Ride a Cockhorse (25 page)

“Julie told me that you had a chauffeur,” Emily said, flashing an obsequious, gap-toothed smile, while watching Mrs. Fitzgibbons change.

As she pulled on her turtleneck, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was both conscious and understanding of the way that the poor girl stared at her. Emily had a short-legged, blockish build, with an arched neck and flat breasts, which added up to something gnomish, even a little malevolent in its ugliness. She had reddish skin and rough hands. Mrs. Fitzgibbons could appreciate how her own womanly form, with its curves and softnesses, not to mention the perfection of her head and throat, could inspire awe in the other. Outdoors, the rain hammered away at the side of the house, buffeting the windows, and kept up a steady rushing noise in the rhododendron leaves. Twice, while dressing, Mrs. Fitzgibbons heard a distinct cracking sound from outside the bedroom window. She was sitting at her dressing table, touching up her makeup, while Emily stood at her elbow, with Mrs. Fitzgibbons's black raincoat folded over her arm.

Presently, a sudden sharp splitting sound brought Mrs. Fitzgibbons to her feet. It was the sound of a bough snapping in two, but was followed instantly by a cry. In the same second, something heavy hit the side of the house. “What the devil?”

“Somebody's out there.” Emily put down the raincoat.

Never a coward, Mrs. Fitzgibbons darted to the window and pulled back the curtains and shade, just as there arose a sound of scuffling footsteps in the mud, and the whomp of a body hitting the clapboards. In the crescent of light shining from the window, Mrs. Fitzgibbons saw the back of Matthew's head disappearing downward into the wet rhododendron leaves. He was wrestling someone to the ground. “That's Matthew!” she said. “He's caught someone.”

“Someone's peeping at you!” Emily astonished the other woman as she dropped everything and ran to the front door. Mrs. Fitzgibbons followed, pulling on her raincoat. In her haste to help Matthew, Emily Krok left the front door thrown wide behind her. From the porch, Mrs. Fitzgibbons detected the pale oval of Julie's face, staring out the back window of the Buick. The rain was blowing across the sidewalk. By this time, Emily was around the side of the house, out of sight, and was shouting angrily. Her raucous shouts were frightening in themselves. “Hit him with something!” she was yelling. “Club him! Club him!”

In no time, the three of them came around the corner of the house. Matthew was clutching Eddie Berdowsky in a headlock and propelling him forward in the rain with skilled violence. Emily had thrown herself into the struggle and was holding Eddie's shirt collar in one fist, and the seat of his trousers in the other. For his part, Eddie was pitched forward at a dangerous angle, as Matthew shot him along in the rain.

“Wouldn't you know it,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, recognizing her son-in-law as the intruder at her window.

“It's a peeping Tom!” Emily confirmed triumphantly.

“You'd better call the police,” said Matthew.

“Take him inside,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, clearly disgusted.

Satisfied that Mrs. Fitzgibbons knew what she was doing, Matthew thrust the rain-soaked man up the steps and into the house. Eddie gaped with bulging eyes at Mrs. Fitzgibbons as he rocketed past her. Emily, not wishing to lose her grip on Eddie's collar and trousers, crashed hard against the doorjamb on the way in. Julie came running from the car. In the front foyer, Eddie's feet were slipping from under him at every step. A little Persian carpet flew sideways as Matthew maneuvered him roughly into the parlor. “Jesus Christ,” Eddie said.

Matthew Dean was incredulous on learning the identity of the other man. Eddie was sitting on the hassock now, gasping for breath. “He's your daughter's husband?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood over her son-in-law. His trouser legs were plastered with mud. He avoided looking up at her.

“Where is Barbara?” she wanted to know.

Eddie held up a staying hand, while regulating his breathing. He couldn't reply for a moment. “Origami class,” he said, finally.

“She's folding birds, you mean.”

Eddie nodded. A spray of rhododendron leaves clung wetly to his shirt.

“This is what I'm saddled with.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons gestured disdainfully.

Julie came into the room, staring aghast at the sight of the man in the drenched blue factory shirt on the hassock. “What happened?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons commenced to castigate her son-in-law in rhythmic locutions, patting the flats of her hands for emphasis. “I go into my bedroom to change my dress, and, lo and behold, somebody's watching me. Somebody's out in the dark peeking in my window. Somebody,” she stressed, “who couldn't impregnate a woman if he had the stuff in a petri dish, wants to watch his wife's mother take her clothes off.”

Eddie showed Matthew a sickly smile. “I lost my key,” he said, pathetically.

Emily Krok hovered close to Eddie, eyeing him with a menacing grimace. “I'd like to tattoo him real good.”

“I run a bank from nine to five,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons's voice climbed, “I come home to dress for dinner, and my daughter's husband is forking off in the bushes outside my window. Because that's what you were doing. We're not children!”

“Frankie!” Eddie protested her words energetically.

“What's more, you can't call the police,” said Matthew.

“That's my point,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “That's what I mean. That's the beauty of it, I suppose. I can't call the police, I can't have him pinched, I can't even tell Barbara.”

“I hope you won't,” Eddie said sincerely.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons turned instructively to Julie Marcotte and Emily. “This is the adult world. This is what you've got to look forward to. The day he married Barbara, he had a pair of my panties in his tuxedo pocket.”

Eddie colored instantly. “That was a misunderstanding.”

Matthew, unable to check himself, began laughing. Mrs. Fitzgibbons laughed, too, and so, to some extent, did Eddie. “Somebody put them there,” he explained lamely. By now, though, the sight of Mrs. Fitzgibbons standing over him in her slender black raincoat, turtleneck sweater, and pants, had begun to work a hold on Eddie. He was staring at her in thrall.

“You're not fit to keep polite society,” she said.

Never in the entire three years of his marriage to Barbara had Eddie presented himself to Mrs. Fitzgibbons as obsequiously as now. In the minutes to come, Mrs. Fitzgibbons called Eddie every name in the book. He was a toady, she said. He was a pervert. His parents were demented. Eddie nodded with philosophical resignation as Mrs. Fitzgibbons characterized his entire family as Neanderthals. “It isn't true?” she said.

“It's true,” Eddie agreed.

“That was why Barbara married him,” she cried. “She didn't want to upset the ecosystem, the balance of nature. Tell me I'm lying.”

“It's true.” Eddie picked wet leaves from his shirt.

“These are orangutans,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “This is the missing link. He can talk, he can drive a car. He puts on his own pants. He can tell a condom from a balloon. There isn't a zoo in the world that wouldn't take him.”

Julie and Emily screeched with laughter as Mrs. Fitzgibbons lashed away at her son-in-law. Oddly, however, when she turned and marched out of the house to the car, with her retinue following, and Julie holding an umbrella over her head, Eddie tagged along. He got into his own car and followed the Buick down Essex Street all the way to the river and across the bridge in the rain to Hadley Falls. The rain was very icy now. The trees in the parking lot of the old Monarch Club dangled ice-laden branches over the two cars and made light clashings on their rooftops. The club was empty, save for Emil, the barman, who sat on a stool, watching television. Sitting at the head of the oak table by the windows athwart the bar, Mrs. Fitzgibbons offered a bona fide picture of the genial dictator relaxing on off-hours with her chums. She entertained them with wit and charm.

“What I like about you four,” she said, putting aside her gloves, “is that none of you is bringing me documents to sign!”

“We're too dumb for that,” Eddie said, laughing.

She signaled imperatively to the barman. “Give them what they want. Bring me mineral water and a menu.”

“Four mineral waters,” said Eddie, whose deference toward Mrs. Fitzgibbons was getting so slavish, it was beginning to draw cynical looks from the others.

“Five in all,” Matthew concurred unhappily.

Even before Emil could return with their menus, however, something happened to produce a most animated effect. Oddly, it was Julie Marcotte who noticed it first. “Chief,” she said, “look who's on television. That's the South Valley man, isn't it?”

The look of intensity that gripped Mrs. Fitzgibbons's face that second, and the suddenness with which she got to her feet, created a noisy stir of excitement at the table. Everyone followed suit. Even Emily Krok stood up. The evening news was being shown on the big color set above the bar, and Tom Pesso, the head of the Channel 6 news bureau, was about to conduct a live interview with the man whom Julie had recognized. It was Mr. William Daviau himself, the South Valley Bank director who had expressed such indignation over the media exposure accorded Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

The newsman was speaking. “Mr. Daviau has requested this chance,” he said, “to rebut certain statements — or to correct unfair impressions, I should say — that he feels were aired over this station on Monday night, by Mrs. Fitzgibbons, the new chief executive of the Parish Bank. I would like to thank you,” he said to the other, “for coming to the studio.”

In the seconds to follow, only the sound of the cold rain hitting the windows of the tavern could be heard, as Mrs. Fitzgibbons and her cronies waited for the man to speak. She had come round in front of the long table and was staring up at the television, her face as pale as murder. For the longest while, nothing happened. William Daviau stared at the newsman in obvious fright. He was tongue-tied. Mr. Pesso tried to help him. “Where would you like to begin, Mr. Daviau?”

The South Valley man wet his lips nervously and opened his mouth to speak, but, as before, nothing came out. The bank director was suffering from a case of stage fright that was rapidly evolving into a living nightmare. Two or three times, he started to speak, but managed only an “um,” or an “ah,” after which his eyes glazed over again, and the silence came back more profoundly than ever.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons's anxiety gave way in a flash to a joyful outburst. Mr. Daviau was still on the screen, stricken with fear; the newsman was posing questions now conceived to elicit simple yes or no replies, but the bank director appeared virtually mindless. His face contorted in pain.

“The voice of the opposition!” cried Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“That man should run for president,” said the bartender.

“Let's have a round of beer,” said Matthew.

“Hey, Chief!” Eddie Berdowsky put on an idiotic face, rolling his eyes and lolling his tongue, and stammered out an impersonation of the pitiful Mr. Daviau — “Ah — um, um — ah, blah, um blah” — while turning and stamping about in a circle, his body limp with amusement; a piece of inspired buffoonery that sent the others into howls of laughter. The floor shook beneath Eddie's feet as he marched round and round.

During the next half hour, Eddie put on such a display of sycophancy that even Julie and Emily were shocked by the son-in-law's shameless behavior. Mrs. Fitzgibbons couldn't open her mouth without Eddie gaping at her with a shiny face and a craven smile. He consumed two mugs of beer and began to sweat profusely. “Did you hear that?” he would cry. “Didja hear what the Chief said? What a sense of humor! Oh, Chief! That's a hot one!” Eddie banged his beer mug on the table and, flinging back his head, gave out with a sudden horselaugh.

Sadly, for the others, Mrs. Fitzgibbons made no attempt to discourage Eddie. She took his servility in stride. This had the effect of encouraging the others to emulate him. He hung on every word she uttered. He sponged up the little water rings on the table before her with his napkin. When the barman brought a basket of bread rolls, Eddie snatched it and set it before her. Through it all, he never took his eyes from her, nor wiped the fixated smile from his face. The only time that Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked at him reproachfully was when Eddie, in a transport of delight over something she had said, clapped his hand to his head with such force that the blow sent his sweat flying in a shiny spray.

By the time Bruce arrived at the Monarch, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's quiet Wednesday evening supper had evolved into a lively, joyous affair, with a great deal of laughter, and her friends banging their glass mugs on the table over practically every remark she made. Mrs. Fitzgibbons cut a fine, boastful figure at the head of the table. Indeed, the spectacle of William Daviau on television had not only embarrassed him, but by contrast illuminated her own rhetorical gifts. For no one could gainsay the brilliance with which she had used the media to capture public attention. Emily Krok spoke up at one point to suggest that Mrs. Fitzgibbons send a funeral bouquet of white carnations to Mr. Daviau's house, but Mrs. Fitzgibbons replied that “persons who dig their own graves should bring their own flowers.”

Bruce had come dressed to perfection, peeling off his raincoat and revealing himself in an elegant chalk-striped gray suit, offset by a pearl-and-black necktie and pearl pocket square. As he advanced across the room, Mrs. Fitzgibbons silenced her friends with a snap of her fingers and gestured for him to take Eddie's place close to her. Bruce received her kiss before sitting.

From the moment he sat, it was clear that he had a matter of importance which he was eager to communicate. Mrs. Fitzgibbons listened with a cold expression as he apprised her of his discovery. It concerned an officer at the bank. As before, the sound of the icy rain striking the roof and windows of the rustic bar lent an ominous counterpoint to the matter at hand. Mrs. Fitzgibbons sat as straight as a rule in her chair, clutching her glass of mineral water; her dark hair and black turtleneck exaggerated the paleness of her face. “Get to the point,” she said.