What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?
That she was beautiful. And bright. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
Once, when she added me to those musical types, I asked her what the order was, and she replied, smiling, “Alphabetical.” At the time I smiled too. But now I sit and wonder whether she was listing me by my first name – in which case I would follow Mozart – or by my last name, in which case I would get in there between Bach and the Beatles. Either way I don’t come first, which I hate, because I have grown up with the idea that I always had to be number one.
* * *
In the fall of my senior year[1], I often studied at the Radcliffe library[2]. The place was quiet, nobody knew me, and the reserve books were less in demand[3]. The day before my history exam, I still hadn’t read the first book on the list, a widespread Harvard disease. I walked over to the reserve desk to get one of the tomes that would help me out the next day. There were two girls working there. One a tall highbrow, the other a bespectacled mouse type. I chose the latter.
“Do you have The Waning of the Middle Ages[4]?”
She looked up.
“Do you have your own library?” she asked.
“Listen, Harvard is allowed to use the Radcliffe library.”
“I’m not talking about legality, Preppie[5], I’m talking about ethics. You have five million books. We have just a few thousand.”
“Listen, I need that goddamn book.”
“Would you please watch your language, Preppie?”
“What makes you so sure I went to prep school?”
“You look stupid and rich,” she said, removing her glasses.
“You’re wrong,” I protested. “I’m actually smart and poor.”
“Oh, no, Preppie. I’m smart and poor.”
She was staring straight at me. Her eyes were brown. Okay, maybe I look rich, but I wouldn’t let some “Clifeif ”[6] – even one with pretty eyes – call me stupid.
“Why do you think you are so smart?” I asked.
“Because I wouldn’t go for coffee with you,” she answered.
“Listen – I wouldn’t ask you.”
“That is why you are stupid,” she replied.
* * *
Let me explain why I took her for coffee. By pretending that I suddenly wanted to invite her – I got my book. And since she couldn’t leave until the library closed, I had plenty of time to study. I got an A minus[7] on the exam. It was the same grade that I gave Jenny’s legs when she first walked from behind that desk.
We went to a nearby cafe. I ordered two coffees and a brownie with ice cream (for her).
“I’m Jennifer Cavilleri, an American of Italian descent,” she said. “My major is music.”
“My name is Oliver,” I said.
“First or last?” she asked.
“First,” I answered, and then confessed that my entire name was Oliver Barrett. (I mean, that’s most of it.)
“Oh,” she said. “Barrett, like the poet[8]?”
“Yes,” I said. “We are not relatives.”
In the pause that followed, I gave inward thanks that she hadn’t asked the usual distressing question: “Barrett, like the hall?” For it is my special burden to be a descendant of the guy that built Barrett Hall, the largest and ugliest structure in Harvard Yard, a colossal monument to my family’s money and vanity.
After that, she was pretty quiet. She simply sat there, semi-smiling at me. For something to do, I checked out her notebooks. She was taking some incredible courses: Comp. Lit.[9] 105, Music 201.
“Music 201? Isn’t that a graduate course?”
She nodded yes, and looked proud.
“Renaissance polyphony.”
“What’s polyphony?”
“Nothing sexual, Preppie.”
Why was I putting up with this? Doesn’t she read the Crimson[10]? Doesn’t she know who I am?
“Hey, don’t you know who I am?”
“Yeah,” she answered with kind of contempt. “You’re the guy that owns Barrett Hall.”
She didn’t know who I was.
“I don’t own Barrett Hall,” I replied. “My great-grandfather gave it to Harvard.”
“So his not-so-great grandson would get in!”
That was the limit.
“Jenny, if you’re so convinced I’m a loser, why did you make me buy you coffee?”
She looked me straight in the eye and smiled.
“I like your body,” she said.
* * *
As I walked Jenny back to her dorm, I still hoped to win a victory over this Radcliffe bitch.
* * *
“Listen, you Radcliffe bitch, Friday night is the
Dartmouth hockey game.”
“So?”
“So I’d like you to come.”
She replied with the usual Radcliffe respect for sport:
“Why should I come to a lousy hockey game?”
I answered casually:
“Because I’m playing.”
There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.
“For which side?” she asked.
