Free Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates

like my father, Philip had declined to press charges
against her.
    Dad had not wanted to talk about the bikini-girl.
No one could make Dad talk about the bikini-girl. Not even Avril Gatti. To me he
said, with his utterly charming abashed-Dad smile: “Thanks, kid. You did
good.”
    *
    Another time when I called my father, it
was Cameron who answered the telephone.
    â€œHi! Lou-Lou? We have news here—we’re flying to
Miami tomorrow.”
    And so there was no Thursday evening dinner that
week. Nor the next week. Rudely, I wasn’t notified until I made a call, and
Cameron called back to explain apologetically that she and my father were flying
to Key West from Miami—“You know, the Key West Literary Seminar? Roland is
giving the keynote speech.”
    I had known that the revered Key West seminar was
imminent. But I’d been led to believe that I was to accompany my father.
    At last I managed to speak with him. My voice must
have been quavering with hurt for Dad chided me kindly.
    â€œLou-Lou, things have changed. Cameron’s coming
with me—of course.”
    â€œYou told me—‘mark on my calendar. Key West.’ You
told me ‘don’t make other plans.’ ”
    In red ink several days in early January had been
marked on my calendar. There was no mistaking this.
    In fact, I’d been invited to a party, or—to
something. . . . I hadn’t accepted of course since I’d planned to
be in Key West with Roland Marks.
    I came close to blurting out Take me with you, please! I will pay for my own way.
    I didn’t, though. A dean is dignity.
    Shamelessly and unapologetically they went
together, and without me. And my father had the temerity to ask me to “check in”
on the house in his absence.
    T HE FURNACE was repaired, finally. Faulty smoke detectors were repaired. I called a
carpenter to inspect the shaky wooden steps leading to the riverbank that needed
to be strengthened and the man promised to call me back with an estimate. He
couldn’t begin work, he said, until at least late March when the weather was
warmer and ice had melted from the steps.
    Daringly—cautiously—I climbed down a half-dozen of
the steps, to see how rickety they actually were. The January air was cold, and
windy, rising from the steel-colored river. Obviously each winter had weakened
the steps; the structure had to be at least twenty years old. (The house itself
was 106 years old—an Upper Nyack landmark. I wanted to think that one day there
would be a brass plaque on the front: Residence of Roland R. Marks, Nobel Prize in Literature .)
    Tightly I clutched the railings imagining the
rickety structure suddenly buckling beneath my weight, collapsing, and my body
falling heavily to the rocky ground below . . . My father would
find me when he returned, a broken body, frozen . . .
    Why didn’t I invite Lou-Lou to come with us! How could I have been so selfish!
    And Cameron would say Don’t blame yourself, Roland! You could not have foreseen.
    In my melancholy mood, almost I wouldn’t have
minded falling—or so the thought came to me.
    I didn’t fall. The steps held. Though some of the
steps were shaky, the structure held.
    Y ET IT could happen to him. An accident. Accidental death.
    A N ACCIDENTAL death is always a
surprise. At least, to the one who dies by accident.
    In the days, twelve in all, that my father and
Cameron were in Florida, I spent more time than I could really afford in the
house in Upper Nyack.
    I was thinking how Roland Marks disliked surprise . The element of surprise was vulgar to him, like the antics of circus clowns.
    Except if he were the one doling out the surprise , then it was fine. Then, it might be
classified as “humor.”
    I knew this, for I knew him—thoroughly. Others have
imagined they’ve known my father, unauthorized biographers have sniffed and
snooped in his wake and