What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Corky also keeps in this office, in an old safe, approximately $5000 in cash—never know when you might need ready cash.

  Also he keeps here a few fresh shirts, neckties, a pair or two of trousers, underwear; in a closet-sized lavatory, towels, soap, shaving and grooming supplies. Never know when, on your way rushing from one appointment to another in downtown Union City, you’ll need to freshen yourself up, fast.

  The best thing about the Pearl Street office, which in fact is a crummy place, is, when Corky Corcoran comes here, for however long he requires, nobody knows where the hell he is.

  Back in the Caddy, speeding along the Expressway, Corky’s feeling a little better. It’s past one-thirty P.M. but fuck you Greenbaum if you don’t like it.

  He’s my husband and I love him, I love him too well fuck that, Corky has better things to think about than that, now. What’s a woman but Kleenex, toilet paper, you use it and as soon as you’re done, you’re done.

  Punches on the car radio to fill his head with noise. Sees with distaste that God-damned billboard HEINZ MEULLER LINCOLN-MERCURY SALES RENTAL & LEASING, every time he passes it he thinks of Meuller and the other guys from St. Thomas and Corky Corcoran with them, a hanger-on, a kid from the south side, riding in Meuller’s car, and something that happened one night when he was sixteen of which he isn’t proud, Christ! when you’ve been shamed every other memory of shame emerges, yes but Corky isn’t going to think about it now, any of it, he’s thinking instead of the grand pink-limestone facade of the Union City Athletic Club at Union City Square, in the very heart of the “historic district,” facing the City-County Courthouse two long blocks away at the northern edge of the park, close by City Hall (with its $20-million addition built, not by Tim Corcoran, but by a rival), close by the stark white First Church of Christ, Scientist, close by the elegant new forty-floor Hyatt on the site of the imperial old Hotel Empire, Union City’s prestige hotel where the St. Thomas parties were held and where, for Corky’s senior prom, he’d taken a plain-pretty cousin of Vic Slattery’s to whom Vic had introduced him, a sweet scared girl whose name Corky has forgotten but how keenly he remembers the desperation of needing to borrow $75 for the occasion, $75 which was to him what $10,000 might be now, if, on the rush, he had to borrow it, poor Corky! poor bastard! the terrible desperation but then the euphoria that followed, the drunken elation, yes but it’s the Union City Athletic Club, the U.C.A.C. it’s called, about which he has the strongest emotions, that evening in September 1975 the membership chairman called Corky to say he’d been voted in, beyond that the way the building looked in all weathers, the heft of it, the stateliness of it, a neoclassical portico and a Technicolor flag at the end of a gleaming brass pole and the trademark crimson-striped awnings at the windows and the crimson canopy at the front entrance and the broad sweep of the stone steps, and the way, how many years ago, Corky Corcoran a skinny kid aged twenty stood sometimes in the park sometimes even in the rain smoking cigarettes and looking at the Union City Athletic Club, he’d just started working then for Ross Drummond Realty & Insurance, those evenings Corky crossing through the park pausing to stare at the men and women arriving at the club, the rich of Union City, gentlemen and ladies they looked to be, even in his Corcoran cynicism Corky believed them to be, handsomely dressed men and women arriving in Caddies, Lincolns, fancy foreign cars beneath the canopy and handing over these cars to the uniformed parking attendants, then ascending the steps into the vast unimaginable interior, all of them members of the Union City Athletic Club, and how did you get to be a member, for it was a rarity for anyone from Irish Hill to be invited to join, for never had any Corcoran been invited to join, not even Timothy Patrick Corcoran the most successful of all the Corcorans, not even in those prosperous last years before they killed him.

  4

  Corky Dines at the Union City Athletic Club

  And here at the U.C.A.C., where with his trademark ridged-rippled red-brick hair and spiffy clothes and quick warm grin, forever a man in a hurry, Corky Corcoran’s known by all.

  “H’lo, Mr. Corcoran!”

  “H’lo, Mr. Corcoran!”

  “H’lo, Mr. Corcoran, real beautiful day isn’t it—”

  Exchanging greetings with the kid who parks his Caddy, the black doorman Archie, the house manager A. G. Rickett, the Elm Room’s maître d’ and the wine steward and God knows who all else, the uniformed pack of them, brass buttons and braid and black tie and smiling their sunny expectant smiles seeing it’s him, Corky Corcoran, one of the “new” type of U.C.A.C. member, businessman, City Councilman, civic-minded friend and associate of the Slatterys, a good-natured guy with no pretensions or airs and, not least, generous with tips—he’s feeling good already, like the air, leaked out of him, is being blown back in.

  The English-churchy interior of the U.C.A.C., heavy plush carpets and chandeliers and great leather ottomans and settees and a ceiling of dark-walnut paneling in carved squares—it’s a solace to him, too. This place where, since 1975, when he comes here, everybody knows who he is.

  “Mr. Corcoran, hello!”

  “Mr. Corcoran, fine day isn’t it!”

  “Here for lunch, Mr. Corcoran?”

  And there’s Red Pitts, the Mayor’s aide, head of what’s called the advancement team, meaning PR, bodyguard, counsel, loyal friend, as devoted to Oscar Slattery, who requires fierce and unqualified devotion, as his own son Vic—here’s Red Pitts stuffed into a double-breasted beige blazer with gray slacks that don’t quite match the beige of the blazer, a speckled silk handkerchief bunched into a not-quite-perfect pocket flourish, but a fine figure of a man, battered-freckled face, snub nose, shifting worried eyes but, waiting for an elevator, sighting Corky Corcoran on the run to the Elm Room, he breaks into a smile, you might call it a smile of recognition, as if his mind’s been elsewhere and Corky has netted it back—“Hey, Corky, how’s it going?” and Corky greets Red in the same convivial manner, pumping handshake, each man has a tough grip, Red’s bigger and surely stronger but Corky’s got that sly-Irish deftness in his fingers, he can make a grown man wince then back off before getting his own fingers mangled in turn. Corky inquires, “Oscar here?”—with a gesture toward the upstairs, for when the Mayor dines at the U.C.A.C. at this time of day it’s usually in a private dining room on the mezzanine, Corky is sometimes included in these lunches, serious-minded but rowdy affairs that beginning at one P.M. can last beyond five P.M., and he sees Red hesitate before saying, “Yes,” then adding, as if Corky’s thin-skinned enough to require an explanation for not being included today, “—the subject’s finances, more budget shit—” and Corky nods, looks sympathetic, it is shit, Union City forever on the brink of bankruptcy, with so much private money, the tax base falling and the conservative Republicans in the State Legislature making it hot for the three-term Slattery administration, not much a liberal-minded mayor can do with a $50-million budget cut forced down his throat, sure Corky’s sympathetic, but what’s to be done? “O.K., say hello to Oscar, to all of them, for me,” Corky says, backing off with a smile even as the elevator arrives and Red Pitts who’s forever on the run too steps hurriedly inside, his smile already fading, switched off, cheap bastard doesn’t want to waste it like Corky’s uncle Philly Dowd who’d go around the house unscrewing light bulbs so they wouldn’t get used up too fast and Corky guesses Pitts won’t pass along his greetings to the Mayor. Late as he is, Corky pauses to watch the arrow above the elevator: not the mezzanine, but the third floor. Is there a private dining room on the third floor? Must be, though Corky’s never been in it.

  Later recalling, how Pitts had hesitated just saying yes Oscar was here, going on then to say it was finances, budget, later Corky will recall this but at the time he’s brooding thinking Pitts will never forgive him, there’s an old rivalry between the two men, not a rivalry exactly but the ghost of one, for Corky had been given to know, as far back as the early 1980s, that the Slatterys were feeling him out for the position that would eventually
go to Pitts, an undefinable but essential and in its way immensely powerful position in the mayoral administration, if you cared about politics so much, if you were fanatic in the ways these men are fanatic but Corky isn’t, Corky has always had other interests not just politics nor even making money, Christ any weird thing orbiting by him can capture his attention, for a while at least, and to have Pitts’ job with Oscar Slattery you have to care about nothing really except politics, the shifting sands of it, daily and even hourly seismic changes, who are your friends and who are your enemies, power’s about choosing sides and hoping your side wins and keeps winning but Corky’s more drawn just to friends, friendship, apart from being a lifelong Democrat he’d be as close to the Slatterys if Oscar was out and Vic lost his seat in the House, maybe closer, politics wouldn’t get in the way.

  Still, Corky can’t help but feel just slightly stung, he knows it’s ridiculous but since boyhood the knowledge that somewhere some of his friends are meeting together, for whatever purpose, however removed from him, however necessarily removed from him, Jesus! it makes him envious, it makes his guts squirm. Why not me, what’ve they got against me?

  Breathless and expectant, Corky arrives at the carved arched entrance of the Elm Room. Scans what he can see of the dining room (and it’s a full house today, Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend), looking for familiar faces, yes and here too steeling himself for the inevitability of seeing certain parties together, friends, acquaintances, business associates, women, alliances that jolt you into wondering what they mean and why are you excluded and what does it mean that you are excluded or maybe does it mean nothing?—Corky wants to see and wants to know but doesn’t always want to see and for sure doesn’t always want to know. (Christ, the time he’d walked in here and saw Charlotte, around the time of their divorce, having lunch with a woman named Yvette Packard with whom Corky’d had a brief but passionate affair—he’d had to walk right by their table on dazed swaying legs and the women had lifted cool mysterious smiles to him—“Why hello, ‘Corky.’”)

  Still, the Elm Room is one of Corky’s sacred places.

  Every man has to have places that, the very thought of them, no matter how demoralized he is or how shitty his circumstances, makes him happy.

  Business deals are forbidden in the Elm Room, not gentlemanly, but of course all the currents here, palpable as static electricity, have to do with business: the business of politics, the business of money, the business of adultery. Who’s hooked up with who and who’s screwing who and who’s getting screwed and does he know it yet or not and some of this is in full daylight but most of it in secret which is why the blood begins to quicken when you step foot in a place like this where in your innermost heart you know you don’t belong.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Corcoran!”—the beaming maitre d’ hurries up, eyes shining like patent leather when he sights Mr. Corcoran, one of those club members so generous even when stone cold sober he’ll slip anybody in a service uniform a ten-dollar bill and in the maître d’s case a twenty-dollar bill. No special reason, just to get good prompt courteous service. What the hell, unlike old fart-in-a-bottle Philly Dowd, Corky can afford it. “May I show you to your table?—your party Mr. Greenbaum is waiting.”

  Corky has already seen Greenbaum at the table he’d reserved, Corky’s favorite table for two there in a farther corner beyond the enormous handpainted mural of Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry “The Hero of Lake Erie” and his men triumphant aboard a full-masted frigate in the great sea battle against the British of 1813, Corky always asks for that table so he can sit relaxed with his back to the corner and in fantasy as least, for the space of a meal at least, know that his back is protected.

  At last, he doesn’t want to think how late, Corky is led through the maze of tables amid a waterfall-din of voices, laughter, and the happy clatter of silverware, crystal, bottles, pausing to say hello and in several instances to shake hands with friends, men who call him “Corky” as warmly and in as brotherly a way as any man might wish, yes and there’s handsome white-haired Father Vincent O’Brien waving hello, big smile for Corky Corcoran who’s been a generous donor to St. Thomas Aquinas since graduating in 1967, and there’s Todd McElroy the sharpie criminal lawyer, trained at Harvard Law but once too of Irish Hill, dirt-poor the McElroys, eight or nine of them living in a rowhouse on East Welland at the very edge of the shabby black neighborhood, and now McElroy, younger than Corky by a year or two, friend too of City Hall and chief legal counsel of the Union City policemen’s union, is slated to defend Dwayne Pickett next month against charges of second-degree murder—McElroy nods at Corky and grants him a tight, measured smile, like he’s giving something away just acknowledging Corky for whose father his own father used to work as a bricklayer when he wasn’t incapacitated by drink, and here, practically in Corky’s path, impossible to avoid, old Buck Glover thrusts out a palsied hand to be shaken, “H-Hello, C-Corcoran!” having forgotten Corky’s first name—Glover was Union City mayor through the 1950s, mayor in fact at the time Tim Corcoran was murdered, a friend of the Corcorans or so it was claimed: Corky stares appalled at the old man, once hefty and energetic as a steer, now so aged, Corky has heard rumors of cancer but isn’t about to inquire, he returns Glover’s handshake and says smiling yes he’s fine and all the family’s fine and yes Sean Corcoran’s doing pretty well, why don’t the two of you get together sometime? play a few cards?—and at last Corky makes it to his table and to the patiently waiting Greenbaum breathless and exhilarated, like a football player who’s run the length of the field for a touchdown.

  Extending his hand to shake Greenbaum’s heavy, stubby-fingered ham of a hand, seeing it’s 1:48 P.M. and he’s almost an hour late!—God damn it. Murmuring, “Christ, Howard, I’m sorry. I would have gotten here almost on time except things came up—” as he sits down, rapidly scans the scene, seeing that Greenbaum, a fleshy man in his mid-fifties, yet with fastidious ways, has been drinking, not wine, but Saratoga water, yes and devouring rolls, half the hard rolls gone from the basket and all of the pumpernickel, Corky’s favorite, gone. Greenbaum’s been looking through a sheaf of financial documents while waiting for his client and these he now slides discreetly aside, all attentiveness focused on Corky who’s faltering stammering some kind of half-assed excuse. “The fucking traffic—”

  Greenbaum laughs. Corky hears it as forced, unconvinced. Those sly hooded turtle’s eyes, that look of patient irony about the loose lips, Corky wonders if Jews of Greenbaum’s sensibility disapprove of profanity. He should learn to watch his mouth as Charlotte used to warn him, maybe Jews associate such language with ill-bred goys, or is it goyim, maybe the word itself means unclean?—but Greenbaum surprises Corky with a sudden paternal smile, an obliquely teasing smile, saying, “Jerome, please relax. Hasn’t it ever come to your notice, you’re always late? You must know you have that reputation.”

  Corky blinks. Corky’s astonished as if this is a radically new notion, one he has never heard before from anyone, never in his life.

  “I am?” he asks dumbly, a hurt kid. “Am I?”

  Greenbaum shakes his head, his jowls quiver with a curious forgiving gaiety. “You’ve been late for each of our three meetings so far, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Sitting here, with no telephone, I’ve been double-checking some of these figures, and I’ve been thinking about your accounts, and about you, Jerome, and it’s all to the good. Really.”

  Corky’s glad to hear this, though he feels rebuked.

  What a relief, though—Greenbaum’s comforting tone. And the ponderous sag of his face. The man has come highly recommended to Corky as a broker and general financial advisor, Corky’d had to fire the son of a bitch who’d been advising him previously and in the process he’s lost a lot of dough which maybe, if he’d gone to Greenbaum, a Jew, in the first place, he might have avoided. Since the 1986 Tax Reform Act when real estate limited partnerships went all to hell, which is where Corky has much of his investment still, he has
n’t been able to make the kind of profits he’d made all through the 1970s and 1980s without knowing how high he was flying and how lucky he was.

  Corky signals the waiter who’s been hovering near, a familiar face, too, how sweet to Corky’s ears that eager query, “Yes, Mr. Corcoran?” which must impress Greenbaum who isn’t a member of the U.C.A.C. (never been nominated?—or maybe has no interest in joining?—well-to-do and civic-minded Jews have been invited in for twenty years now, not long after the south-side micks like Corky Corcoran and Todd McElroy and not long before the four or five showcase blacks) though the man’s expression is unreadable. Maybe he thinks we’re all assholes, they’re the Chosen People. Could be right.

  Corky orders a scotch on the rocks. Doesn’t specify any brand not wanting Greenbaum to think he’s a goy drinker who takes it all seriously. Greenbaum’s alluding to Corky’s reputation has made Corky ill at ease wondering what his reputation is.

  As the waiter walks off, Corky calls him back. “Any pumpernickel rolls?”

  “Yes sir.”

  As if Corky’d entrusted him with a mission.

  The thought of Christina low in his guts, like the first stirring of diarrhea.

  Saying with a grin to Greenbaum, who’s been watching him closely, “Howard, you wouldn’t believe what I was doing just now, the reason I’m late getting here,” and Greenbaum says, “No, what?” and Corky says, “Directing traffic,” and Greenbaum says, lifting his heavy eyebrows, “What?”