Free Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

Another—?
Again—?”
    People began to call me. In the wake of the Key
West Literary Seminar at which the celebrated Roland Marks and a “very young,
very blond” Ph.D. student from Columbia were clearly a couple.
    Dad’s longtime agent called. Max Keller had known
Roland Marks for more than forty years, why was he so surprised? I wasn’t in a
mood to share his incredulous indignation commingled with pity and, yes, envy:
“At least, tell me her age. People are saying—twenty-four? And Roland is seventy-four ?”
    Through clenched teeth I told Max that I didn’t
know the young woman’s age.
    â€œHer name?”
    â€œI don’t know her name. I’ve forgotten.”
    â€œAnd is she good-looking?”
    â€œI have no idea. I’ve barely glimpsed her.”
    â€œAnd is she smart ?
People are saying so . . .”
    â€œMax, I have no idea. I’m going to hang up
now.”
    â€œAnd Roland is in love? This is serious?
Maybe?”
    â€œLook. He’s elderly. He needs an assistant—his
papers, manuscripts, letters are a mess. And he needs a full-time attendant to
take care of him—he has let his house go, he’s like a baby when it comes to living . It can’t be me to take care of him—I
have my own life. She came to interview him, and essentially, she stayed. She is
young, and she is blond. What else? In the past, Dad just took up with
‘women’—good-looking, glamorous women—the assistants and interns were a separate
category. But now, this might be the first time he combines the two so maybe
that will be an improvement.”
    I’d spoken breezily, to hide my anger. I’d meant to
be amusing but Max didn’t seem to think that I was very funny.
    â€œShe’ll get Roland to sign a pre-nup. She’ll insist
on money up front, if she’s smart. (She sounds smart.) And she’ll wind up the
executrix of his estate, Lou-Lou—not you. So don’t be so amused, my dear.” And
he hung up.
    Executrix of his estate. But I was Roland Marks’s executrix!
    After the last divorce, he’d made me his executrix.
Before this, he hadn’t had a will: he’d assumed, as he said, that he would be
around for a “long, long time—like one of those giant tortoises that live
forever.” But in his late sixties, after batterings in court, he’d begun to feel
mortal. He’d told me frankly that he would be leaving money to all of his
children, even those who’d disappointed him pretty badly, and from whom he was
estranged—“I don’t want to single you out, Lou-Lou. They would just hate you.”
But what Dad would do for me, beyond leaving me money—(which, in fact, I really
didn’t need, as a professional woman with a good job)—was to name me executrix
of his estate, which would include his literary estate, for which service I
would be paid a minimum of fifty thousand dollars a year.
    I’d been deeply moved. I may even have cried.
    I’d said, “Dad, I can’t think of this now. I can’t
think of you—not here. But I will be the very best ‘literary executrix’ who ever
was—you deserve nothing less. I promise.”
    â€œI know, Lou-Lou. You’re my good girl.”
    A FTER K EY West, they returned to Nyack
briefly. No time to see Lou-Lou—though at least Dad spoke to me on the
phone.
    They were on their way to Paris, where Roland Marks
was to be feted on the occasion of the publication of a newly translated novel;
and from Paris, to Rome, where another newly translated novel was being
launched; and from Rome to Barcelona and Madrid . . .
    By now, they were lovers. Of course.
    I wondered how .
    (At seventy-four, my father was still a virile
man—it would seem.)
    (Yet, at twenty-four, his new lover might be
repelled by him—wasn’t that reasonable to suppose?)
    (No. This is not a