What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As Tim Corcoran might have told her. Kissing her, and teasing her, in his laughing way so she would not hear the fury in his voice, Why set yourself up to be humbled?—you’re a ridiculous woman!

  Why then did you marry a ridiculous woman?—you’re the fool.

  Because I am a fool, why else?

  Staring at her with such love, such hunger, if the child Jerome happened to see he’d have to look quickly away.

  The wake for Tim Corcoran at Donnelly’s which was the most crowded of wakes in Irish Hill since that of the notorious McNamara the ex-Police Commissioner in 1957, and the following morning at eleven o’clock the funeral at Our Lady of Mercy which was more crowded still.

  Hundreds of mourners from Irish Hill and other parts of Union City including Edgewater on the lake where well-to-do Irish-American families like the Slatterys lived yet not a single person from Maiden Vale except the female real estate agent who’d sold Tim Corcoran his new house. For though there were neighboring houses on Schuyler Place there turned out to be no neighbors living in them, still less friends.

  6

  Like a dream of dark rippling water the funeral passed leaving him untouched.

  It was his first funeral for Theresa had shielded him from the others—elderly aunts, uncles, Grandpa Corcoran six years before.

  It was his first funeral for in fact Death had never struck so near.

  Strange then to be seated, and everyone staring while pretending not to stare, in a pew at Our Lady of Mercy not the Corcorans’ own but at the very front of the church. Where you had no choice but to stare at the casket, the flowers, the dazzling glittering altar, the priest in stiff gold-threaded vestments who was Father Sullivan who’d married Tim Corcoran and Theresa McClure and who’d baptized their baby Jerome Andrew and who, halting and swaying in grief, the sonorous Latin phrases slurred in his mouth, flushed cheeks clumsily shaved and stipples of scarcely coagulated blood on his jaw, was now saying a solemn high requiem mass for the repose of Tim Corcoran’s immortal soul.

  Drunk and sick, poor Father Sullivan, well you couldn’t blame him, so close to the Corcorans and he’d known Tim all of Tim’s life, a spasm of coughing at the introit so it seemed he might break down entirely and his young assistant would be obliged to take over, but the old man hung on, stubborn as a bull, damned strong for his age and condition, never would relinquish the sacred chalice at such a time.

  None of this was a dream yet it passed like a dream and like a dream too it held the risk of terror, a feather’s touch could do it.

  For he’d been staring hypnotized at the casket which was massive, gleaming black, sleekly shaped like a seagoing vessel and so how horrible it must be laid in the earth instead. And the lid shut close over Tim Corcoran’s handsome face. . . . The horror of this too swept over Jerome, that his father might open his eyes to pitch blackness, buried alive, waking only to suffocate, trapped in a box, in the earth, the unspeakable horror of it of which Jerome could not bear to think even as he could think of nothing else.

  At the wake the previous day the lid of the casket had been open. What terrible injuries had been done to Tim Corcoran, to the base of his skull where a .45-caliber bullet had entered, no one could see.

  Jerome had contemplated the man in the casket which was lined with puckered white satin like the inside of a candy box, lying in such a way that Tim Corcoran would have scorned, in a pose of sleep, angelic sleep, a somewhat puffy face, smooth-rouged cheeks, lips manipulated into a faint puzzled smile, and a rosary of amber and silver beads twined in his clasped fingers.

  A rosary! Tim Corcoran! Who had not said a rosary in twelve years.

  You wondered how Tim’s friends, seeing him in such a pose, could keep from laughing.

  At the same time there was the presence of the rouged dead man in the candy-box casket there was the uncanny sensation felt by all that, knowing Tim Corcoran, you wouldn’t have been surprised to see him show up at his own wake, the real man, tall and ruddy-faced from the cold, and snowflakes melting in his curly-crinkled hair, and his eyes bright with drink, pushing his way into the overheated flower-choked room clapping his friends on the shoulders, taking the women’s hands and kissing their cheeks. Here I am, what’s going on? It’s Christmas, isn’t it?

  Jerome was urged at last to approach the casket and to kiss his father goodbye. There were so many weeping, choking women, women who’d loved Tim Corcoran, Jerome set himself apart from them defiant and dry-eyed. He leaned over the casket, he shut his eyes and held his breath and kissed the waxy rouged cheek. His heart slammed against his ribs. His bowels clenched. He thought calmly, This is not Daddy, this is someone else.

  So it was all right.

  Just tell us what you heard and what you saw, Jerome.

  Not blind, son, are you?

  Our only witness.

  His mouth was so fucking dry, he swallowed repeatedly. The sour brackish stink of his breath rising in his own nostrils as when he woke from sleeping hard, open-mouthed, and his breath was stale.

  He paid no heed to the Latin phrases, numbly he knelt with the others, he rose, and stood, and knelt again, and again stood, as the organ thundered overhead and voices sang with a yearning, hungry urgency rising to the curved painted ceiling of Our Lady of Mercy, and none of this he heard, it passed leaving him untouched.

  Swaying above the altar railing, in his stiff gold-threaded vestments, the old priest Father Sullivan turned to bless the congregation, his hands pudgy-pale. This was a high mass, a solemn high requiem mass, slow, ponderous, the first solemn high requiem mass of Jerome Corcoran’s life. But he scarcely noticed. Recalling how once he’d torn pages out of a comic book, Tales from the Crypt, to stop himself from staring at ugly drawings of a man buried alive, he hadn’t been able to resist turning back to those pages, the horror of it.

  He’d thought, yes it might happen to him. He would never have thought it might happen to his father.

  “Jerome?—are you all right?”

  His aunt was whispering in his ear. He must have whimpered aloud unaware.

  On the far side of Aunt Frances his cousins were sitting, and since his father’s death he had not spoken to them, nor looked them in the face. He could not imagine speaking to any of his classmates or friends, now his father was dead. Their pity for him would choke him with rage.

  Strange, and uncomfortable, to be sitting here between Uncle Sean and Aunt Frances in the front pew, center, at Our Lady of Mercy. This was not the Corcorans’ pew. He had to resist the impulse to glance back at his family’s pew, to figure out what was wrong.

  Sometimes Tim Corcoran accompanied his wife, son, and mother to mass, but most times he did not. When he did, he hung back in the vestibule or out on the sidewalk to shake hands with his friends, to talk. The women and the little boy went inside, Tim took his time, like the other men in no hurry to enter the church and bless themselves with two fingers of holy water and genuflect and be seated. You half-expected him to hurry inside, to take his place in an unobtrusive corner of the church.

  Just tell us, son.

  What you heard, and what you saw.

  Jerome’s guts churned moistly. It was pain caused him to whimper aloud but he steeled himself and did not double over. His anus burnt from scalding shit, he’d been diarrhetic for forty-eight hours.

  Aunt Frances, and his mother’s cousin Agnes, and Sister Mary Megan Dowd who was an older sister of Tim Corcoran’s, an Ursuline nun, had been at 8 Schuyler Place to take care of Jerome. They’d drawn a bath and made him bathe. They’d dressed him in the navy blue wool suit that fitted his shoulders loosely, they’d fastened the snap-on tie at his neck. They’d combed his snarly hair. They’d hugged him, wept over him, prayed in his presence so he stood miserable waiting for it to end. Your mother will be home for the funeral, they said, then later they said, Your mother isn’t quite strong enough, the doctor doesn’t want to discharge her, maybe you can visit her tomorrow.

  Jerome had not asked a word
of Mommy. He would not.

  They told him his mother loved him and was thinking of him but she wasn’t quite strong enough to leave the hospital yet, in a few days maybe, when the doctor said she was ready.

  And still Jerome hadn’t asked a word of her. Not truly believing he would ever see Mommy again, not even her body stiff as a wax dummy in a casket.

  He’s in a state of shock, you see, Sister Mary Megan Dowd had whispered.

  God damn them to hell for forcing him to sit in a steaming-hot tub, liquid shit had erupted from him, a spasm of gut-pain that left him whimpering and helpless. But fortunately the bathroom door was locked from inside.

  Since Christmas Eve everything inside Jerome threatened to turn into liquid and drain away. If he gave in and ate, he vomited it back in a soupy acid gruel. If he drank water or fruit juice, he no sooner swallowed than it forced its way out, burning, as piss.

  Tim Corcoran’s bowels too had loosened, in the shock of Death. When Jerome had found him, and Theresa bent over him, his nostrils had been assailed by the stench.

  There were things you could not believe, for no words can accommodate them.

  Theresa had been screaming, and continued to scream, staring at Jerome without recognition. When the ambulance came, and the attendants helped her to her feet, urging her toward the ambulance, she’d screamed at them and tried to claw at their faces.

  Jerome did not truly believe he would see her alive again, thus shrewdly he refused to ask a word of her.

  He’s in a state of shock.

  As are we all. Oh, Jesus!

  You’re not blind for Christ’s sweet sake are you?

  Our only witness.

  At Donnelly’s Funeral Home there had been crowds of mourners, and so many flowers, and, here and there, plainclothes policemen.

  A rumor had spread through Irish Hill, there would be another killing. For was not Sean Corcoran the next likely target?

  Tall vases, gigantic floral displays, white lilies, and white roses, and white carnations, and most spectacular of all white gladioli, you saw the logic of flowers in such a place as the viewing room at Donnelly’s, for the eye leapt at once to the dead man in the casket and then moved outward, elsewhere, anywhere else.

  Faces swollen with grief, faces ravaged with shock, eyes alit in disbelief and fury, the many Corcoran relatives, the Dowds, Muldoons, Culligans, McClures. Jerome stiffened himself against their rough hugs, their fevered embraces. The tears of the women. The heat of the men’s breaths.

  There was the rumor, too, Jerome had seen.

  Jerome was the sole witness, Jerome had seen.

  Uncle Sean pointed the plainclothes policemen out to Jerome: But don’t stare.

  People did stare bluntly at the several Negroes who came to the wake, for there were no blacks in Irish Hill and it was not a section of Union City in which blacks were made to feel welcome.

  Look!—look. Why are they here?

  It would be said that many Negroes came to Tim Corcoran’s wake but in fact there were six Jerome counted. They came, not with their wives or families, but alone, singly, self-conscious, furtive, stricken too with shock at Tim Corcoran’s death but not comfortable sharing their feelings with the whites.

  Tim Corcoran had hired these men, carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, nonunion labor, for off-site noncontractual work, after hours. He’d used a black truck driver for one of his gravel trucks for maybe a week until the Teamsters tossed a firebomb through the window of the man’s house in Shehawkin.

  Tim Corcoran had said, A black guy saved my ass in Korea, fuck the unions I’ll hire anybody I want.

  Won’t the unions let them join? Jerome asked. Why not?

  Why? Tim Corcoran laughed derisively. Because they’re assholes, kid. White asshole cowards.

  Telling him then about Jack Dempsey who wouldn’t fight a black heavyweight, knowing he’d lose the title.

  In Korea, he’d been a POW and this black kid from Georgia had helped him when they had to march, he’d had a sprained swollen ankle and couldn’t have made it without this kid helping him, so fuck the unions I’ll hire anybody I want.

  Jerome observed one of the black men staring at Tim Corcoran for a long time, a look on his face of horror and regret and amazement and hurt. This was a tall burly plum-brown-skinned man of no age Jerome could guess, eyes protuberant and livid with broken capillaries, a splayed nose, lips wide and thick as if swollen as, once, stung by a bee in Dundonald Park, Jerome had felt his upper lip swell like a balloon, tight to bursting. When at last the black man turned, to approach him, Jerome recognized him as one of the plasterers who’d worked on renovations at the new house.

  Ignoring the stares of others, who were not hostile precisely so much as rudely curious, the man expressed his sympathy to Jerome, said how sorry he was, what a nasty surprise, at Christmas, too, what a good man Jerome’s father was, nobody would forget what a good man he was, and Jerome mumbled thank you, he’d learned that day to say thank you, it was all you could say, thank you, and the black man said again, louder, what a good man Mr. Corcoran was, nobody like him in Union City for sure, and Jerome said thank you, he was swallowing repeatedly, his mouth dry as caked dust, and the black man finally just stared at him with a look of inarticulate grief, grief sharp as hunger, there was nothing further to say in the presence of Death so he mumbled goodbye and backed off eager now to escape and Jerome wiped at his eyes unable to remember the man’s name but it was a fact: every Negro worker his father had introduced him to over the years, Jerome had forgotten the name almost immediately.

  Is that one of them? someone asked. One of them?

  Jerome’s uncle Mike Donnelly was speaking to Sean Corcoran the two men staring after the black man, and Sean said, not lowering his voice, Who else?—no good reason for any nigger to come to Irish Hill, except he helped get my brother killed.

  You knew certain facts without knowing you knew. Without having to ask.

  Bricklayers’ and Allied Craftsmen’s Local Union No. 19. Carpenters’ Local Union No. 6. Plumbers’ and Steamfitters’ Local Union No. 11. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 273 AFL-CIO. Glaziers’ Local No. 8. Insulators’ and Asbestos Workers’ Local 71. International Union of Operating Engineers Local No. 42. Painters’ Local Union No. 112. Roofers’ Local Union No. 52. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local No. 161. The Mohawk County Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. The Western New York Trade Union Council. With all of these at one time or another there had been disputes, negotiations, threatened or actual slowdowns or strikes, and contracts; and yet again, when these contracts ran out, disputes, negotiations, threatened or actual slowdowns or strikes, and new contracts. (The newest contract, the largest Corcoran Brothers had ever negotiated, was for $12 million to build a twelve-storey addition to City Hall, downtown at Union Boulevard and Brisbane.) Corcoran Brothers Construction Co. was thriving in the late 1950s and Tim Corcoran was in the habit of rubbing his big-knuckled hands together saying aggressively, Hell, I like a good fight: I’m a counterpuncher like my old man.

  Son, you’re our only witness.

  Not blind are you, son?

  They had not questioned him this morning, and would not, for this was the morning of his father’s funeral. They had questioned him for two hours on Christmas Day and they had returned to question him the following day, though there was female screaming in the house Let him alone! Let the child alone! which he seemed not to hear himself, let alone acknowledge. And in the interstices of these exhausting and confusing sessions Uncle Sean shut the two of them away to speak with him in private, gently and even tenderly at first with the air of an adult nudging a sleeping child awake, then more insistently, impatiently. Sure you saw, Jerome, it’s a fact they were there, who d’you think shot him if there wasn’t anybody there, c’mon shut your eyes you can summon it back plain as day, 1958 black DeSoto, part of the license number, MCF, a kid your age knows cars for Christ’s sweet sake.

  An
d in the limousine driving to Our Lady of Mercy this morning, down from Maiden Vale, Uncle Sean was whispering to him, not very coherently for he’d been drinking much of the night, and Aunt Frances leaned over, incensed, and gave her husband a shake, Leave the child alone! Are you mad, are you drunk on this day of all days, for shame, for shame, the day of your own brother’s funeral!

  To Jerome she’d said, Pay no attention to that man, he isn’t in his right mind these days. None of us are but he’s the worst.

  You know. You saw, and you know.

  For Christ’s sweet sake.

  Detective McClure was at the funeral mass, Jerome had seen him enter the church, and genuflect, and take a seat inconspicuously at the rear. He wondered if the other detective was here, too. There were uniformed policemen out on the street and a UCPD cruiser would escort the procession of hearse, limousines, cars to the cemetery.

  Though he’d died in mortal sin yet Tim Corcoran would be buried in sanctified soil. Catholic soil. In the Corcoran family plot.

  Knowing what you know, seeing the effect close up, could you use a gun on a man? Fire bullets into the base of his skull, into his back? his lungs, heart? So that he coughed and vomited blood, and spilled his bowels, his insides exploding out?

  For your father’s sake, Jerome. Just tell us.

  A bell was ringing briskly. The Holy Eucharist was being raised that God might see it, and rejoice.

  Time for communion. Until this moment Jerome had not thought of communion. Had he not violated his fast by drinking water that morning to cleanse his mouth of vomit?—yes but he did not care, not in the slightest. These many minutes he’d been gazing at the casket in the aisle, before the communion rail, this strange beautiful polished black vessel that contained what was called Tim Corcoran’s earthly remains, and it was not possible to know of other things, still less to care.