Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

I’ve got the lumber, and I’ve cleared away the time.”
    â€œNext 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.”
    â€œAn 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.
    T HEY 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.”
    â€œWhy ‘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.
    O NCE, Ifollowed 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