What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Thalia’s been staring at the glass of pineapple juice, swallowing compulsively, distracted as Corky continues, speaking casually, not putting pressure on her, saying he’d been a little scared by her telephone messages, why wasn’t she home when he tried to call her, he must have tried to call her twenty times and no answer and no answering machine, not that he was angry, he wasn’t, but he was scared, she must know he loves her and naturally he’s scared when she’s out of contact and behaving so mysteriously—“Even Miriam, at my office, you remember Miriam, honey, don’t you?—was worried.” Wants Thalia to feel just enough guilt so she’ll drink the fruit juice and that will be a start, at least. If she’s starving she’s lightheaded and not capable of making sound judgments, if she’s on oxycodone, or an amphetamine, her appetite’s depressed, it’s a cycle. Corky’s edging toward her, wants badly to touch her, circle her thin wrists with his fingers. He’s thinking, if he touches her, he’ll have won.

  After possibly three minutes second-by-second of a stalemate Thalia reaches out slowly and takes up the glass of fruit juice, and raises it to her mouth, Corky’s careful not to seem to be watching, in fact he’s looking out the window at the hedge of lilac and clouds high in the waning sky like horses’ manes and he’s changed the subject talking of the Toronto Blue Jays, that afternoon’s game, the crazy bet he made shaking his head as if, perceiving Corky Corcoran at a distance of only a few hours, even he himself is bemused. Says Corky, “Well. I stick with my bets, I don’t regret them and I never renege.” The sky seems to him so beautiful, cobalt-blue darkening behind the clouds, he almost can’t bear it.

  This jumpiness, this edginess, you wouldn’t call it exactly sexual excitement, for Corky isn’t in fact aroused, seems to communicate itself to Thalia for just as she’s about to drink she pauses, and lowers the glass, raises it again tentatively then lowers it as if the very weight of it tires her, God damn it, Corky’s practically grinding his teeth observing this out of the corner of his eye. Doesn’t say a word. Won’t poke the wildcat. Just drains his own glass stifling a profound belch half pineapple juice and half Twelve Horse Ale.

  God damn this stepdaughter he married himself into: this is how it’s been between them, Thalia and her aching step-Daddy, for too many fucking years.

  Then, these quicksilver changes are a fact of life with Thalia, as with ninety percent of the females Corky’s known, which is why basically you can’t trust a female no matter who it is, Thalia catches sight of the morning Journal scattered across a table, and goes to look at it, the front page and the photo of Marilee Plummer and the headline and starts breathing quick and audibly like she’s begun to hyperventilate and she’s saying, whispering, “—can’t believe Marilee’s dead! Just can’t believe it!” and begins to cry and by now the damned fruit juice is forgotten set down hastily on the table.

  Thalia cries, and Corky goes to comfort her, she doesn’t push him away at least not initially, he feels his heart’s breaking, poor kid, so sorry for her in her grief that’s a tremulous grief irradiating her body so she’s shivering convulsively. And how helplessly she cries, a harsh jagged angry weeping, her face looks longer and narrower streaked with tears, rivulets in her cheeks. All Corky can do is murmur, “—it’s tough, honey, Jesus I know, it’s shitty—” shocked feeling how thin she is, jutting shoulder bones like wings, knobby vertebrae, not like a woman in her mid-twenties, unhealthy, wrong, and there’s the oily-rank smell of her hair, and the fleshy-stale smell of her body, faint scent of underarms and crotch and sweat half-pleasurable to Corky’s nostrils as it’d been the evening before in Thalia’s closet sniffing at the soiled leotard. But Corky feels no sexual stirring, only a profound unease, almost panic. The way Thalia’s crying so sharply reminds him of Theresa, his cock’s shriveled to about the size of a prune.

  “Honey? Tell me?”

  Thalia shakes her head, Thalia pushes Corky away, not roughly but decisively. Hurrying then out of the kitchen, distracted and wild-eyed glaring in grief, the sprig of lilac fallen to the floor unnoticed. Corky follows her into the solarium, she’s only half-conscious of where she is but he’s relieved she hasn’t run out of the house, what would he do then, pursue her? drag her back inside?—he’s dealt with hysterical women upon occasion in his complicated past but always Corky Corcoran was the cause of the hysteria so that puts you in an entirely different position, a position of power. Which he doesn’t have here. But in the solarium Thalia begins to calm down. Makes an effort to control herself. Corky’s tentative, hovering near. Corky’s own eyes are moist with tears. Shit, a woman crying, female grief, it goes through you like a knife blade, nothing like it.

  Yet Corky’s alert enough, seeing the cordless receiver on the glass-topped table, to take it off the hook. So they won’t be interrupted.

  Thalia wipes her face with a tissue, and blows her nose, half-turned from Corky so he can’t see her ravaged face, saying, “We were like sisters for a while, Marilee and me. Not recently but last year, and the year before. We were still friends—I am still Marilee’s friend—only not so close—but we were close, why didn’t she listen to me!—I did all I could, I swear, to talk her out of it.”

  “You knew Marilee Plummer was going to kill herself?”

  “No! I mean, I didn’t know when. I mean—” Thalia pauses, tearing at her thumbnail with her teeth, “—I was terrified she would, but I couldn’t stop her.”

  “You mean she told you?”

  “They don’t need to tell you, you know.”

  “‘They’—?”

  “People in despair, people who want to die. People who wind up in such a state, it’s easier just to die.”

  “Then Marilee did kill herself, it was suicide?”

  Furiously Thalia says, “She tried it once before, maybe more than once, nobody knew but me. In March, it was. She called me, her voice was so weak over the phone I almost couldn’t hear her, ‘Thalia, I’m in trouble,’ she said, ‘I made a mistake,’ it was five in the morning and I didn’t even ask any questions, I knew, I put a coat on over my nightgown and went over and there Marilee was, in bed, she’d taken all the barbiturates she had, in this condominium of hers, all expenses paid, you’ve seen it, maybe?—in Pendle Hill.” Thalia speaks rapidly, not looking at Corky. She’s visibly shaking. “She’d vomited some of it up so I helped her, I forced her to vomit up the rest, then I made black coffee for her, I cleaned things up, I washed her, poor Marilee, I washed her hair. Fancy cornrow braids, dozens of them, takes hours to braid and it’s expensive having it done the way Marilee did because she’s—she was—a fancy glamor-black, like on the cover of Ebony, like in Playboy, the kind you look at and you think, there’s somebody who’s really made it, no bullshitting Marilee Plummer. But she wasn’t like that, that was what she tried to be but she wasn’t, and her black friends were gone, she’d dropped them after college and they were gone and the blacks here in the city considered her the lowest of the low, purely shit, for turning Steadman in—whether he’d raped her and humiliated her and did you know he’d pissed on her?—the ‘golden shower’ it’s called—whether he’d done any of it, or not. Most of them never believed Steadman had except if he had well the cunt deserved it, the cunt was asking for it, why’d she go with him to his place if she wasn’t asking for it. The women especially. The black women. Not just the ones in the inner city though that’s where it was concentrated—is concentrated. They’re glad Marilee’s dead! They’re happy for Steadman! Even some members of her own family, Marilee said, were on his side.” Thalia’s breathless, speaking rapidly, angry tears in her eyes. “So I stayed with her, that day. I held her for hours, she was catatonic, her jaws rigid like lockjaw, she was freezing cold. So scared. She didn’t look like Marilee Plummer but like another person. When you’re depressed it’s like your body is dead, and so heavy. The spirit is turned to lead inside the body. I kept telling Marilee that after the trial she could move away, go to New York for instance. I could go with her, I said. I said, ‘He m
ay have hurt you, Marilee, but he didn’t defile you.’ Thinking of course it was all Marcus Steadman. How life had changed for her, after what happened. And finally Marilee said, it was just a whisper, I wasn’t sure what I’d heard at first—‘It isn’t just him.’”

  Corky says, “Meaning what?”

  Thalia doesn’t answer immediately. She hugs herself, shivering. Cuts her eyes at Corky, her anxious step-Daddy staring at her not knowing what to do or say or even what to do with his hands. “You weren’t involved with Marilee, were you, Corky?”

  “Of course not.”

  Corky’s response is quick and adamant but he knows his face is flushed.

  “Did you ever go out with her? Call her?”

  “No. I hardly knew her.”

  “Marilee knew you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?—sure she knew me,” Corky says, trying not to get rattled. Thalia’s looking at him with that expression he wouldn’t want to decipher. “Lots of people know me. So what? And even if I had called Marilee Plummer, which I didn’t, so what, what’s it to you? What’s it got to do with her killing herself?”

  “It might be,” Thalia says slowly, meanly, in such a way Corky guesses she’s testing him, “that Marilee told me some things, about you.”

  “Then she was lying.”

  “Was she?”

  “What’s this, an interrogation?—I said yes. If she told you she was seeing me, sleeping with me, whatever—she was lying.”

  “Marilee didn’t lie. Not to me.”

  “How the fuck would you know?”

  “She was my friend, she trusted me. Cut it out, Corky, will you? You don’t know shit.”

  “Honey, why are you so angry with me? I don’t get it.”

  “You get it, all right.”

  Thalia’s voice so quavers in dislike of him, repugnance for him or for someone she sees in his place, Corky can’t quite believe it.

  “You know who Marilee was involved with, don’t you?” Thalia asks, “—why she did what she did? Sure you do.”

  “Honey, I don’t.”

  “You know, you’re one of them. You share—when you can. Don’t you!”

  “Share what?” Corky asks, his face reddening, he knows what Thalia is getting at but can’t acknowledge it, shit, he can’t. “—Who was she involved with?”

  Thalia backs off as if Corky’s planning to grab her which he isn’t, he’s approaching her meaning only to comfort. She knows she can trust him, or should know.

  “Your friend Vic Slattery.”

  Corky shakes his head, this is preposterous. Maybe not, knowing what he knows of Vic’s weakness for women, more likely the weakness of women for Vic, but whose fault is that, not Vic’s, Corky’s frowning and shaking his head annoyed as if he’s been accused himself, made to blame. Asking Thalia skeptically, “Did Marilee tell you that, too?”

  “Marilee didn’t need to tell me, I knew.”

  “How did you know?”

  Thalia pauses as if she’s about to say I know Vic Slattery but there’s such anguish in her she can’t speak, can’t speak those words, which in any case Corky doesn’t hear, nor want to hear; nor will he remember having heard or not heard. Corky’s stern and his face is heated and his eyes slightly wild but he’s this girl’s stepfather close as any blood relation, it’s an insult if she backs off mistrusting him, and disbelieving.

  “About Vic, there are always rumors, all kinds of shitty slanderous rumors, everyone knows that,” Corky says, pursuing now a palpable truth, a truth Thalia herself must acknowledge, certainly she knows. “No man in public life, a man as attractive as Vic, and dangerous, from the point of view of his political enemies—”

  Thalia cries, “You wouldn’t tell me the truth, would you, even if you knew? Any more than he would. Unless he was made to.”

  “Thalia, I am telling you the truth. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Wouldn’t you!”

  “For Christ’s sake, Thalia—”

  Thalia looks at Corky wanting to believe him, he sees that and it placates him a little, still he’s angry, he’s angry in Vic’s place, some terrible gathering blame like the very sky turning opaque seems to be encroaching, though possibly it isn’t, it can be made to cease.

  Corky’s without any doubt, or tells himself so. He can make it cease.

  “I think you lie all the time, I think you’ve lied to me lots of times, I don’t doubt you have your reasons and your reasons are good ones, you think,” Thalia says rapidly, backing off, now against the solarium wall, nudging her leg against the edge of a planter containing a gigantic fern whose leaves have begun by degrees to turn brown, despite Mrs. Krauss’ efforts to save it, “—I don’t even doubt that you love me, or think you do.” Her mouth works, she’s pale and long-faced, horse-faced, ugly. “For instance: was it you who broke into my apartment last night, Corky?”

  “Me? Your apartment?” Corky isn’t prepared for this thrown into his face, but his answer comes swift and astonished, “—Jesus, Thalia, someone broke into your apartment? Last night?”

  “It was you, wasn’t it? Corky, just tell me. I know why you did it and I’m not angry, just tell me.”

  Corky shakes his head, wordless. Should he say? He should. He contemplates his accuser, he’s close to smiling. Once said, never unsaid. He wonders how good a look the woman downstairs got of him, or maybe somehow Esdras himself. Christ!

  Though saying, genuinely upset, “Thalia, let’s get this straight: sometime last night, during the night, your apartment was broken into? And you were there?—in bed?”

  Thalia eyes Corky doubtfully. As if she knows, but doesn’t know. “Yes, I was there. But not in bed. And it wasn’t during the night, it was early in the evening around six. It was you, Corky, wasn’t it?” pleading with him now.

  “What do you mean, you were there?” Corky asks, astonished. “When this person broke in, you were there?”

  “I was hiding. In a closet.”

  Smiling at Corky, a swift defiant smile so he’s stricken to the heart with terror that his and Charlotte’s worst fears are exactly right: Thalia is unwell.

  But Corky’s so astonished, he can only repeat, like a parrot or an idiot, “You were hiding?—in a closet?”

  Thalia says, “I was prepared to hide, I knew they would be coming for me. I was already hiding but then I thought, hearing him at the door, maybe it was you, because the phone had been ringing all day and I thought it might be you but I couldn’t answer because it might not be you and then they’d know.”

  Corky’s staring at Thalia. He should acknowledge the intruder was him but somehow he can’t. Just can’t. Though afterward to regret it and even now suspecting how afterward he’ll regret it he’s unable to speak, you asshole Corky, trying to do good and fucking up as usual. And now compounding one lie with another, asking, even demanding, “Jesus, Thalia, honey, why did you just hide if you heard somebody breaking in your apartment, why didn’t you call the police?” and Thalia shakes her head vehemently, as if Corky’s asked an outrageous question, with revulsion she says, “The police!—them!” and Corky asks, “What do you mean?” and Thalia says, “You know,” and Corky asks, “Honey, what do I know?”—for indeed he’s baffled, and sweating like a guilty man, all this has about blown his mind.

  But Thalia won’t say. She knows what she believes she knows but she won’t say so Corky surmises it’s paranoia, a fear of the police too, Thalia has never seemed to trust the police and Corky’d taken it to be an affectation, a radical-minded young person’s affectation, as in the 1960s the belief was never trust the pigs, the pigs in uniform. And Thalia and certain of her friends believed themselves radical thinkers, so this makes sense. A kind of sense. At least, Corky wants to think so.

  Asking, still upset, about the intruder—how long was he in the apartment, did he steal anything, didn’t she get a look at him?—and afterward, what had she done?—and where is she staying now?—and Thalia’s answers aren’t
very coherent, nor very audible, Corky thinks she’s staying with a friend somewhere in the city, but even that isn’t clear. Don’t push her, don’t press her, that will only make things worse, Corky thinks. He’s had experience with hysterics, in this very house.

  “I hid because I wouldn’t be driven out by them. I was already in hiding when he came. He might have been them, or he might have been you, but I couldn’t know so I got into the closet and made myself small as I could, squeezed behind some clothes, and suitcases. He opened the door, he opened it twice—and didn’t see me. I didn’t breathe but I heard him breathing, I thought it might be you but what if it wasn’t, because Marilee was dead and they’d be coming for me because I was her friend, oh Corky we were close as sisters for a long time then things came between us, I won’t say what, I won’t say his name, it was my fault as much as Marilee’s, I’m so ashamed. I didn’t approve of Marilee’s life, her jobs, living where she did, the people she’d turned her back on—it was her mistake, she set whites higher than blacks I think, without meaning to—but I don’t want to judge, not her. Then after it happened in January, with Steadman, and everything Marilee couldn’t control, we were close again, she needed me. But I couldn’t help her, at the end. I failed her. I knew, I knew she would kill herself, not when, but I knew she would, and I couldn’t stop her. I had foreknowledge in dreams. But it didn’t make any difference.”

  Corky has let Thalia speak uninterrupted, now she’s crying again, a despair so raw and open it’s like Corky’s own, almost. And not shrinking from him as he holds her, gently, cautiously folding his arms around her thin shivering body.