What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  So Corky tells, this time more extravagantly, his tale.

  Hey: d’you love me?

  Oh, lover. Oh God.

  Had it been real, any of it?—Corky lifts his glass to his mouth, first drink of the day, this is real, this is something you can depend upon.

  That good burning sensation going down. That good airy-elated sensation going up through the nasal passages and into the brain.

  So narrow, so unforgiving, is it some Catholic thing?—some remnant?

  He’s here now, but he’s leaving.

  Listening to Greenbaum lecture him. Municipal bonds, securities. Real estate limited partnerships. Real estate here in Union City: Corcoran, Inc., owns rental properties, offices mainly, one apartment building of thirty-five units on Schoharie Street near the city hospital. It’s been Corcoran, Inc.’s, strategy to acquire rundown property and even in some cases property condemned by the city or virtually given away at bankruptcy auctions, then put money into it, borrowed money, the big deal here is tax depreciation and IRS has been challenging Corcoran, Inc.’s, claims since 1989: Greenbaum has been conferring with Corky’s tax lawyers and “isn’t too happy” with what he’s learned.

  Corky, staring at the menu, says, with an affable sigh, “Shit, I’m not too happy about any of this. That’s why you’re here.” Which isn’t the truth exactly: Corky had been looking forward to this lunch at the U.C.A.C., the first time he’s brought Greenbaum here, hoping to get to know the guy who’s a prestige money man for all his modest downscale ways (Greenbaum’s dull-brown suit looks off-the-rack at, say, Macy’s) and about whom Corky’s heard things that have made him sound interesting: he’s a widower who lives alone in spartan surroundings in a brownstone on Front Street close by his office, he’s an amateur cellist and music lover with a very generous commitment to the Union City Chamber Music Society, he’s childless and sending relatives’ kids to college, medical school, like Corky himself, a cousin’s daughter to nursing school and another kid to Georgetown Law School, Corky figures they have certain traits in common though externally—say anybody’s been glancing their way, right now—they couldn’t look more unlike, the fair-skinned red-haired blunt-faced mick and the swarthy-skinned pouchy-eyed rabbinical-looking Jew. Two different species?

  Corky thinks fiercely, what’s needed here isn’t fucking financial advice but fucking wisdom.

  Greenbaum is oblivious of the waiter and of the time, lecturing Corky further on local property investment, Corky’s plans to buy (that is, to borrow money to buy) two old Union City landmarks, the Griswold Building, which will require a minimum of $1 million to renovate. The Bull’s Eye, an Art Deco architectural oddity on lower State Street built in 1929 and badly needing renovations too: is this the right time, considering Corky’s other commitments, and the interest rates on those commitments, for him to buy? Greenbaum also brings up the subject of Corky’s four $50,000 investments in Viquinex Financial Corps. in California real estate: it’s a sinking ship, the syndicator wants to combine, “roll up,” all their partnerships into one, and Greenbaum’s advice is yes, go along with it—“They’ve got a gun to your head, Jerome.”

  Just what Corky, his eye adrift down the columns of fancily named appetizers, first courses, entrées, specials on the Elm Room menu, wants to hear. Joking, with a twitchy smile, not looking up, “A smoking gun, it sounds like.”

  Corky’s feeble joke is a whisper of a plea not to know, not to be told, the probable truth, which is that the entire $200,000 is gone to hell, an investment in a limited partnership he’d leapt at in 1987 when Viquinex first went on the market and Corky’s then-advisor was talking it up as foolproof. Yes but don’t tell me now for Christ’s sake at the very start of lunch but Greenbaum, unheeding, shrugs his shoulders as if to indicate, You said it, my friend, not me.

  Under ordinary circumstances Corky loves to study this menu, a beauty of a menu, by now he’s sampled most of the items, more than once, though never yet les escargots, the thought turns his stomach, a sharp recollection of sticky gray thumb-sized slugs on the underside of an old rotted barrel behind Uncle Sean’s garage, Christ! no thanks! and at $8.95 a throw, nor has he ever ordered any variation on one of today’s Elm Room specials, sweetbreads en brochette, no thanks. A stirring in his gut. Yes but the scotch will help. Soothing, narcotizing. Brains, guts. What they call, on the menu, tripe. Dear God, the things human beings will take into their mouths willingly, yes and pay high prices for! That time at the Chop House Charlotte ordered honeycomb tripe, a rich buttery sauce over it, and Corky hadn’t known what it was, and she got him to take a taste and all the table watched (they were there with two other couples, of the Drummond social set) and when Corky figured it out and went dead-white in the face and left the table for the men’s room they laughed at him—not cruelly but worse yet fondly, patronizingly, Corky’s so sweet and so funny.

  Years of that fond patronizing familiarity, yes but he’d courted it hadn’t he, how otherwise to take his place among them, Charlotte’s world, and the women coming on to him too, or trying out the idea of coming on to him, then backing off quickly when they saw what he might be like, not like their husbands but direct, blunt: You want to fuck, or not?—just don’t play games.

  Yes but they’d rather play games.

  Rarely does Corky see any of these old friends except maybe on neutral territory, big parties. The women’s eyes still lingering on him but, to be frank, they’re Charlotte’s age, Charlotte’s three years older than Corky, women that age are invisible to him.

  Vic Slattery too with an eye for younger women, a loyal married guy with a terrific wife but, hell, what can you do if the younger women have an eye for you. Impossible to resist one hundred percent of the time though with Vic, as with any public figure, Clinton for instance, it’s dangerous. Corky’s thinking of certain postcampaign parties, the wild ones without the wives, that Fourth of July two years ago at Lake Placid where he met Marilee Plummer, that other girl what’s-her-name Vic’s aide’s assistant—Kiki. And Thalia turned up too, came and went and was gone and he hoped to Christ she hadn’t seen him. Still, by then, he was divorced from her mother.

  Thinking cruelly, Christina at thirty-six, soon to be thirty-seven: how many years remaining to have another baby?

  Yes I’d do it again. In the right circumstances. With the right man.

  Greenbaum orders a salad lunch, no appetizer though Corky recommends the deep-fried crab cakes, another bottle of Saratoga water, poor bastard must be on a diet, forty pounds overweight, a whistling wheeze sometimes audible in his breathing, still he’s been devouring bread, maybe out of nerves more than appetite, compulsive: they say you never get anywhere in life without being compulsive. Are Jews’ IQs higher on the average than non-Jews’? Corky wouldn’t want to think how Jews and Irish would stack up. Exposed in some public place like the science page of The New York Times.

  Shrugged his shoulders just now and the man’s entire body was in it, slack walrus-body, sizable in the hips. That shiny dented-looking almost-bald head packed with brains.

  “That’s all you want, Howard? A chef salad?” Corky’s faintly offended. “We’ll share a bottle of wine, though, O.K.? White? Red?”

  Greenbaum says, with forced enthusiasm, “Either, Jerome. Fine.”

  Corky, trim enough at 150 pounds, except for that slabby-fatty stuff around the waist, has a blood-pressure problem. Curse of the Corcorans. What the doctor calls hypertension. Saying, deadpan, knowing Corky’s appetites, just cut out the salt and the red meat and the alcohol, before we try medication.

  Hearing the guys the other day in the locker room, after squash, blood-pressure pills make you impotent. Christ, fuck that.

  Corky shifts uneasily in his seat. His penis is sore: fiery at the tip: mangled-feeling: like after that long weekend bender at Las Vegas, coming home with the clap. Scared as hell he had AIDS. The shame of that, he’d’ve had to blow his head off, not just dying a horrible death but people saying he’s a fag.<
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  Hasn’t eaten since breakfast at the Statler hours ago, seven-thirty and then just coffee and Danish pastry so he should be famished, he’s a guy who loves to eat, his Aunt Frances teasing him he’s got a cast-iron stomach but, right now, that isn’t so. Still, Corky refuses to be cheated of the pleasure of lunch: orders the deep-fried crab cakes, the Elm Room salad (that’s doused with heavy-creamy dressing), London broil which is a specialty of the house, a side order of oven-roasted potatoes.

  “And a carafe—no, make that a bottle—of the house red wine.”

  Corky closes his menu and hands it to the waiter, a job well done.

  Christ, how he loves it here!—in the Elm Room of the Union City Athletic Club of a Friday afternoon, at his favorite table. Back to the wall.

  “The faster you travel, the slower the clock. Did you know that, Howard?”

  Greenbaum glances up from a document at his elbow. He’s got his bifocals on, squinting at Corky as if Corky’s out of focus.

  “Know what?”

  “The faster you travel, like through space, the slower clock time. They say it’s a fact.”

  “That only pertains to subatomic particles, doesn’t it?”

  Corky’s only fazed by this remark for a moment. Sipping his wine, savoring the rich-fruity red taste, Corky feels his eyes moisten with pleasure. He says, “No, it’s real. I mean—it pertains to us. If for instance you had a twin, Howard, and he left Earth and traveled by rocket at the speed of light, when he returned to Earth you’d be older than him.”

  Greenbaum’s one of those guys, can’t take anything on faith, a look like there’s a corkscrew up his ass. “Why?”

  “Why?” Corky stuffs his mouth with pumpernickel. That’s a good question. “Einstein formulated it, and it’s been confirmed—the theory, I mean. Of course, I wouldn’t know why.” A pause. “I studied architecture in college, not physics.”

  Greenbaum’s loose lips smile suddenly, it’s a quick wistful look, you can see the kid he was, fifteen years old, bookish, straight-A, moony when it comes to such thoughts. “The mystery of the physical universe,” he says, “is as opaque as the mystery of the human soul.”

  “You said it,” Corky says emphatically. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Disappointed that Greenbaum has had only a sip or two of the wine and it’s God-damned delicious—something French called Château Pigoudet.

  Disappointed too that Greenbaum is back to business. Just when they were getting to know each other. Breaking the ice. Of course, this is a business lunch, and Corky’s paying for it.

  He’d called Greenbaum at the recommendation of one of his squash partners, I’m getting the shitty end of the stick from too many sons of bitches, I need help and from what I’ve been told you’re my man. A moment’s silence before Greenbaum answered, carefully, Maybe I’m your man.

  Now Greenbaum brings up the subject, painful to Corky, of the money Nick Daugherty still owes Corky, after how long: three years? four? Nick’s supposed to be repaying it at $500 a crack, interest-free, but the payments are irregular and Corky doesn’t like to come down too hard on the guy, a sweet guy, not stupid but hit by bad luck, one of Corky’s few remaining old friends from parochial school days and a link to those days, a memory of when Tim Corcoran was alive and trucks marked CORCORAN BRO’S CONSTRUCTION barreled along the streets of Irish Hill. It was only $5000 Nick borrowed from Corky, a cash-flow problem with the Daughertys’ family-owned printing press, he’d offered Corky a share in the business but Corky said no, that wasn’t necessary, pay me back when you can. He says, now, “What Nick owes me is small potatoes, compared to this Viquinex shit. But I’ll talk to him: I’ll call him. After Monday.”

  Greenbaum says, “Get him to sign this promissory note. That’s all.”

  This, sounding like an order, sets Corky’s teeth on edge.

  Greenbaum hands him a legal-looking form. All prepared? For Nick?

  Without examining the document, quick as if not wanting anyone to see him, Corky takes it, folds it, slips it into his pocket. “I trust Nick. But I’ll talk to him about this.”

  “Get him to sign it. Talk’s talk.”

  O.K., smart-ass. Jew-boy. You’re the authority.

  Corky’s crab cakes arrive. Steaming hot. He douses them with Tabasco sauce. At the first bite, he feels a resurgence of nausea. At the second bite, he feels a stirring of juices, appetite. A swallow of wine, and at the third bite he’s ravenously hungry.

  Food and drink, you can depend upon. Women, money, politics, shit.

  Could be, loving to eat as he does, Corky Corcoran will one day blow up like a balloon. Like Stanislaus Corcoran, Tim’s great-uncle, Union City Police Captain, Sixth Precinct, 290 pounds packed into a five-foot-eight frame and he’d sired nine children, bloated cagey face lopsided in secret mirth and they’d found him floating in the canal one Sunday morning beyond the Erie Street locks, fully clothed and peaceful-looking they said as a big man relaxing in his bathtub except for the hole in his face bullets had blown away. The year was 1928, Stanislaus was a victim of the rum-running feuds, but only one of the victims and until that time he’d done all right. He’d done more than all right. One of the aristocrats of Irish Hill and after his death his widow and kids discovered $28,000 in a mattress in the house.

  Greenbaum’s chef salad arrives. Pink dressing on the side, but he uses it all, trowels it over the fancy rolled-up slices of meat, hardboiled egg quarters, lettuce. And more thick-buttered bread. If this guy’s on a diet, his left hand doesn’t know what his right hand is doing, Corky can relate to that.

  Eating, the men chat more casually. Eating’s the principal effort. Corky devours the crab cakes, rubs a chunk of pumpernickel on the greasy Tabasco-smeared plate, devours that. Orders a second bottle of wine. More food arrives: the London broil, so-called. Some kind of steak, Corky orders it for the name, “London Broil,” first time he’d ever heard of it was here in the Elm Room, a guest of Ross Drummond his father-in-law to be. Never been to London or Europe and hasn’t any urge to go, Charlotte tried to talk him into it, in fact they had plans for a honeymoon in Rome but in the end Corky was too busy, Corky’s always been too busy and he likes it that way. Christ, buying properties and repairing and renovating and hooking up with the right kind of tenants (i.e., they pay rent on time and don’t wreck the premises) and even more important the right kind of managers (i.e., they don’t fuck you in the ass) and making your own bank payments on time, it’s a full-time occupation like being a priest, Corky thinks, or a nun. You own property, property owns you.

  Corky says, nudging Greenbaum, “See that priest over there?—by the window? That’s the head of the St. Thomas Aquinas school, y’know, private school for boys? Out on Lakeshore Drive.”

  Greenbaum says, “I’ve heard of it.”

  Heard of it!—St. Thomas Aquinas is the number one high school, private or public, in all of western New York State.

  Maybe he’s joking? Jewish-type humor, sly and ironic. Sign of a superior IQ.

  Not discouraged, Corky launches into one of his tales. Never so happy as when telling one of his tales. A Corcoran family trait, others called it running at the mouth, Theresa teased Tim, listen to you!—half of what the man says is blarney and the other half b.s. But she’d loved it just the same.

  As if it’s a confidential aside, never before uttered aloud, Corky tells Greenbaum, “—When I was a young guy just starting out, I knew I had to impress the right people. There was a big fund-raising campaign for the school and Father Vincent—his friends call him that, I mean I call him that now, I didn’t when I was a student—was the head of the campaign, one of these Jesuits who’s invited to parties even by non-Catholics, he’s so popular, and he’d see to it that anybody who gave money to the school got his picture in the paper and a lot of publicity, if you gave enough, I mean—for sure, it was a worthy cause and I’m damned glad I graduated from the school, the Jesuits taught me everything I know—” he’s breathless, talki
ng and chewing and saying things he doesn’t mean, but what the hell, “—I made up my mind to give the school a big cash donation. Except I didn’t have any extra cash. This was 1974, I was running kind of scared. Getting in over my head in some ways, y’know the way you do when you’re just starting out? So—I came up with this wild idea, actually it’s simple as ABC: I borrowed five thousand dollars from an older guy I did business with, saying I didn’t want to go through the bank but I’d pay the going interest rate of course, and a week or so later, I came back to him with the money and the interest, for a month—I’d computed it to a penny. Told him, ‘This big deal came through for me I didn’t expect, but thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.’ Turned around a few weeks later and did the same thing with another guy, an influential guy in the city, but six thousand dollars this time, and again I repaid it within a week or so, interest exactly computed, told this guy, too, I’d had some good luck with a deal I hadn’t expected, I was really grateful he’d helped me out. So then I was feeling, like, really lucky and prosperous, like it’d all been true, y’know?—and I waited awhile and then borrowed ten thousand dollars from a third party, exact same terms as the others, and this”—Corky pauses, seeing how Greenbaum is staring at him, listening closely—“I take in its entirety—and to me this is an enormous amount of money—and now I’m counting on sheer luck, I don’t believe in prayer or in God or any of that religious shit but I’m sort of what you’d call superstitious like a lot of Irish—I figure this is what you’d call a good deal, eh?—I can’t lose, eh?—though my history of betting on sports, especially fights, is uneven, but I told myself, ‘Corky, c’mon, this is a chance of a lifetime.’ So—Howard—you’ll never guess what I did with that ten thousand dollars.”

  Greenbaum’s heavy jaws pause in their chewing. His shiny, dented head is held perfectly still, as if the thinking, inside, is in suspension, too. “Jerome, I’d never be able to guess.”