Love Story by Erich Segal

had
questioned me merely, as I said before, so we could … talk.
    He reached into his desk drawer and
took out a checkbook bound in the same cordovan leather as the handle
of his letter opener and the case for his scissors. He opened it
slowly. Not to torture me, I don’t think, but to stall for time. To
find things to say. Non-abrasive things.
    He finished writing the check, tore
it from the book and then held it out toward me. I was maybe a split
second slow in realizing I should reach out my hand to meet his. So
he got embarrassed (I think), withdrew his hand and placed the check
on the edge of his desk. He looked at me now and nodded. His
expression seemed to say, ‘There it is, son.’ But all he really
did was nod.
    It’s not that I wanted to leave,
either. It’s just that I myself couldn’t think of anything
neutral to say. And we couldn’t just sit there, both of us willing
to talk and yet unable even to look the other straight in the face.
    I leaned over and picked up the
check. Yes, it said five thousand dollars, signed Oliver Barrett HI.
It was already dry. I folded it carefully and put it into my shirt
pocket as I rose and shuffled to the door. I should at least have
said something to the effect that I knew that on my account very
important Boston dignitaries (maybe even Washington) were cooling
their heels in his outer office, and yet if we had more to say to one
another I could even hang around your office, Father, and you would
cancel your luncheon plans … and so forth.
    I stood there with the door half
open, and summoned the courage to look at him and say:
    ‘Thank you, Father.’

21
    The task of informing Phil Cavilleri fell to me. Who else?

    He did not go to pieces as I feared
he might, but calmly closed the house in Cranston and came to live in
our apartment. We all have our idiosyncratic ways of coping with
grief. Phil’s was to clean the place. To wash, to scrub, to polish.
I don’t really understand his thought processes, but Christ, let
him work.

    Does he cherish the dream that Jenny
will come home?
    He does, doesn’t he? The poor
bastard. That’s why he’s cleaning up. He just won’t accept
things for what they are.
    Of course, he won’t admit this to
me, but I know it’s on his mind.
    Because it’s on mine too.
    Once she was in the hospital, I
called old man Jonas and let him know why I couldn’t be coming to
work. I pretended that I had to hurry off the phone because I know he
was pained and wanted to say things he couldn’t possibly express.
    From then on, the days were simply
divided between visiting hours and everything else. And of course
everything else was nothing. Eating without hunger, watching Phil
clean the apartment (again!) and not sleeping even with the
prescription Ackerman gave me.
    Once I overheard Phil mutter to
himself, ‘I can’t stand it much longer.’ He was in the next
room, washing our dinner dishes (by hand). I didn’t answer him, but
I did think to myself, I can. Whoever’s Up There running the show,
Mr.
    Supreme Being, sir, keep it up, I can
take this ad infinitum.
    Because Jenny is Jenny.
    That evening, she kicked me out of
the room. She wanted to speak to her father ‘man to man.’
    ‘This meeting is restricted only to
Americans of Italian descent,’ she said, looking as white as her
pillows, ‘so beat it, Barrett.’
    ‘Okay,’ I said.
    ‘But not too far,’ she said when
I reached the door.
    I went to sit in the lounge.
Presently Phil appeared.
    ‘She says to get your ass in
there,’ he whispered hoarsely, like the whole inside of him was
hollow. ‘I’m gonna buy some cigarettes.’
    ‘Close the goddamn door,’ she
commanded as I entered the room. I obeyed, shut the door quietly, and
as I went back to sit by her bed, I caught a fuller view of her. I
mean, with the tubes going into her right arm, which she would keep
under the covers. I always liked to sit very close and just look at
her face, which, however pale, still had her