What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  So Drummond said, scowling, sullen, “—Shit, son, just an inquiry. I mean, hell, you hear of the Irish Mafia, eh? Isn’t that what it’s called? Certain incidents in Irish Hill—when I was growing up—Prohibition—rum-running from Canada—things happened, eh? Double-crossers wound up floating in the canal, eh? You know anything about that, Corky?”

  Drummond always called Corky “Corky.” Fond-familiar, even in the office, like a dog’s name.

  Like a man punched in the gut trying not to show it for fear of offending, Corky said slowly, “I’ve—heard of it. I guess.”

  He wants me to arrange for Braunbeck to be killed?

  He thinks I’m the man who knows how?

  There was a long moment’s silence. Clumsy, prickly. Drummond scratched at his crotch, his face sagged with displeasure. Corky just sat there dumb-fuck mute. Elsewhere on the yacht, voices and laughter. Corky’d forgotten where he was, why he was here, sunburnt and headachy and far from home. In the company of the Drummond family, he was shy about even looking at Charlotte—gorgeous Charlotte in her white sailor’s togs, hair pulled up beneath a wide-brimmed hat, eyes hidden by dark sunglasses—and Charlotte tended to steer clear of Corky, leaving him for man-to-man stuff with her father. The two men who mean the most to me in the whole world, she called them. Darling Jerome, and Pawpaw.

  Now Pawpaw stared at Darling Jerome with hooded, assessing eyes. This is a test you’re failing, fuckhead. But saying, sighing, shifting his bulk to indicate he’s about to heave himself to his feet, “O.K., son, you’re an altar boy, and I’m King Farouk. Mum’s the word, eh? ‘Dominus vobiscum’”—making the sign of the cross with ribald fingers in Corky’s face.

  Corky remembers how then he’d finished his last beer of the day, warm as piss. He was sunburnt all over. His, the kind of fair thin Irish skin that doesn’t tan, only burns. The warm comforting beer-buzz at the back of his skull had shifted to a dull ache like a thought, a memory, of something awaiting him back on land, beyond the Yacht Club ‘s fake lighthouse. He thinks I’m the man who knows how? And there came running little Thalia in her pink swimsuit, a welcome interruption, thumb in mouth to whisper in Grandpa’s ear her shy dark eyes on Corky’s face. And behind her, gorgeous Charlotte, with her teasing, melodic voice, that air of playful reproach Corky wasn’t to understand for years, “You men! What on earth do you find to talk about all the time?”—as if not knowing the subject could only be her.

  Afterward, Corky repeated some of this conversation to Charlotte, who said quickly, “Jerome, darling, you’re putting the wrong interpretation on Pawpaw’s words. He was joking! He would never seriously suggest such a thing.” Kissing Corky, curtly, as a schoolmarm might do. “If you knew Pawpaw, you’d know.”

  Driving out to Chateauguay Falls, thinking these thoughts, Corky’s in a defensive, close to derisive mood. What a fool he’d been! Falling for face, tits, ass. An emphasis upon ass.

  And what about the old man’s dough, fuckhead? What about that?

  Well.

  Always, driving north of Union City into the affluent predominately white suburbs—St. Claire, St. Claire Shores, Riverdale, Chateauguay, Chateauguay Falls—Corky’s in this mood: he’s a city resident, hates the suburbs. These “communities” of middle-and upper-middle-class whites fleeing Union City taking their schools, churches, hospitals, community services with them: fuckers. Real estate value’s a teeter-totter: the city’s loss is the suburbs’ gain. Even in this fucking recession.

  Yet so many of Corky’s friends and contacts live now in the suburbs. Vic and Sandra have always lived in Chateauguay, and Christina and her husband in Chateauguay Falls. And now Corky’s ex-wife. Another man’s new wife. God damn: Corky’s thinking he could forgive Charlotte everything except moving out to Chateauguay Falls with “Gavin” Pierson.

  After Schoonover (where he had the car washed, though hadn’t had time to get the interior vacuumed) Corky took the Fillmore north to the Chateauguay exit, he’s running late, fuck it, not a time to get lost in the curlicues and cul-de-sacs of Quail Ridge Hollow where the Piersons live, a “planned residential community” where the least expensive properties sell for $1 million, but, sure, he gets lost, so it’s 7:37 P.M. when at last, cursing under his breath, Corky turns up the sandstone-pebbled driveway to 23 Quail Ridge Pass. Either he’s hours late, or isn’t expected at all.

  Can’t remember exactly what they’d decided this morning. Except hadn’t Charlotte hung up on him?—as the bitch is always doing. But Corky owes it to her, in this crisis with Thalia, to drop by. Yeah, he misses her. His “wife.” And maybe she’ll have some news of Thalia.

  Corky’s smoking another Camel, smoking like he’s expecting somebody to snatch it from him. Last time he’d given up, he’d been chain-smoking, four packs a day, a real nicotine junkie. Swigging too from a plastic jug of unsweetened grapefruit juice he’s been gripping between his knees as he drives. Unquenchable thirst. Nothing to eat all day but that sweet potato pie heavy and compact in his gut as a chunk of meteorite but quarts of fluids and still the mocking a drink need a drink? he’s doing his best to ignore. Drains the jug and tosses it into the back seat amid the other debris. Frowns at himself critically in the rearview mirror and sees he looks like—what? The surprise is, for all the shit he’s been taking, he doesn’t look that bad, actually. Skidding to a stop in the alley he’d banged the underside of his jaw on the steering wheel but if there’s a bruise or a bump, it doesn’t show. The other bruise, on his forehead, isn’t too visible, his hair combed down, damp from sweating like a pig chasing Thalia all over hell then losing her.

  Corky’s undecided: how much should he tell Charlotte? She’s a natural hysteric and what he did was pretty crazy. Dangerous. Fucking car chase like something on TV except unlike TV where everything’s hoked up to come out right and to make sense, the pursuer in this case lost the pursued.

  Still, Corky’s grateful neither he nor Thalia cracked up. He’s God-damned grateful the Caddy isn’t damaged, much. (Some scratches and scrapes on the hood from the garbage can, a hairline crack on the passenger’s side of the windshield, partly crumpled right front fender and bumper—but now the car’s washed, if you don’t look too closely it looks almost good as new.)

  Grateful too he didn’t get stopped by a cop when he was driving like a madman, that’s all he needs—JEROME CORCORAN, CITY COUNCILMAN, ARRESTED FOR SPEEDING, RECKLESS DRIVING.

  Better yet: JEROME CORCORAN, CITY COUNCILMAN, ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF CHILD MOLESTATION, PERVERSION. His photo in the paper shielding his face with handcuffed hands, like Leroy Nickson, page one of the Metro section.

  Corky’s thinking he’ll never forgive Thalia, now. God as my witness, never. His heart’s broken.

  At the same time thinking She loves me, it’s a mistake. If there’s one thing I know, it’s Thalia loves me.

  Corky parks the Caddy in the circle drive below a house that does in fact look like a million bucks: split-level contemporary stacked like a postmodernist wedding cake, white brick, fieldstone, glass walls, redwood deck. The three-car garage is open, a single car inside, Charlotte’s Mercedes coupe. Evidently Pierson’s not home—Corky hopes so. He jokes about the sucker with everybody but that look in Pierson’s eyes when he runs into Corky, cringing-guilty like he’s done Corky some insult that in Sicily, for instance, would be his death warrant, has begun to bug Corky. Should’ve punched Pierson in the mouth when he had the chance, in the locker room at the U.C.A.C. Screwing another member’s wife, breaking up a marriage, “Gavin” wouldn’t have sued. Maybe, even, he’d hoped Corky would hit him?

  Maybe that’s what we all want. Somebody to hit us hard enough, our guilt’s absolved.

  When Corky climbs the steps to the massive front door (what’s it made of, hammered copper?) he sees guiltily that the door’s ajar and Charlotte’s waiting for him. Watching for him. How long? Her voice rings out, “Jerome! Hello—” and quickly they greet each other in the way they’ve cultivated since their
estrangement: the crucial thing is not to look into each other’s eyes.

  A quick shy half-embrace, Charlotte’s cheek turned to be kissed, a handshake—that’s enough. Corky knows that Charlotte has just set a drink aside (on a shelf, behind a vase, inside a drawer, behind a television set) when his car turned up the drive, he smells the darkish-sweet wine on her breath. Red wine, not white. Not a good sign, but better than the hard stuff.

  Charlotte says, staring, “My God, Jerome! Are you smoking?”

  And right away Corky’s pissed hearing in this a deep exasperated pity, beyond reproach, for Corky and Charlotte had given up smoking together, not once but three or four times; hellish times, worse for Charlotte than for Corky. Charlotte has wished him dead, Corky knows, but—smoking, again? She says huskily, “Jerome, no. You can’t be.”

  Corky blocks this, smiling. “You’re looking good. Terrific!”

  Which is true, at least that’s his blurred first impression. A woman you’d never take for forty-six, more like thirty-six. She’s in beige, creamy-brown, white. Silk designer blouse, silk-wool slacks. Sandals. Dull-gold hair close-cropped and lifting from her ears like wings. Glitter of gold earrings, bell-like jangle of thin gold bracelets. A smooth jawline, shadowless eyes, lovely mouth still cherry-red, fleshy. Must be fifteen, even twenty pounds heavier than she’d been when they first met, starving herself in those days, fighting her appetite, instincts. Corky knows his ex-wife’s body—breasts, hips, thighs, curving belly—the brunette pubic hair in scratchy-tickly tufts—the slender ankles, child-sized toes—like a man knows the terrain of a mountain he was once stranded on, and survived on. Recalls too as he hasn’t for a long time, and hasn’t wanted to, how, making love, whatever glamorous ease and laughing good spirits she’d bring to it, this is a woman who ends heaving and thrashing and whimpering and pleading. Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh God oh! coming like a mule’s kick.

  Gavin Pierson with his spindly legs, hairless concave chest and baby’s potbelly, prick about the size of Corky’s middle finger—Jesus, no, Corky doesn’t want to think about it.

  Suppose the woman is his wife, she’ll always be his wife. Always, Corky loves her. But here they are pretending otherwise, like a man and a woman on stage. That play—La Ronde?

  Charlotte says, “And you—you’re looking good.” A moment’s hesitation. “In real life, and on TV. Are those for me?”

  Corky’s brought his ex-wife a dozen blood-red roses, a guilt offering you might call it, he hopes to hell Charlotte won’t make a wisecrack along those lines, spoil things immediately as she has a habit of doing. Hands her the bouquet, smiling his boyish-frank smile, sardonic Corky, can’t resist—“Actually, they’re for Stud: where’s he?”

  Charlotte takes the roses without acknowledging the wisecrack though Corky can see she’s annoyed, frowning as if with deliberation burying her face in the roses Corky has an idea are scentless, not real roses somehow—he’d bought them from a cadaverous white kid of about eighteen hustling from a traffic median on busy Schoonover near the car wash, poor bastard strung out on possibly crack? heroin? risking his neck at the traffic intersection, a crude printed sign 1 DOZ ROSES $10, Corky guesses they’re stolen but rolls down his window eager to make a purchase, just the thing for Charlotte. Never goes empty-handed visiting, or almost never.

  “Gavin”—Charlotte’s pronunciation of the name, a fruity name to Corky’s ear, is precise, emphatic—“is in Philadelphia. His mother’s been hospitalized for what we hope is a mild case of diverticulitis, he’ll be back tomorrow.” A little stiffly adding, “Thank you. For these. They’re beautiful.”

  Corky grins awkwardly, rebuffed. They’re in the foyer of the house, Charlotte’s leading him in the direction he supposes of the kitchen, heels clattering on the gleaming tessellated floor. Christ, this place is impressive, Corky feels it as a wire-thin pain in his head, need a drink? a drink? oh God cathedral ceiling in the living room, fieldstone fireplace and hearth like something in a ski lodge, a wall of plate glass overlooking one of those prissy little Zen gardens, raked pebbles and miniature shrubbery and a single piece of statuary and what looks like driftwood, artsy stuff, the architect who did the house is Korean and must’ve sold the newlyweds a bill of goods, also these bare tile floors with oatmeal-colored runner-rugs, Charlotte’s taste has always been for heavy Oriental carpets. European antiques. It pisses Corky he’s been left with that crap not to mention the fucking “Georgian Colonial” in Maiden Vale Charlotte had to have, now on a lousy depressed market Corky’d be lucky to get $500,000 for the property, inside the city limits. “Where’s the stuff you took from the house?” Corky asks casually. “That big rug—”

  “In the guest suite,” Charlotte calls back over her shoulder, casually too. “It’s perfect there.”

  Fuck you, thinks Corky, incensed. What was good enough for our living room is only good enough for your “guest suite.”

  In the kitchen Charlotte fusses with the roses, chooses a vase for them, Corky sees there aren’t twelve roses only eleven, God damn that hustler, he hopes Charlotte won’t notice. She’s smiling a tight strained smile saying she’d been waiting for Corky since about four but it’s all right, she’s glad he’s here now, would he like a drink?—wine, beer?—and Corky makes a snorting noise to indicate, what?—wine?—don’t you know me any better than to suggest wine?—shifting his shoulders inside his coat annoyed this woman is playing dumb-fuck games with him pretending, after their long history together, she doesn’t know his tastes, or has forgotten. It’s a put-down, Charlotte’s innocent little inquiry, nobody overhearing could guess.

  Yeah they’d think paranoid. That’s what they’d think, huh?—this guy’s paranoid.

  “Well,” says Charlotte, carefully, not looking at Corky just as Corky isn’t looking too directly at her, the two of them watching her with the roses, “—some beer, then? Gavin has, I think, some—you can look in the refrigerator—German beer, or Japanese—” Corky sees a wine bottle on a counter, opened, fruity-heavy Italian red, but no wine glass in sight. He opens the refrigerator conspicuously snubbing the fancy imported bottled beer, chooses instead a can of club soda. At this, Charlotte does look at him, raised eyebrows and widened eyes. “Did you—have an accident? Your car—”

  Corky, knowing perfectly his ex-wife’s logic, why the sight of him taking a can of club soda not a bottle of beer alarms her, laughs irritably, says, “No, sweetheart, I did not have an accident. My car’s in the driveway, you saw it.”

  “That’s all you want, club soda?”

  “I’m not staying long.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you since—”

  “O.K., I’m sorry, I’m late and I’m sorry and we have things to talk about so let’s talk about them for Christ’s sake,” Corky says rudely, he’s feeling the pain as a wire tightening around his head now clamping his temples, a drink need a drink but as he yanks the pull-top and swigs a mouthful of the club soda even as he’s suppressing a belch of sour grapefruit juice he knows this isn’t the drink he wants, it isn’t sufficient. Jesus, he’s got the shakes.

  And Charlotte too, spilling water on the counter forcing the roses into a vase with a narrow neck, Charlotte too has the shakes: ex-wife and ex-husband watching this awkward procedure but Corky won’t say a word the complaint against him being he was always bossing Charlotte around monitoring her every action when it came to such things, mechanical things, especially critical of her driving, poor Charlotte taking her revenge as a wife will paying not the slightest attention to Corky’s advice even when both of them knew he was right which was ninety-seven percent of the time. Tactful Corky looks away from Charlotte’s nervous fingers, the manicured red-polished nails so perfect like the fluff-blown gold-rinsed hair, the expensive clothes, when you’re a woman of forty-six perfection of this kind must mean everything, at the same time it means exactly nothing, your youth’s gone.

  And the new ring. Rings. A shock to Corky to see, to realize his rings are gone. In t
heir place an emerald-studded wedding band and a diamond big as a grape rimmed with smaller emeralds. To spite me. All of it, to spite me.

  Corky’s gallant pouring Charlotte wine in a fresh glass and discreetly taking the bottle with him as they move out of the kitchen in the direction of, Corky assumes, the splendid living room, though as it turns out he’s wrong, both of them registering with relief how gallant too Corky’s been not saying a word about Charlotte fucking up the roses (two stems broken, left behind on the counter) as he’d have done in the old days. So Charlotte isn’t going to push it about the smoking, though Corky, seeing no ashtrays anywhere in this place, is continuing to smoke, scattering ash, and no apologies.

  Charlotte, uncharacteristically silent, leads Corky along a lengthy hall then two steps down into a “family”-style room at the rear of the house, this too like a lounge in a ski lodge, long low cushioned leather sofas, a stark-white ceramic stove looking like it’s never been used for a fire only for display, a steep wall of plate glass overlooking a redwood deck stretching out of sight in the shadows. Corky feels a touch of vertigo, where are we? this isn’t our house as Charlotte sets the vase of roses down on a sculpted-mahogany coffee table, invites Corky to sit down—“Even if you can’t stay long.” He’s embarrassed by the significance Charlotte seems to be giving the impulsive gift of his.

  This room at least has the look of a room lived in, unlike other parts of the house Corky has been able to glimpse. Big TV with a thirty-inch screen, VCR equipment and dozens of videotapes on a shelf, a surprising number of books and not just Charlotte’s best-sellers in their hot candescent jackets. Built-in bookcases covering much of two walls, “Gavin” must be a reader? Corky scans titles, sees historical biographies, Civil War, World War II, some of the same popularized-science books Corky himself owns, wonder if this guy’s actually read them? understood them? On the mahogany coffee table there’s a copy of A Brief History of Time amid copies of Fortune, Vanity Fair, TV Guide, The Wall Street Journal. Corky checks “Gavin’s” bookmark and sees he’s gotten to page eighty. He’s sure he’s gotten farther.