked out of his life and began my own.
9
There remained the matter of Cranston, Rhode Island, a city slightly more to the south of Boston
than Ipswich is to the north. After the debacle of introducing Jennifer to her potential in-laws ('Do I
call them outlaws now?' she asked), I did not look forward with any confidence to my meeting with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]