What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  His cousins resented him. Sure. No secret. Especially Peter—he’s the son in the family, the big deal. Lois was always bossing him around, Tess was O.K., now they don’t keep in touch except for Lois laying a guilt trip on Corky about Sean, how long’s it been since you’ve seen him the bitch is always asking. Who’s counting?

  Corky’s thinking if he sees his uncle today, takes him to the parade, maybe if there’s time to see Aunt Megan in the hospital—that should square it.

  Of course, Corky’s cousins don’t know how he’s supplementing the old man’s pension from the city. Fuck if he’d ever tell them.

  Just the kind of thing Tim Corcoran did on a grander scale. For elderly or sick relatives, his and Theresa’s both. In Union City and back in Ireland, too. But helping out people’s no good if you humble them, humiliate them in the process.

  Like Oscar Slattery, secretly providing scholarship money for Tim Corcoran’s boy Jerome. The man’s kindness, generosity. Tact.

  Corky’s laughing, having a great time, almost forgetting why he’s here—a communion breakfast? Stomach’s unpleasantly bloated, has to surreptitiously loosen his belt by another notch. Once he starts his AA regimen back to bench pressing, too, get rid of the flab, embarrassing when a woman glances down, sees—What a slob! she’d be thinking if she had common sense. Corky’s got one eye on the head table like a pining lover (why doesn’t Oscar Slattery acknowledge Corky?—Corky who’s glancing his way smiling and alert?) and one eye on Zubkow who’s been talking about “Preacher Marcus Steadman” giving the credulous table the lowdown on him, wild-kinky stuff Corky’s never heard before and guesses might be invented the way that shit about Corky Corcoran impersonating a police officer was invented but it’s funny, nasty and funny, what more can you ask. And everybody at the table is Caucasian, in fact everybody at the communion breakfast is Caucasian, so there’s no offense. As long as Zubkow lowers his voice so the waiters can’t hear.

  A weird guy, Petey Zubkow: a sleaze, perpetually on the make, any woman with half her brains should know but the guy’s got these long-lashed sloe eyes, Russian-Slavic cheekbones, he’s Corky’s age at least but like Corky looks younger, and though married for half his life to the same woman, with near grown-up kids, he’s got girlfriends mad for him to hear him tell it—must be the City Hall atmosphere, a crisis every week, sometimes every day, and then there’s election time when everybody goes crazy. Politics is sex, you want to screw. The closer to election day, the hornier you get. Except nothing satisfies the craving. Corky remembers the hottest campaign, 1988, Oscar’s early lead in the polls was shrinking and by November 1 he was only ten points ahead of his Republican rival a youngish federal attorney, Bush-endorsed, and there was Marcus Steadman running as a spoiler, ceaseless shit going on in the local media, daily accusations, calls for reform, Democrats and Republicans at a stalemate blackmailing one another (not that the public knew this—for sure, the public didn’t) and Steadman taking potshots at everybody, and nerves were so high-strung it was like a perpetual Red Alert—even Corky Corcoran, with no one running against him for the Council, was antsy all the time, couldn’t concentrate and couldn’t sleep and one night at campaign headquarters in the Statler Zubkow introduced Corky to a girlfriend of his and her friend, both of them working as assistants, and they went out drinking together and had a great time and wound up at four in the morning in Zubkow’s office at City Hall where Zubkow screwed his girl in his inner office where there was a sofa, and Corky screwed his in the outer office atop a desk where she passed out giggling and hiccuping, and after a while Zubkow came out saying his had passed out, too, so let’s switch, so they did, and Corky goes into Zubkow’s office where it’s dark stumbling over practically onto the girl and she’s faintly protesting pushing him away saying she wants to go home but she’s so obviously drunk she doesn’t know where the hell she is or what she wants, then Corky’s inside her where she’s already wet and dilated from Zubkow and he’s making it interesting for her, Corky’d take bets any day he’s a superior fuck to Zubkow, so the girl starts responding, grabs the cheeks of his ass with both hands, he gets her to come and it’s like a sudden scared sneeze all over her body and she likes it O.K. but afterward when they’re both getting their breath she says, sullen in the dark, “It isn’t funny, what you and Petey did, you shits, fuck you both,” starting to cry she’s so pissed off, and Corky says, the first thing he’s said till now, innocent-seeming, “How’d you know I wasn’t Petey?” and the girl says, this line that cracks Corky up, “He’s got a bunchy-fatty ass, the bastard.” So ever after they’ve got this joke between them, Corky and Zubkow: Zubkow’s “bunchy-fatty ass.” Funny!

  Every time they meet, or, like now, Zubkow sees Corky grinning at him, the memory passes between them and Zubkow actually blushes a little and laughs—what the hell, it’s like they’re bonded brothers or something. Even should the men hate each other’s guts Corky’s a decent enough guy and a reliable friend never to tell any third party about the episode which would embarrass Zubkow who’s vain about his looks, his body, his reputation.

  The waiters are coming around now with strawberry cream tarts and tiny cups of Irish coffee, it’s early in the day for Irish coffee but, Christ, hard to resist, so Corky takes a cup, also a tart, but vows inwardly he isn’t going to drink any of the coffee nor eat more than a few forkfuls of the tart, he is stuffed, almost like he’s been drinking and it’s 11:47 P.M. not 11:47 A.M. There’s a clicking of glasses, Oscar Slattery’s on his feet beaming at the roomful of men he knows are his friends, men he can trust, men like himself, Corky sees Oscar still looks a little pale which is unusual for him, and his eyes ringed in shadow like he hasn’t been sleeping well lately, must be tough to be under constant scrutiny, knowing your enemies are waiting for you to fuck up like wolves snapping at your heels, yes but Oscar Slattery’s an old pro now saying, “Gentlemen! Excuse me! May I say a few words about this day—a secular holiday, but sacred in our hearts?—but first, a toast, if I may—” lifting his tiny cup of Irish coffee in a spirit of playful festivity so everybody in the room lifts his, Corky included, “—An old Irish toast that to my mind has never been bettered: ‘May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, may the sunshine be warm on your face, and may you be safe in Heaven before the devil knows you’re dead!’”

  Always, at this toast, there’s appreciative laughter as there is now, and Corky laughs, too, though moved by the familiar words—hell, he is proud of being Irish, it’s a grand race. A sorrowful history and an uncertain future God knows, but St. Patrick too was a slave, never forget. The Irish are God’s special people like the Jews which is maybe why He has sent them so much suffering and ignominy, fuck Him.

  Zubkow nudges Corky in the arm, “—your coffee? Aren’t you drinking it?” grinning and suspicious like he’s got Corky’s number, knows Corky’s on the wagon cautious about sipping even a little whiskey-warmed coffee, even some frothy whipped cream, and Corky plays it cool saying, “Jesus, Petey, I’m stuffed.”

  Not even a thimbleful of whiskey—this time, Corky’s serious.

  This is part of your education, lads: learning the difference between yourselves and real fighters.

  That first time, meeting Oscar Slattery. Knowing who Oscar was, and his older, then more powerful brother William, talked of with envious admiration in Irish Hill. Where few could claim to know them personally. Corky was fifteen, on the boxing team at St. Thomas, a junior lightweight at 125 pounds; Vic Slattery a heavyweight at 178 pounds, the star of the team. Both boys were baby-faced and intense and erratically talented depending upon the ineptitude of their opponents. Intramural bouts, Corky and Vic always won their matches; away from home, things were chancy. Amateur boxing more resembles fencing than it resembles professional boxing, judged by the quantity of points—“hits”—rather than the actual force of the blows; knockouts are infrequent, and may be accidental. Yet what glamor in being picked to be on the St. Thomas team, and Cork
y only a sophomore! Skinny-scrappy Corky Corcoran who’d grown up in Irish Hill liking to hit other guys and used to being hit in turn, what sport better suited for him. In the ring, you only fight guys your own weight.

  Corky modeled himself after Henry Armstrong, Kid Gavilan, Carmen Basilio he’d seen in films shown by the boxing coach, Vic modeled himself after Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano trying patiently for that big right hand but also Cassius Clay—“Muhammad Ali”—quick and cunning and unpredictable on his feet. Corky knows in retrospect he was a lousy boxer even for an amateur, throwing punches in rapid windmill fashion when he panicked, with a percussive but near-strengthless left jab and not much real power in his flashy right, fast on his feet and a classic amateur imagining he’s got the will to fight, the warrior’s blood-lust, when it’s only an American kid’s desire to compete in a sport, be one of the guys on a team. And Vic, too intelligent to fight by instinct, ponderous, studied, then suddenly reckless in his ring style, capable of throwing what the coach called “bombshells” in his left hook but missing half his shots, wasn’t much better. He’d confessed to Corky he wanted to win his matches but not to hurt his opponent so Corky laughed incredulously in his face—“Jesus, Vic, hurting them’s the point, isn’t it?”

  Corky thought Vic’s reason was, too, he didn’t want to be hurt himself. Wasn’t used to it. His family, nobody hauled off and slammed a kid, ever. Whereas Corky Corcoran didn’t mind, much. Maybe his pain threshold, so-called, was higher.

  Corky could never figure why Vic liked him, Corky can never figure through his life why the hell anybody likes him, it’s a puzzle so many people do. Girls and women, most of them are such dopes they’re easily fooled, but guys like Vic Slattery? This big-boned sweet-faced kid, good-looking tawny-blond with wide intelligent brown eyes and strong jaws and a nose that bled at the mildest blow from a twelve-ounce boxing glove—Vic was a rich man’s son, something of a momma’s boy (so it was said: Corky never thought so), smutty-minded like all kids his age but religious, too; he’d embarrass his friends, talking suddenly of Catholic theology he took seriously enough to question—whether the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was “there from the beginning”—why it might happen that, if you slashed the sanctified Host with a knife it would bleed, being the body and blood of Jesus, but when you allow it to dissolve in your mouth after communion it doesn’t bleed—“Or, if it does, you can’t taste it.” Corky would’ve jeered at such crap except it was Vic anxious to know what was true, what was real.

  Also you never know, as a Catholic born into the faith, whether what you think is crap is real, and it will all be on your head someday, your derision.

  At the new school Corky—still, then, “Jerome”—hadn’t any real friends until Vic Slattery, and after that, quick as Blackstone’s magic, he had lots of friends. Start at the top, Corky knew even as a fifteen-year-old, and everything else follows. Kids who wouldn’t piss on you will rush to be your friends if you’re friends with a big shot—“social life” is as simple as that. He’d set his sights on Vic because Vic was tops. Also Vic was good-natured, generous, the kind of A student who has to work for his grades, not dumb but sometimes dumb-seeming, innocent. (Corky understood exactly how it could happen, years later when Vic was suspended for a semester from Villanova for being involved in a “cheating episode.” Vic had lent a friend his chemistry notes, the asshole took the notes into the final exam, and got caught. And years after that when Vic was a freshman congressman just getting to know the ropes his career had been almost permanently fucked by the media digging up dirt about contributions to his campaign, all of it the fault of the campaign manager he’d inherited from Oscar Slattery—a smart guy, a guy you’d want on your side in a campaign, unless he gets caught.) Corky’s strategy with Vic was just to be around him a lot, at crucial times; to be the kind of guy Vic would naturally like, but with some surprises, too—Corky’s Irish Hill tough-guy manner played for laughs. If you can make people laugh you can make them like you: a motto of Corky Corcoran’s. Working on Vic Slattery whose old man was in Democratic politics and a part owner of a big Union City department store wasn’t any harder than working on trigonometry homework for a kid with a mind like Corky’s, and a hell of a lot more rewarding.

  Also, Corky loves Vic. Vic’s his man.

  And what an occasion, that first meeting with Oscar Slattery!—Vic’s father showed up unexpected at a boxing meet at St. Loyola High School, in Troy, just in time to see Vic win—barely, but win—his match, and to see feisty little Corky Corcoran win his match, both boys scoring points while taking punches to the face and body, and looking as much like losers as winners. Vic’s nose was swollen and bleeding, Corky’s thin-skinned face red as if he’d been scraped with sandpaper. Oscar Slattery was a magnanimous man warmly congratulating the coach and taking everybody out for steak suppers then driving Vic and Corky back to Union City that night so they’d be spared the school bus—he’d come to Troy in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car, a deep mahogany color, flashing chrome and tinted windows and about the most beautiful thing Corky’d ever seen, stopped dead in his tracks knowing he was going to ride in it.

  Of the nine guys on the boxing team, he’d been singled out as Vic Slattery’s close friend.

  The embarrassment of being dropped off at his uncle’s shabby-shingled house on Roosevelt Street amid a neighborhood of similar, even shabbier houses was hours away, not to be contemplated yet.

  It was during this drive along the nighttime Thruway from Troy to Union City that Oscar Slattery told Vic and Corky, kindly, if bluntly, that they weren’t boxers, still less fighters; just amateurs lucky enough not to meet opponents outside the Catholic boys’ school league, Negroes especially—how carefully Oscar Slattery pronounced that tricky word: “Ne-groes”—who’d take their heads off. Sitting in the front seat of the Lincoln, smoking a cigar, thoughtful, smiling, happy, a good-looking man with plump clean-shaven cheeks and steely-gray hair, not complicated-seeming as, later, Corky would know he was, is; a father who loved his son so much some of the love spilled over onto his son’s friend.

  “This is part of your education, lads,” Oscar Slattery said, looking from one to the other in the rear seat, “—you’re learning the difference between yourselves and real fighters. You’re learning how hard the real thing is, how you can lose even while ‘winning.’” He paused, sucking on his cigar, to let that sink in. “You’re not hungry enough, either of you—and God help you, if you were.”

  Calling them lads—that word Corky’d last heard on his Grandfather Liam’s lips, years before.

  Corky didn’t learn until graduation that Oscar Slattery had paid for his three years at St. Thomas—arranged for his “scholarship.” And that not from Oscar but from one of Corky’s Jesuit teachers. Corky’d been stunned, astonished. There was no connection he knew, nor ever was to know, between Oscar Slattery and Tim Corcoran. Never could he ask why for fear of revealing his own uncharitable heart.

  Several times Corky tried to write a letter thanking his mysterious benefactor, sweating over the God-damned thing, writing and rewriting and tearing it up and finally one day at the Slatterys’ house he’d started to thank Oscar in person, blushing and tongue-tied, and Oscar curtly cut him off, “Hell, kid, us micks have got to stick together, eh?”

  The communion breakfast is breaking up, photographers from local papers are taking pictures of Oscar and his VIP guests outside on the peninsula of lawn, Corky Corcoran not included. It’s almost noon.

  And here comes Red Pitts looking like he’s got a corkscrew up his ass. That’s a smile?

  Pitts tells Corky that Vic and Sandra are waiting for him in Oscar’s private office. They don’t want anybody to know they’re on the premises who doesn’t need to know—“So keep it to yourself, Corky, will you?”

  “Thanks, Red,” says Corky, stubbing out his cigarette in the remains of somebody’s waffle, in a plate on a trolley heaped with dirty dishes and cutlery, “—fuck you, Red. Terrific
.”

  “Sure,” says Pitts, calling after Corky, Corky can’t see but knows the fucker’s shiny-eyed clenching his fists, “—any time, Corky. You name it.”

  Corky’s heart’s pounding like he and Red have actually been swinging at each other. Jesus, do they hate each other’s guts! Not even knowing why.

  Except Corky remembers Red Pitts talking with Thalia: looming over her, leaning close.

  Oscar Slattery’s private office is a spacious walnut-paneled room off the front foyer, converted from a gentleman’s library for Oscar’s use—part of it’s a home office, but it opens into a billiard room with a wet bar, sumptuous leather furniture, a flagstone fireplace with a ten-foot hearth. The rear windows are twelve-foot Thermopane looking out onto a strip of lawn and the Chateauguay River.

  It’s in this room, at a round table beneath a low-hanging porcelain chandelier, that Oscar’s poker games take place. Always on a Friday night, but on an unpredictable schedule. At least, so far as Corky Corcoran knows, it’s an unpredictable schedule.

  Corky lives in dread of being dropped from these games. Not that he’d want to admit it!—fuck, he’s got too much pride.