Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

gallery but had been exiled to
Nyack, where she lived about a mile from my father. They were old friends: not
lovers, I don’t think. Once Hilma had said bitterly to my father, “Some of us
don’t make the cut. It isn’t evident why.” And my father had blushed, guessing
that this remark was meant to be an insult to him, who’d clearly made the cut;
at the same time, it was enough of an oblique insult that he didn’t have to
acknowledge it. Gallantly he said, with a squeeze of the woman’s hand,
“Posterity judges, not us. Be happy in your work, Hilma. It’s beautiful
work—enough of us know. That’s the main thing.”
    As Cameron moved about the gallery, very seriously
considering Hilma Matthews’s art, I continued to observe her. I wondered at her
motive—was she planning to talk about the exhibit, to impress my father? Had she
been invited with my father to a local event, where she might meet the artist? I
couldn’t believe that she was acting without motive, out of a genuine interest
in these large abstract canvases by Hilma Matthews, in the style of a more
hard-edged Helen Frankenthaler.
    Cameron and the woman at the front desk fell into a
conversation. It seemed that they were talking about the exhibit, though I
couldn’t hear most of their words.
    I did manage to hear the woman ask Cameron if she
lived here and Cameron said yes—“For the present time.”
    I waited to overhear her boast of Roland Marks . But Cameron said nothing further.
    I had an impulse to come forward and say hello to
Cameron. She couldn’t have known that I’d followed her here—my greeting could
have been spontaneous, innocent.
    I thought, if I hadn’t known her, I might have
introduced myself to her in the gallery. I might have thought A sensitive, intelligent person. And beautiful. I might have asked Are you new to Nyack?
    T HAT
SPRING.
    That final spring of my father’s life.
    It was my work at Riverdale College from which I
was becoming increasingly distracted. Initially I’d thrown myself into it with
renewed energy as a way of quite consciously not thinking about my father’s fiancée; then, I discovered myself daydreaming in my
office, rehearsing scenes with my father and Cameron Slatsky. Sometimes it
seemed urgent to me that I act quickly , before they were married; at other times, I
was gripped with lethargy as if in the coils of a great boa constrictor.
    I should have spoken with Cameron in the gallery, I
thought. Or met up with her on the street.
    Just the two of us: the women in Roland Marks’s
present life.
    I’d tried to make discreet inquiries about Cameron
Slatsky at Columbia, but had been reluctant to provide my name; if it were
revealed that I’d been prying, I would have been humiliated; my father would
have been furious at me, and might not have wanted to see me again. He was
famous for breaking off with people he’d known well, and had loved, if
he believed he’d been disrespected.
    What I’d been able to learn about Cameron Slatsky
online was not exceptional, nor did it conflict with what she’d told us. She had
graduated from Barnard with a B.A. in English and linguistics; she’d been a
summer intern for a New York publishing house, and for The New Yorker; she’d traveled briefly in Europe, with
friends; she’d enrolled in the Ph.D. English program at Columbia. She’d grown up
in Katonah, Westchester County. Her parents must have had money, for someone was
paying her tuition at Columbia.
    Since moving into my father’s house, with an
upstairs room designated as her study, Cameron continued to work on her
dissertation, as she said, on site . Living with the subject of a doctoral
dissertation! Quite a coup for one so young.
    Obsessively I rehearsed my conversation with
Cameron.
    Pointing out to her that any relationship with my
father was doomed to be impermanent; that, even