What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The Griswold Building, The Bull’s Eye. Two landmark Union City properties. He’ll buy, and Greenbaum’s not going to be involved. Can read about it in the paper.

  Corky asks Greenbaum what a roll-up is, how’s this going to fuck him in the ass further, not that, feeling so mellow and so cool, he seriously wants to know, he’ll take Greenbaum’s advice but he wants Greenbaum to think he wants to know, Jerome Corcoran’s a sharpie, too. His reputation around town is strong as it is because Corky’s got the habit of quizzing people closely, making them sweat. While Corky frowns in skeptical concentration maybe not half-listening. Eye contact’s the trick.

  So Greenbaum warms to his subject, and yes he’s convincing. Explaining why a general partner, or a syndicator, requires a roll-up at certain crucial times, the enhanced economic power, the fluidity, and Viquinex is in serious trouble, might have to file for bankruptcy, so they’re going to their ninety thousand investors in eleven partnerships for help: vote yes, give us a new, big unit. Corky sees the logic of it. Sees too his back’s against the wall. If Viquinex folds, he’s out his $200,000; if he goes with the roll-up, he’ll have to pay a fee. And he could still lose. But Greenbaum says, “Assuming the proposal goes through, the new partnership will be managed by Hallwood, a merchant bank solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Shares will be listed on the American Stock Exchange.”

  The Vivaldi’s getting sharper now, sounds like one thousand violins sawing away out of the ceiling. Corky says, “O.K., Howard, you’re the expert, I’m in for yes, except what’s needed isn’t fucking financial advice but fucking wisdom.” Corky’s words sound alarmingly slurred. His face feels like a neon sign. Here comes the waiter, smiling, with fresh piping-hot coffee. Greenbaum smiles that twitchy startled smile. But it is a smile. “The question you ask yourself in the middle of the night,” Corky says earnestly, “is why are we here? I mean, you know, on earth? I don’t know about the Jewish people, but, I used to be Catholic, our catechism taught us we’re here to know, love, and serve God in this world and be with Him in the next but that’s a lot of bull, right? I was eleven years old when I figured that out for myself.” Corky leans forward, elbows on the edge of the table. Keeping his voice low, level. There are only a few parties remaining in the Elm Room and one of them is McElroy and his companions. “The other night, Howard, I was reading this paperback book, Whither Life? is the title, about the origin of the universe, there’s some cosmologist, in fact he’s a Jewish person, at Princeton University, believes we’re here, Homo sapiens, in the universe, because we’re conscious.” Corky speaks with boyish ardor but Greenbaum the wise old patriarch listens gravely, as if this is dubious news. “See what I mean? The universe is mostly empty stuff, just nothing, a vacuum, or rock, dust, debris, but we human beings are conscious, and one of the things we’re conscious of is the universe.” In Corky’s head, this sounded impressive. Uttered aloud, in the Elm Room, voices and laughter at a nearby table and the violins sawing away and Greenbaum regarding him with that inscrutable frown, it falls flat.

  Greenbaum, stirring his coffee, sipping it thoughtfully, says, “Yes, that’s a theory.”

  “A theory?—it’s a fact.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “It’s a fact, we are conscious—aren’t we?” Corky in his excitement raps his knuckles on the tabletop. Even muffled by the white linen tablecloth they make a sharp enough noise to alert the waiter, who’s been in attendance close by. Corky signals him, no, not yet.

  Corky says, “Howard, can I ask you something? frankly?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do Jews think of the universe?”

  Greenbaum laughs. Such straight white perfectly aligned teeth—obviously dentures. You can see he’d been a good-looking guy twenty years ago, give him a full head of dark curly-kinky hair. But Corky isn’t sure he likes the laugh, it’s maybe insulting. “What do Jews think of the universe?—which Jews?—which universe?”

  Corky doesn’t know what to make of this. He knows, but it isn’t the response he’d hoped for. Too much like those fucking high school debates, answer a question with a smart-ass question, ask your opponent to define his terms.

  “Well, like,” Corky says awkwardly,”—the Jewish people? As a people? They believe in God, don’t they?”

  “Some do, some don’t.” Then, seeing this is too blunt, in the face of his companion’s eagerness, Greenbaum adds, with pedantic equanimity, “Orthodox Jews—fundamentalist Jews—naturally have beliefs very different from, say, Americanized Jews. Reform, liberal, humanist, secular, agnostic—all different. To the Hasidim, a Jew like myself would be no better than a heathen.”

  Corky persists, “Yet you’re all linked. You’re all Jews.”

  Greenbaum says, ironically, “Through history, yes, we have been perceived in that way.”

  “I mean it’s a deep blood tie, it’s race. There’s pride in it. The ‘Chosen People.’ With us—” Corky flails about, not knowing what he’s saying or even what he means, “—it’s all fucked up, we hate one another’s guts. There’s no unity.”

  “If you’re thinking of Israel,” Greenbaum says, as if to be helpful, “that’s a unique political-religious phenomenon. An artifice, unthinkable without American support, in a perpetual state of war expectancy. Of course, Israel appears unified.”

  Corky says, “Yes, but you could go there, you’d fit right in. They’re your people.”

  Greenbaum says, again laughing, “And why would I want to emigrate to Israel? It’s about the size of New Jersey, did you know?”

  “New Jersey! Christ.” That’s a sobering thought. “But, look, you’re linked by history, that’s the main thing. A history of being ‘superior’ people—I mean that, sure!—and of being persecuted because of that. Other people, like for instance the Irish, my father’s family came over from County Kerry, they’re persecuted, but they’re not superior.” Corky says, hotly, “The Irish Catholics are the niggers of Great Britain. The question you ask yourself, you’re a ‘nigger,’ is was I born this way, or did some fuckers make me this way?”

  Corky’s head feels like a balloon detaching itself from his body. He’s stopped drinking, he’s had a cup of powerful black coffee, but is he getting drunker? Maybe the chocolate mints are doing it. Chocolate’s addictive as tobacco, Corky has read. Screws up the brain’s chemistry.

  Greenbaum says, sympathetically, “Personal history is painful enough, racial history can be crushing. That’s so.”

  Corky says, “It must be so fucking hard, being Jewish. I mean, just to think about. You know?—just to get through a day without hearing ‘Hitler,’ ‘Holocaust’—that depressing shit. I read in The New York Times the other day, in Germany there’s these young kids who call themselves Nazis.” Corky pauses, not meaning to get onto this subject, but he can’t seem to stop. “I’d want to kill, I was Jewish. I’d go off my head. My daughter Thalia, actually she’s my ex-wife’s daughter, a serious, high-strung girl, she went to Wells College for a year then transferred to Cornell, took art, history, philosophy, one of the courses she took was about the Holocaust, she said it changed her life forever. She says the world really is good against evil, a madman like Hitler you’re either for him or against him, right? you either stop him or get stopped by him, right?” Corky’s breathing hard, unconsciously gripping Greenbaum’s arm. “Well, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Howard, am I.”

  Corky signals for the check. Time to move on. Greenbaum has an appointment at 3:30 P.M. and Corky’s got to get in touch with Thalia. Only two other luncheon parties remain in the Elm Room, one of them is McElroy and his friends but they’re about to break up, too.

  A changed light, through the tall windows facing the park. Corky can see those heavy massed clouds, like brains, covering the sun. They call it the lake effect, in Union City—one minute sunshine, the next a fucking overcast sky.

  While they wait for the check, Greenbaum finishes his coffee, fastidious slow sips, the man’s lips fleshy, s
ensual, here’s a man who appreciates food and appreciates life, not rushing, all over everywhere like Corky Corcoran. Corky has heard the Yiddish mensch but isn’t sure exactly what it means. Anyway, Greenbaum hasn’t opened up to him, there’s civility and distance between them. The Elm Room’s too formal, elegant? Corky says, evenly, “So, Howard, you’d rather meet in your office, instead of have lunch? Or, look, why don’t I meet with you first, then we can go out somewhere? Next week? I’ll have my secretary call.”

  Greenbaum says, politely, “Fine, Jerome.”

  “You know, you could call me ‘Corky.’ I’ve asked you.”

  “‘Corky’—yes, fine.”

  An awkward silence. Corky recalls how, that first lunch here, with Ross Drummond, the older man had done all the talking, talking at Corky, leaving him breathless.

  A sick stirring in his gut. Groin. How she’d torn at him, sobbing, near-hysterical thrashing her head from side to side on the floor, spittle on her chin like semen and he’d known he was hurting her but hadn’t cared, and Christina’s nails raking his shoulders, sides, buttocks, wanting to hurt him too yes but wanting his cock deep inside her too. Begging him then not to walk out. Corky, no. Corky, I love you.

  Can’t believe it’s over. But it’s over.

  The nuns in grade school scaring them about Hell. Which was a place. You got in, like in a cave, and you couldn’t get out. Did you ever scald yourself, did you ever burn yourself on a hot stove, do you know human flesh burns and melts, like fat?—well, it can. In Hell, it does.

  The nun who taught Jerome’s sixth-grade class told them that the most painful punishment of the damned is being forever deprived of God but the child Jerome Corcoran thought it would be just fine to be deprived of God if he wasn’t burning alive.

  Scanning the items on the check, calculating the tip, twenty percent of $115.95, Corky asks Greenbaum, casually, “One more thing I always wondered: do Jews believe in Hell?”

  Now that the strain of the lunch is over, and Greenbaum’s about to escape this intense, hot-skinned character Corcoran, he says, as if the question has engaged him too, “Actually, no.”

  “No—?”

  “The Old Testament doesn’t deal with it—there’s too much going in the real world. Much later, in the rabbinical era, in the Christian-medieval era, ideas of an ‘afterlife’ seep into Judaism, but don’t get developed.” Seeing Corky’s mildly incredulous look, Greenbaum laughs. “You think Jews missed the boat, Jerome?—I mean, ‘Corky.’”

  “But how did you—do you—keep people in line? Without Hell, how do you scare them?”

  Greenbaum lifts his stubby fingers in a delicate hands-off sort of gesture. “I don’t want to scare anyone. Do you?”

  Corky says, frowning, for him this is serious talk, “I mean, look, in religion, I thought the idea’s to scare people into believing in God, and in being good? Without Hell,” Corky laughs, “the Catholic Church would be lost.”

  Greenbaum says, “Judaism seems always to have focused upon ethics. There’s the promise of the Messiah to come, and a new world, and there’s a strain of mysticism, but in mainstream Judaism, the focus is upon ethical behavior, human responsibility. Human beings dealing with one another.”

  “And no Heaven, either? Jesus.”

  “The idea is there, as I said the idea of the ‘afterlife,’ seeping in from outside influences. But it never really gets developed.”

  Corky has handed back the check with his scrawled, near-illegible signature, he’s accepted the waiter’s beaming “Thanks, Mr. Corcoran!” and he and his guest are headed for the door, somewhat awkward now on their feet, as if each is being forced to take a new measure of the other—Greenbaum is a large, thick-bodied, slope-shouldered man, making no effort to keep his spine straight, yet well over six feet tall; Corky, for all his flamey-haired energy and persistent goodwill, is inches shorter. And he hates being shorter.

  Corky asks, skeptically, “How’d you people get so advanced, so fast? You started out primitive in the desert, then what?”

  “You know, ‘Corky,’ I’m not ‘you people.’ I’m not all Jews.” Greenbaum speaks, as he’d spoken earlier, almost gaily; merrily; on his feet, affable and unhurried, he does seem to be lording it over Corky. He carries a scuffed brown leather briefcase under one arm; the handle is broken. Brown shoes with the dark suit, and not recently polished. A middle-aged Jewish widower and music lover and top money man and a total mystery to Corky. “Do you speak for all Christians?”

  “Hell no, Howard,” says Corky with a shrug, “—I don’t even speak for myself.”

  Greenbaum thanks Corky for the lunch, and the two men shake hands saying goodbye, when Corky sees a startled expression on Greenbaum’s face, and turns—it’s Budd Yeager, big smile, looming over Corky too, one hot heavy hand clapped on Corky’s shoulder and the other, fingers dexterous as in a secret caress, slipping something (folded bills?) into the breast pocket of Corky’s jacket. “How’s it going, Corky, I’ve been missing you,” Yeager says, but not wanting to talk, no time to talk, he’s in the company of the others and has walked up to Corky just to make this gesture, already turning away, big toothy smile, pewter eyes and pewter crewcut and it’s a friendly gesture, man to man, a secret between them (Greenbaum is surprised) that links them as friends, buddies, so familiar and comfortable with each other there’s no need for the formality of handshakes, greetings. Corky grins and thanks Yeager and waves to the others, Ben Pike and Todd McElroy smiling toward him, too, and makes it a point to continue out of the Elm Room with his companion not remarking upon Yeager’s gesture, nor the mysterious contents of his pocket, he senses Greenbaum’s intense curiosity but this is private business.

  “O.K., Howard, thanks, thanks a lot, I’ll have my secretary call you next week, we’ll set something up, O.K.?”—smiling and backing off seeing the puzzled expression in Greenbaum’s face, the shifting assessment. Corky walks briskly away, his destination the men’s room (not the first-floor men’s room but the mezzanine) reveling in the ease and warmth and rightness of Budd Yeager’s unexpected gesture, perfectly timed, hinting to Howard Greenbaum Corky Corcoran’s stature in Union City, in quarters where Greenbaum for all his brains and Jew sagacity wouldn’t have a clue.

  Corky’s grinning. Not taking the elevator but bounding up the stairs.

  How’s it feel, kid, to be established in this town?

  Seeing, in the privacy of a toilet stall, that Budd Yeager has paid the poker debt he’s owed Corky for six weeks. Not a check but cash, nine crisp freshly minted hundred-dollar bills.

  Nine hundred dollars! Terrific. Corky presses his nose to the bills, sweet Christ what a smell. Women should wear it, as perfume.

  Except: Corky seems to recall the loss wasn’t this much, more like $700. Corky was a little drunk at the time, not to the extent his mental capacity was impaired, he’s never, or rarely, that drunk, so he can’t be sure. He’ll look it up in his ledger.

  The trick for Corky is to achieve that delicate equilibrium between sobriety and shit-faced drunkness that’s his optimum poker-playing time. When he plays cards—or do the cards, like magic, play him?—with an unerring instinct. I can’t lose! I’m here to win! At such times Corky’s afire, Corky’s gifted with second sight, his opponents’ faces are transparent and readable as the front page of a newspaper, can’t lose! here to win! but—unfortunately—this state’s temporary. It might last an hour, it might last ten minutes.

  That night, at Oscar’s, Corky’d had a run of at least forty minutes. He’d fucked Budd Yeager over royally, Yeager an aggressive, bullying poker player, thought for sure he was calling Corky’s bluff and then, the look on his face, seeing the cards in Corky’s hand fanned out before him—four aces. “Cocksucker!” he’d whispered.

  In that context, no sweeter term of endearment.

  Later that night, Corky’s luck faded, he’d been fucked over in turn by others, not that he minded losing to Oscar Slattery, old Oscar laughing with gre
edy childish pleasure fanning out his own winning hands, the Mayor happiest at such times, or so he says, when he can relax with his friends, let down his guard, rough and careless and profane and cunning as he wants, yes and he’s especially fond of Corky Corcoran, always has been, Corky likes to think Oscar thinks of him as a kind of son, a nephew maybe, more like Oscar than Vic who’s always been a source of tension, and hope.

  Corky puts Yeager’s bills in his wallet. Must be, if Yeager thinks he owes Corky $900 it’s $900. Corky isn’t going to complain.

  How’s it going, Corky, I’ve been missing you.

  Meaning what? There’ve been other poker nights at the Mayor’s to which Corky wasn’t invited? Or, there haven’t been any recently, which is why Yeager hasn’t seen Corky?

  Washes his hands energetically at one of the fancy marble sinks, douses his warm pleasantly throbbing face in water cold as he can get it out of the faucet, tries to tamp down his springy hair. Like Tim Corcoran’s: rooster’s comb. In the fluorescent light that seems a magnification, Corky sees random steely-gray hairs.

  I can believe I’m going to die but, shit, not that I’m going to get old.

  Which reminds Corky: get down to see Uncle Sean tomorrow, why not take him to visit Sister Mary Megan in the hospital?—two birds, old birds, with one stone.

  Terrific idea.

  Give me something to do, to take my mind off Christina Kavanaugh.

  Corky prefers this men’s room on the mezzanine floor since, this time of day, it’s likely to be deserted. And no uniformed black attendant hovering close by with a linen towel, H’lo Mr. Corcoran! Nice day Mr. Corcoran! Thank you Mr. Corcoran!—to be frank, that shit turns Corky’s stomach, handing out ten- and twenty-dollar bills like he was made of money, not fucking worried about his financial future. Also, Corky has been a busboy, parking attendant, in his late teens, knows how those guys hate your guts, anybody depending upon tips hates your guts and you can’t blame them, Mr. Hot-Shit Money-bags leaving big tips. That Frenchy maitre d’ downstairs with the shiny black eyes’d slit Corky’s throat with his teeth for his money if he knew he could get away with it.