What I Lived For Read online

  “—Or you could call Greenbaum and postpone your lunch,” Christina says, “—and stay here and have lunch with me.”

  But Corky’s already headed, naked, for the bathroom, “Chrissie, honey, there’s nothing I’d like better,” he says, “—but you know I can’t.”

  Christina laughs. “Oh, I know.”

  Under the shower, lavishly soaping himself, it’s the second time this morning Corky has had a shower but this is the luxury one, this the unspeakable exalted pleasure, he’s thinking how sweet of Chrissie to laugh, so rarely to speak in reproach. Other women, most of all Charlotte, hadn’t laughed.

  Corky Corcoran, a man in motion. No sooner gets to one place and loves it than he’s restless and bored and can’t bear to stay another minute. The truth about you, Charlotte once said, furious, tossing something (his car keys?) at him, you should live in your God-damned car.

  Charlotte Drummond, no she’d been Charlotte Braunbeck when they met, the woman of all Corky’s women who knows him best. The brutal intimacy of the formerly married.

  Married eleven years. Twenty-eight when he’d gotten into it, thirty-nine by the time he’d gotten out. A lifetime. Vowed he’d never stick his head in such a noose again.

  Yet it’s Charlotte he’s thinking of, more soberly now. Needs to call. To check about Thalia. That look in Thalia’s face the first time she’d overheard Charlotte and Corky quarreling, poor kid like she’d been slapped, even now Corky feels a stab of grief.

  It’s children who get hurt, children who can’t get out of the way fast enough.

  Our only witness: you.

  Well, he’ll have to get Thalia’s telephone number, new address, from Charlotte. Or maybe have his secretary call Charlotte?—unless that would insult her.

  You only get to know another person thoroughly, Corky thinks, to the degree to which you’ve fallen out of love with that person.

  Except: he’s crazy about Christina Kavanaugh, and he’s certain he knows her.

  Hey: d’you love me?

  Oh, lover. Oh God.

  That second time she’d come, Jesus how beautiful. Open-mouthed kissing and he’d swear he could feel the contractions rippling through her. Wondering, Do their hearts contract like that, too?—must be the nearest thing to dying.

  Except: if Christina doesn’t show up at the Memorial Day fundraiser, where Corky’s scheduled to speak, Corky’s going to be hurt, Corky’s going to be seriously hurt, he can only be hurt by people he loves so sure as hell he’s careful not to love many people now he’s an adult and in control of his fate and if Christina hurts him he isn’t going to like it. Which is an understatement.

  It was through a fund-raising program for the old, original Maiden Vale Library he’d met her. Contrived to meet her. A proposal for $200,000 for extensive renovations of the library came up before the City Council and was vetoed derisively within minutes but Corky scanned the list of names on the petition, the names of the rich, and one name leapt out at him Christina Kavanaugh! so civic-minded Jerome Corcoran made it a point to show up at the next Friends of the Maiden Vale Library meeting one windy June afternoon of the previous year, approximately thirty well-to-do men and women, a predominance of women, Corky singled out Christina Kavanaugh at once, looked at her frankly, smiled at her in his way that never fails to coax a smile in return from virtually any woman and most men: Here I am, I’m a good-hearted guy, trust me! Christina stared at Corky, her face coloring slightly, as if embarrassed she should know him and didn’t: or was he a friend of Harry’s?

  Corky was introduced to the gathering as one of the few City Councilmen with an interest in the preservation of Union City historical buildings and this was in fact the truth, Corky’s weakness is for buildings like the Maiden Vale Library he’s grown up seeing, at least from the outside, and doesn’t want razed, obliterated, suddenly gone. You had to love the old Maiden Vale Library, deteriorated as it was, built 1836, a local masterpiece of Classic Revivalism, airy rooms and high ceilings and somber Ionic columns and a parlor-sized reading room impractical as hell; badly warped hardwood floors, a rotting roof, leaking basement and windows, a $2-million deficit at a time when the budgets of new, modern branches of the public library were being cut back; only forty-eight hundred cardholders, compared to thirty thousand at the larger Maiden Vale branch. (Corky, ever-scrupulous in such details, had done his homework.) Still, Corky spoke warmly and enthusiastically to the group, Corky’s a guy who loves to talk if he’s in the right place at the right time, he’d impressed his audience listing pros and cons of fund-raising for the library, suggesting that he, in his capacity as a Councilman, try to arrange for a state allotment of the $200,000 under the New York Historical Buildings Fund—there’s an emergency fund for just such purposes. Corky explained why their cause was vetoed at City Hall but declined to speak ill of his fellow Council members or of Mayor Oscar Slattery, clever Corky took the opportunity to point out how supportive Slattery was regarding the public library system, public health, education, police. Seeing Christina Kavanaugh’s eyes upon him how knowledgeable Corky was! how frank! courteous! with that Irish ardor and glow in his face that isn’t always the effect of alcohol and afterward as he’d anticipated a half dozen women vied for his attention and here too Corky was clever and courteous making his way purposefully to Christina Kavanaugh who stood holding her coat watching him as if simply waiting for him, with a tight-jawed calm that excited him. Happiness flooding to every part of Corky’s body including his cock: Here I am, trust me!

  He asked her her name, and she told him. They shook hands. Corky gripped her hand, hard. The color up in his face, the glisten in his eyes. He said, “You’re Harry Kavanaugh’s wife?” and Christina said, “Yes, and he’s my husband,” staring Corky down, as if he’d said something to offend (Jesus, he hadn’t meant to!—he’d’ve fallen at the woman’s feet, grabbed her ankles inside those smoky-silky stockings) or to tease, “—but he isn’t here now, is he?”

  They walked out together. The Maiden Vale Library was in an old part of the district, on a once-prestigious boulevard of large, pretentious houses, some of them now divided into condominiums and offices, the elms had long since been cut down and even in the windy dusk the area looked raw. As Corky shoved open the heavy outer door, Christina’s hair blew against his face, he shut his eyes weak with a wave of desire he couldn’t believe she couldn’t feel, too.

  Outside the overheated library the world was blunt and stark. A place of little comfort unless you risked rejection by seeking comfort.

  Corky asked, “Would you like to drive somewhere?—for a drink?”

  Christina said, “Yes. Corky. You know I would.”

  Corky!—it’s as if the woman has laid her lovely hand on his prick. Corky stared at her, sick with love.

  Seeing her eyes fixed on his. A little scared, and excited. Her eyes a luminous pebbly transparency, the mouth beautiful, he’d thought of kissing her, what it would be like, a quickening sensation in his body, oh Christ. Remembering how that evening downtown he’d trailed this woman, drink in hand, yes and probably half-drunk turned on by her big, pregnant belly as much as by her beautiful face.

  Later Corky was to learn Christina remembered him, too. How obvious he’d been, watching her. Good-looking Irish-faced guy a minor Democratic politician, she hadn’t known his name at the time. And hadn’t inquired.

  Bitch. Stuck-up cunt. Nobody snubs Corky Corcoran.

  No longer.

  Impatiently Corky shuts off the shower, damned thing leaks, hadn’t he given Christina the name of a first-rate plumber but weeks go by, months, and it still leaks. Just like a woman. Charlotte pretending she couldn’t deal with plumbers, electricians, the lawn men, the furnace repair man, they only respect another man, you don’t know. Shit, thinks Corky, the excuses women make!—drying himself with a towel Christina’s already used, other towels on the rack luxuriant and spotless (you don’t forget, with Christina, this is a high-class woman) but the damp towel is
good enough for him.

  Jesus, why’s he always running late?—Corky’s a guy who’ll be late for his own funeral. What time is it?

  Yes but obviously Corky needs that edge to his life. Always on the move, Corky Corcoran’s your man, traversing Union City by day, by night—expressways, avenues, streets. Keeping pace with his own fast pulse. Too restless to stay in one place for very long. Metabolism like a God-damned monkey Charlotte used to complain, envious of him he never gained weight like her.

  Can’t slow down, the bastards will catch up with you.

  Eat my shit. Who’s to stop me?

  Fucking Christina the judge’s wife—what you live for, eh?

  Corky rubs steam off the mirror, peers critically at himself. It’s a weakness of his, O.K.—vain of his good looks, if you got it flaunt it, you learn young, girls casting no-mistaking-it looks at him even as a kid, eyes locking eyes. Corky’s darkish red-brown curly hair, great hair for a guy but, shit, it’s definitely thinning, no hiding the fact when it’s wet and flattened against his scalp. My scalp? Showing through? The sight of it makes his prick shrink. Baring his teeth in a mirthless grin to examine them: teeth are O.K. if just slightly discolored (from smoking; but he’s quit). Left front tooth is bigger than the right, buck-tooth, saw-notched, like he’d been punched by some cutey, but nobody can see, probably. Except close-up like Christina.

  She’d think it was sexy. Anything about him. If they love you, you can’t lose.

  That early time together, Christina drunk and randy, laughing like a young girl then suddenly her face crinkled and she’s crying, Jesus!—how fast they switch from one to the other, blows your mind. Telling Corky he was the only man she’d ever known who had the gift of happiness—her words: “gift of happiness”—just his smile, you changed my life with that smile. And Christina pressed herself into his arms hot and guilty saying it—this—meaning them: being lovers—was nothing she’d ever believed could happen in her life let alone planned, contemplated. And it must have nothing to do with the rest of her life. Her husband who needed her in a way Corky could never comprehend, that had to do with his very worth as a human being: should he live? should he surrender, die?—and her son, too. Her son whom she’d loved as a baby with a ferocity she hadn’t known she was capable of, a ravenous mother-love it had been, and now the memory of it lodged deep inside her, and did not, could not, exactly attach itself to the adolescent boy the baby had grown into out of my own body, Christina said, marveling, it’s something you live through but can’t understand and you can’t speak of it, there aren’t the words. So Corky who hadn’t been following all this precisely, Corky in what’s called post-coital bliss, guessed some question was being put to him, some proposition of a moral kind defined and unsentimental as a legal contract, saying grandly, “Any way you want it, baby. You call the shots.”

  Corky examines his eyes, the left eye bloodshot as hell, and bruised-looking dents beneath his eyes, tonight for sure he’s got to sleep, six, seven hours at the least, turn off the phone and get undressed and actually go to bed, into bed, not sprawling half-clothed slantwise across the bed or downstairs on the sofa the TV on or worse yet in his car as he’s inclined to do, God knows why.

  Why?—to make a quick escape if required.

  Fucking fed up with being an insomniac, since the age of eleven but what’s to be done. The doctors and the therapy and the rest of that shit hadn’t helped Theresa erase from her memory the way Tim Corcoran had looked lying broken and bleeding and dead and the electric shock and prescription drugs for sure hadn’t helped, Corky is filled with rage and disgust and knows nobody can help him and knows he wouldn’t trust anybody who could help him, fuck that, he’s a private man, nobody screws with his head. When they were first married, though, and he was trying to lead what’s called a normal life, sleeping in a bed with his wife (whom he loved, then, hell yes he did love Charlotte) Charlotte got him to go to her doctor, get a prescription for barbiturates, Corky tried them for a few days then flushed them down the toilet. His brain zapped, cotton batting muffling everything and flashes of weird dream-pictures during the day, fuck that. Pills are for women, he’d told Charlotte. Any time I want seriously to knock myself out I’ll get drunk.

  Except you have to wake up, eventually. Sick as a dog.

  Read, the other night, in his paperback A Treasury of Science Lore, the longest a human being has been known to survive without sleep is nine days. Poor bastard must have been raving mad by then.

  Corky has brought most of his clothes into the bathroom. Dresses swiftly. With impatient fingers looping his tie around his neck seeing by his watch the time’s 12:50 P.M.—which is pretty damned good, considering.

  Steps out of the bathroom into cooler air and is about to call out something to Christina when he hears her voice, she must be speaking on the telephone, Corky pauses knotting his tie to listen, edges a little closer, barefoot and noiseless, to where she’s standing, back to him, a short distance away at a rear window, sunshine in her black hair like it’s on fire, he sees she’s wearing a maroon-checked jacket and maroon flannel pants, a smart getup, Christina Kavanaugh too is ready to leave her brownstone loft at 331 Nott for the rest of her day. Corky hears her say, not guardedly exactly, but quietly, in an undertone, these words that pierce his heart like a blade, yet so swiftly and so without warning there’s no pain, “—yes, he’s here now, but he’s leaving.” A pause, and then, “Yes.” Another pause, and, “I will, honey. Of course. Around six. I have to drive out to Indian Lake for this piece I’m doing on the Children’s Center, that new therapy for autistic children, I think I’ve told you? Then—” Another pause, and then, in a tone of intimate appeal, of familiar placating, “Yes. You know I do.”

  By the time Christina hangs up the phone, turns back, Corky’s sitting on the sofa bed (it was a bath towel she’d slung over it, an old bleached-out towel she’s used many times before) yanking on his socks, forcing his feet into his shoes. His face is composed, clenched as a fist.

  Corky Corcoran the locally celebrated poker player, the gambler, innocently vain in his imagining that no one can read his face if he doesn’t want them to read it, and now he doesn’t want this woman to read it, but he doesn’t seem to hear her ask him something, then repeat it and still he doesn’t hear, he’s suspended, no-feeling, a distant roaring in his ears. He’s here now, but he’s leaving.

  Christina, incongruously dressed for the city, yet still barefoot, has taken up a hairbrush and briskly brushes her hair, static electricity crackling in the long sensuous strokes, hair smooth as a single black substance framing her face that’s lightly flushed from so much emotion, a pink cast to it, and she walks forcefully on her heels, with that ramrod-straight posture Corky associates with the very rich or the very arrogant. She pauses, looking at him. “Corky? What’s wrong?”

  Corky raises his eyes to hers, empty of all expression.

  Asks, coolly, “Wrong how? With me, with you?—or generally?”

  “You look angry.”

  “Why should I be angry? Shouldn’t I be happy?”

  Corky continues jamming a foot into a shoe. At home, he has a fucking shoehorn.

  Christina stands before him, no longer brushing her hair, staring at him.

  The pendulum clock’s pert toy-ticking has become louder and if the thing starts chiming, Corky’s going to smash it with his fist.

  “Corky.”

  Christina drops the hairbrush onto the sofa, comes quickly to him, a knee on the sofa beside him, leaning over him and her arms wrapped around him, she kisses his cheek, it’s a fierce loving gesture but Corky, furious Corky, doesn’t respond. She whispers, “Corky?—oh, lover.” He feels her quickened heartbeat but still he doesn’t respond. Down on Nott Street a garbage truck makes a series of sudden noises like staccato farting.

  Christina leans back to peer anxiously into Corky’s face. “Were you listening, just now?”

  “You mean, did I hear.”

  “You d
id—?”

  Christina touches Corky’s warm cheek and he flicks her hand away. It’s the first rough or even impatient gesture this woman has experienced with Corky, he sees her eyes widen in that kind of alarm that has excited him frequently, with other women, that female anticipation of physical upset, violence, but Corky gives no impression of being excited now, on the contrary Christina’s baffled by his steely calm, Corky Corcoran who’s by nature so affectionate and demonstrative and talky, rising stiff to his feet, ready to walk out. He picks up his boxy-sporty jacket and thrusts his arms into it with the impatience with which he’d jammed his feet into his shoes and he’d be on his way except Christina stops him. “Corky! Please wait—”

  Still calmly, Corky says, “I told you, Christina. I have a date for lunch at one.”

  “Corky, you can’t walk out like this. Darling, please. I’m not sure what you heard me say, but—”

  “Call me, we’ll talk. After Monday.”

  It’s as if Corky has slapped her, she steps back. Disadvantaged on the heels of her feet. Appearing, so suddenly, rather short, diminished, a not-young woman in this bright pitiless light, forehead crinkled and thin white lines at the corners of her eyes and the eyes unnaturally bright with tears, worry. Numbly, she repeats, “I—I’m not sure what you heard, but—Corky, I—”

  Again she plucks at his sleeve and this time Corky reacts spontaneously: pushes her away.

  A quick unerring reflex like a boxer’s, the flat of his hand, right hand shoving against her left shoulder, not hard, yes but hard enough to push her away.

  “Fuck you, Christina. And Harry Kavanaugh.”

  Corky walks out, out of the loft, taking the stairs at first calmly and then, halfway down, with the rushed fury of a wounded-hearted kid, he’s in a fever of disbelief and rage and it isn’t until he reaches the vestibule that he pauses, his heart pounding in his ears. Isn’t she going to call me back? There’s never been one of them who hasn’t called me back.