Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

and—who
knew?—possibly my father and Cameron were away for the weekend, or in New York
City; frequently they spent evenings in the city, or stayed overnight as guests
in one or another of my father’s (usually wealthy, Upper West Side) admirers’
apartments. It was Cameron who told me about such evenings, casually—“They said
to say hello to you, Lou-Lou. The Steinglasses.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œEdythe and Steve? Steinglass?”
    No idea who this was but I smiled as if in
gratitude at being remembered, by someone.
    â€œWell—thanks! Is their place still so great?”
    â€œYes. It is fantastic .”
    â€œOverlooking the park?”
    â€œAt Seventy-third Street. Yes.”
    Each weekend they were away, or mysteriously
unaccounted-for, I dreaded to hear, belatedly— Lou-Lou guess what! Your dad and I are married.
    Or, more somberly, though with a helpless
baby-smile, from Dad— Lou-Lou, sorry! We wanted a private ceremony, no fuss.
    What relief then, that day, to so casually drop by
the house on Cliff Street, and there was Cameron in jeans and short-sleeved
T-shirt raking the neglected front lawn in which, in jagged clusters, daffodils
and jonquils were brightly blooming; ponytailed Cameron who waved at me, and
smiled—“Hi, Lou-Lou! We’ve been missing you.”
    This had to be a lie. But it was a gracious sort of
lie.
    Very different from Dad’s grumbling greeting, as I
knocked very lightly on the (opened) door of his study—“Lou-Lou! Good! I need to
talk to you about these God-damned bills .”
    Dad frequently confused those bills he asked me to
pay for him, out of his checking account, with bills he’d paid, or intended to
pay, himself; inevitably, there were mistakes. Sometimes we both paid the same
bill, sometimes no one paid. When I told Dad that it would be easier for us both
if I paid his bills via computer, he refused to listen—“And what if the damned
computer ‘crashes’? What then? Paper checks are at least something you can feel .”
    This had been going on for years. This was a
disgruntlement that felt easy and comfortable, like worn bedroom slippers.
    I laughed thinking This is what a family is. This.
    And later that afternoon, when, it seemed to have
developed, I would be staying for dinner, and Cameron and I were to prepare
together one of Dad’s favorite meals, chicken tangine with prunes, dried
apricots, almonds, and couscous, another incident occurred that gave me, if not
hope exactly, a sense that things might not be so hopeless as I’d been thinking:
by chance, I overheard my father speaking in a low, sarcastic voice to Cameron,
in an adjacent room.
    Poor Cameron! I felt a thrill of sympathy.
    Recalling how many times I’d heard Roland Marks
speak in this way, within my hearing or not-quite, to one or another of his
wives—my mother, Phyllis, Avril, Sylvia. Inevitably, Roland Marks would find fault with a woman, or rather, the woman’s
imperfection would be revealed. In this case, so far as I could gather—(for
truly I didn’t want to eavesdrop, and especially I didn’t want to be caught
eavesdropping)—the zealous and well-intentioned assistant had filed away some of
my father’s papers on her own accord, without his having instructed her; or
possibly, something was “lost” in my father’s office, that had been the
assistant’s responsibility. And so Dad spoke harshly to Cameron, who didn’t seem
to be defending herself; only perhaps murmuring Yes yes I’m sorry in the way that, if a whipped dog could speak,
a whipped dog would speak in such a circumstance.
    Not all of Roland Marks’s women had been so meekly
apologetic, so subservient. Even my mother had tried to defend herself,
sometimes. And others had quarreled with him, quite fiercely, even hatefully, at
a time in their relationship when it was clear that Roland no longer