What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Corky had been gripping Christina tight, maybe too tight, their lovemaking has bruised her in the past, yes but she loves it, she loves it from him, she has told him so, beginning now to writhe, lifting herself against him with mounting desperation, Corky recalls having heard that an intense orgasm can trigger labor in a woman in a state of advanced pregnancy, the powerful contractions of the vagina, the eerie violence of these contractions, quick-frenzied squeezing like a heart gone wild, Christina cries out, in a climax that is a series of climaxes in rapid rippling succession, she moans, sobs, buries her damp face in his neck, Corky loves this, something fearful in it, the woman’s convulsions, but wonderful too, his cock deep inside her and gripped so frantically tight, how needed he is, how much she does love him, no subterfuge here, no hypocrisy, never has he been so close to any woman and never so certain of any woman even if she had not told him how she loves him Corky would know, a man knows, the helpless muscular contractions are making him come too, he can’t hold himself back any longer, slipping into that free fall, the precipice shattering beneath him, the vertigo, an explosion of dazzling light behind his eyelids, never is Corky prepared for the violence of orgasm, the sledgehammer blow of it, groaning, whimpering like an infant, it’s an electric current rushing through his body, it is his body, he’s paralyzed, in that free fall, suspended, the power of it, the impact, the ejaculation that is his heart’s very blood, the fierce longing of that blood to reproduce itself, to live forever.

  Corky’s body flames up, he turns to ashes.

  And only, Corky sees, when at last he can bring himself to lift his arm, to covertly look at his watch, its stylish ebony-dark Rolex face highlighted against the sweaty bronze hairs of his wrist—only 11:45.

  Time for one more fuck, before he has to push on?

  Telling her, cradling her in his arms, lazy and dazed as swimmers lying spent on a beach, basking in sunshine, “Chrissie honey, you won’t believe what I was doing on the way over here, the reason I was a few minutes late,” and she says, her voice lifting, warm, throaty, this voice Corky only hears in Christina at such times, “Yes, what?” and he says, boyish, bemused, “Directing traffic on Brisbane,” and she exclaims, rising on one elbow to look at him, giving him the gift, and this too only at such times, in this loft floating in the sky above windy-gritty Union City, secret, unknown to all others, of her quickest most intimate most radiant smile, “Corky, what—?”

  Great storyteller, Corky Corcoran, like all the male Corcorans, Timothy Patrick in his time, Grandpa Liam in his time, old Spades Corcoran who’d worked forty years on the Erie Canal, old Hock Corcoran convulsing his listeners with wild boozy fantastical tales, Corky’s friends love him when he’s most himself most Irish spinning anecdotes into stories, sure the guy’s a little too loud especially when he’s been drinking, especially when he wants to impress, sure he tries too hard, not usually with women (with women, you don’t need to try hard: women are on your side) as with men.

  Corky’s stories have one thing in common, of course: Corky’s at the center. He’s the hero, or he’s the jerk you have to love. He’s the victim, or the worm-that-turns, or the guy-who-loses-his-temper, or the dumb-fuck who wins in the end. He’s the sneaky counterpuncher. He’s the mastermind. He’s the man with the aces, the royal flush. He’s—who? Corky Corcoran!

  Telling Christina Kavanaugh not about Death (for what was hauled away in the ambulance but dead meat: no siren, no haste: that’s how you know) nor even about standing his ground with that fuckface Beck who knew him, for sure Beck knew him, but only about directing traffic off Brisbane and through the alley, how he must have looked out there, dressed as he was, a civilian and not a cop, but with an Irish cop’s face, the novelty of it, and Christina laughs as he knew she would, hugging him, pressing her warm face against his warmer, sweat-slick chest, the springy-frizzy hairs of his chest, laughing, “Oh Corky, I wish I’d seen you.”

  Corky laughs comfortably. “You’re seeing me now.”

  The sinewy bronze-glowing length of him. Knobby toes, the big toes’ horny nails, discolored like old ivory, he’s wriggling them, at the far end of the creaky sofa, and his hard-muscled legs, knees upraised, lazy, sprawled, comfortable in the woman’s arms, or so-seeming.

  Corky asks, “What about Monday night—you’ll be there?”

  The jump is quick and slant but Christina gets the connection: if you want to see Corky perform in public, really perform, and really in public, seated at the head table with the Slatterys and the van Burens and maybe the Governor himself (if Cuomo can make it: that’s pending), Memorial Day evening at the ritzy Chateauguay Country Club is the occasion.

  Christina explains carefully, “Yes, I think we’ll be there, I’ll be sure, I’m sure, unless—” her voice trailing off as it does when she’s thinking of her husband, but out of tact or that shy stubborn air of privacy Corky sometimes resents in her she won’t say, Corky feels her thinking rapidly, eyelashes tickling the hairs on his chest, how strange the phenomenon of another’s thinking: in one of the paperback science books in the back seat of Corky’s car, he’d read about a philosopher who’d examined freshly decapitated heads during the French Revolution in pursuit of “thought”—“mind”—weird! but it is a mystery, others’ thoughts simultaneous with your own but veering off on angles you can’t follow still less predict. “—You know, I bought tickets. Weeks ago.”

  “Sure,” says Corky, stroking Christina’s hair, “—I know, you told me. Weeks ago.”

  So there’s this sliver of a wedge between them, Corky’s pride and Christina’s air of apology beforehand, yes she wants to come to the fund-raiser, no she doesn’t want to come, hates these occasions, of course she bought tickets, $1000 a plate but the Kavanaughs have enough dough to buy out the place, that’s not the point and Christina knows it and Corky knows she knows it. Even the fact that the Kavanaughs have long been supporters of Vic Slattery as of liberal Democratic politics generally isn’t the point.

  Christina says, “It’s just so hard, sometimes. Seeing you at these public gatherings. And seeing you see me. I hate the deception, the hypocrisy. I never believe I’m playing the role right and I don’t want to play the role right.”

  Corky strokes Christina’s head, her hair that’s so beautiful, black, glossy, not quite so fine as the hair of other women Corky’s known (for instance Charlotte: her fading-gold hair she’s fanatic about not allowing to go gray, Corky glanced up at her one morning, his own wife, saw, Jesus, that woman’s getting blonder, who is that woman?) but thick, rippling-solid, he likes to close his fist in it, grip it hard.

  Thinking, What the hell, what does it matter, shit does it matter really, the main thing is here, and now, like this, the two of them like this, and anyway Corky too feels clumsy when he and Christina are together in the presence of others.

  It’s been a long time, how many months, since he’s seen Harry, had to shake Harry’s hand. Poor bastard. Tried to walk with a cane for as long as he could, forestalled a walker, the inevitable wheelchair, multiple sclerosis a disease attacking young adults, the central nervous system, Corky read about it in an old paperback book The Family Medical Encyclopedia, guilty and a little sick learning of Kavanaugh’s chances, this mysterious condition MS, the insulating tissue that covers the nerve fibers degenerates in patches and is replaced by scar tissue, who knows why, so nerve messages from the brain are blocked getting to muscles and organs, the only hope is, like Kavanaugh in the past, you can go into remission, but that’s mysterious too, and temporary—Christina doesn’t talk about it much, but she’s said being hopeful really hurts, it’s hope that hurts, you want to believe you’re ready for the worst and you settle in for it then suddenly there’s a change, there’s actually improvement, you’re on a roller coaster up and down and can’t get off except at the very end. Corky hates that sensation of not being able to wake up fully (when he’d drunk more heavily than he does now, that happened frequently: scared the shit out of him), lying crooked
or crumpled where he’d passed out sometimes even on the floor of his bedroom like he’d been headed for the bed but couldn’t make it, sometimes in his car waking at dawn in a parking lot behind a tavern and how strange how unreal yes how mocking like a cartoon seeing these places Corky knows mainly by night exposed by day sometimes in acid sunshine like an aging woman plastered with makeup, he hates that and he’s terrified of it, Christ the horror of being paralyzed really, trying to wake but not being able to, trying just to move your leg and you can’t, Christina said it began when Harry remarked his legs were tired all the time, pins and needles in his feet and hands and Corky’s thinking suddenly of poor Sister Mary Megan in Holy Redeemer, seventy-two years old, she’d had surgery to remove a uterine tumor the family is saying is “benign,” Corky winces thinking of it, of her, how kind she’d been to him, that terrible time, that time of which Corky tries not to think, yes and months and years afterward when Theresa was sick and in a kind of remission too, Sister Mary Megan the only one in the family to perceive what lay curled like a fishhook in Jerome’s heart, no matter the kid’s antic good nature and gregariousness at school Pray to God for understanding, pray to God every hour and every minute of every day for the strength to forgive Him. Jesus he’d better haul his ass over to the hospital to see her, guilty about so rarely seeing her, Uncle Sean too, any of them, they’re proud of him supposedly but he avoids the family, has avoided them since being taken up by the Drummonds, especially since marrying Charlotte, the snobby bitch, but if he doesn’t get that plant to Sister Mary Megan soon the fucking thing’s going to shrivel up in the back seat of the Caddy, he hasn’t remembered to water it yet.

  Corky asks cautiously, “How is Harry, you haven’t said for a while,” and Christina doesn’t reply at first, now the lovers’ languor has lifted, too much talk, the wrong kind of talk, maybe all talk is wrong, “—He’s fine. For him. You know. He’s home.” Meaning not in a hospital, not in a rehabilitation clinic. For now (so Corky’s guessing) that’s the main thing.

  Beyond that, don’t ask. Just, no.

  Aunt Frances used to say, No news isn’t good news, people rush to tell you good news.

  Maybe all talk is wrong at a time like this. After love. After such lovely fucking. Floating in the sky and the river below glittering like mica in the sun, Oh Christ you want it to go on forever but of course it can’t, as soon as you speak you begin to ease apart.

  Sometimes, after orgasm, Christina cries, so quietly Corky wouldn’t know except he feels her shaking. A secret weeping, that hot splash of tears, he senses he shouldn’t acknowledge.