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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.

13
    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