Ride a Cockhorse (2 page)

It was during these same days precisely, however, in the early fall, that Mrs. Fitzgibbons developed an unexpectedly lustful interest in the resplendent young drum major who led the high school band past her house. Every Saturday morning, at fifteen minutes to twelve, the big noisy ensemble came round the corner of Essex Street, not a hundred feet from her door, with flags and pennants blowing and the tall, sandy-haired Sugrue boy out front, high-stepping his way into view. It was a sight to behold. He flourished an enormous gold-tasseled baton. With his high purple hat, his fringed epaulets, and great chestful of gleaming brass buttons, he offered a vision of martial beauty. Behind the young drum major, like an amplification of his own youthful grandeur, came the band in perfect step, a colorful machine. First were the three flag bearers, followed by a gorgeous rank of prancing, bare-thighed, arrogant-looking majorettes, their batons twirling in unison in the sun. A half dozen cheerleaders followed, in purple-and-white sweaters, shaking pom-poms in both hands, and, last of all, the big, solid eighty-piece marching band itself, with trumpets and snare drums going. The sound was deafening. The spectacle overall, with its American flags and high school colors flying, its brilliant purple ranks and gleaming brass, exceeded description—as in the way, for example, that it turned the corner at Essex and Locust, with the inside marchers marking time very smartly, their knees snapping up and down in place, while the entire rank pivoted round them like a swinging dial, and then stepping forth proudly again, raising their horns to their lips. To Mrs. Fitzgibbons, the music and grand moving panoply of it all was nothing short of celestial, as though the Maker were showing off His minions.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's married daughter, Barbara, who often visited her mother on Saturday mornings, took an altogether different view of the noisy, militaristic display parading past in the street. Barbara Berdowsky was a person very much up to the minute in her social views, and in her manner of expressing herself associated a coarse tongue with the language of feminist liberation, environmentalism, and other such current enthusiasms. “They look like a bunch of fucking Nazis,” she said.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons had not heard, however, as at that moment she was standing behind the leafy curtain of Dutchman's-pipe that ornamented her front porch, staring fixedly at the lean ramrod figure of the drum major himself. Terry Sugrue had halted smartly right in front of her house, holding his baton on a high diagonal from his chest, to signify, no doubt, the introduction of a new musical piece. He was marching in place. His head was up; he had a brass whistle in his mouth; the sun was in his face. Behind him, the row of majorettes had followed suit, their bare knees and white boots flashing up and down in perfect synchronicity with his own steps. The golden tassels of his prodigious baton blew and shimmered in the October air. Mrs. Fitzgibbons had an impulse to run into the street and wrestle him to the pavement. Suddenly, the drums fell silent, the boy's whistle pierced the air, up shot the baton, there was a great clash of cymbals, and twenty trumpets sounded in unison.

In tempo with the vigorous diagonal strokes of the drum major's baton, the band came past Mrs. Fitzgibbons's house. The noise was breathtaking. The drumming was indescribable. The purple-and-white uniforms lit up. The musical selection chosen by the bandmaster, Mr. Pivack (who wore a special beige-and-cream uniform and habitually skipped about on one side or the other of his talented assembly), became recognizable to the ear. It was the high school's own football fight song. Mrs. Fitzgibbons kept her eyes fixed all the while on the vain young drum major, as he high-stepped his way up the tree-flanked roadway toward the Franklin Street football field. The music was so loud that Barbara didn't hear her mother's remark, obliterated as it was by the grunting of the tubas going past. “I'd like to change his diapers,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

She never knew what had come over her, nor was she much inclined to think about it, but for a week running, Mrs. Fitzgibbons dressed up for herself every night and went riding in her car. One evening, before going out, she caught an unexpected glimpse of herself in the hall mirror and was delighted to discover a stranger looking back at her. She was wearing the dark violet Charmeuse dress that she had worn to her daughter's wedding, and had accessorized with the silver and amethyst choker that her late husband, Larry, had given her one Christmas; her hair was tied back, and her face made up with obvious skill; even the lift of her own breasts struck Mrs. Fitzgibbons as the attraction of someone else. For more than an hour that evening, she drove around town in her dented Honda; she had the windows down and was listening to the Top 40 on the radio. It was the car that Larry had bought for them back in 1982, two years before he died. “Everybody thinks that the Chinese make junks,” he used to say, “but the Japanese made this one.” (Larry was witty. Mrs. Fitzgibbons never denied him that. On his deathbed, when he knew he was finished, he smiled at her, and said, “What were my last words?” That was Larry's farewell. He never spoke again.)

A few minutes before eight o'clock, after darkness had fallen, Mrs. Fitzgibbons spotted the Sugrue boy walking under the maples on Nonotuck Street, with his red nylon bookbag slung over his shoulder, his pale hair glowing under the streetlamp, and she pulled up next to him in the Honda. Her heart was thumping when he came over to the car window. She had signaled to him. As so often in the days to come, Mrs. Fitzgibbons hadn't a notion in mind what she was going to say before she actually spoke.

“I'm having motor trouble,” she said. “It's skipping.”

Obeying her instincts, she took an even franker approach. “You're the boy in the band! I know who you are.”

She sat behind the wheel, with her elbow on the window, smiling at him.

“I'm the drum major,” he said. He was tremendously vain, she thought. She liked that. She liked vain men. Larry, unfortunately, had not been that way.

“Don't I know it! The band goes past my house every week. You march beautifully!”

“Thank you,” said the youth. Being tall, he was forced to lean over.

“I'm Frankie Fitzgibbons. My husband,” she said, “was an alderman.”

“Your name is Frankie?” said the boy.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued smiling. She couldn't help herself. She had never seduced anyone in her life. Larry had been like an appliance; he'd done what he was warranteed to do. The Sugrue boy was another animal altogether. Already she had intimations of success. She would tell him what to do, and he would do it.

“Do you know anything about cars?”

“I'm not good at mechanics,” Terry answered. He was staring blankly at the dashboard.

“Can you drive?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got into the passenger seat. “Drive it around the block,” she said, “and tell me what you think.”

As he climbed into the car, Mrs. Fitzgibbons admired his long blue-jeaned legs. He looked a little distressed at attempting to correct something for which he had no proficiency. “It sounds okay,” he muttered softly.

“Well, it's not okay. It stalled on me twice.” She was lying but gave no thought to it. “Drive it around,” she said.

The drum major complied. He put the car in gear and started slowly up Nonotuck Street. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was watching him cannily. “What's your name?” she asked.

“Terry Sugrue.”

“Is that the family with the murderer?” she asked.

“Murderer?” He looked at her.

“There was a Sugrue who killed somebody years ago.”

“I never heard anything about that,” said the youth.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was improvising. “A man named Sugrue killed a bookmaker on a farm out in Granby and buried his body in the woods. He owed the man money.”

“No fooling.” He kept his eyes on the road.

“Do you know anything about carpentry?” She advanced an altogether new subject.

“Not much.”

“You take shop classes, don't you?”

“I used to. A long time ago—in junior high.”

“You can nail two boards together.”

Terence laughed but continued staring at the road. He affected a keen listening attitude toward the engine, as he gradually speeded up the car. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not watching the road. She was surprised by her own brazenness.

“I need a couple of boards nailed together,” she said.

“Engine sounds okay to me.”

“It's not.”

“I think you'd have to ask a mechanic.”

“You're doing fine. There! Did you hear that? It skipped. Now,” she said, “it's going to stall.”

The boy looked perplexed. “It's nice and smooth.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons assumed a doubtful air. “Ever since Larry died, I get a little paranoid.” She sat back. “How is it you're still in high school?”

“I'm a senior.”

“Because you don't look it.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons addressed him in the way a school principal might. “You look about twenty. Did you stay back?”

“Me? I never stayed back in my life! I'm first honor roll.”

“You are? I'm glad to hear that. Turn left on Northampton Street,” she said, “and go a little faster. You're poking.”

“Sometimes,” he suggested, “it helps to gun the engine.”

“Then gun it.”

Terry shifted into neutral and raced the engine hard.

“That sounds better,” she said, after Terry released the accelerator. “I think you did it.”

“I didn't do anything.”

“That sounds normal. What did you do?”

“I gunned the engine.”

“That did the trick.”

“I think you're worrying about nothing, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

“Frankie,” she said.

“Frankie.”

“Gun it again.”

“It doesn't need it.”

“Gun it, sweetheart. Do what I tell you. I think you corrected it. Do you have a car of your own?”

“No, I don't.”

“What do you do on dates?”

“Dates?”

“Dates,” she said. “You can't go out without a car.”

“Maureen, my girlfriend, has a car. Actually, it's her brother's car, but he works evenings at the junior college.”

“Who is Maureen?”

“Maureen Blodgett.”

“I know Maureen Blodgett,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons lied. “
She's
your girlfriend?” She made a face.

“Well, sort of.” Terry faltered, visibly disconcerted by the perplexed expression on the woman's face. They had stopped at a traffic light.

“She's a little young for you, isn't she?”

“Maureen? Maureen's nineteen. She's older than I am.”

“Maureen Blodgett? Not the Maureen Blodgett I know. She looks like a kid.”

“She looks a little young,” Terry allowed, “but she's out of high school.”

“I can't believe what I'm hearing.
You
,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “and her? That is a surprise. If you had asked me to guess, I'd've picked somebody completely different from that. Somebody like that Salus girl, the pianist, the redhead, the one who goes to school in New York.”

“
The concert pianist?
” Terry glanced in disbelief at Mrs. Fitzgibbons. For just a second, his eyes strayed to her breasts. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was sitting up straight, as though in a physical response to the shock of Terry's choice of young women. Her violet dress shimmered under the passing streetlights; she was conscious of the effect she had produced.

“What's so unusual about that?” she demanded, recalling hastily details from an article in the local
Ireland Parish Telegram
about the pianist. “She's in her twenties. She's beautiful. She has a future. You'd make a wonderful match.”

“Me and her?” Young Sugrue couldn't believe his ears. The young woman in question had graduated high school five years earlier and had been known from an early age as a light of the community, a prodigal talent much written about in the local newspaper.

“Don't you think she likes men?”

“I suppose so,” he said.

“Of course she does. You can speed up, by the way. We're not going to a funeral.”

“I think the car is okay.”

“You didn't answer my question. Do you honestly think that Lorraine Salus doesn't like men? Of course she does. It's hard for a girl like that to make a good match. People who are beautiful and gifted, like Lorraine, or yourself for that matter, find it hard in that way. To locate a proper mate, I mean. You can't just take anyone who comes along. I mean it. You may be underestimating yourself.”

The look on the drum major's face, as he glanced round from the steering wheel at Mrs. Fitzgibbons, betrayed the deep core of vanity in him. He was listening intently. To be so susceptible to flattery, she thought, was really quite sad.

“It's your duty,” she went on, “to make a good match. That's something that women understand better than men. Women judge men from a breeding standpoint. A woman always asks herself what kind of children she would have with this man. Men don't do that.”

“That's very interesting.”

“That's why Maureen What's-her-name is chasing after you. She wants to breed up.”

“Breed what?”

“Up! It's instinctive. All females do that. They look to catch a male that is better than they are. It's called breeding up.”

Terry regarded her with an ingenuous stare.

“It comes from nature. That's why wild animals fight in the breeding season. The males fight, and the females watch. And when it's over, the females go to the winner. It's as old as God. It's the oldest thing there is. I guarantee you, if Lorraine Salus saw you leading the band down to the stadium, she'd go crazy. Even I'm impressed. I'm very impressed. Anyone would be impressed.”

“Maureen loves watching,” he added.