What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Nothing wrong with being patriotic, thinks Corky. From colonial days to Operation Desert Storm.

  Not that he has ever served in any war, nor even served in the Army. Hard to realize he’s too old, now. His father in the Korean War, his Uncle Sean in the Second World War, older cousins of his in Vietnam—if Corky let himself think about it, he’d be ashamed. Like he’s been a coward, a man not really a man.

  Wonders if Greenbaum served. Too smart, probably. When they get to know each other better, Corky can ask.

  In Israel, he’s read, every man’s a soldier. Women, too?

  Jews stick together, micks stick one another in the back.

  Corky’s got a cousin on his father’s side, last name Farley, said to be in the IRA. In County Armagh, on the border. Or is that just rumor?

  Still, the Irish people don’t support the IRA. Back-stabbers. Ninety percent of contributions from the United States. Corky once gave $1000 cash to what he’d been told was the “Irish cause” but in retrospect he thinks he’d been screwed and in any case it was an asshole thing to have done, what if he’d been caught? exposed? a liberal Democrat giving money to an outlaw terrorist army?

  Also, Corky Corcoran doesn’t believe in terrorism. Not that kind, innocent people blown up. Women, children. Even men. No thanks.

  From where he’s sitting he can see the park, windy, wind in the trees, mid-spring and the leaves are all out, those plane trees, elegant species, tall now, that solid deep-chested look. Dozens of trees the U.C.A.C. planted at its own expense on city property when every elm practically in Union City died of that fucking Dutch elm disease.

  Plane trees, the peeling bark: Corky feels a stab of hurt, then he’s angry. Schuyler Park, where Theresa sat. Knitting, waiting. On that bench, waiting.

  Feels just great, thanks. Fuck you all, thanks.

  Now Corky Corcoran’s here, he’s here.

  It burns his ass, though, to see McElroy, over there, with his party. McElroy too much like Corky himself except he got a law degree, had better breaks. No smarter than Corky Corcoran, though.

  Corky’s trying to figure out who’s with McElroy, what the connections are. Two of the men are maybe older partners in McElroy’s firm?—Corky recognizes the faces from around town, but doesn’t know the names. And there’s Police Chief Ben Pike and Budd Yeager, a homicide detective, next in line, it’s said, as chief of detectives—Yeager’s a member of the poker-playing group to which Corky belongs, a loose, shifting group, though with Oscar Slattery at the center. Maybe once a month they play, at the Mayor’s residence on Riverside Drive, small stakes, no serious gambling, though some serious playing. Corky’s just an average player, but a good sport when he loses.

  Recalling that Yeager owes Corky for one of the games, it’s been weeks now and Corky knows he isn’t going to collect. That fucker.

  Corky guesses he likes Yeager well enough, you have to admire the son of a bitch, educated in the Marines, crewcut hair the color of metal filings, jaw like the heel of a boot. Detectives, plainclothes cops, carry guns with them all the time, don’t they? Even in the swank Elm Room?

  Yeager’s not a member of the U.C.A.C., of course. But Ben Pike is.

  Weird to think, Corky thinks, shivering, how there’re guys in this room, white linen tableclothes and a single red rose on each table and classical music in the background, everything elegant, decorous, who’ve killed people. In the line of duty, so-called. Yeager, for sure, and maybe Pike—he doesn’t know about Pike. And other men, scattered and anonymous, well-heeled diners enjoying lunch, who’ve maybe killed, in a war. In uniform, with issued weapons. In the line of duty.

  Corky raises a glass, blindly drinks. He’s thinking, how can you shoot another person knowing what the bullets do, going in the brain, in the soft vulnerable helpless guts.

  Yes, Corky likes Budd Yeager well enough but doesn’t really know him and, at Oscar’s, tries to keep out of his way. Beating him at cards, all their friends witnesses, was surely sweet, but maybe shouldn’t be repeated too often.

  Corky says, interrupting Greenbaum who’s been talking rapid-fire business for the past ten minutes, “—You see that table of men over there?—by the window? Eight-to-one odds I know what they’re talking about.”

  “Yes?” Greenbaum peers over his bifocals at Corky quizzically, not as if he’s interested in Corky’s statement but surprised and a little disdainful of the fact Corky’s made it. He’s been waving another legal document, fucking depressing shit, but Corky’s been drifting off in self-defense. Along with coffee and these Swiss chocolate mints they bring on a three-tiered silver dish which Corky can’t resist Greenbaum’s been sweetening him, it seems like, praising him for the high-interest bonds he bought in the early 1980s (some of them paying ten percent interest, good solid conservative investments Ross Drummond advised for him) the way you’d praise a dim-witted kid for not shitting his pants. Sweetening him, Corky’s been thinking uneasily, for some bad news. Is that it?

  Corky’s decided not to come out pointblank and ask Greenbaum how much he’s worth at the present time. If Corky really wants to know he can find out from his accountant. And add in on his own the extras, the properties and cash and loans out he deals through his Pearl Street office.

  Greenbaum’s gazing with hooded froggy eyes at the men at the table by the window but doesn’t seem much impressed.

  Corky says in an undertone, “—That guy with the gray hair is Ben Pike the police chief, you must know him from his picture in the papers, and that guy next to him, Budd Yeager, one of the top UCPD homicide detectives, Yeager’s a friend of mine, and the guy next to him is with the Internal Affairs Division, and the youngest guy, back to the window, he’s an old St. Thomas classmate of mine, the lawyer who’s going to defend Dwayne Pickett next month. You know—Pickett?” Corky’s getting pissed off, his companion so slow on the uptake, and so deliberate in it, like he can’t be fucking bothered with this trivia. Corky’s busting his balls to be nice to the guy in his own private club and this is it?

  But Greenbaum seems to know who the men are. At least, the name “Pickett” rouses him.

  Saying, with a shudder of revulsion, “If that murderer is acquitted, it will do for Union City what the Rodney King verdict did for Los Angeles. We’ll go up in flames. Every advance we’ve made in race relations will be destroyed. Uh!—it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  Corky’s surprised hearing Greenbaum so emotional, like he’s personally involved. This is Corky’s way of thinking, too, but he says, “Pickett and the two other cops swear the kid had a gun. That is, they saw a gun. Just because the gun never got found doesn’t mean it didn’t exist and didn’t get carried away by the other kids running with Devane Johnson. Or, if it didn’t exist, something existed that looked enough like a gun maybe by accident and maybe not to be mistaken for a gun. I’ve heard these cops in person, at the Internal Affairs hearing, and they sound like they believe what they say one hundred percent. I’m not defending Pickett, but—”

  Greenbaum interrupts contemptuously, “Shooting a child in the back! Between the shoulder blades! That’s where the bullet went in. And claiming self-defense!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s despicable. That the policemen’s union—this ridiculous ‘Benevolent Association’—is defending those men makes them all accomplices in a murder.”

  “Yes, Howard, but—”

  “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  Greenbaum’s been speaking so loudly, his large soft lips quivering like jelly, Corky’s worried the cops might overhear. But disappointed too when Greenbaum returns to the business at hand.

  Corky says, “Howard, you seriously think Union City cops are racists?” as he’s unwrapping another of the mints, he’s lost count how many of the damned things he’s had, Charlotte used to conspicuously push the tiered silver dish away from him at such times saying he’d had enough, “—I don’t, I just think they’re antsy, y’know—trigger-happy. I
think they have a tough job.” Eyeing Greenbaum’s wine glass too, two-thirds full. If it isn’t dispatched soon the waiter will clear it away.

  Again Greenbaum glances at Corky with that quizzical look of his. Like, asshole, you’re paying me to talk about this crap, and not finances?

  Greenbaum shrugs, smiles. Says, with barely audible concealed contempt, “Sure, the Union City police are less overtly racist in 1992 than they were in the 1960s when they voted to support George Wallace for President. Or in the 1920s, when half of the force belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. I suppose it’s a real moral achievement that they haven’t gone out on strike to support Sergeant Pickett.”

  “That’s kind of extreme,” Corky protests. “I mean, shit, Howard—isn’t that kind of extreme? Our cops aren’t racists.”

  “‘Our’ cops?”

  “D’you know sixteen percent of them are nonwhite? Patrolmen, out on the streets, it’s twenty percent nonwhite? Oscar Slattery’s been pushing to bring the numbers up higher and it’s going to work.”

  Greenbaum shrugs and gives Corky that glazed-bored look that means he’s stopped listening. But Corky isn’t a politician for Christ’s sake he’s a citizen speaking the fucking truth.

  “—Anyway, Howard, blacks can be racists, too. Right? This Reverend Marcus Steadman, who raped a girl—a black girl—a black woman—the things he says, he’s a black racist, right? What about that?” Corky’s getting excited, hot under the collar.

  “What about that?” Greenbaum retorts, “—I’m not defending Steadman.”

  “Blacks are anti-Semitic, too. I mean—some of them. A lot of them. Right? You know about that? Like what’s his name Faker—”

  “Farrakhan.”

  “Yeah, him! What about him? He’s black, O.K.?”

  Greenbaum stares at Corky puffing up like a frog. There’s a terrible silence, the men breathing hard staring at each other across the white linen tablecloth. Corky’s been hearing his voice raw and aggrieved and adolescent as on the St. Thomas debate team. At the state tournament in Albany where Father Dolan the debate team’s advisor told Corky he’d won his debate but lost the decision because the judges ended up hating his guts.

  And Corky’d protested, You mean it isn’t enough to be right?—they have to like me, too?

  So Corky decides to cool it. Back down a little. He’s coming on too strong, Greenbaum won’t want to be his friend. Two bottles of wine and two scotches and Christina kicking him in the balls the way she did, he’ll be out of control if he doesn’t watch it. Saying, “Of course, two wrongs don’t make a right. Steadman has nothing to do with it. I see your point, Howard.” Though, did Greenbaum have a point? “Any one of us, our souls were examined, like with an X ray, he’d have prejudice, race hatred, nobody’s perfect, but”—asshole, what’re you saying now?—“that doesn’t give us the right to shoot somebody in the back. Or,” Corky finishes lamely, “—to be shot in the back.”

  A twitch of Greenbaum’s lips. A noisy stirring of his coffee (which Corky sees is practically whitened with cream) and it’s back to business.

  More praise for Corky for having dumped his Utah Power bonds a few years ago. Also for bailing out of a nuclear power plant in the State of Washington which has subsequently folded. Also for cutting his losses in a partnership with a Union City developer with whom Corky’d planned a “condominium village” on Meridian Avenue on the site of a block of condemned rowhouses—“The man is headed for bankruptcy court. I mean that literally.”

  Corky laughs. “You mean, I’m not?”

  Greenbaum ignores this. Moves on briskly to praise Corky for his choice of a tax lawyer to help him with his case with the IRS, which is challenging Corcoran, Inc.’s, pension plan tax structure, demanding $400,000 in back taxes. (Corcoran, Inc., established 1981, consists of one person, Jerome Andrew Corcoran. Once a year, Jerome Andrew Corcoran, president of the corporation, makes out a check for his annual salary to Jerome Andrew Corcoran, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer of the corporation. On that same day, Jerome Andrew Corcoran, treasurer of the corporation, makes out a check for his annual salary to Jerome Andrew Corcoran, president of the corporation. A high percentage of the income flowing into Corcoran, Inc., is designated for the corporation’s pension fund, thus untaxed; what remains is emptied out once annually, in the form of these salaries.) Corky winces, thinking of the fucking lawyer’s fees, $300 an hour, how he hates lawyers, producing nothing for the society, raking in big percentages, he should have been a lawyer himself, at least he’s sending his nephew Rickie to law school and maybe someday Rickie can help him.

  “I can’t sleep nights, worrying about the IRS,” Corky says, rubbing his eyes, “—what’s to stop the fuckers from auditing me, screwing me, every year from now on? Assuming I win this case, which I can’t assume.” Raps his knuckles on the tabletop, a reflex that’s unthinking and a little loud.

  Greenbaum snuffles. Indignation. He’s on his client’s side, though—“You have a right to be upset, Jerome. It is unjust. Your corporation is legally constituted and your pension income will be taxed after you retire, as income. The IRS has no grounds. We happen to know that there are trillions, I mean literally trillions of dollars in pension funds in this country held by, for instance, unions, the most notorious being the Teamsters, but the government’s afraid to pursue them, bad publicity and, of course, the unions can pay top dollar for legal counsel. So the IRS goes after the small pension funds, the small fry. For peanuts.” Even in the sympathy of his outpouring, Greenbaum’s lips twitch.

  Small fry, peanuts. Me.

  Corky laughs, “I thought I did have ‘top legal counsel,’” even as he reaches for Greenbaum’s wine glass, “—You’re not going to finish this, Howard? May I—?”

  Corky carefully pours the wine into his own glass. He figures, a glass averages out to maybe five dollars. He’s paying.

  Greenbaum says, apologetic, “Since my wife died eight years ago, I rarely drink. To me, wine is celebration, ceremony, and . . .” His voice trails off but Corky gets the point: this isn’t celebration or ceremony.

  Thinking of the first time he’d gotten drunk. After his father’s funeral. His head going up like a helium balloon even as his knees buckled and the attic swam. And the lightning flashing in the darkening sky unless it was just Shehawkin, fiery shit pouring out smokestacks into the air.

  Corky says, quickly, “Yeah, I know. I mean—I can guess.”

  Next, to Corky’s annoyance, Greenbaum has another legal document, this time for Corky’s signature. Greenbaum has advised him, and he’s agreed, to take part in a class action suit against the Bender Financial Group, Inc., of Portland, Oregon, another of these limited-partnership deals he’d invested in, like Viquinex except this one has gone belly up, filing bankruptcy out in Portland, taking Corky’s $175,000 with them if they can. (The secret reason for the bankruptcy claim is it’s a way to escape fines and cleanup for certain of the group’s companies, imposed on them by the Environmental Protection Agency. So Greenbaum has informed Corky.) A number of investors are uniting to sue and this form is from the United States Bankruptcy Court for Oregon and Corky figures what the hell he’ll sign, more money down a rat hole, only he won’t sign here—“I’ll take it, and sign it back in the office, and mail it to you,” he tells Greenbaum. Folds it, puts it in his pocket with the promissory note for poor Nick Daugherty. A gentleman might talk business in the Elm Room but a gentleman doesn’t do business in the Elm Room.

  Recalling all he’d heard of the Union City Athletic Club’s tradition of no Jews. And then, in the 1970s, a quota on Jews.

  Next, Greenbaum’s on the subject, to him crucial, of Viquinex, and why Corky as an investor should vote yes in the roll-up proposal. By this time, mulling the last of the Château Pigoudet in his mouth, reluctant to let it leak down his throat, Corky’s agreeable, Corky’s cool. Beginning to realize that when Jerome Corcoran deals outside Union City, New York, it’s other men’s prices he has to meet,
not his own that others have to meet. He’s the one likely to get fucked, not the one who does the fucking.

  Corky swallows the last of the wine. Why has it taken till now, May 22, 1992, he’s forty-three years old and divorced and no kid or kids and no woman he loves or can trust and, asshole, you’re not getting any younger, or smarter—why has it taken him till now to realize this simple fact?

  Union City, New York. Born here, lived all his life here. Here, everybody knows his name.

  Recalling how he’d stood at Christina’s rear window. All he could see, he loved. His gaze drawn like a magnet to the modest spire of the Griswold Building miles away. The only Louis Sullivan–designed building in western New York State, the first skyscraper for hundreds of miles and what a weird, bold, beautiful building with gargoyles and terra cotta so in advance of its time—and the fuckers, the City Council, the Chamber of Commerce, yes and City Hall, would abandon it to be sold to some developer who’d surely raze it and build another office tower or worse yet a high-rise parking garage on the site, Corky Corcoran’s going to buy it and restore it, fuck anybody who tries to stop him, Corky’s the man.

  Yes, and the old Bull’s Eye, too. On lower State Street surrounded by discount furniture stores, pawnshops. But still does a good business, weekends especially, a jazz combo sometimes and a mixed crowd, whites and blacks, Corky has terrific memories of late nights at The Bull’s Eye after high school games, dances, yes and for her sixteenth birthday he’d taken Thalia there, just the two of them, on tentative good terms, peace between them, tentative and precious and the kid had liked the place, Corky wonders if she ever goes back, all grown up now.