Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

much loved
or respected them. But Cameron Slatsky—so young, inexperienced—so in awe of the great man —seemed to have been struck dumb.
    The scolding went on and on, and on. I felt sorry
for the blundering assistant and at the same time gratified for it was the first
time I’d heard my father address Cameron in such a way; and I understood it
would not be the last.
    Later, Cameron was upstairs in “her” room. She’d
hidden herself away in tears, or shame. She’d been embarrassed to have been
scolded when I was in the house, perhaps; but I wouldn’t let on, when we
prepared dinner, that I’d heard anything at all. I would talk of other things,
perhaps as if casually I would bring up the exhibit at the gallery in town,
Hilma Matthews’s paintings; or, I would ask how her dissertation was developing on site .
    At dinner, I would entertain Dad and Cameron with a
humorous recounting of the luncheon with the president of my college—“I told
her, as graciously as I could, ‘Of course I’m honored but I couldn’t possibly
take your place. I have more than enough to do taking care of my famous father.’
” And we would laugh together.
    Dad was wonderfully tease-able, if the teasing was in reference to his reputation, his
popularity, his “women.”
    So happy: the happiest I could remember myself
being, in many years.
    Maybe when Dad had looked at me with eyes of
unabashed and helpless father-love, as I’d stood with the silly little tooth in
the palm of my hand. That long ago?
    Except, stiff and sulky, Dad came downstairs from
his study, and seeing me said, “You’re still here?” and I said, “Dad, you and
Cameron invited me to stay for dinner, don’t you remember?” and Dad said, with a
shrug, “Fine. You can go check on her, see how she is, you know how emotions
upset me,” and I said, “You mean, other people’s emotions, Dad—your own are
sacrosanct.” And he said, on his way outside, “Wise guy.”
    The last words my father said to me, which he
hadn’t said to me in probably thirty years— Wise guy.
    He’d had his camera. He must have intended to take
photographs. I watched him outside on the terrace and at the same time I was
thinking about Cameron upstairs and how he’d told me to check on her, and what
this meant to me, how much it meant to me; and so, when Dad headed for the
steps, I wasn’t observing very clearly, or lucidly—just stood there in the
sunroom smiling to myself, a big husky not-young overgrown girl in her father’s
house.
    It did not strike me— He is in danger. Those damned steps!
    It did not strike me— If I’d wanted someone to fall, I might have sabotaged the steps. I might have loosened nails, supports.
    Though I was drawn to run upstairs to Cameron, yet
I found myself following my father outside. A chilly wind from the river, and
sun splotches in the heaving water.
    The Hudson River is a living thing, so close by.
The massive breadth of water wind-rippled and agitated, never at rest,
mesmerizing to watch as liquid flames, and this afternoon a curious
slate-blue-gray color, the hue of molten rock.
    â€œDad? Be careful . . .”
    He didn’t hear. He wouldn’t have heard. Too many
times I’d warned him, he had no awareness of any real danger. And there was a
swagger to his walk, a stiff sort of bravado, as if he believed that someone—it
would have to be Cameron, she was the only “woman” in residence—was watching
him, and admiring him; he took care not to lessen the weight of his right leg,
his arthritic knee.
    High overhead several hawks flew. I felt a
premonition—but then, I often felt such premonitions here on the terrace above
the river. My father laughed at “premonitions”—though he took his own seriously,
for he was a superstitious man. I was smiling still,