Ride a Cockhorse (12 page)

Until now, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's oratorical skills had been just a memory, a winter's evening in high school when she had suddenly taken the floor to dominate a debate. Julie and two or three others had collected outside the door, blinking in unison each time the camera flash went off. Mrs. Fitzgibbons had the wind up, her blood coursing with excitement.

“I'm not going around them, I'm going to roll over them.”

While speaking, she saw Mr. Neil Hooton go treading softly past her door. He peered in at her suspiciously, then glanced away. Of all the officers at the bank, Mr. Hooton had always best satisfied Mrs. Fitzgibbons's idea of what a successful banker ought to look like. A portly man with a headful of snowy hair, he wore little gold spectacles far down on his nose and had a taste for colorful suspenders and bow ties. Since her first days at the bank, she had admired him; she had sought his help and approval on a thousand occasions, even though his responsibilities as treasurer and director of the capital markets desk differed categorically from her own. Moreover, since the start of the monumental bull market that got under way in the summer of '82, with the Dow averages surging higher and higher year after year, Mr. Hooton's star had risen commensurately, to a point where it was generally recognized that any sort of emergency at the bank that might have incapacitated Mr. Zabac, as to require his staying at home, would have seen Neil Hooton mounting the marble staircase to take his place.

Later on, as Mrs. Fitzgibbons was showing the newspapermen out of her office, Mr. Hooton came back the other way. The stock market in New York was down significantly that Friday afternoon, and the man was pulling a long face. He strutted past her with an angry frown. Tiny pinpoints of paranoia assembled in Mrs. Fitzgibbons's pupils, as she stared daggers at him. That quickly, the stoutish man had materialized as her most dangerous adversary. She stared fixedly in the direction of the treasurer's office long after Mr. Hooton had passed from view.

Julie was waiting patiently nearby for Mrs. Fitzgibbons to acknowledge her presence. Anita Stebbins was standing next to Julie.

“Mrs. Baskin doesn't need Anita,” Julie said, unable to conceal the satisfaction she was experiencing at treating Mr. Frye's former secretary as a basket case. Anita was gaping at Mrs. Fitzgibbons. The flash of resentment she had shown yesterday on being removed from her job had given place now to a helpless, simpering expression.

“Mrs. Baskin said I was overqualified.” Anita smiled ingratiatingly.

“Is that a fact?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was still smoldering inside over the spectacle of Mr. Hooton marching past like an important financier, so that the sudden opportunity to fire somebody presented itself as a cathartic relief; in fact, it aroused physical sensations in Mrs. Fitzgibbons that she would have been ashamed to describe.

“What are you qualified to do?” she asked harshly.

“I know word processing.”

“Come along, speak up. Tell me what you can do.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons snapped out the words with great impatience.

“I type seventy words a minute, I know word processing, I've helped Jacqueline Harvey do payroll—I've been secretary to Mr. Frye since May of eighty-six—and back in the summer of—”

“You're superfluous staff!” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, unable to hold back a second longer. “I see no place for you here.”

“Please, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.” Anita was a pretty, dark-haired girl, who had never made an enemy.

“You're finished.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was implacable.

“But I understand the bank.”

“Well, you go understand another bank.” She dismissed Anita in an even bigger voice, her eyes widened in consternation at the girl daring to answer her back.

“But, why?” Anita implored to know.

“Hold on, now,” exclaimed Mr. Donachie, stepping suddenly out of nowhere into the breach between Mrs. Fitzgibbons and the secretary, raising his hands to signify the uselessness of further objections.

“Take her to her desk for her things,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“I don't have a desk!” cried Anita.

Unfortunately for Miss Stebbins, this last protest produced a humorous effect. Marcel, the part-time boy from the mailroom, and Julie laughed, while others in the vicinity stifled their amused reactions. Only Mr. Donachie showed a sober countenance; with his head in the air and his eyes bulging with voluptuous satisfaction under the leather bill of his black hat, he led Anita away by the elbow.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons explained later to Julie the necessity of eliminating certain “elements” among the staff. “When the boss goes, his loyal flunkies are left unprotected. They have to go. That's how it works. When you take over authority at the top, you have to lop off some heads. If the man before me had understood that, and had had the testicles to scare people, he'd still be here. He'd still be chief. Leonard has no fight in him.”

Julie followed Mrs. Fitzgibbons into her office. She remarked in a soft, thrilling voice on Mr. Frye. “He keeps
staring
at you,” she said.

“Of course he does. You're surprised? He wants me to jump his bones.”

“
Mrs. Fitzgibbons!
” She raised her hand to her face.

“He depends on my good nature now. He works for me. He doesn't want to be scolded or fired. He wants me to drive him out to the forest, to some leafy ditch, and show him that he's attractive to me.”

Julie shrieked with delight over Mrs. Fitzgibbons's outlandish cracks.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons chimed in at once. “Show him that I like his body!” she cried, and loosed a peal of laughter that could be heard in the street.

When Mrs. Fitzgibbons arrived home that Friday afternoon, her daughter and son-in-law were just pulling up to the curb in their gray compact. Eddie was behind the wheel. If Mrs. Fitzgibbons had had any admirers in the past three or four years, her son-in-law was one of them.

“Wow, look at your mom,” he said, as Mrs. Fitzgibbons strode up to her door in her poison green dress with her coat over her arm.

Barbara was repelled at once, however, by Mrs. Fitzgibbons's glamorous looks. She ridiculed her mother at the first opportunity. “What on earth have you done to yourself? Have you gone insane? You look like a high-class tramp.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons did not put her key into the lock, but paused at the door with an expression of wry forbearance. At close range, the beauty of her face and her dark, almost navy-blue eyes had magnetized Eddie Berdowsky. She looked taller than usual, too, and her hair glowed lustrously.

“What a change,” Eddie said. “You look super, Frankie. Look at her dress.”

“I have a date,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I can't talk now.”

Barbara's gray gooseberry eyes, magnified unnaturally behind her big shiny glasses, shone with alarm. “What is she talking about?”

In fact, Barbara and her husband looked no more impressive in Mrs. Fitzgibbons's presence than a pair of domestics reporting for work. Eddie was still wearing his faded blue uniform shirt from the electronic-game company where he worked, a long-sleeved shirt with the crisscross emblem of a baseball bat and hockey stick stitched on the pocket. Barbara wore a shapeless floral dress, a cardigan, and walking shoes with brown-and-white laces. They followed Mrs. Fitzgibbons indoors.

“I've been promoted at the bank, and I have a dinner engagement,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “Why don't the two of you go off to the Gulf of Mexico and save some endangered birds?”

“What a comic!” Eddie loved his mother-in-law.

Ignoring them, Mrs. Fitzgibbons went into her bedroom to change. She was scheduled to pick up Terry at six o'clock. She spoke to Eddie and her daughter through the partially closed door, remaining out of sight. When the phone rang, and Barbara went to answer it, Mrs. Fitzgibbons pulled open the door. Eddie couldn't credit his eyes.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was wearing only her shoes and underclothes. “Was that the telephone?” she said.

Eddie stared up at her from the sofa with a sickly smile on his lips. She had changed into a pink brassiere; she was removing a skirt from a hanger. Eddie was speechless. Barbara never wore brassieres. She called such things “harnesses.” Women, Barbara said, were not draft animals. Moreover, Barbara was not built like her mother.

At length, Eddie spoke up. He was sitting forward with his legs apart, his elbows on his knees. “We came with news. Barbara thinks she's pregnant.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons stopped toying with the hanger. “Please,” she said with disdain, “spare me.”

“She does, Frankie.”

Reaching, Mrs. Fitzgibbons closed the door between them. “Make sense,” she said.

“It's true. That's why we're here. It's ten to one, Frankie. Barbara thought you'd be thrilled. Hey, I thought so, too.”

Eddie had come now to her door and was speaking through it in an intimate tone. “Who are you dating?” he asked quietly. He was staring at the doorjamb suspensefully. “Who's the lucky guy?”

When Barbara came back from the foyer, Eddie was pressed against Mrs. Fitzgibbons's bedroom door, smiling crazily. “I told her about the baby,” he said.

“And?”

“I think she was not thrilled.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons emerged then in a new gray angora sweater and black skirt. She was clasping a bracelet onto her wrist.

Barbara watched her mother with a grim, thin-lipped expression. “Someone named Terry is on the phone,” she said.

“Tell us about your new job, Frankie.” Eddie hovered close to Mrs. Fitzgibbons. He turned to Barbara. “Your mom has a date tonight.”

“What's this about a baby?” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“Is that all you have to say?” Barbara's anger was transparent. “Why aren't you ever home lately?”

“You can't even take care of yourselves.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons eyed the mirror behind the sofa. “Look at the two of you.”

“We thought you might help us now to get a mortgage,” Eddie said. He glanced at Barbara, whose face was an angry mask. “The way we talked about it—you know—”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked at them with genuine amazement. “You what?”

“You know,” Eddie blushed, and made a wreathing movement with his hand, “at the bank.”

Without pausing, Mrs. Fitzgibbons invoked the businesslike tone of one transposing a polite conversation to a less frivolous level of discourse. “You two are barking up the wrong tree. I run a business. We don't show favoritism,” she said. “This is mortgage financing. This is not Monopoly. You have to have money. You have to be creditworthy.”

Instantly, Barbara exploded. “You conceited bitch! I knew she'd say that. When the time came, I knew it! I hate your insides!”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons watched with stern calm as Barbara squeezed and shook her fists in frustration.

“I wish my father could have lived to see the day!” Barbara cried. “You're shaming me. He would turn over in his grave.”

“The only thing that would make your father turn over in his grave would be if the television set was behind him.”

“I'll never talk to you again!”

Eddie sought to mollify his wife. “Don't be rash.”

“Who's on the phone?” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“You sicken me,” said Barbara. “I hate and despise you.” She waved her fist in her mother's face. “You'll live to rue this day. I'm shamed!” Barbara departed the house with her gray eyes bulging scarily. The front door slammed.

Eddie offered his mother a mitigatory interpretation of his wife's tantrum. “It's because she's pregnant,” he said, shrugging.

“Don't be a jackass.”

“She says she is.”

“It takes more than saying. You're not that naive.”

With Barbara gone, Eddie reverted to his intimate manner. “You look really exciting, Frankie. Is that your date on the phone? You know,” he said, in a tone suggestive of a long-standing mystification on this point, “I was always surprised that you didn't date. I could never figure that out.” He followed Mrs. Fitzgibbons to the telephone in the foyer. “A woman like you,” he added ardently.

Outdoors, Barbara was blowing the car horn for him. Mrs. Fitzgibbons held the telephone receiver to her collarbone. “You run along now. I want to talk to this man.”

Realizing he had followed her to the phone, Eddie colored embarrassedly. “You still want me to come over and clean the cellar one of these days?”

“Go with Barbara. Go play mommy and daddy,” she said.

Eddie clapped a hand to his head and laughed insanely at her words.

When Mrs. Fitzgibbons came back at midnight with Terry, she was feeling her champagne. Within minutes she was in bed with her drum major and was displaying an aggressive style of love-making, which was not distasteful to the eighteen-year-old youth. She was very full of herself, a sensation that was only exaggerated by the look of infatuation in Terence's eyes whenever she complimented him. The boy was in love. Mrs. Fitzgibbons saw him as one of the perquisites of success. She had noticed over dinner at the Canoe Club how he listened in raptures when she talked about doing things for him in the future, or how he smiled in coy embarrassment when she talked about buying him some new golf clubs, or a pair of those pigskin perforated gloves that looked so stylish on the fairways.

In bed, she chided him amusingly. “It's a good thing you don't work for me,” she said. “I'd fuck your eyes out twice a day.”

“I wouldn't mind that, Frankie. I really wouldn't.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was on top of him, holding his face and chin in her left hand, while reaching back with her right to excite and frustrate him. “You wouldn't be worth a nickel to anybody else.”

“You're right about that, Frankie!” he said.

“You fell into the honeypot. A boy like you shouldn't work at all. You should be set up in a hotel room someplace, down at the Roger Smith, taking bubble baths and prettifying yourself for the evening.”