Patricide

by Joyce Carol Oates

  For that was the paradox: like other writers of his generation, Roland Marks was both ego-centered and insecure; he believed that he was a literary genius—(otherwise, how could he have had the energy to write so many books?)—while at the same time he believed the worst things said of him by his critics and detractors. Even the Nobel Prize hadn’t shored him up for long.

  (When Norman Mailer had died in 2007, at the age of eighty-four, Roland Marks had publicly lamented—“Now Norman will never win the damned Nobel! That’s their loss.”)

  There was no hope, I thought. He would fall in love with this Cameron Slatsky—(“Slutsky”?—I dared not joke about her name to him)—he had already fallen in love with her. Brain, (male) genitals. Irresistible.

  I said, a little sharply, “But what about you, Cameron? We haven’t heard a thing about you.”

  Sitting so close to the girl, it was difficult not to succumb to her warmly glowing personality; if I had not resolved to hate her, I would probably have liked her very much. She was beautiful—but awkward, unsure of herself. She was certainly very smart. As a professor I was inclined to like my students unless they gave me reason to feel otherwise, and Cameron Slatsky wasn’t much older than our Riverdale undergraduates.

  With a stricken look Cameron said, “Oh—me? There’s n-nothing to say about me . . .”

  “Well, where are you from?”

  “Where am I from . . .”

  Cameron shook her head mutely. Her face crinkled in an infantile way. At first I thought that she was laughing, fatuously; then I saw that she was fighting back tears.

  “Oh well—my life is too sad. I don’t want to talk about my life—please.”

  This ploy had an immediate effect upon my father: he moved to sit beside Cameron, taking both her hands in his and asking her what she meant. I hadn’t seen such an expression of tenderness in the man’s face since—well, the incident on the hockey field. Presumably Roland Marks had been deeply moved by other events in his life—(the births of his youngest children, for instance)—but I hadn’t witnessed them.

  What a blunder I’d made, asking the girl about her personal life! I’d taken for granted that it would be a conventional, proper, dull suburban life which would provoke my father’s scorn; but quite the opposite had developed.

  And it seemed to have been already arranged, to my surprise, yes and dismay, that Cameron would be staying the night in Nyack—“Since we have work tomorrow morning, it makes sense for Cameron not to commute all the way back to New York City.”

  All the way back! It was no farther than my “commute” to Skaatskill.

  Calmly my father regarded me with bemused eyes. Asking if I would please check to see if the guest room was “in decent shape” for a guest?

  I would, of course. I did. Like a house servant—or a slightly superannuated wife—I brought in a supply of fresh towels for the adjoining bathroom. The guest room was drafty from ill-fitting windows but that wasn’t my concern.

  Cameron had the graciousness to express embarrassment. She saw me to the door, since Dad wasn’t inclined to rise to his feet after the intense two-hour dinner.

  I would have slipped away with a muttered farewell, but Cameron insisted upon shaking my hand, and thanking me—for what, I couldn’t imagine.

  “I’m so happy to have met you, Lou-Lou!—as well as your amazing father. So happy, you can’t imagine.”

  Yes. I could imagine.

  I left them, trembling with indignation. Driving to the George Washington Bridge where once again wet rain was whipping into sleet, and the pavement was slick and dangerous.

  “Accident. ‘Accident-prone.’ Who?”

  NEXT DAY when I telephoned my father, it was Cameron’s bright voice that greeted me.

  “Oh Lou-Lou—guess what! Your father has asked me to be his assistant, and I’ve said ‘yes.’ I think that I can add my experience in some way to the dissertation material—like, a journal as an appendix?”

  A memoir, most likely. Which you will write after the man’s death.

  DREAMS OF my father’s death.

  “It was an accident. He didn’t l-listen . . .”

  Quickly before the will is changed. Before the executrix is changed.

  Distracted by resentment and anxiety I made an effort to be all the more friendly, helpful, and alert in my dean’s position. I was sympathetic with everyone who complained to me, I even shook hands with particular warmth. I stayed up until 2:00 A.M. answering e-mails including even e-mails from “concerned” parents. It was reasonable—(well, it was wholly unreasonable)—to think that, if I was a good person, I would be rewarded and not punished by Fate.

  *

  Once, I’d saved Roland Marks’s life.

  I’d been twenty years old. I was to be a junior at Harvard, within a month.

  My father was staying with wealthy friends on Martha’s Vineyard in late August. With his third wife, gorgeous/unstable Avril Gatti. I was in a smaller guest house, that overlooked the water, when a girl in a bikini drove into the driveway in a little red Ferrari convertible.

  She was sharp-beaked, like a hungry bird. Crimped dyed-red hair as if she’d stuck her finger in an electric socket.

  “Is Roland Marks here? I have to see him.”

  “He isn’t here. Is he expecting you?”

  “Where is he? He’s here.”

  “I’m sorry. This is not Roland Marks’s house, and he is not here.”

  “I know whose house this is. And I know he is here.”

  Since the publication of Jealousy, and Roland Marks’s figure, in tennis whites, on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, many people had tried to contact him. The usual sorts of people, but now others as well. A more American-suburban spread, not primarily Jewish-background as before. Dad laughed at the commotion but was beginning to become concerned.

  “Philip is absolutely correct”—(Dad was referring to his friend Philip Roth)—“people naively think they want to become ‘famous’—but it’s nothing like what you expect. Instead of having the luxury of failure, which is being left alone, you’re fair game for every idiot.”

  Rudely the bikini-girl was staring at me, in my shapeless Save-the-Whales T-shirt and drawstring sweat pants. Even my bare feet looked pudgy and graceless.

  “Are you one of his daughters? Karin?”

  “No.”

  “The other, then—‘Lou-Lou.’ ”

  “Louise.”

  “ ‘Lou-Lou.’ ”

  “Well, my father isn’t here. He’s in London.”

  In fact, Dad was sailing with our hosts. He’d be back within a few hours.

  “No. He’s on the island. I asked in town. There are no secrets here.”

  The bikini-girl was edging toward me in a way that made me nervous. Her body was fleshy and full yet her face looked drawn and there were distinct shadows beneath her eyes. She was glancing about, suspiciously. “He’s—where? Down by the water? Upstairs in the house? And his wife—‘Avril.’ Where’s she?”

  I thought She has something in that bag.

  It was a large Bloomingdale’s sort of bag made of elegantly woven straw. The handles were tortoiseshell. The way the girl was gripping it, I understood that she had a weapon inside.

  Calmly I said, with a forced smile, “I can leave a
message with my father. He can call you.”

  She laughed. “Call me! Are you joking? He will never call me, he has said so.”

  “Then . . .”

  “There was a time when that hypocritical son of a bitch called me, but now, I can’t even call him; he never calls back. Your father is a terrible man. You know this, I’m sure. You don’t look stupid—only just moon-faced and fat. I don’t think that your father should be allowed to live.”

  Barefoot, with garishly painted toenails, the bikini-girl was edging toward the veranda of the main house, which was shingle board purposely stained to appear weatherworn, with a steep-pitched roof. Inside the house there were voices—I didn’t know whose. I’d begun to sweat. My fatty upper arms stuck to my armpits. I was calculating that I would have to wrench the bag away from the bikini-girl with no hesitation, within seconds; if she stepped back from me, she could take out her weapon . . .

  With my strained mouth I continued to smile. I saw that the girl had tiny rosebud or pursed-lips tattoos on her back. I saw that her bikini was striped iridescent-purple and that her flushed-looking hips and breasts were tightly constrained; she was breathing audibly.

  “Wait, please.”

  “I’m just going to knock at the screen door.”

  “No, please—wait.”

  “I’ll just call ‘hello’ inside. I won’t go fucking in.”

  As the girl edged past me I stumbled to my feet and threw myself at her, and wrenched away the bag—it was heavy, as I’d suspected.

  She began screaming. Cursing me. She clawed at me but I didn’t surrender the bag. Our hosts’ adult daughter came out of the house, astonished. A Portuguese water spaniel, that had been sleeping on the veranda nearby, began barking hysterically. The girl ran stumbling to the little Ferrari, where she’d left the key in the ignition; haphazardly she backed out of the driveway, all the while cursing us.

  In the elegantly woven bag was a snub-nosed revolver. In fact it was a Smith & Wesson .25-caliber “snubbie”—a semi-automatic with a mother-of-pearl handle that carried six rounds. It would turn out to be a stolen gun, sold to the bikini-girl in New York City; a female sort of gun, though close up it could be fatal.

  Our hosts’ daughter called the Vineyard police and the girl was arrested within a half hour as she tried to buy a ticket for the ferry.

  It would be said that she was one of Roland Marks’s girls. One who hadn’t worked out.

  My father refused to discuss her. My father professed not to know her—never to have heard of her. His wife Avril did not believe him. The bikini girl was older than she’d seemed: thirty-two. She’d been arrested for carrying an unlicensed and concealed gun. She lived in TriBeCa and described herself as an actress associated with La Mama. Later, we would learn that, the previous summer, she’d stalked Philip Roth in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, though, like my father, Philip had declined to press charges against her.

  Dad had not wanted to talk about the bikini-girl. No one could make Dad talk about the bikini-girl. Not even Avril Gatti. To me he said, with his utterly charming abashed-Dad smile: “Thanks, kid. You did good.”

  *

  Another time when I called my father, it was Cameron who answered the telephone.

  “Hi! Lou-Lou? We have news here—we’re flying to Miami tomorrow.”

  And so there was no Thursday evening dinner that week. Nor the next week. Rudely, I wasn’t notified until I made a call, and Cameron called back to explain apologetically that she and my father were flying to Key West from Miami—“You know, the Key West Literary Seminar? Roland is giving the keynote speech.”

  I had known that the revered Key West seminar was imminent. But I’d been led to believe that I was to accompany my father.

  At last I managed to speak with him. My voice must have been quavering with hurt for Dad chided me kindly.

  “Lou-Lou, things have changed. Cameron’s coming with me—of course.”

  “You told me—‘mark on my calendar. Key West.’ You told me ‘don’t make other plans.’ ”

  In red ink several days in early January had been marked on my calendar. There was no mistaking this.

  In fact, I’d been invited to a party, or—to something. . . . I hadn’t accepted of course since I’d planned to be in Key West with Roland Marks.

  I came close to blurting out Take me with you, please! I will pay for my own way.

  I didn’t, though. A dean is dignity.

  Shamelessly and unapologetically they went together, and without me. And my father had the temerity to ask me to “check in” on the house in his absence.

  THE FURNACE was repaired, finally. Faulty smoke detectors were repaired. I called a carpenter to inspect the shaky wooden steps leading to the riverbank that needed to be strengthened and the man promised to call me back with an estimate. He couldn’t begin work, he said, until at least late March when the weather was warmer and ice had melted from the steps.

  Daringly—cautiously—I climbed down a half-dozen of the steps, to see how rickety they actually were. The January air was cold, and windy, rising from the steel-colored river. Obviously each winter had weakened the steps; the structure had to be at least twenty years old. (The house itself was 106 years old—an Upper Nyack landmark. I wanted to think that one day there would be a brass plaque on the front: Residence of Roland R. Marks, Nobel Prize in Literature.)

  Tightly I clutched the railings imagining the rickety structure suddenly buckling beneath my weight, collapsing, and my body falling heavily to the rocky ground below . . . My father would find me when he returned, a broken body, frozen . . .

  Why didn’t I invite Lou-Lou to come with us! How could I have been so selfish!

  And Cameron would say Don’t blame yourself, Roland! You could not have foreseen.

  In my melancholy mood, almost I wouldn’t have minded falling—or so the thought came to me.

  I didn’t fall. The steps held. Though some of the steps were shaky, the structure held.

  YET IT could happen to him. An accident. Accidental death.

  AN ACCIDENTAL death is always a surprise. At least, to the one who dies by accident.

  In the days, twelve in all, that my father and Cameron were in Florida, I spent more time than I could really afford in the house in Upper Nyack.

  I was thinking how Roland Marks disliked surprise. The element of surprise was vulgar to him, like the antics of circus clowns.

  Except if he were the one doling out the surprise, then it was fine. Then, it might be classified as “humor.”

  I knew this, for I knew him—thoroughly. Others have imagined they’ve known my father, unauthorized biographers have sniffed and snooped in his wake and much garbage has been written of him—but no one has plumbed Roland Marks’s essence.

  I wondered what Cameron Slatsky would write about him, sometime in the future. When my father wasn’t alive to read it, and to recoil in horror and disgust.

  I had to protect him against her, I thought. Or better—(since another “Cameron” would appear, probably within a few months)—I had to protect Roland Marks against himself.

  DAD HAD always been admiring, in his way.

  Grudging, yet admiring. />
  For he’d had a habit of saying, even when I was much too old for such personal remarks, “You’re my big husky gal. You don’t need any man to protect you. Nothing weak or puling about you.”

  The emphasis—you. Meaning that I was to be distinguished from the weak, puling, manipulative females who surrounded my father and other luckless men.

  “In the female, sex is a weapon. Initially a lure, then—a weapon. But there are those who, like my exemplary daughter, refuse to play the dirty little game. They transcend, and they excel.”

  He’d actually said such things in company, in my presence. As if I were an overgrown child and not a fully mature young woman.

  Sometimes, he’d been drinking. He’d become sentimental and maudlin lamenting the “estrangement” of his other children, and the “bizarre, self-destructive” behavior of their mothers.

  It was painful to me, yet I suppose flattering—how my father boasted of his “exemplary” daughter. Often, I felt that he didn’t know me at all; he was creating a caricature, or a cartoon, adorned with my name. Even when he was looking straight at me his eyes seemed unfocused.

  “Lou-Lou’s my most astonishing child. There’s nothing mysterious or subtle about Lou-Lou—she is all heart. She isn’t obscure, and she isn’t devious. She’s an athlete.” (Though I hadn’t been an athlete for years. Most girls give up team sports forever after high school.) “Did I ever tell you about how Lou-Lou played field hockey—really down-dirty, competitive field hockey—at the Rye Academy? Up there in Connecticut? I’d drive up to watch her play—stay overnight in the little town—at one of the championship games she was hit in the mouth with a puck—no, a hockey stick—and just kept charging on—running down the field bleeding from the mouth—and made a score for her team. And afterward she came limping over to me where I was standing in front of the bleachers anxious to see what had happened to her and Lou-Lou says, ‘Hi Dad’—or ‘Hey Dad, look’—and in the palm of her hand, a little broken white thing. And I said, ‘What’s that, Lou-Lou?’ and she said, ‘What’s it look like, Dad?’ and I looked more closely and saw it was a tooth, and I said, ‘Oh, sweetie—it looks like about five thousand bucks. But you’re worth it.’ ”