What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Jesus, Thalia! Poor little girl.”

  Next comes an interlude of calm and Corky’s given reason to feel he’s back in control. Sitting with Thalia and talking soothing her and humoring her as one might a sick child for surely Thalia is a sick child, has been so for years. But so skilled in negotiating the terms of her own sickness and so intelligent a young woman, always there’s the question Corky puts to Charlotte: Who’s to say? You, me? Who’s to say who’s right, and Thalia in the wrong?

  Thalia says, biting her thumbnail, her face fine-wrinkled with the effort to be precise, honest, “What I wanted most for myself was to be not myself. To be abstract, in the service of a principle. Not intoxicated with ‘ego.’ Blind with ‘self’ that’s like a beacon shining into your eyes,” and Corky says uneasily, for something about this is wrong, “What do you mean, ‘wanted,’ Thalia?—it’s all in the past?” and Thalia says, not hearing, this selective deafness is a trait she shares with the mother she’s repudiated, “—Which is why Marilee seemed wrong to me, and mysterious, for so long. I didn’t understand at the time but now, since her death, I’ve been thinking of nothing else since her death but this, I do. You see, Corky,” eager and almost elated, as a teenager she’d light up with such sudden insights, some of them obvious, others subtle, or weird, or plain mistaken, “Whites expect nonwhites to be more than just individuals. We expect them to be in the service of a principle—abstract—not selfish like the rest of us. It’s a form of racism! Colonization! Like the white liberal who’s so shocked and hurt by the black whose religion is hating whites. Saying ‘Hey, I’m your friend, I don’t hate you so how can you hate me,’” and Corky says, irritated, “You sound like Marcus Steadman, for Christ’s sake—you believe that shit?” and Thalia says, still frowning, with that attitude of exquisite precision wanting or needing to get things said, and said right, as if for the record, “It isn’t a matter of what I believe, or you believe, it’s a matter of what is. Sometimes it just comes to you. It must be like God—overwhelming—blasts you through, obliterates you. A few months ago I was in that pro-choice rally that turned nasty in Union Square Park. We were marching to City Hall and the Operation Rescue people blocked us, they were screaming at us, waving their signs, chanting—‘Pro-choice is a lie, no baby chooses to die,’ and that stopped me cold. It went right through me, it was cold and sharp as a blade, I felt the truth of it. It wasn’t an opinion, it was a truth, and I felt it, I knew.” She pauses. “But I didn’t change my politics.”

  Thalia’s breathing quickly, audibly. They’ve been sitting at the glass-topped table in the solarium as the sun shifts toward the horizon illuminating the bank of clouds like a mountain range on fire and Corky’s been earnest and fatherly, saying now, “Hell, Thalia, there are two sides—more than two—to any political position. But if you want to get anything done, any progress, you have to decide, make up your mind which side you’re on and act. You can’t always be thinking. You only have to act. In the voting booth—”

  “I know that,” Thalia says quickly, brightly. “Corky, I know that! But I need to hear you say it. I really do.” There’s a strange emphasis to her words, Corky can’t figure it. Is he telling her to do something it won’t be in Corky Corcoran’s own best interest for her to do?

  Thalia’s curious about the house, wants to see it. What’s this house she grew up in like now?

  Corky follows her into the front rooms, rarely used now he’s a bachelor, and alone. Switching on the living room lights seeing the room through Thalia’s eyes, high ceiling, ornate molding, the swanky European-style furniture or what remains of it—a stage setting but where are the actors?—what’s the point? Corky hasn’t had anyone over in a long time. He’s invited out so often, there’s no need, and no time anyway. And when, married, he’d invited some of his own people over, that’s to say his relatives, the occasions always fell flat. Trying to mix Irish Hill with Summit Park, the same difficulty Tim Corcoran had inviting the family to Schuyler Place, the nicer people shy and stiff and all but mute fearful of spilling something on the rug or farting and the rest of the pack, the Donnellys for instance, making sure they did spill something, and did fart. Corky recalls that Christmas open house when he’d mixed his relatives with Charlotte’s and with their friends, the strain of it, Corky’s cousin Lois inquiring pointblank of him do you own this place free and clear or is there a mortgage, Mike Donnelly getting in a quarrel with Ross Drummond over politics, Sean Corcoran in a disagreement too with one of Corky’s neighbors, the old man maudlin-drunk, and worst of all, Corky winces remembering, a parish priest from Batavia, second or third cousin of Corky’s, Father Mulvaney, passing out in one of the bathrooms with the door locked so Corky ended up having to remove the hinges from the door, fuck that, fuck that shit, such embarrassment, and Charlotte pointedly saying nothing about it, Charlotte and the Drummonds, a united front.

  So, no more parties. Not till Corky gets reestablished.

  Thalia says, “It’s hard for me to believe that I ever lived here. Except I had to come from somewhere, didn’t I.”

  Corky says, “Well, this part of the house doesn’t look familiar, much, to me either.”

  “I remember the house more than I remember myself in it.”

  Corky says dryly, “Well, Thalia, I remember you.”

  French windows along one wall, a milky-marble fireplace on the facing wall, imported from Florence, Italy, according to Charlotte’s fag decorator, out of an eighteenth-century palazzo. Creamy-beige brocade, recessed lighting, but a bare hardwood floor, needing to be waxed. Half the furniture gone. That bronze Chinese rug, hand-woven, crimson and jade and turquoise herons, beauty to knock out your eye, how could Corky let Charlotte take it, Thalia asks, childish indignation in her voice, and unfairness, and Corky says, shrugging, “The rug was a wedding present from your grandparents, as far as I was concerned it was Charlotte’s, of course.” Not adding, what the hell, anything Charlotte wanted of the household she could have. To get out from under that heavy neurotic bitch, so he could breathe, was all Corky wanted at the end.

  Weird how, when you’re in love, buying furniture for your house, each item is precious, invested with meaning. When love’s gone, it’s just some objects in a room and the room’s got walls, floor, ceiling—what’s the big deal?

  Thalia says, “Grandpa tried to buy me, too. Plenty of times. But he hasn’t succeeded.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Corky thinks of the $4-million inheritance. Wondering suddenly if Thalia will even outlive her grandparents—live to inherit.

  Of course she’ll live: I’ll make sure of it.

  “In what ways has Ross tried?” Corky asks.

  “Various ways,” Thalia says coolly. “You know how he is, that type. And Mother, too. And, in his own way, not a very effectual way since I never see him, Mr. Pierson.”

  Charlotte’s third husband, Thalia’s new stepfather. Gavin Pierson whom Thalia always calls “Mr. Pierson.” He’s a highly successful Union City investment broker, an associate of Ross Drummond’s, mid-fifties, wife died of cancer a few years ago and Charlotte “consoled” him and Corky knew, or half-knew, too caught up with his own affairs to concentrate, except he’d notice how at the Athletic Club on the squash court and in the locker room during those months when Pierson was swept up in Charlotte’s scheme of revenge, the poor guy couldn’t look Corky in the eye, stammered guiltily in his presence. “What’s with him?” Corky once inquired to mutual acquaintances as Pierson hurried away and the men were blank, innocent. Pretending they didn’t know.

  Corky’s fists are clenched, remembering. The bruise on his forehead throbs.

  Corky asks, “Charlotte has told me, you refuse to see her. You hurt her feelings, you know.”

  Thalia shrugs. “She isn’t my mother now, that’s past.”

  “Hey, c’mon: what kind of talk is that?”

  “I told her we’re free of each other and it’s a good, beautiful thing t
o be free. It’s like a cleansing flame, Corky. You should know.”

  “I know you’re talking a lot of crap. What’s it, some Oriental ‘wisdom’ religion? Like out of a fortune cookie?”

  Thalia laughs. Her laughter rises like glass reversed in falling, a happy sort of breakage. There’s a faint eerie echo in the room and hearing it Thalia presses her forefinger over her lips and laughs harder.

  Before Corky can press her on this, he’s actually about to take hold of her arm, Thalia moves on into the next room, the dining room, a latticed French door overlooking the slope of the lawn and an elegant Irish crystal chandelier hanging poised over empty space—no table beneath, no chairs, another bare hardwood floor. As if some comically abrupt apocalyptic event had occurred sweeping inhabitants and furnishings alike away, no trace of their passing, not the slightest disturbance in their wake. Thalia laughs, and wipes at her eyes. “Christ it’s so fucking sad, isn’t it—any place where people’ve been, and aren’t any longer.”

  Corky protests, “Why? I’m going to buy new furniture, for all these rooms, just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’m thinking I should wait, maybe I’ll get married again.”

  “Married again? You?” Thalia stares at him, so blunt it isn’t even rude. “It’s too late for you.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?—‘too late’? I’m only forty-three years old.”

  “It’s too late for all of you.”

  Thalia speaks softly, with an air of sorrow, resignation. Corky tastes cold thinking again yes she is disturbed, something is wrong, like when you’re a kid and you meet another kid who isn’t right in the head, just that expression not right in the head, how quickly you know, though you’d be unable to explain.

  Corky decides to play it light, though. Maybe the kid’s teasing.

  “You don’t know the first thing about me, Thalia. About me, let’s say, as a man.”

  “I know you’re the kind of man who has to prove he’s a man by way of women. But it’s other men you’re proving to, like they’re proving they’re men to you. It’s the opposite of freedom. Where freedom’s fire, that’s muck.” Thalia makes a bemused snorting sound, a teenaged kid moving off with a sidelong glance at Corky, she’s laughing at him.

  Goes into the next room, which Corky wishes she wouldn’t, damned nosey kid and he can’t reasonably stop her.

  This room’s an ex-parlor you might say, once Charlotte’s and now exclusively Corky’s, a bachelor’s den. Black leather sofa, matching chairs, curtainless windows, expensive wall-to-wall carpeting but stained, scattered newspapers, magazines—business, sports, girlie stuff. There’s a gigantic TV on a swivel stand, VCR equipment. There’s a CD player, state-of-the-art equipment, shelves of CDs mainly jazz, blues. Thalia doesn’t remember this, looks around squinting. A kid bursting into her daddy’s secret room and after a moment’s startled pause she begins to smile, sly slow smile, examining the girlie magazine atop a table, Corky wishes the hell she wouldn’t, fuck he’s embarrassed like he’s exposed as some jerk-off, drooling over airbrushed tits and cunt and whacking himself off.

  How to explain to Thalia that except for Playboy, to which he’s been a loyal and enthusiastic subscriber since the early 1970s, and which generally he reads in near-entirety, he buys these magazines off newsstands and hardly glances through them. The habit, the instinct, is in the buying: some promise, or hope, of—God knows what.

  Says Corky heartily, as if he’s just now thought of it, “Thalia, I have an idea: let’s go out to dinner, just the two of us. It’s after six. I’ll make a reservation. If you want, you could take a shower, freshen up. What do you say?”

  Bent over a table leafing through one of the skin magazines, Thalia doesn’t hear. She’s absorbed, her lips moving. Laughs, sniffs. Wipes at her nose. Then, peering at Corky through a straggly curtain of hair, forehead creased like the skin’s been squeezed together, she says, deadpan, “Corky, I used to get the distinct impression, when I was in high school, maybe even junior high, that you sort of wanted to, I mean you entertained the possibility of, well—I mean—” she grins, a mean light in her eyes, “—you wanted to fuck me. Was I wrong?”

  Corky’s stunned at this, it must show in his face.

  Saying, as if Thalia’s joking, or pushing the way she does, no relationship to truth or anything actual, anything that need be acknowledged, “Yes. You were wrong.”

  Thalia laughs. Flicks the magazine shut, straightens to her full arrogant height, smiles at Corky. “I thought maybe I was wrong, I just wanted it confirmed at the source.”

  Corky moves on. Shaky-legged, and his face mottled, Jesus, he’s shocked at this. Just the word fuck in Thalia’s mouth in that way, fuck me, can’t believe it. Coming out with it like that!

  She hates me, Corky thinks.

  His instinct is, he’s back in the kitchen again, sees the cordless phone, he’ll call Charlotte. Poor woman she’s been frantic leaving messages for him. Worried about her daughter and with good reason.

  Charlotte, help me! Maybe you could come over here, how soon can you get here, you and Gavin.

  Corky laughs harshly, takes a Budweiser out of the refrigerator and drinks. Fuck Thalia, she thinks she’s going to cocktease him.

  You and that gentleman-prick Gavin. Come over here, I’m bailing out. She’s yours.

  She never was mine, she’s nothing of mine, I was playing a part, I was pretending to be Daddy, all my life I’m playing parts, I don’t know who the fuck I am and know what?—I don’t give a shit.

  The beer’s so cold and so good going down, Corky’s eyes moist over in simple gratitude. He’s trembling.

  Thinking of the stolen snapshot. Thalia, and some man. And Vic, and Marilee Plummer, another man. What’s it all about but fucking, either you are, or you aren’t. Bottom line.

  Either fucking, or being fucked. In the ass. Sure. Simplest premise of human life.

  Like what that smart-ass kid said, at the debate tournament, from some genius-school in Manhattan, Corky and Vic and the St. Thomas team thrown up against these New York kids most of whom are Jews with a Chink or two thrown in, the topic is Resolved: The U.S. military presence in Vietnam is essential in America’s war against World Communism and the St. Thomas team’s all patriots for sure, the Holy Roman Catholic Church teaches its sons to be patriots, die for your country and God bless you and similar shit and this sly kid, last name ends in -berg or -stein, cuts through the bullshit saying the purpose of war is basically to provide food for insects, worms, scavengers, that’s the ecological perspective, that’s the ultimate perspective, “human” values are just part of the equation, and how the guys’ jaws dropped, Corky’s and his teammates’, and the look on their Jesuit advisor’s face, never heard anything like that.

  That, said Father Dolan, afterward, is the voice of atheism.

  Well, thinks Corky, somebody’s got to cut through the bullshit some of the time, there are your basic premises in life, fuck or be fucked, eat or be eaten.

  He’s hungry.

  Then, when Thalia drifts back into the kitchen a while later, tears in her eyes, she’d gone upstairs to look at her old room she misses it actually dreams of it a lot weird as that sounds, Corky’s in a mood to be nasty himself but right away, unpredictable as she is, Thalia sounds wistful, sincere. “There’s so much lost to me I wish I could retrieve. I’m coming to the end of something but I don’t know where it started.” Staring at Corky, gnawing a thumbnail so he’s sorely tempted to snatch her hand away from her mouth.

  Corky takes this straight, in fact he’s touched. Any time Thalia makes a civilized overture to him, he’s a pushover.

  “Honey, the end of what?” Corky asks.

  “A period of difficult adjustment.”

  “Meaning—?”

  Thalia stiffens, a look comes over her face like she’s ashamed, Corky guesses it’s a man, hopes to Christ it isn’t Vic even as he tells himself reasonably it couldn’t be Vic: Vic Slattery fucking Corky Cor
coran’s stepdaughter would be like Corky fucking Vic’s wife Sandra, you just don’t do such shit to your close friends.

  Corky’s convinced, Corky erases all further suspicion.

  Saying, “Why don’t we discuss this at dinner? We’ve got so much to talk about. Some of the things you’ve told me—” Corky’s voice trails off, can’t deal with it just now. Needs a drink stiffer than Budweiser.

  He then rapidly runs through, for Thalia’s sake, the names of restaurants they might go to—Brauer’s? Italian Villa? House of Siam?—as Thalia stands listening, or seeming-so, biting her damned thumbnail to the quick. Interrupting him then as a child might, rude yet not by intention, “Corky, what is your life?”

  “My—what?”

  It’s a weird moment. Corky feels like a boxer who’s been jabbing keeping his opponent at just the right distance then suddenly he’s hit a blow to the solar plexus coldcocking him dead.

  “Your father was murdered, and the murderer never even arrested,” Thalia says calmly, outrageously, “—and then your mother—didn’t she die in a mental hospital? But it doesn’t seem to have affected you, somehow. I mean, your personality. You seem to—well, to like life. You’re like life. Life itself. You keep going.”

  Corky’s shocked. Corky’s angry, embarrassed.

  Hell, Corky’s flattered.

  Saying, managing to laugh, his Irish-kid smile, “Shit, sweetheart, you know Corky Corcoran: ‘Where there’s quantum theory, there’s hope.’”

  But Thalia doesn’t get it. B.A. Cornell, smart-ass kid knows all the answers, condescending to her own stepfather in his own home, she doesn’t catch on he’s waving it in her face practically, I’m the guy who broke into your apartment. Doesn’t remember the very passage she’d underlined in her astronomy text.

  Less amiably Corky says, “Sure I keep going, Thalia, you got a better alternative? What am I s’posed to do, fucking roll over and die?” He pauses, seeing she’s looking at him in that strange assessing yet opaque way. “For one thing, I’ve got to look after you, don’t I? If you get sick again, or freak out. Jesus, the way you’ve been living!”