Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 case are trophies. Athletic trophies.
    ‘They’re gorgeous,’ Jenny said.
‘I’ve never seen ones that look like real gold and silver.’
    ‘They are.’
    ‘Jesus. Yours?’
    ‘No. His.’
    Barrett III did not place in the
Amsterdam Olympics.
    It is, however, also quite true that
he enjoyed significant rowing triumphs on various other occasions.
Several. Many.
    The well-polished proof of this was
now before Jennifer’s dazzled eyes.
    ‘They don’t give stuff like that
in the Cranston bowling leagues.’
    Then I think she tossed me a bone.
    ‘Do you have trophies, Oliver?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘In a case?’
    ‘Up in my room. Under the bed.’
    She gave me one of her good
Jenny-looks and whispered:
    ‘We’ll go look at them later,
huh?’
    Before I could answer, or even gauge
Jenny’s true motivations for suggesting a trip to my bedroom, we
were interrupted.
    ‘Ah, hello there.’
    Sonovabitch! It was the Sonovabitch.
    ‘Oh, hello, sir. This is Jennifer -
‘
    ‘Ah, hello there.’
    He was shaking her hand before I
could finish the introduction. I noted that he was not wearing any of
his Banker Costumes. No