What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It’s 11:04 A.M. and he’d been due around 11:00 but it’s O.K. Punches in radio station WWAZ to catch the news, five after the hour. Corky’s hooked on the news, a real addict. Especially local news. Fed up with Washington politics, that shithead Bush and absolute asshole Quayle, makes you ashamed almost to be an American, at least the Democrats got through the energy bill, bucking Bush’s man Watkins, that’s good news for once but mainly Corky’s caught up in local news, even the sensational stuff broadcasters like “Richie Richards” of WWAZ focus on. Never know, turning on the radio, how the news is going to touch you. Might even, if you’re Jerome Andrew Corcoran, hear your own name.

  Not today, though. Today it’s all depressing crap. This “Richie Richards” Corky loves to hate. Frenzied yammering between ads. Latest bulletins which are in fact pseudo-bulletins. Why the fuck does the fuckhead harp on the same themes day after day: Union City is in a fiscal crisis, Union City is in a crime crisis, Union City is in a moral crisis, Union City is a crisis. Rust Belt casualty. Depopulating. Whites to the suburbs. So what else is new? Crime, drug use on the rise. AIDS deaths. AIDS babies. Tax base eroding. Once the third largest city in New York State, now dropped to fifth. And fast falling. Corky Corcoran who was born in Union City and raised in Union City and loves Union City and happens to own $1 million in property in Union City bitterly resents this kind of shit. Not the truth of it exactly, for maybe it is true, but the selectivity, the unfair bias.

  Next time Corky runs into this traitor “Richie Richards” maybe he’ll punch the fucker in the mouth.

  Today’s typical: the guy starts out phony-sad reporting the weatherman’s prediction of a generally lousy Memorial Day weekend, thunderstorms expected early Monday, still the annual parade’s scheduled until further notice—you can almost hear Richards gloating, the parade’s for suckers, sure to be washed out. Then the usual firecracker recitation: one fire, two break-ins, three drug arrests, a grandmother of nine wounded by gunshot in a “domestic disturbance” on South Erie Boulevard—meaning ninety-five percent black now, the stretch of Erie beyond Grand, all that was once Irish Hill and is still quaintly and misleadingly so called. (A little knot of whites still remains. Too poor or too disorganized or too stubborn to move. And among them Sean Corcoran, still in the old woodframe house on Roosevelt, Aunt Frances dead for years and the old man must be seventy-seven at least, long retired, living off a city pension to which, by a confidential arrangement, Corky contributes $300 each month. Corky feels guilty anyway, so rarely drops by to see the old man, or even calls him. Sean Corcoran took him in, treated him like a son, or anyway no worse than he treated his own son Peter, and Corky’s a guy right now without a family of his own, certainly no kid of his own. Corky thinks: I’ll swing around to Sean’s tomorrow, or Sunday. Hoping to Christ it isn’t too late.) Next the news is of Thursday night’s demonstration at the Mohawk County Courthouse and for this Corky turns the volume up.

  The demonstration, mainly of blacks, was led by a local black leader and activist named Marcus Steadman, one of Corky’s fellow City Council members and a preacher in something called the African-American First Church of the Evangelist—a notorious troublemaker who’s himself under indictment for raping a young black woman. Steadman’s the kind of black man who depresses liberals and gladdens the hearts of conservatives. The kind of nigger, as Sean Corcoran and his friends used to say, to give even niggers a bad name. Corky isn’t prejudiced against blacks, nor any race, creed, religion, but he sees the logic of such a sentiment. God damn, Corky can’t stand Marcus Steadman. And everybody he knows, from certain of his black City Council colleagues up to the Mayor and his aides, feels one hundred percent the same way.

  Steadman’s an opportunist, a rabble-rouser. Taking up the cause, in itself a worthy cause, of protesting the Pickett-Johnson incident, and mixing it in with the Rodney King verdict, and weird religious mumbo-jumbo of an upcoming Black Apocalypse—the black races of the world are going to rise up, like a giant tidal wave, and drown the effete white races, in the year 2000. WWAZ replays passages from Steadman’s ranting speech of the night before, on the steps of the courthouse, Where’s justice? Steadman is shouting, where’s black justice? Where’s our justice? Corky, driving his car, listens in fascination, Jesus Christ he hates that man, hates him like poison for turning every City Council meeting into a shouting match, dividing the inner-city blacks who owe so much to Oscar Slattery, plus insulting Corky personally whenever he has a chance. (How did Marcus Steadman most hurt Corky Corcoran? By refusing to shake hands with him, the first time they met. Leaving Corky with his hand stuck out, like an erect prick. Nobody snubs Corky Corcoran!) Even though he has to admit, Steadman’s essentially right. It is a racist society, no doubt. And maybe Pickett did shoot a twelve-year-old kid without sufficient cause but, if so, that’s for a jury to decide.

  The trial’s been scheduled, postponed, rescheduled. Now it’s set for mid-June. Just a few weeks. With Steadman fanning the flames, it’s going to be a nasty time. (And Steadman himself is soon to stand trial.) Corky doesn’t like to think what might—what will—happen if Pickett is acquitted, like the L.A. cops. Union City could go up in smoke like L.A. Listen to Steadman, the guy’s a true preacher, makes even a sworn enemy like Corky shiver hearing him, voice like a tenor sax, leaping and wailing, keening, Biblical cadences Rise up O my brothers! O my sisters! Where is our justice?

  Next, “Richie Richards” winds up the 11:05 news in a phony-scandalized voice, keeping the most repulsive “news” for last. It’s recycled crap which Corky’s been hearing for at least two days now: a twenty-nine-year-old Union City resident named Leroy Nickson, married and the father of a five-month infant boy, not only beat the infant to death with his fists for “crying too much when he was trying to sleep” but disposed of the body by—

  Corky punches the radio off.

  Fuck that shit—he’s heard enough.

  Noticing now, now traffic’s moving normally again, on the down side of Pendle Hill, an ambulance moving away. No siren now, and no flashing light. Meaning a corpse inside, not a customer.

  No sign of an accident on the street. UCPD sawhorses cordoning off a driveway and part of a sidewalk, a UC Fire Co. van in a No Parking zone, uniformed firemen and cops out front. Corky’s curiosity is immediately aroused. What’s going on?

  Pendle Hill Village is one of those townhouse-style condominiums built in the 1980s in “gentrified” islands in the downtown sector you’d have written off as dead-end zones in the 1970s. This one was built, as Corky happens to know, on the site of the old Pendle Hill Brewery. Only a few blocks from St. Vincent’s Mission on Front Street where the winos line up three times a day for free meals and the occasional delousing. Less than a mile from that stretch of Canal Street the downscale pimps have staked out for their hookers. Still, it looks swanky. Yuppie-swanky. Each condo unit with its own front entrance and garage below; all buff-beige brick and curvy wrought-iron railings and red geraniums in clay pots. And bars on the lower windows so classy you might not guess their practical purpose. Synthetic like a movie set, but with a look of romance: a “village” for well-paid young professionals, computer programmers, lawyers, money people, PR and media girls, a swinging-singles kind of condo it would’ve been in the crude happy innocent days before AIDS. Even has its own Pendle Hill Laundry & Dry Cleaners, its Pendle Hill Florist, its Pendle Hill Fashion Boutique, its Pendle Hill Video. Corky’s reminded of the place Thalia lived in for a while when she’d worked for Family Services as a caseworker, that high-rise “luxury” apartment the Dominion Towers, farther downtown, with a view of the river and the bridge and Fort Pearce, Ontario, on the other side. Thalia just out of Cornell, twenty-two years old and thinking she’s going to devote her life to “helping humanity” and it’s just one of those shit-jobs idealistic kids sign on for not knowing what’s ahead. Still, Thalia lasted longer than most. Her mother worrying all the while she’d be mugged, raped, murdered “down there.”

 
None of those things had happened to Thalia, but other things had happened to Thalia.

  Corky parks behind the firetruck, No Parking but he figures this is a special occasion, rules suspended. He’s a curious guy, pushy you might say. Gives himself a quick check in the rearview mirror, sees he looks O.K., five hours’ sleep the night before which is pretty good for him, and his eyes not noticeably bloodshot. Climbs out of the Caddy seeing the Caddy too looks good, impressive, nobody’s going to notice that scratch on the right side, traversing both doors, thin as a pencil stroke he’s been too busy to get it touched up but will, soon: next week.

  “Hello, officer. What’s happened here?”

  Corky’s addressing not one of the uniformed cops but an older guy obviously a detective. In fact, Corky knows him, vaguely—the name’s Beck? He can see Beck recognizes him too, or almost does, there’s that pinched look in the detective’s face for a fraction of a second, I know you, you know me, fleeting and vanished immediately and Corky’s thinking how for sure you don’t get to be a Union City senior detective by being a nice guy, knows Beck won’t answer any question of his but will block it with one of his own, so he’s prepared. Beck asks, not returning Corky’s smile, but politely, “You live here, mister?” and Corky says, frank and concerned, “I used to, officer. I know the neighborhood, and some people here. I was just driving by, and . . .” It isn’t entirely a lie since the Dominion Towers is less than a mile away.

  “There’s been what you’d call an emergency situation,” Beck says. “It’s under control now.”

  “Not a fire—?”

  “It’s under control now.”

  Staring at Corky like he’s grinding his back teeth to keep from telling Corky to go to hell. Boiled-looking face, a German stolidity to it, rhino horn for a nose, no bullshitting this guy. Maybe fifty years old. Packing a Beretta inside that bulky off-the-rack sport coat, you got to wonder how many times he’s fired it.

  “Yeah? O.K., I was just wondering.” Corky’s got his car keys in hand, rattling them, smiling. “Like I said, I used to live—”

  “But you don’t now, right? You’re not a resident of this condo complex, right?”

  “That’s right, officer. I’m what you’d call a . . .” Corky smiles to show this is a sort of a joke, nothing for Beck to jump down his throat about, “. . . concerned citizen.”

  “Well, this area is sealed off. See? No names and no details are released until—they’re released.”

  This means a death or deaths, but Corky isn’t going to push it. Must be a dozen cops here, firemen, police radios yakking, an air of upset, grim looks, worry, sure somebody’s died, the body’s just been carted away, probably not a natural death, Corky will learn what it is eventually. Registering the address that’s been sealed off with yellow UCPD tape: 1758 Brisbane. Townhouse condo, attached single-car garage below, Venetian blinds drawn tight on the windows, mail and flyers stuffed in the mailbox like it hasn’t been picked up in days. That sad stark look of a place where something’s gone wrong that won’t ever be made right. Like a photo that’s overexposed. You look. You can’t see what’s wrong but you can’t not look.

  Corky thanks the officer and backs off, he’s a good-hearted guy not meaning to intrude. Quick to leave before Beck hasn’t any choice but to order him to move on, which he guesses Beck would rather not do sensing not how they’re connected to each other but that they are, in city politics dense and clotted and lushly symbiotic as algae covering a pond.

  What they say in boxing, What goes around comes around.

  Corky drives on. Knowing that the cops are already checking him out, his license plate, on the computer. Routine police procedure. Doesn’t bother him. He is a concerned citizen.

  And Corky likes cops, always has. The cops that like him, in any case. Though it’s a fucking shame as everybody said for years everybody said Tim Corcoran’s murderers were never arrested, never tried. Just not enough evidence. D.A. couldn’t make the case stick.

  Though in fact Al Fenske was killed, gunned down himself gangland style, Easter 1962. And the hired killers in the car Corky hadn’t quite seen were arrested on other charges, sent to prison eventually. So there’s justice. Isn’t there?

  Corky’s at Union Boulevard already, it’s 11:17 A.M. and he’s smiling, his easy smile, sure Corky Corcoran likes cops, likes everybody, his reputation’s he’s the nicest guy in Union City, if you don’t cross him.

  2

  “He’s Here Now, but He’s Leaving”

  Pussy, thinks Corky. Licking his lips. Jesus, beautiful.

  He’d picked it up at the China Import Emporium in the Lakeview Shopping Mall, where Corcoran, Inc., owns office property.

  Never sees Christina without bringing her something. A habit pleasurable and maybe addictive, Corky’s apt to impulse buy for any number of people he knows, women especially (in the rear of the Caddy there’s a pink potted begonia wrapped in silver foil tied with a big crimson bow, Corky picked up Wednesday with every intention of bringing it to his elderly aunt Sister Mary Megan Dowd who’s been in Holy Redeemer Hospital for at least a week: God damn, he means to get there). This item for Christina, Corky knows she’s going to like: a gorgeous ceramic figure halfway between a cat and a fox, vivid russet-red and intricately painted in brilliant colors, slanted gray-green eyes, feminine features, clever damn thing stands about six inches high and you discover you can pull it apart and there’s another even more beautiful cat-fox inside, you pull that apart and there’s another inside that, and so on—six in all. Must be hand-painted, tiny little brushes. Oriental art. And not that expensive—under $100.

  Every time Corky gives Christina a present, she seems embarrassed, says she wishes he wouldn’t. But why not? How’s he going to show her he’s crazy about her otherwise, in ways she can see, touch, weigh in her hand?

  Corky parks the Caddy where he usually does: not in front of Christina’s brownstone at 331 Nott, where she rents a third-floor loft, but up the block and around a corner by an Italian bakery. He’s wary by nature. And by design. Don’t let the bastards get you by the short hairs, right? An old-fashioned Irish Catholic gallantry too, which is to say a concern for appearances. Wants to “protect” Christina, who’s a married woman. Anyway until they work it out when she’ll tell her husband (who’s, unfortunately, a pretty sick man) about Corky and when she’ll be free to marry Corky—if ever they work it out.

  Sure, Corky’s crazy about Christina. She’s really in deep in him like no other woman. But does he really want to marry her, or anyone?

  Wouldn’t like me quite so much, lover?—if I were free and unattached.

  That’s bullshit, Corky thinks. He does want to get married again, and soon. And it’s going to be to Christina.

  Weird, though—he’s always lapsing into this dream. Not a dream exactly because he’s usually awake when he has it. Lots of times, driving. Especially the Expressway, the Thruway. Suddenly he’s thinking of this wife of his, kids, two or three kids, big white colonial in a lakeshore suburb like Chateauguay . . . like it’s real, this is Corky Corcoran’s actual family, only where are they exactly, and where’s he? Almost, it scares him. That tightening sensation in his chest. Like Time is running out. Tim Corcoran was only twenty-five when his son was born.

  Yet in the dream the wife doesn’t seem to be Christina. Doesn’t seem to be anyone he knows. (Not Charlotte, for sure.) Corky tries to see her face but can’t. The kids too—blurred. He can hear their voices, almost—like music—airy, tuneless, teasing. Can’t buy me love. Old Beatles song, must be thirty years ago.

  What’s it mean, Corky hasn’t a clue. He’s not a guy comfortable inside his own head.

  Peering into the rear of the Caddy as he locks the doors. Jesus, how’d the inside get to be such a mess? There’s the begonia plant, but also newspapers, paperback books, even empty beer cans and Styrofoam cups, a variety of crud he’s accumulated without being aware of it like the crud on his razor blades, the inside upper rim
of his toilet bowls. Charlotte was right: every car Corky drives he turns into a pigsty, but how’s it happen?

  Walking back, not fast not slow but like a guy who knows his destination and’s looking forward to the very process of getting there, to 331 Nott, Corky’s noticing the street life: Hispanics, blacks, shoppers, kids, pretty normal-looking folks so what’s this bullshit, Union City is in a crisis?

  The spics and the blacks, the guys especially, they really stand out: cool dressers. Cool dudes. And Corky too in this “sport jacketcoat” he likes the look of, silky-wool fabric lighter than camel’s-hair but soft like camel’s-hair, and that color. Prosperous-looking, but conservative-prosperous. Not pimp-prosperous like some of these studs.

  At lunch he’ll ask Greenbaum how much money Greenbaum thinks he’s worth, approximately. Two million dollars is the bottom line, Corky thinks.

  He likes the way people glance at him, women especially. And their eyes snag. Men sizing him up. He’s a cocky guy but not belligerent; quick to smile; sometimes, if he’s nervous, he can’t help smiling. In public like this he walks with his shoulders squared, head up, casual in his gaze, easygoing, a manner he cultivated as a kid, transferred as a scholarship student, aged fifteen, to the private boys’ school St. Thomas Aquinas. Rich classmates, and Corky from Roosevelt Street, Irish Hill. The Corcorans down on their luck since Tim’s death. Except: Uncle Sean poked him in the shoulder one day, told him there’s a surprise in the works, a friend’s thinking of you, and next day a certified letter came to “Jerome Andrew Corcoran” from the director of St. Thomas informing him he was the recipient of a privately endowed scholarship. And no more information forthcoming than that, for years.

  Corky’s scholarship was for need, not grades. His grades were average at the parish school, except in math where he’d score sometimes as high as one hundred percent. Not until after he graduated did he learn, and then accidentally, that his scholarship to St. Thomas was paid for by Oscar Slattery in memoriam Tim Corcoran. Even Vic Slattery, who by chance became Corky’s friend, hadn’t known.