Patricide

by Joyce Carol Oates

  This was a wonderful story. One of Roland Marks’s wonderful family stories. In his fiction most of his family stories were comical catastrophes but when he was talking to friends, or to a friendly audience, his family stories were wonderful.

  Even his detractors warmed to Roland Marks at such times. Even those who knew he was confabulating, in his zeal to tell the ideal, the perfect, the family story.

  In my father’s absence, I cherished such memories.

  In my father’s absence that was a betrayal, and a warning of betrayals to come, I visited my father’s house on Cliff Street, Upper Nyack, with a pretense of “checking” the house; wandering through the drafty rooms, standing outside on the terrace and gazing at the broad misty river below, shivering in the cold I told myself There have been precious memories even if they are laced with lies.

  *

  “Lou-Lou? What’s this I hear? Another—? Again—?”

  People began to call me. In the wake of the Key West Literary Seminar at which the celebrated Roland Marks and a “very young, very blond” Ph.D. student from Columbia were clearly a couple.

  Dad’s longtime agent called. Max Keller had known Roland Marks for more than forty years, why was he so surprised? I wasn’t in a mood to share his incredulous indignation commingled with pity and, yes, envy: “At least, tell me her age. People are saying—twenty-four? And Roland is seventy-four?”

  Through clenched teeth I told Max that I didn’t know the young woman’s age.

  “Her name?”

  “I don’t know her name. I’ve forgotten.”

  “And is she good-looking?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve barely glimpsed her.”

  “And is she smart? People are saying so . . .”

  “Max, I have no idea. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “And Roland is in love? This is serious? Maybe?”

  “Look. He’s elderly. He needs an assistant—his papers, manuscripts, letters are a mess. And he needs a full-time attendant to take care of him—he has let his house go, he’s like a baby when it comes to living. It can’t be me to take care of him—I have my own life. She came to interview him, and essentially, she stayed. She is young, and she is blond. What else? In the past, Dad just took up with ‘women’—good-looking, glamorous women—the assistants and interns were a separate category. But now, this might be the first time he combines the two so maybe that will be an improvement.”

  I’d spoken breezily, to hide my anger. I’d meant to be amusing but Max didn’t seem to think that I was very funny.

  “She’ll get Roland to sign a pre-nup. She’ll insist on money up front, if she’s smart. (She sounds smart.) And she’ll wind up the executrix of his estate, Lou-Lou—not you. So don’t be so amused, my dear.” And he hung up.

  Executrix of his estate. But I was Roland Marks’s executrix!

  After the last divorce, he’d made me his executrix. Before this, he hadn’t had a will: he’d assumed, as he said, that he would be around for a “long, long time—like one of those giant tortoises that live forever.” But in his late sixties, after batterings in court, he’d begun to feel mortal. He’d told me frankly that he would be leaving money to all of his children, even those who’d disappointed him pretty badly, and from whom he was estranged—“I don’t want to single you out, Lou-Lou. They would just hate you.” But what Dad would do for me, beyond leaving me money—(which, in fact, I really didn’t need, as a professional woman with a good job)—was to name me executrix of his estate, which would include his literary estate, for which service I would be paid a minimum of fifty thousand dollars a year.

  I’d been deeply moved. I may even have cried.

  I’d said, “Dad, I can’t think of this now. I can’t think of you—not here. But I will be the very best ‘literary executrix’ who ever was—you deserve nothing less. I promise.”

  “I know, Lou-Lou. You’re my good girl.”

  AFTER KEY West, they returned to Nyack briefly. No time to see Lou-Lou—though at least Dad spoke to me on the phone.

  They were on their way to Paris, where Roland Marks was to be feted on the occasion of the publication of a newly translated novel; and from Paris, to Rome, where another newly translated novel was being launched; and from Rome to Barcelona and Madrid . . .

  By now, they were lovers. Of course.

  I wondered how.

  (At seventy-four, my father was still a virile man—it would seem.)

  (Yet, at twenty-four, his new lover might be repelled by him—wasn’t that reasonable to suppose?)

  (No. This is not a reasonable situation.)

  (Yes. It is utterly reasonable—it is pragmatic. She will marry him for his money and his reputation and not his “virility.”)

  Lying in my bed in Skaatskill, I was helpless in the grinding maw of such obsessive thoughts.

  “He won’t betray me. Even if he marries her . . .”

  (Ridiculous! He’d betrayed virtually everyone in his life, every female. Why not reliable old Lou-Lou with her pearly false tooth?)

  Dad had asked me to continue to “check” the house, so of course I did. Bitterly resenting being treated as a servant and yet—grateful. More than I needed, I visited the house; I brought in Dad’s mail, which was considerable; sorted it, left it in carefully designated stacks on his desk—the work of an assistant; but the assistant wasn’t on the premises, I was.

  At Riverdale, I now left my office promptly at 5:00 P.M. most days, where once I’d remained until much later. And now on Friday afternoons, I sometimes left as early as 3:00 P.M. (“Family matters”—“my father, medical appointment.”) Or took the entire afternoon off.

  There were academic events I had to attend, national conventions—these I cut short, to return to Nyack and drive past the house on Cliff Street which was looking shut-up, unattended. With my key I let myself in and prowled the rooms like a clumsy ghost. I knew the house so well, yet stumbled. I collided with things. Seeing my reflection in mirrors—“Oh, Lou-Lou? What has happened? You were just a girl . . .”

  I was doing my father’s bidding and yet: I was an intruder.

  Easily, I might become a vandal.

  For there was some secret in this place, that might be revealed to me if I prevailed. Though Dad would have been furious, I looked through his desk drawers, and his filing cabinets; there were literally thousands of papers, documents, manuscripts in his keeping, in his study and in an adjoining room; his older manuscripts, galleys, page proofs and drafts were stored temporarily at the New York Public Library, which was negotiating to purchase the entire Marks archive. It was not true that my father’s papers were a mess as I’d told Max Keller—but they did require a more systematic organization, which only I could provide, I believed.

  Only I! The exemplary beloved daughter.

  I lay on the bamboo settee in the sunroom staring out at the sky and the river below. Soon, my father and Cameron would return—she was now his “fiancée.”

  The Hudson Valley: such beauty! But it was not always an evident, obvious beauty—the beauty of a river depends upon weather, gradations of light. The ceaseless shifting of sunshine, shadow. Cloud formations, patches of clear sky. An eye-piercing blue. Dull gunmetal-gray. The river reflecting the sky, and the sky seeming to reflect the river.

  I was thinking of the English explorer Henry Hu
dson who’d sailed up the river for the Dutch, in the early seventeenth century, until, about 150 miles north, the river became too shallow for him to navigate. How bizarre it seems to us, Hudson had been looking for a route to the Pacific Ocean, as his predecessor Christopher Columbus had been looking for a route to the East Indies . . . I thought The routes we think we are taking are not the routes we will take. The routes that take us.

  I must have fallen asleep for I was rudely awakened by a loud rapping at the front door.

  It was the carpenter I’d tried to engage to repair the steps. I had not heard from the man in weeks and now, as if on a whim, or more likely he’d happened to be driving by the house, he’d stopped to speak with me.

  We went out onto the terrace, to look at the steps. He’d given me his estimate for the repair but I had no way of knowing how reasonable it was, for I hadn’t called anyone else. He said, “I could begin next week, Mrs. Marks. I’ve got the lumber, and I’ve cleared away the time.”

  “Next week—really?”

  Then for a long moment I stood silent. Almost, I’d forgotten the man, the stranger, standing close beside me, the two of us looking down at the steps; then I said, “I’m truly sorry, but my father has changed his mind. He says he wants something more ambitious. He’s been talking to an architect.”

  “An architect? For just some steps?”

  I laughed, awkwardly. “Well, he wants something more ambitious for the terrace, and the steps, and down below on the riverbank, something like a gazebo. You might know my father Roland Marks—he never does anything simply.”

  Of course, the carpenter didn’t know Roland Marks. He had no idea who Roland Marks might be, and judging by the disgruntled noises he was making, he didn’t care.

  THEY RETURNED. The fiancée was now living at 47 Cliff Street, Upper Nyack.

  Not often, not every week, but occasionally they invited me to have dinner with them. And when they were away, to check on the house and bring in my father’s mail.

  On the third finger of her left hand, Cameron wore an engagement ring. A large diamond—ridiculous! Roland Marks had often commented disparagingly on the absurdity of engagement rings, wedding rings; he’d never worn a wedding ring, himself.

  When are you planning to be married?—I did not ask.

  Cameron was kind to me, at least. Kinder than my father who often seemed irritable at the sight of me as if it might be guilt he truly felt, but couldn’t acknowledge.

  Though Dad surprised me one day by asking if I kept in contact with my mother and when I said yes, asking me how she was.

  The truth was, my mother had survived. She’d long ago remarried and was living in Fort Lauderdale with her (aging, ailing) second husband, and was on reasonably good terms with her adult children, whose children she adored. And she never asked after Roland Marks as one might never speak of a virulent illness she’d narrowly survived.

  I said, “Mom is doing great, Dad. Thank you for asking.”

  “Why ‘thank you’?—that’s a strange thing to say.” Dad lowered his voice, so that Cameron in the other room wouldn’t hear. “I was married to your mother once, for almost twenty years! Of course I would want to know how she is.”

  Years ago, as a girl, I’d have felt a clutch of hope in my heart, hearing these words from my father. Maybe he will return. Maybe he will love us again. But now I knew better. I knew the words were only words.

  ONCE, I followed Cameron Slatsky in Nyack. By accident I’d seen her on the street, a tall leggy blond girl in jeans and a pullover sweater looking, from a distance, like a teenager.

  Heads turned as she passed. She seemed not to notice.

  Why, she was preoccupied. Somber-seeming. Her hair tied back in an ordinary ponytail. And her shoulders slouched. By the time she was forty, she’d be round-shouldered.

  But Roland Marks wouldn’t be alive to see her then.

  At a discreet distance I followed her. It wasn’t so very unlikely that I might have been in Nyack that day—if Cameron saw me, I could explain convincingly.

  She stopped by the Cheese Board. Buying my father’s special cheeses, and his special (pumpernickel) bread. She stopped by the Nyack Pharmacy. Picking up my father’s prescription medications. She stopped by the Riverview Gallery where there was an exhibit of new paintings by a local artist.

  The gallery had a side entrance. Through the doorway I observed the young blond woman moving slowly from canvas to canvas, with the sobriety of a schoolgirl. No one else appeared to be in the gallery except a female clerk.

  The painter whose work was being exhibited was Hilma Matthews, a woman in her late seventies with a respectful reputation as an abstract artist; she’d once had a Madison Avenue gallery but had been exiled to Nyack, where she lived about a mile from my father. They were old friends: not lovers, I don’t think. Once Hilma had said bitterly to my father, “Some of us don’t make the cut. It isn’t evident why.” And my father had blushed, guessing that this remark was meant to be an insult to him, who’d clearly made the cut; at the same time, it was enough of an oblique insult that he didn’t have to acknowledge it. Gallantly he said, with a squeeze of the woman’s hand, “Posterity judges, not us. Be happy in your work, Hilma. It’s beautiful work—enough of us know. That’s the main thing.”

  As Cameron moved about the gallery, very seriously considering Hilma Matthews’s art, I continued to observe her. I wondered at her motive—was she planning to talk about the exhibit, to impress my father? Had she been invited with my father to a local event, where she might meet the artist? I couldn’t believe that she was acting without motive, out of a genuine interest in these large abstract canvases by Hilma Matthews, in the style of a more hard-edged Helen Frankenthaler.

  Cameron and the woman at the front desk fell into a conversation. It seemed that they were talking about the exhibit, though I couldn’t hear most of their words.

  I did manage to hear the woman ask Cameron if she lived here and Cameron said yes—“For the present time.”

  I waited to overhear her boast of Roland Marks. But Cameron said nothing further.

  I had an impulse to come forward and say hello to Cameron. She couldn’t have known that I’d followed her here—my greeting could have been spontaneous, innocent.

  I thought, if I hadn’t known her, I might have introduced myself to her in the gallery. I might have thought A sensitive, intelligent person. And beautiful. I might have asked Are you new to Nyack?

  THAT SPRING.

  That final spring of my father’s life.

  It was my work at Riverdale College from which I was becoming increasingly distracted. Initially I’d thrown myself into it with renewed energy as a way of quite consciously not thinking about my father’s fiancée; then, I discovered myself daydreaming in my office, rehearsing scenes with my father and Cameron Slatsky. Sometimes it seemed urgent to me that I act quickly, before they were married; at other times, I was gripped with lethargy as if in the coils of a great boa constrictor.

  I should have spoken with Cameron in the gallery, I thought. Or met up with her on the street.

  Just the two of us: the women in Roland Marks’s present life.

  I’d tried to make discreet inquiries about Cameron Slatsky at Colu
mbia, but had been reluctant to provide my name; if it were revealed that I’d been prying, I would have been humiliated; my father would have been furious at me, and might not have wanted to see me again. He was famous for breaking off with people he’d known well, and had loved, if he believed he’d been disrespected.

  What I’d been able to learn about Cameron Slatsky online was not exceptional, nor did it conflict with what she’d told us. She had graduated from Barnard with a B.A. in English and linguistics; she’d been a summer intern for a New York publishing house, and for The New Yorker; she’d traveled briefly in Europe, with friends; she’d enrolled in the Ph.D. English program at Columbia. She’d grown up in Katonah, Westchester County. Her parents must have had money, for someone was paying her tuition at Columbia.

  Since moving into my father’s house, with an upstairs room designated as her study, Cameron continued to work on her dissertation, as she said, on site. Living with the subject of a doctoral dissertation! Quite a coup for one so young.

  Obsessively I rehearsed my conversation with Cameron.

  Pointing out to her that any relationship with my father was doomed to be impermanent; that, even if he claimed to adore her he didn’t adore her; he adored the person who adored him.

  And then I thought, she knows this. Of course.

  She knows, and doesn’t care.

  If he adores her as his muse, or just wants to have sex with someone so young—why would she care? She’d spent enough time perusing the more sensational literary biographies and collected letters to come to a realization that, in a sequence of wives, it’s only the final wife—the widow—who inherits the estate.