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Jenny
too, very softly).
    ‘Play ball!’ said I, as kind of a
pleasantry.
    Nobody seemed amused. Least of all
Jenny. She looked away from me. Oliver III glanced across at me.
    ‘I certainly wish you would play
ball now and then, Oliver.’
    We did not eat in total silence,
thanks to my mother’s remarkable capacity for small talk.
    ‘Mostly. My mother was from Fall
River.’
    ‘The Barrens have mills in Fall
River,’ noted Oliver III.
    ‘Where they exploited the poor for
generations,’ added Oliver IV.
    ‘In the nineteenth century,’
added Oliver III.
    My mother smiled at this, apparently
satisfied that her Oliver had taken that set. But not so.
    ‘What about those plans to automate
the mills?’ I volleyed back.
    There was a brief pause. I awaited
some slamming retort.
    ‘What about coffee?’ said Alison
Forbes Tipsy Barrett.
    We withdrew into the library for what
would definitely be the last round. Jenny and I had classes the next
day, Stony had the bank and so forth, and surely Tipsy would have
something worthwhile planned for bright and early.
    ‘Sugar, Oliver?’ asked my mother.
    ‘Oliver always takes sugar, dear,’
said my father.
    ‘Not tonight, thank you,’ said I.
‘Just black, Mother.’
    Well, we all had our cups, and we
were all sitting there cozily with absolutely nothing to say to one
another.
    So I brought up a topic.
    ‘Tell me, Jennifer,’ I inquired.
‘What do you think of the Peace Corps?’
    She frowned at me, and refused to
cooperate.
    ‘Oh, have you told them, Ollie.?’
said my mother to my father.
    ‘It isn’t the time, dear,’ said
Oliver III, with a land of fake humility that broadcasted, ‘Ask me,
ask me.’ So I had to.
    ‘What’s this, Father?’
    ‘Nothing important, son.’
    ‘I don’t see how you can say
that,’ said my mother, and turned toward me to deliver the message
with full force (I said she was on his side): ‘Your father’s
going to be director of the Peace Corps.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Jenny also said, ‘Oh,’ but in a
different, kind of happier tone of voice.
    My father pretended to look
embarrassed, and my mother seemed to be waiting for me to bow down or
something. I mean, it’s not Secretary of State, after all!
    ‘Congratulations, Mr. Barrett.’
Jenny took the initiative.
    ‘Yes. Congratulations, sir.’
    Mother was so anxious to talk about
it.
    ‘I do think it will be a wonderful
educational experience,’ she said.
    ‘Oh, it will,’ agreed Jenny.
    ‘Yes,’ I said without much
conviction. ‘Uh - would you pass the sugar, please.’

8
    ‘Jenny, it’s not Secretary of State, after all!’

    We were finally driving back to
Cambridge, thank God.

    ‘Still, Oliver, you could have been
more enthusiastic.’
    ‘I said congratulations.’
    ‘It was mighty generous of you.’
    ‘What did you expect, for
chrissake?’
    ‘Oh, God,’ she replied, ‘the
whole thing makes me sick.’
    ‘That’s two of us,’ I added.
    We drove on for a long time without
saying a word. But something was wrong.
    ‘What whole thing makes you sick,
Jen?’ I asked as a long afterthought.
    ‘The disgusting way you treat your
father.’
    ‘How about the disgusting way he
treats me?’
    I had opened a can of beans. Or, more
appropriately, spaghetti sauce. For Jenny launched into a full -
scale offense on paternal love. That whole Italian-Mediterranean
syndrome. And how I was disrespectful.
    ‘You bug him and bug him and bug
him,’ she said.
    ‘It’s mutual, Jen. Or didn’t
you notice that?’
    ‘I don’t think you’d stop at
anything, just to get to your old man.’
    ‘It’s impossible to ‘get to’
Oliver Barrett III.’
    There was a strange little silence
before she replied:
    ‘Unless maybe if you marry Jennifer
Cavilleri …’
    I kept my cool long enough to pull
into the parking lot of a seafood diner. I then turned to Jennifer,
mad as hell.
    ‘Is that what you think?’ I
demanded.
    ‘I think it’s part of it,’ she
said very