What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Around the time he sold the building was when Thalia collapsed at Cornell, it comes back to him now.

  Schoharie is a steep hill leading up from the river, potholed asphalt, rowhouses populated by blacks, Hispanics, welfare whites, then across Erie Boulevard it’s more working-class, in fact Devane Johnson’s family lives in this part of the city—Devane Johnson, the twelve-year-old black kid shot in the back by a UCPD officer. Driving in this part of Union City in a Cadillac De Ville isn’t so risky as you’d think, the drug dealers and pimps all drive expensive cars so a white businessman successful as Corky Corcoran fits right in.

  Where Schoharie crosses a broad, busy avenue called Werhle it changes its character, a block of duplex woodframe houses not at all badly maintained, the next block refurbished brick rowhouses smartly painted in designer colors, Corky knows the guys who developed this and they had the right idea, the west side is ripe for gentrification, like Pendle Hill. Except in this recession, are the units fully rented? Corky guesses not. His aren’t.

  588 Schoharie isn’t a rowhouse but an apartment building of three floors, new-looking, moderately upscale, a young professionals/singles type of place, exactly where you’d imagine an ambitious girl like Kiki to be living while she scans the field, calculates how far she can get, who she can get, before she’s thirty and played out. Used Kleenex, Corky wonders if they see themselves that way, ever? Or don’t dare? Kiki’s building has its architectural pretensions, it’s disconcertingly similar to the Georgian Colonial facade of Corky’s own house, red brick and white portico and trim, broad white shutters, that all-American look, sheerly phony. Inside it’s cheap materials, built to last maybe twenty years, some of the fixtures, bathroom racks, doorknobs, coming off in your hand, and those processed wood doors that warp so they can’t close—Corky knows, he owns properties like this himself, short-term investments. Sad, he’s thinking, unless maybe it’s funny, the architectural styles of this country, pseudo-Colonial across the street from pseudo-Victorian and close by “French Country” (those tacky mansard roofs! Corky sees them everywhere, can’t stand them) and “English Tudor” and “Contemporary” and “Postmodern”—and inside, these creatures Wolf Wiegler called Cro-Magnons, with no clue how we got here, or why.

  Corky enters the vestibule of 588 Schoharie, checks out the mailboxes, there’s K. ZALLER Apt. 6B and he presses the buzzer but no response. “Fuck it.” He hears voices, a young man and a young woman push through a door careless about closing it behind them so Corky reaches out to keep it from locking and slips through and upstairs at 6B rings the doorbell once, twice, three times—“Fuck it.”

  Back at the Werhle intersection Corky’d noticed a LIQUOR WINE BEER store, and he sees it fleeting in his mind’s eye, but lets it go. Presses his ear against the door to 6B as he’d pressed his ear against Thalia’s God-damned door the other day, why is Corky Corcoran always on the outside of where he wants to be, what is his life coming to! No sound inside. Nothing distinct. Maybe Kiki, like Marilee Plummer, is dead?—but Corky won’t be the one to find her.

  Back in his car Corky contemplates what to do. It’s a ten-minute drive to Sean Corcoran’s—a fact pressing on his chest like concrete. He loves the old man, he supposes, only just doesn’t want to see him, talk to him. When Corky’s old, who in hell’s going to want to see him?

  The prospect of getting old, being old,—that putty-colored old rummy in the morgue with his ghastly face, skinned-looking testicles, Wiegler’s diet chocolate soda can resting on his chest—Corky’s tasting panic. I need a drink, and I need it right now.

  But if he goes to visit Sean maybe he can pick up a gun, it’s beginning to seem obvious that Corky Corcoran needs a gun to protect himself from danger.

  Corky drives back to Werhle and parks the Caddy in a small shopping plaza, ignores the LIQUOR WINE BEER sign and enters instead a food store where, propelled by a compulsive thirst, he buys another quart of grapefruit juice, opens the container with shaky fingers and begins to drink it there. The cashier, a woman in her thirties, initially attracted by Corky’s springy red hair, good clothes, battered good looks, is now staring at him. Corky says, smacking his lips, “Real healthy for you,” as if it’s a joke, and the woman shrugs and says, “Maybe.” Corky’s so used to women opening up to him this is a rebuff that stings.

  Corky notices there’s another woman in the store, a customer, dark-haired, with glasses, a plain pinched face, in shirt and jeans and sandals; oddly furtive, jerky in her movements up and down the aisles, as she picks up items, stares at them, sets them back on the shelf. Or is she stalling for time, until Corky leaves the store? He watches her and sees, to his astonishment, how her thin triangular face becomes Kiki Zaller’s—this is Kiki?

  And she’s watching him, unsmiling, face severe as a mask’s.

  “Hey Kiki—it’s you?” Corky smiles a big hello but he’s staring too, can’t help it: Kiki, whom he remembers as a reckless beautiful girl, is hardly recognizable, in chunky plastic-framed glasses with an amber tint that looks medicinal, her skin sallow without makeup and her lips bloodless and that spectacular frizzed copper hair now mostly brown, blunt-cut and skinned back from her face.

  And no earrings. Not even studs. Where they’d been, Corky can see tiny puncture marks in the girl’s delicate earlobes.

  Clearly Kiki isn’t overjoyed about running into Corky Corcoran on this balmy spring Sunday. Her smile is twitchy and fleeting and her eyes are narrowed like a cat’s. “Mr. Corcoran? What are you doing here?” Corky laughs incredulously, takes it that Kiki’s joking, saying, “What’s this ‘Mr.’?—I’m ‘Corky,’” squeezing her limp cold little hand as if they’re meeting on their usual party turf; he’d even kiss her cheek except Kiki’s holding herself so stiff, seems almost frightened of him. Corky laughs again and says, “Actually, Kiki, I’m looking for you.”

  Kiki laughs too, harshly. Her triangular little death’s-head of a face dips in mirthless mirth. “Oh no you’re not, ‘Corky,’” she says.

  Corky’s a little embarrassed at Kiki seeing him with the quart of grapefruit juice, drinking it right there in the store like a kook. But Kiki’s not her old self, flirty and derisive. She’d ignore Corky entirely if she could.

  Corky looks on as Kiki’s purchases are being rung up on the cash register, he can see she’s uneasy, or annoyed, him standing there smiling, so good-natured a guy it’s impossible to shake him. She’s buying a carton of Capris, one of those so-called low-tar cigarettes Corky used to scorn when he smoked, cigarettes for women, and a six-pack of Molson’s Lite, Corky scorns “lite” beer too, except the very sight of the aluminum cans sets his mouth watering, and three cans of Campbell’s soup, and five eight-ounce containers of fruit yogurt, and a package of something called FreshScent which looks like sanitary napkins—fumbling with her wallet (which is reptile skin, or a good imitation, expensive) so Corky leans in quickly, “I can pay, Kiki,” but Kiki flashes him a look of barely contained rage, “No thanks, Mr. Corcoran, I can.”

  So from the start, that first exchange, it’s fucked. Which Corky knows, but can’t accept—for why would Kiki Zaller be hostile to him? He’s the nicest guy in Union City, he’s got friends in high places, he wants only to do the right thing.

  (Near as Corky can remember of that wild-drunken night, he’d been a gentleman through the humiliating shit about Kiki’s earring stuck on his ear. Hadn’t lost his temper with either Kiki or Marilee as another guy would have—the bitches laughing at him calling him Frecklehead, that’s to say Fuckhead. So what’s Kiki got against him now?)

  Corky’s eager to establish contact with Kiki, that vein of intimacy or its semblance he requires the way he requires oxygen to breathe, saying in an undertone, as he follows her out of the store, “Christ! Wasn’t that a terrible thing, a shocking thing, Marilee . . .” letting his voice trail off so Kiki can murmur in response, but she doesn’t say a word. Not a word! Outside in the sunshine, a glaring windblown light and Corky sees Kiki isn’t
Thalia’s age after all but years older, pushing thirty, her face is tight with strain, she’s clenching her jaws, not looking at him. The chunky plastic glasses aren’t flattering to her slender face, there’s a reddened mark on the bridge of her nose.

  How she’d leaned against him nudging her breast against him teasing and breathy, Well, Corky, maybe I like hurt but is this the same girl? Corky can’t believe it.

  Still there’s a connection between them, physical, erotic, a sense of a shared secret. That, Kiki can’t ignore.

  But then this happens: Corky asks Kiki where’s her car and Kiki says in a small cold voice she walked to the store and Corky says O.K. then get in mine, here’s my car, I’ll drive you back but already she’s edging away gripping the grocery bag against her breasts and pointedly not looking at Corky, and Corky calls after, “Hey Kiki—what the hell? C’mon get in.” But the cold little bitch continues on toward Schoharie with no more than a cursory gesture as if to say leave me alone, I do what I want to do, don’t fuck with me. Corky couldn’t be more astounded if the girl’d slapped him in the face.

  When a guy’s rebuffed, though, he’s got two choices: to accept it and creep away like a loser, or to pretend it never happened. Corky’s made a career of going for the second option.

  So he climbs in the Caddy, sure he’s pissed and hurt but he’s not going to show it, like losing an election (which in fact has yet to happen to Corky Corcoran) when you’re gracious about your rival’s success and the voters who didn’t vote for you, that’s just shrewd poker, everybody loves a good loser and Corky’s primed for the role and he knows, he just knows, Kiki’s going to come around to liking him and trusting him, and maybe more: he knows.

  Wondering if, at her apartment, Kiki will offer him a beer.

  Corky drives along Schoharie at five miles an hour hugging the curb, keeping pace with Kiki who’s walking fast, a stiff angry look to her walk, and her head stiff, certainly she’s aware of him but she doesn’t so much as glance toward him like he’s some guy trying to pick her up, and Corky hopes to hell a police patrol car doesn’t cruise by, no telling what Kiki might say. But Corky smiles—this is all so fucking weird to him, such an insult, he’s got no choice but to smile—calling out to Kiki, “Jesus, I don’t want to bother you, Kiki, I guess you’ve had a bad time of it lately?—Thalia took it pretty hard, too. And that’s why—that’s one of the reasons—I’d like to talk to you? Just for a few—” Such an appeal, so straight from the heart, how can the bitch ignore it? But she does.

  At 588 Schoharie Corky parks the car, gives it away he knows where Kiki lives by parking hurriedly at the curb before she turns up the walk, rushing then to the entrance to open the door for her. Still smiling, but his eyes are showing the strain. Kiki passes coolly through the doorway making sure she doesn’t brush against him. What’s he got, AIDS? Her face is so tight it’s as if wires are strung beneath the thin, sallow skin, radiating outward from her eyes and bracketing her bloodless little slug of a mouth. The flirty-fucky party girl Kiki Zaller’s known to be, where’s she? Corky can’t help but think there’s a deliberate deception going on here aimed specifically at him.

  Or is Kiki a lesbian?—that’s it? He seems to remember Kiki and Marilee dissolving in peals of laughter in each other’s arms. Choking with hilarity at the predicament of ol’ Frecklehead.

  Inside the vestibule Corky’s a gentleman politely offering to take Kiki’s grocery bag from her as she fumbles to unlock the inner door, but Kiki shakes her head impatiently to indicate no, no thanks, she can do it herself, she’s got a routine. Corky’s panicked he’s going to lose her. He lifts his hands, he’s throwing himself on her mercy, saying, almost begging, “Kiki, I need your help, it’s got to do with Thalia,” and at this Kiki gives him a furtive look, a look maybe of guilt, and mumbles, “Sorry I can’t help you, sorry—” she’s slipping through the door but Corky grabs it and follows her, “Hey please! Don’t shut me out. I’m a desperate man—look at me.”

  His hangover eyes, the bruise on his forehead, his shaky pleading voice—this does the trick, or seems to.

  Kiki sighs. A hissing sound, like Father Vincent over the phone.

  Your foot’s inside the door, that’s the main thing. Once you get inside nobody’s going to remember how you got there.

  Kiki leads Corky upstairs, allowing him now to take the grocery bag from her, a small victory but it’s a victory. And at the door to 6B she murmurs, “Come in, then,” in a flat, dry voice, as if they’ve been quarreling and Corky’s won out of sheer doggedness. He feels his prick stir, the first sign of life in eighteen hours.

  Inside, the living room’s small as Corky envisioned. A faint stink of tobacco smoke. Standard oyster-white walls, ceiling track lighting, sofa, chairs, a large TV prominent in a corner, stacks of videocassettes spilling onto the floor. Wall-to-wall carpet, too-bright electric-blue, covered in lint and dustballs. Something sad about this room, maybe it’s a furnished room? “So this is where you live, Kiki!” Corky says with forced enthusiasm.

  No reply. As if speaking, or making even a gesture of ordinary civility, would cost her too much, Kiki directs Corky into a cramped little kitchen where he sets the grocery bag down, feeling husbandly, on a sticky counter. His eye takes in a certain measure of grime in the sink, jagged flecks of rust on the stove, glassware and plates set on the counter upside down, rinsed and not washed. He wonders what rent Kiki’s paying for this place.

  Even now Kiki doesn’t so much as murmur thanks but begins to unpack the bag. Breaks open the carton of cigarettes immediately, lights up a Capri without offering Corky one, how does the bitch know Corky doesn’t smoke, rude bitch, enough like Thalia to be a sister, why are younger women so much less feminine than women of Corky’s generation? And so brisk, matter-of-fact, the way Kiki’s slamming the Campbell soups onto a cupboard shelf, then dumps the six-pack and the yogurt into the refrigerator. A mostly empty refrigerator, with a sweet-rancid odor lifting to Corky’s sensitive nostrils.

  He’s smelling Kiki, too. Paradoxical combination of soap, dried sweat. Musty-bloody. An odor of underarms, that under-the-hair-nape-of-the-neck odor that turns Corky on—an old, old memory of the girl from Ballyhoura his father had helped to bring over, Deirdre, Deirdre’s smell, her unshaven underarms, legs. Running Jerome’s bath but not overly keen about baths herself.

  All this cheers Corky up. Giving Kiki his warmest grin.

  “Not going to offer me a cigarette, eh? Or a beer? I guess I’m seriously on your shit list.”

  Kiki has shut the refrigerator door but hasn’t moved away. The kitchen’s so cramped, they can’t avoid touching. Corky sees she’s smiling, or anyway her lips are twitching; for her, this is quite a concession. Seen in profile Kiki’s a striking young woman, even without makeup. Her slender nose, strong chin. The bones of her cheeks. Through the open collar of her carelessly buttoned shirt Corky can see the taut tendons of her neck, a bluish vein pulsing there. Always it comes over Corky, this close to a woman, virtually any woman, a weird disorienting sense of her being that’s somehow identical with his own.

  Says Kiki, now archly, raising her eyes to Corky’s as if something is prodding her be female! female!, “Do you want a cigarette, or a beer, Corky?”

  Says Corky, smiling, with satisfaction, “Thanks a lot, Kiki. But actually I don’t.”

  Kiki takes a deep drag on the cigarette and exhales smoke like pent-up laughter. Turns to walk away, running a hand through her chopped-looking hair. Doggy-Corky trots after, his eyes dropping to take in her tight little ass in the bleached jeans, the slightly swaggering motion of her shoulders inside the shirt. He’s aching to touch her, he’s the kind of guy who finds it hard to talk to a woman without touching her, a hand on her shoulder, a squeeze of her fingers. The tension between them has made him excited—maybe Kiki’s planned it that way?

  Kiki says bluntly, before Corky can speak, “I’m sorry I can’t help you, I’m through with all that. Why don’t you leave.”<
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  “But, Kiki—”

  “I’d just like you to leave.”

  “I only want to ask you—”

  “Yes, but—no: I don’t know anything about her, and I don’t want to know.” Kiki’s breathless, backing off from Corky, smoking her cigarette quickly as if she thinks somebody’s going to take it from her. “I’m starting a new life on June first.”

  Corky says, pleading, “But I’m desperate, Kiki—I’ve got to find her before something happens.”

  Kiki stares at Corky. She pushes her heavy glasses against the bridge of her nose. “You’ve got to—find her? How can you find her? She’s dead.”

  “No, I mean Thalia. Not Marilee. I’m looking for Thalia.”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything about Thalia, either. About either of them. I’m leaving Union City on June first and going to—” a wild note in her voice, a twist of her lips as if she’s daring Corky to doubt her, “—Rio.”

  “Rio? Brazil?”

  “I’ve got a friend who will take me.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Who’s she?” Kiki laughs. “No one you know.”

  The telephone starts to ring. They’re in the living room, there’s a phone within a few feet of Kiki but she doesn’t seem to hear it ringing. It’s like a dream, Corky thinks, Corky himself out there telephoning, poor fucker’s trying as always to get in.

  With mild disapproval, Corky asks, “Aren’t you going to answer your phone?” Of course, he’s flattered as hell she doesn’t.

  Kiki shakes ashes onto the soiled blue carpet. “It’s a wrong number.”

  “How do you know that, honey?”