Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates

the college had issued
invitations to the distinguished writer who lived “just over the George
Washington Bridge” from the college. But Roland Marks, who hated the pomp and
circumstance of commencements, accepted such invitations only from the top Ivy
League universities, or smaller institutions that paid . (Dad could command somewhere in the vicinity of ten thousand
dollars for a commencement speech which he’d adroitly tailor to fit the
situation. A single commencement address had served him for decades like
one-size-fits-all sweatpants and had yielded somewhere in the vicinity of two
hundred thousand dollars.) The problem was, Riverdale College had a small,
eroding endowment and so hoped to acquire my celebrity-writer father for no fee,
and I’d been the awkward go-between for several seasons. Dad said, chuckling,
“What a sap I’d be, Lou-Lou, to sit through your commencement ceremony, give an
‘inspiring talk,’ have lunch with the trustees, for zero bucks . Bad enough to get zero bucks at Harvard, but hell—that’s Harvard.”
    Each time, I was embarrassed to return to the
college to make excuses for my father who was to be traveling in Europe at
commencement time, or committed to another commencement. Each time, the zealous
president promised to invite my father for the following year.
    â€œ. . . have seemed distracted,
Lou-Lou. For the past several months. And so I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s time
for you to consider stepping down—that is, returning to
teaching . . .”
    These words out of the president’s mouth I did not
entirely fathom.
    Was the woman asking me, in this roundabout way, to
take her place as president ? Was she asking me to step down from the deanship, that I might step up as president?
    â€œI—I’m sorry—I don’t quite understand?”
    â€œÂ . . . your performance as dean has
been, I’m afraid, increasingly erratic. Your staff has become demoralized, and
faculty have complained . . .”
    In a haze of incomprehension I sat at the
president’s cherrywood dining room table, as the woman spoke on, on and on; for
there was no way to stop her, and no end to all that she had to say in her
kindly-yet-unhesitating manner.
    â€œÂ . . . finish up the term of
course, we hope. . . . I’ve asked Esther Conrad to assist
you . . . move her office into the room adjacent to yours. A
complete physical exam might not be a bad idea . . . our
insurance will pay . . . And at faculty meetings,
if . . .”
    The haze like cotton batting had invaded my ears.
Pushing into my brain that had gone numb. Blindly I reached for my water
glass—and knocked it over. Water and ice cubes went spilling. The president
veered back but couldn’t escape an ice cube or two in her lap. Nervously
laughing I recalled, as a girl, overturning my water glass during meals at home,
and my father, for whom domestic occasions were something of a strain, an
interruption from his far more urgent writerly life upstairs in his study,
saying wittily, if sarcastically— Well if there’s a fire on the table now it’s out. Thank you, Lou-Lou!
    How young he’d been then. Wickedly handsome with a
bristling dark goatee.
    I rose to my feet. I was shaky but undefeated. I
would report to my father this outrage. Yet calmly I said, “I will think over
your proposal, President Lacey. I will think it over and get back to you,
soon.”
    A dignified exit. No looking back.
    D RIVING HOME that evening confounded Did she really mean to demote me, or—promote me? Was it code for—would I want to become president?
    â€œ ‘Thank you, but no. My life with my father has to
take precedence right now.’ ”
    *
    April 14, 2012. Not a day I’d planned to
spend in Upper Nyack.
    It was a sun-warmed fragrant Saturday,