What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Breakfast! But maybe he won’t have to eat.

  By 10:28 A.M. Corky’s coming off the ramp of the City Center-Dominion Bridge exit, he’d turn right if he was going to Nott Street but he turns left taking cobbled Front Street downhill to the river to the Van Dusen Dorf district which is the oldest part of Union City, settled by Dutch traders in the 1600s. Jesus, what a long time ago! Corky’s glad he doesn’t live in Europe, ancestors going back forever, no way to measure even a century let alone your own puny life. Here, it’s exhausting enough. You have to love these old ugly buildings, the squarebuilt stone Lutheran Church still in use, General Schuyler’s house one of those boring domestic museums mainly furniture and spinning wheels, butter churns. There’s the ruin of a gunpowder shed preserved like it’s sacred ground. And the aged pockmarked stone jail with the slots for windows. And the square behind the jail where the scaffold used to be—where, in 1883, a Corcoran from County Kerry, a kid in his early twenties, was not only hanged but decapitated. What a sight that must’ve been for the gaping assholes in the crowd.

  And the ancient Van Dusen Dorf cemetery kept up now like a theme park. As if history’s something you can see. And small-scaled—the graves look like they’re made for dwarves. Tilting weatherworn markers thin as pancakes. Even a decrepit old plane tree is propped up by crutches. In observation of Memorial Day a dozen foot-high American flags are fluttering in the cemetery but skeptical Corky thinks, Is that right?—any veterans buried there, they’re none of ours.

  Stuyvesant House, deeded to the city in lieu of taxes in the Depression, is a red brick colonial mansion on a narrow two-acre peninsula in the Chateauguay River; even so, it’s surrounded by a twelve-foot brick wall topped with electrified razor wire. There’s a security guard on duty in a kiosk just inside the granite gateposts of the entrance and this guy insists upon checking Corky’s ID and scanning the list of guests frowning pinch-faced not finding Corcoran at first, which burns Corky’s ass—as if he hasn’t been a guest at the Mayor’s many times since Oscar’s inaugural party! “Look at the bottom of the list, or turn it over—I’m invited,” Corky says hotly, “—I was just invited this morning, I’m a special guest of Vic Slattery’s, my fucking name’s there.” So finally the guard locates Corcoran, Jerome and waves Corky through, cocksucker eyeing the Caddy’s crumpled fender and bumper. Corky says, “Thanks, buddy!” in a voice heavy with sarcasm.

  A moment later rebuking himself: that asshole’s a potential voter.

  Corky parks his car, wincing a little in the bright May sunshine but feeling good, optimistic. Meeting the Slatterys at Stuyvesant House, Memorial Day morning: just the kind of impromptu invitation Corky’s grown to expect from these people. They pick you up, they sometimes set you down—sure, there’ve been dry spells when the Slattery’s, both Vic and Oscar, seemed to have forgotten Corky Corcoran’s existence—but they pick you up again.

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

  Looming like a rift in the sky a quarter-mile away is the Dominion Bridge to Canada. And across the way, details of its shoreline distinct, even the winking glare of sunshine on the windows of the high-rise Holiday Inn, is Fort Pearce, Ontario. Corky remembers, in high school, how they’d drive over to Fort Pearce on weekend nights sometimes—six or seven guys crowded into a car, Heinz Meuller driving, or Eddy Darnton, sometimes Vic in the big canary-yellow Caddy convertible, looking for action, girls. Those adventures that’d seemed wild to them, Catholic schoolboys, now tame in retrospect, childish. Most of the time.

  In the graveled parking lot Corky meets up with the city comptroller Fats Pickering, heavyset good-natured guy in his fifties Corky’s got a special feeling for, the sucker’s dropped $500 in Corky’s lap not once but twice backing the Bills for the Super Bowl. Pickering’s attitude toward Corky is more complex so while he’s grinning and clamping a hand on Corky’s shoulder wishing him a good morning he’s also quick to get in, before Corky can respond, “Saw you on TV yesterday, kid—you really fucked up, eh?” laughing like gravel being shoveled.

  Corky wilts under his friend’s arm like he wants to disappear.

  Inside Stuyvesant House Corky’s dismayed seeing so many old and middle-aged men, and Vic nowhere in sight. And no women. Must be the occasion is a Holy Name Society breakfast?—did Vic get the details wrong? (It wouldn’t be the first time: Vic’s so dependent upon his office staff to deal with things like places, times, the actual nature of events, he can fuck up ordinary matters. God damn!) Oscar Slattery is greeting guests in the reception room and Corky heads for him but he’s cut off by Red Pitts swinging by, Pitts sees Corky and freezes, even the wide affable smile on his face freezes, and the two men look at each other, and finally Pitts says, “Corky, hello—what are you doing here?” not hostile but for sure not friendly, and Corky says, flaring up, “What do you think?—I was invited,” and Pitts says, as if without thinking, “You were invited? To this?” and this really pisses Corky who says, “Vic asked me to meet him here. That’s a problem with you?” Pitts contemplates Corky as the men, in the entrance to the reception room, are being jostled on all sides, decides against whatever he’s going to say and shrugs and moves on and Corky grabs his arm, and repeats, “That’s a problem with you, Pitts?” and Pitts glares down at him, he’s half a head taller than Corky and outweighs him by fifty pounds, and not bemused by him like Yeager, nor certainly apprehensive of him, screwing up his face, saying, “Don’t go sucking up to Oscar right now, Corcoran, he’s pissed at you,” and Corky says, “Why?” though knowing why: it’s the TV interview, him running at the mouth the way he did.

  Pitts is walking away, Corky’s mouthing after him, “Why? Why’s he pissed? I’m pissed—I’m the one!”

  Desperate now to get to Oscar as a son to a father he believes has judged him correctly as rebellious yet must present himself as misjudged, but, fuck it, Corky’s way is blocked, all these old farts crowded in here, and moving in a shuffling flow into the dining room where the breakfast buffet’s set up, and tables draped in white linen with shining cutlery and foot-high American flags as centerpieces. Corky’s dry-mouthed, scared. Angry. Seeing Father Vincent O’Brien handsome and regal in his priest’s costume working the room like a seasoned politician, there’s Bishop Malley white-haired and palsied in an earnest conversation with Oscar’s older brother William—but hadn’t the Bishop had a stroke, wasn’t he non compos mentis? Corky’s sure he’s heard this, but the report must have been exaggerated. And in the buffet line getting his plate heaped with steaming food is Father Creighton the St. Stanislaus parish priest, an old friend of the Slatterys. Too many priests! Corky’s feeling oppressed, a tightness in his chest.

  “Corky Corcoran! How the hell’s it going?”—and Corky’s hand is being briskly shaken, Corky switches to automatic pilot, talking with Hatch the deputy mayor in charge of public school funding, and Aickley the Fourth Ward Democratic boss, and Spitzer the head of Oscar’s Finances and Appropriations Office, and Leo Boner the chief attorney for Lloyd, Weber, and Marty MacLeod the middle-aged son of the man who owns the Union City Journal, Marty who’s something of an asshole but a good-natured guy always glad-handing Corky and suggesting with a lewd snigger the two of them take a Vegas weekend together—“Hit the casinos, and bang the broads, and have a helluva great time, eh Corky?” And there’s an octogenarian Democratic donor from the Edgewater district where the elder Slatterys live, one of those elderly multimillionaires with a New Deal—Great Society social conscience, an old friend and longtime supporter of the Slatterys and he’s got Corky buttonholed apparently mistaking him for a nephew of Oscar’s rattling on excitedly spittle gleaming in the corners of his slack lips about some issue Corky can’t follow though he’s furrow-browed, respectful making an effort, a drink? need a drink?—seeing with horror it’s only 10:48 A.M., how’s he going to get through the day? At last in desperation grabbing the elbow of a man he scarcely knows except he’s a relative of Oscar’s and the owner of WWUC-TV and g
ets the sucker caught like tarbaby on the old man and adroitly detaches himself with a wave and a grin and pushes his way to the beverage bar and gets a glass of tomato juice, nice and chilled, he can pretend is a Bloody Mary. There’s even a sprig of celery in it.

  And where the hell’s Vic? Sandra? Nowhere in sight.

  Serve Corky right if his friends stand him up, now.

  Corky’s face lights up seeing Oscar Slattery headed in his direction, Oscar’s plumpish-pale with that ghostly pious look in the eyes men of a certain temperament and girth get when they’ve fasted and taken Holy Communion and everybody knows it. Oscar seems to see Corky yet doesn’t recognize him intensely involved in a conversation with several other men well dressed and groomed like himself, these faces familiar to Corky, multimillionaire donors and supporters they are most likely. St. Stanislaus parish is the most wealthy Union City parish, located in the northeast Edgewater district, taking in St. Thomas Aquinas Academy for Boys and the Marymount Academy of the Sacred Heart for Girls. Oscar and his companions are going into the dining room to the head table but Corky’s going to waylay them, put his hand on Oscar’s arm and say hello but just at that moment, fuck it, here’s Petey Zubkow putting his hand on Corky’s arm and chortling, with that perpetually drunk-sounding wheezing laugh, “Corcoran! Long time no see! How’s the ol’ pecker holding up?” so Corky’s thrown off balance like a boxer caught by a smart jab he didn’t see coming but he’s going to pretend he did, saying, grinning, “Zubkow! How’s the bunchy-fatty ass?” And the two men laugh, laugh.

  Damn, Oscar and his friends slip away. Without a glance at Corky Corcoran.

  Corky quickly shakes Zubkow who’s a longtime political appointee of Oscar’s in the Department of Public Transport, one of those crafty-sleazy-unfailingly loyal types even a mayor of such integrity as Oscar Slattery keeps around him. Following in the wake of Oscar as, now, everybody remaining in the reception room follows him, it’s time for breakfast to formally begin though (Corky sees, with disdain) a number of guests have begun to eat hungrily. Corky counts fifteen tables, round tables set for twelve; plus the head table, set for eight, on a raised dais against the rear wall. Behind the head table are French doors opened upon a garden of gorgeous big crimson-blooming flowers like orchids—that classy shrub, Corky can never remember the name, Charlotte’s favorite, rhododendron? Jesus, what a room! What a house, Stuyvesant House! Herringbone wood floors, thirteen-foot ceilings in the downstairs public rooms, intricate plaster moldings, a total of eleven fireplaces. In here, French silk wallpaper a bronzey-radiant shade like sunshine’s coming out of it, almost the same color as the bricks of the Mount Moriah Crematorium—real class. Corky always has a great feeling about this house since, when Oscar decided to renovate it, after his second election as Mayor, when he’d won with enough of a majority to buck the tide of criticism from his detractors, he’d asked Corky for advice; and if he didn’t exactly follow it, he listened.

  Corky knows better but, hell, even a City Councilman in a place like this, you can’t help fantasizing What if, someday . . . me?

  The Slatterys’ private quarters are on the second and third floors, and from what Corky’s seen of them, admittedly not much, they’re pretty classy, too.

  Of course, the Slatterys have maintained their private house in Edgewater. Oscar will run for another mayoral term and he’s sure to win and beyond that who knows, maybe yet another term, or maybe retirement. But he won’t be Mayor of Union City forever.

  Corky’s watching Oscar and two of his companions step up to take their places at the head table where Bishop Malley, Father O’Brien, and Father Creighton in their Roman collars, regal black suits are just settling in. Silky American flags in the background, a podium, a microphone. This evening, at the Chateauguay Country Club, Jerome Andrew Corcoran will be at the head table, in a larger and even more politically, charged setting than this: Oscar Slattery’s Union City; Vic Slattery’s Washington.

  The smell of breakfast food—especially crispy bacon, greasy sausage links—is mouthwatering; though Corky isn’t in a mood to eat just now.

  Seeing then, with a stab of resentment, that prick McElroy easing past with some well-dressed paunchy guys, Jesus, is McElroy a member of St. Stanislaus parish now, and in the Holy Name Society? Corky wouldn’t put it past the conniving bastard. Talk about sucking up to the big boys, McElroy’s the one! Corky’s feeling not just disgust but hurt realizing McElroy for sure saw him, and walked right past.

  McElroy’s wearing an expensive-looking three-piece suit, those executive pinstripes, gray, not much imagination but he does look like a sharpie lawyer of the high-paid kind. And the shoes. Corky has a pair just like them exactly, he knows the price. Fucker with his yuppie haircut, a ring on his left hand meaning he’s married which Corky must’ve known, but forgot. And McElroy has kids, too—no doubt. Sons he’ll send to St. Thomas, daughters he’ll send to Marymount. A Catholic wife, not from Irish Hill, who’s at this moment attending a luncheon of the St. Stanislaus Sodality of Mary at, let’s say, the Edgewater Inn.

  Corky thinks, mollified, that time in the swimming pool in Dundonald, my friends and me, we half-drowned the jerk-off, I got a knee in his balls.

  Corky’s going to drift back to the front of the house to see if possibly Vic and Sandra are waiting there, though it doesn’t seem likely, when Zubkow and a City Hall pal come swinging by and inveigle him into going through the buffet line with them, so Corky does, not that he’s hungry but he lets the smiling black waiters in their dazzling white outfits heap his plate with food, it’s their job and they seem to enjoy it, Corky’s a guy who hates to say no, somebody wants to give you something it’s against human nature to say no, isn’t it—or just Irish nature? Do you need to fuck every woman who makes it known she’s available Charlotte used to rage, suddenly past the age of forty Charlotte began using the word fuck, must’ve been in the air so much she decided why the hell not why let her husband throw the word in her face to insult her thus to disempower her like the very word’s an extension of his prick she’s supposed to be envious of, and inferior to?—fuck that.

  Whatever Corky told Charlotte, he’s forgotten, more or less. But the truth of it was, and is, assuming a woman’s attractive, and the circumstances are right, Corky can’t say no.

  Even since getting serious about Christina Kavanaugh, and seeing her every chance he can, Corky’s had a few one-night stands, not that he’d want Christina to know about them, Jesus, it’s just hard to resist.

  It’s a sumptuous buffet, what you’d expect from Oscar Slattery, but Corky declines the eggs Benedict, ditto the breakfast ham, O.K. for a piece of French toast and maple syrup, O.K. for some hash browns and some bacon, sausage links he’ll douse with catsup, no strawberry pancakes, no thanks!—but maybe a single blueberry-and-cream waffle, a waffle’s not a pancake exactly. The smiling black waiter with a gold-glinting front tooth seems to be pushing scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, looks disappointed when Corky says no so Corky says yes, but then no thanks to a fruit cup of fresh pineapple and yogurt, no thanks to a bowl of what looks like tapioca pudding unless it’s some fancy kind of oatmeal but, O.K., sure, he’s got a sweet tooth and he won’t be eating until the fund-raiser tonight, why not a piece of cherry Danish. Waiters are serving coffee at the tables, more tomato juice if he wants it, Corky’s laughing in good spirits screwing around joking with Zubkow and the other guy who really are asking for Bloody Marys and the black waiter’s stopped short like either he doesn’t know what this is or he’s pretending not to mumbling he’ll check with the kitchen, so everybody at the table laughs. It’s a festive occasion, Memorial Day breakfast at the Mayor’s, a select group of citizens, why not enjoy it? Nobody’s getting any younger.

  And it’s O.K. to light up here, too—this is a private party, not a public one. Any Union City or New York State official event or event held on public property, smoking’s outlawed, but not here, this is 100 percent men. Lots of these old guys carrying cigars.<
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  More laughter, this muffled, throughout the dining room, as Father Creighton rises solemnly to say grace, and the clattering of silverware abruptly ceases, Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord Amen and on this Memorial Day special gratitude . . . that lilting droning priestly voice, the “singing” voice of the mass, weird, almost beautiful like a woman’s. Corky’s heard it in so many priests strangers to one another he guesses it’s something that happens to them? But the Church really fucked up, though, ditching Latin for English. Now you can understand the mass, its asshole simplicity, there’s nothing there. The muffled laughter’s because half the guys in the room were already eating and had to quick stop, bow their heads, mumble grace.

  Old geezers sixty, seventy years old giggling like schoolkids. Christ, thinks Corky, don’t we ever grow up?

  He’s laughing at Zubkow’s nonstop wisecracks, dirty asides and sniggers, crude grade-school stuff but funny—What’s the pilot’s seat in a plane called when there’s an all-girl crew?—a cuntpit!—maybe not too funny but everybody at the table roars laughing except one old guy blinking quizzically, must be deaf and that makes it funnier yet when Zubkow has to repeat cuntpit! raising his voice so he’s heard at other tables. So they’re all laughing, Corky’s sputtering his scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, feeling a hell of a lot better now that shit with Yeager’s pushed to the back of his mind, he’ll worry about the implications some other time, now’s not the time.

  Corky’s eating all the food on his plate surprising himself he is hungry even after that enormous breakfast at the Pancake House. Yes but you could say this is lunch—it’s 11:20 A.M. and time’s moving fast. Waiters coming along with coffee, huge steaming silver pots of fresh-brewed coffee, caffeine-charged. The French toast is Goddamned delicious: Corky remembers how Aunt Frances used to make them French toast on Sunday sometimes, especially if they went to high mass at 9:00 A.M. instead of regular mass at 8:00, Peter, Lois, Tess and Jerome all of them starving by the time they sat down to breakfast . . . Uncle Sean stopped going to mass, since Tim’s death he had a hard time taking any of it seriously he said but Aunt Frances said: Don’t let the children hear you! Jerome at the kitchen table his eyes watering like his mouth for the delicious food that’s never going to be enough to fill his empty belly, shovel it in, chew and tamp it down, unloosen your belt another notch, never enough. And he loves Aunt Frances for feeding him like he was her own not another woman’s son that woman has ceased to cook for, loves Aunt Frances but will never tell her so: never.