Patricide (6 page)

So I wanted to think. My sister and two brothers
had fled Roland Marks's gravitational pull. He liked to say, dryly—
The
older
kids
are
on
their
own.
If
that's
how
they
want
it—fine.

“We'll get the tooth replaced, Lou-Lou—I promise.
We'll fix you up fine. Better than new.”

For years I'd had to suffer orthodontic braces. Now
that my teeth were reasonably straight, I'd lost a crucial front tooth. Dad
didn't appreciate the irony. Or, Dad had other, more pressing things to think
about.

I couldn't know, or wouldn't have wished to know,
how what was preoccupying my father was nowhere near: not even in Manhattan.

An individual whose name I didn't (yet) know, who
would become Roland Marks's next wife; at the present time living in Berkeley;
the object of his current concern, or obsession. Yet it had seemed slightly odd
to me, a quizzical matter, how Dad chattered about West Coast residents: “They
seem younger somehow, more naïve and innocent, on the West Coast. Here it's six
P.M
.—they're still at three
P.M.
We're the future they're headed for.”

In my codeine daze I tried to object: “Dad, if the
world ended, it would end for them
at
exactly
the
same
time
it
ends
for
us
. Don't be silly.”

“ ‘Silly'! I guess I am, sweetie.”

And Dad gazed at me, or rather toward me,
not-seeing me, with a fond, faint smile of such heartbreak, I knew that I would
love him, and forgive him, forever.

W
EEKS
LATER
—(you will not believe this!)—over Christmas break in Manhattan,
at Dad's apartment on West Seventy-eighth Street, I would overhear a call
between my father and—could it be Tina Rodriguez?

For it seemed, they'd already met at least once in
the “city”—that is, New York City. Evidently they'd had drinks together. They'd
talked over an “issue”—exactly what, wasn't clear.

T.R.! And Roland Marks!

I don't think that anything much came of it. I'm
sure that nothing came of it. Roland Marks was always “having drinks” with
women—friends, editors, agents, journalists, admirers. To his credit, not all
were glamorous young women; some were his age at least. You might hear that he
was seeing X, but you might not ever hear of X again. Instead you'd be hearing
of Y, and of Z.

I was shocked, and felt betrayed. Not by my father
but by Tina Rodriguez.

Why would she want to see my much-older father in
the city? What had she thought that a meeting with Roland Marks might lead
to?

I hoped T.R. wasn't disappointed. As I was
disappointed in her.

We'd wanted to think that our wiry-limbed phys. ed.
instructor with the snapping-dark eyes was a lesbian, at least. Not susceptible
to men.

I would never tell my teammates. I would never play
field hockey again.

*

“Hello, Miss Marks! So good to see you
again.”

“Hello . . .”

In my discomfort I couldn't recall her name—the
skinny blond ponytail girl of the previous week with the insipid ingratiating
smile.

Except today she wasn't wearing her hair in a
ponytail jutting out of the side of her head but brushed straight, to her
shoulders. Shimmering and lustrous as a model's hair, not at all straw-colored
or paintbrush-like but dazzling-pale-blond like Catherine Deneuve.

And she was wearing a trim little designer-looking
mauve wool jacket, with a matching pleated skirt. And stockings, and high-heeled
shoes.

The eyebrow piercing had vanished. Quite proper
gold studs in her creamy ears.

“ ‘Cameron'—remember me? Your father is out in the
sunroom, Miss Marks. We're almost finished for the day, come right in.”

I'd been unlocking the front door of my father's
house on Cliff Street, the following Thursday, when the door was flung open for
me by the smiling blond stranger—the Ph.D. student/interviewer from Columbia.
Vaguely I'd assumed that, since my father hadn't mentioned her, she'd been
expelled from his life.

And what an insult, an arrogant blond stranger
daring to
invite
me
inside
my
father's
house
that
was
practically
my
own
house
as
well.

Like a pasha Dad was sprawled on a bamboo settee in
the sunroom sipping a muddy-looking cup of coffee which I had to suppose smiling
Cameron had prepared for him. To be Roland Marks's assistant was to be his
personal servant, as well.

Just barely, my father managed a smile for me.

“Lou-Lou. You're a little early, are you? No
‘accident' on the bridge today?”

I'd wanted to lean over my father and brush his
cheek with my lips in a tender-daughter greeting, to impress Cameron Slatsky;
but I knew that my father would recoil, maybe laughingly—we rarely indulged in
such sentimental
female
gestures.

“I'm not early. I'm exactly ‘on time.' But I can go
away again if you'd like, and come back later.”

I spoke in a voice heavy with adolescent sarcasm. A
few seconds in a parent's presence can provoke such regression.

I didn't like the bemused and condescending tone of
my father to me, his favorite child, as it might be interpreted by the shining
blond stranger.

On a glass-topped table in front of my father were
many sheets of paper, some of them photocopies of pages from Roland Marks's
books, as well as a laptop and a small tape recorder. And a can of Diet Coke
which the intrepid interviewer must have brought for herself since it
represented the sort of “toxic chemical cocktail” my father had always banned
from his households.

I could see that the interviewer was systematically
questioning my father about his career, making her way through his book titles
chronologically. Her questions, numbered for each title, appeared to be
elaborate.

For the first time, I wondered, is the girl was
serious? About Roland Marks's
oeuvre
? Her interest
had to be a calculated campaign—didn't it?

I had never read a page of my father's allegedly
brilliant fiction for its aesthetic properties. I'd read only to pursue an
ever-elusive glimpse of my own self through Roland Marks's eyes though I'd
read—and reread—obsessively.

Smiling Cameron Slatsky said, “Miss Marks, may I
bring you something to drink? There's more coffee, and wine. And I brought Diet
Coke . . .”

Dad said, “For God's sake call her ‘Lou-Lou,'
Cameron. ‘Miss Marks' sounds like one of those cryptically unfunny
New
Yorker
cartoons.”

Stiffly I told Cameron Slatsky no thank you, I
didn't want any of her Diet Coke. Or coffee or wine either, for that matter.

In fact I'd have loved a Diet Coke. But not in my
father's presence.

“We're not quite finished for today, Lou-Lou.
Cameron has been asking some very provocative, tough-minded questions about the
‘internal logic' of my novels—I'm being made to feel flayed. But it's a good
feeling, for once.”

A
good
feeling—flayed?
This had to be ridiculous.

Shining-blond Cameron cast her eyes downward in a
semblance of modesty. Indeed they were beautiful gray-green eyes, once she'd
removed her glasses.

She was looming above my father dazzling and
willowy in the mauve wool suit, that had to be of very high quality, though
possibly purchased at a consignment shop; the brass buttons were just slightly
tarnished. She was slouch-shouldered as a too-tall teenaged girl might be, which
made her appear touching, vulnerable. In the instant in which my father turned
to Cameron I sensed how
the
exemplary
daughter
disappeared from his consciousness, as if a
portion of his brain had been severed.

Of course, I was upset. I hadn't expected
this—again. In the intervening week I'd tried to erase the arrogant young woman
from my memory.

However, in my role as a college administrator I'd
long ago learned to disguise upset. Emotions were not permitted in one in
authority. In an unperturbed voice I asked my father—smilingly—what sort of food
he wanted for dinner; and my father gallantly asked Cameron what sort of food
did she want?—“There's Chinese, Italian, Thai—but we had Thai last
week . . .”

The way—gently crumpling, a catch in his throat— in
which my father enunciated “Cameron” was not reassuring.

Bright-vivacious Cameron said, like any high school
girl aiming to be liked, “Please choose anything you want, Mr. Marks—I mean,
Roland. I'm not a fussy eater. I like all kinds of things.” It was the sweetly
subservient manner of one who understands that to manipulate others in serious
matters you should always acquiesce in small matters; you should give an
impression of
pliancy
.

“Except sushi—the thought of raw fish makes me feel
queasy.”

Cameron shuddered, and laughed. Roland Marks
shuddered and laughed, too.

Cynically I had to wonder if Cameron knew that,
many years ago, Roland Marks had gotten deathly sick after eating sushi at a
publisher's banquet in Tokyo; since then, the mere thought of raw fish made him
feel queasy, too.

I said, “I'll order Chinese. I'll specify—nothing
raw.”

I left them and went into the kitchen. I must have
been upset, I collided with doorways, chairs, countertops. In the other room I
could hear their laughter, that was chilling to me.

I'd interrupted a domestic scene—was that it?
Unbelievable.

It must have been my father's age. Everything had
to be accelerated, even as it was being repeated. And ever-younger women, to be
confused with not
daughters
but
granddaughters
.

I bit my lower lip. This was unfair! Unjust.

The
deluded
old
man
can't
fall
in
love
so
quickly—so
soon
again.

It was a measure of my upset, I'd thought of my
father as an
old
man
. In a normal state of mind I would never have
thought of Roland Marks in such a way.

Several times during the past week I'd called my
father, spoken with him or left phone messages. I had not mentioned the young
Ph.D. candidate who'd been interviewing him nor had my father mentioned her to
me and so I'd felt justified in thinking that she might already be out of our
lives.

As always I'd been a dutiful and devoted daughter.
Dad had very little idea of how hard I worked at Riverdale College and of how
much the college expected of me. For him, I'd made several telephone calls which
he hadn't had time to make himself and I'd arranged for a furnace repairman to
drop by the house, since Dad was having trouble with the furnace. (Roland Marks
was helpless as a child living in an adult's house: he had no idea how to keep
up with repairs, whom to call, how much to expect to pay; he just suspected all
the locals to be taking advantage of him.) The wooden steps at the rear of the
house, leading down to the beach, badly needed repair; at the end of the summer
I'd tied yellow tape across the top of the steps, to discourage people,
primarily my father, from using them; but Dad had ripped the tape off, of
course—“Lou-Lou is always exaggerating ‘safety measures.' ” (Walking along the
riverbank with his Nikon camera was one of Dad's few relaxing hobbies.) I was
trying to find a reliable carpenter to repair the steps but, like plumbers and
building contractors in Rockland County, reliable carpenters were in short
supply.

When Dad had tried to deal with local handymen and
tradesmen, and they'd failed to call him back, he'd given up in disgust. Nothing
was so insulting in Roland Marks's elevated world than someone failing to call
you back—Roland Marks was the one who failed to call others back. But an
administrator knows that such disgust is but the first rung of the ladder you
must climb routinely, if not daily.

In the kitchen I called Szechuan Village. I ordered
several dishes which we might share. Cameron seemed the type who'd want brown
rice, so I ordered brown rice as well as white. I was very much in control but
my hand shook gripping the phone and the Chinese woman at the other end of the
line seemed to have trouble understanding me. “Speak English?” she said
uncertainly, and I said, vehemently, “I am speaking English!”

In the next room I could hear them. The girl's
uplifted soprano voice, and the man's deeper voice. It was a duet in which I was
not welcome—I had no musical voice.

Also, I was feeling intense jealousy. For the one
thing that Roland Marks had never been able to abide from anyone in his family,
adult children as well as wives, was talk of his “career”: his “writing.” All
that was Roland Marks's professional life was out of bounds to his family, as it
would have been out of bounds for his children to have asked him how much money
he made a year, or which of his women he'd loved best.