Ride a Cockhorse (37 page)

The change that came over Mrs. Fitzgibbons upon hanging up the phone seemed inspired by a powerful tonic. The mental revival was so thorough in its effect that she actually acknowledged the frightening character of her actions. She recalled demolishing an immense window with something solid in hand. She remembered crouching in terror behind the arbor vitae bushes by the city hall steps, hiding from the ambulance attendants. Her stockinged legs had been covered with muddy snow, her arm felt broken. Mrs. Fitzgibbons even remembered threatening the EMT men with death if either of them dared lay a hand on her person. (She had actually said that. “I'll have you executed.”)

By coincidence, Mrs. Fitzgibbons hung up the phone at the same moment that her son-in-law, Eddie, paying his first visit, was being admitted through the locked doors.

“I brought you some tangerines, Mom,” he said.

She was standing in her stockinged feet, her thoughts swinging back and forth in a mind grown almost worrisomely lucid. A split second later, she caught sight of Dr. Singh emerging from behind the nurses' desk, his swarthy head shining moistly in the fluorescent light, and turned on him. “It was you,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. With her good arm, she thrust Eddie out of the way, knocking the grocer's bag from his hand. Tangerines rolled on the floor. In a thin, recriminatory voice, Mrs. Fitzgibbons started in on the psychiatrist. “You throw me into a general ward, with the dregs of mankind, ask me a hundred thousand questions, feed me Styrofoam gruel, lock all the doors, and no one tells me my rights.”

“Mrs. Fitzgibbons—” Motioning for patience, the doctor retreated a step. Mrs. Fitzgibbons closed the distance.

“I'm arrested against my will—” she started anew.

“You weren't arrested. Please,” he protested.

“I'm picked up against my will, I'm taken in, I'm questioned, I'm drugged. I'm transferred in the dead of night from one place to another. Then,” she said, showing him her navy blue eyes up close, “I'm further interrogated, pumped up with more drugs, locked into a ward with your usual assortment of nut cases, like some Soviet dissident—”

“It is not like that. If you don't step away from me, I have the authority to have you restrained and tranquilized.”

Eddie spoke up from behind her in a surprisingly menacing tone. “I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

“I'm told what to do,” she railed at him, “I'm told where to sleep, I'm given an old rag of a sweater to wear, gruel three times a day, some pills in a cup, and I'm supposed to be happy. I'm supposed to start ovulating every time you walk into the room, I suppose! You, an alien who ought to be locked up for what he does to the English language.”

In an aside, Eddie explained to Mrs. Huller, a nurse's aide, who had stopped at his side to watch. “That's Mrs. Fitzgibbons,” he said. “She practically runs this town.”

“I'm a Bombay street beggar!” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“I'm going into my office,” said Dr. Singh.

“
You'll stand here and take it
,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons in a very big voice. She was taller than he and backed him up to the glass wall of his office.

“Do you work for her?” Mrs. Huller asked Eddie.

Eddie answered significantly. “Everybody works for her.”

“I'm not asking for special treatment,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons persisted. “I don't expect people to break a leg to go fetch what I need, or even strive to make a good impression on me.” She pulled off the sling that supported her arm, and threw it down. “There was ice,” she explained. “I slipped on it. I fell! I hurt my arm.”

“You suffered a serious manic disorder, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. You lost control.”

“
What if I did?
” she challenged him at close range, her head tilted to one side, her eyes drilling into his. “Do you want to pick a fight with me?”

“Somebody's cruising for a bruising,” said Eddie.

“I could close this place down in a week.”

“No one is holding you against your will, but you can't be released on a Sunday.”

Twenty minutes later, before Bruce and the others arrived, Mrs. Fitzgibbons called Mr. Frye on the public telephone. She phoned him at home. Eddie stood beside her, holding her canvas tote bag in one hand and her address book in the other, while she dialed the number. Growing clearer in mind, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had recalled her scheduled luncheon appointment in Sturbridge the following day with the man from the Shawmut Bank in Boston.

“You'll go in my place, Leonard,” she instructed the man on the other end.

“What happened?” he asked, suspiciously.

Surmising that news of her hospitalization had reached him, Mrs. Fitzgibbons raised her voice in a way designed to forestall skepticism. “Never mind about me. I fell on the ice. It's nothing.”

“Where are you?” he persisted, insidiously.

“Listen,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons stated, while gripping the phone to her ear and staring vacantly at her son-in-law, who was staring then at the soft contour of her bosom, “I didn't call to file a medical report. A car will come for you at noon.”

“Will I see you before I go?” Mr. Frye's suspicions persisted in a maddening fashion. Had Mrs. Fitzgibbons been fully herself of recent days, she would have exploded. For now, she obeyed the urge to explain herself.

“No,” she said, “you will not. Why are you asking me? Why should I see you? I've spoken to Zabac,” she lied. “I've explained to him why I want this. You'll give Nate Solomon every encouragement. Do you understand?”

Still, the man on the other end of the line hemmed and hawed. She could picture him sitting in front of a televised football game, blinking and grimacing, a portrait in middle-aged pathos.

“I'm only worried that we're going off half-cocked,” he said.

That did it for Mrs. Fitzgibbons. For the first time since the previous evening, when she lost her temper about Mr. Curtin Schreffler, she employed the big, thrilling voice that Providence had conferred on her a couple of weeks ago. “YOU'RE NOT PAID TO WORRY!” Her hand shook as she shouted.

Eddie stifled a laugh, clapping a hand to his temple and lurching to one side. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was white with fury. Patients, shuffling past, stopped and stared in wonder.

“I'll send Felix!” she bawled. “I'll send Mr. Kim! I'll send Connie McElligot!
Worry?
When you're licking stamps in the mailroom, you'll have reason to worry!”

“I wasn't disagreeing, Frankie,” Mr. Frye objected ghostily.

“YOU BE READY AT NOON!” The voice was simply indescribable.

“Noon,” Mr. Frye repeated.

“You be ready at twelve sharp, and sign anything that man puts in front of you. I don't expect you to understand me. I expect you to carry out my orders.”

After hanging up, while still fulminating, she allowed Eddie to crouch before her and help her on with her heels.

“These Lilliputians!” she said.

She strode toward the sun room. Eddie came sniggering along behind her, carrying her tote, his eyes fixed on the vibration of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's calves.

“He'll do what you told him, Mom.”

She gestured angrily. “Well, I'm going to be their big boogums from now on, mark my words.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was discharged from the hospital by Dr. Cauley late on Monday morning. At the time of her release, she was in an unexpectedly becalmed state of mind, however, despite her refusal these past forty-eight hours of her medication. By now, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's reputation among the hospital staff was such that her departure created a stir. She was looked upon by the help as something of a local force, a phenomenon, someone who had begun dominating the news in a way that portended even bigger things. Earlier, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had telephoned Julie at the bank, and instructed her to contact Mr. Curtin Schreffler and notify him that she wanted to see him in her office at one o'clock. She was not feeling especially resentful that morning toward the president of Citizens, but was acting on the information furnished her by Mr. Brouillette of her competitor's grave condition regarding the Mannox Apremont Company. That is to say, Mrs. Fitzgibbons saw nothing extraordinary in treating the president of a sovereign institution as though he were nothing more important than a book-keeper on her staff; in her quiet state of mind, she saw the matter in its essentials; in Felix Hohenberger's portfolio, she held a delinquent note on a company whose failure would prove ruinous to the other bank, and was therefore ordering its leader to report to her. If Mrs. Fitzgibbons had stopped to think about her rise to prominence, she would have seen this brash, theatrical rejection of protocol and of the social niceties as the hallmark of her success.

One of the nurses who was most admiring of Mrs. Fitzgibbons was Ellen Montcalm, a stoutish young woman with brilliant bottle-green eyes and frizzy hair. Nurse Montcalm had just heard a news item on her car radio. Mrs. Fitzgibbons, she said, had been selected over the weekend by the Massachusetts State Council of Women as recipient of one of its highest achievement awards, along with five other women from the state. Of everyone present, Bruce was demonstrably the most excited by the news; he hugged Mrs. Fitzgibbons. The nurse asked for her autograph.

After tying her scarf about her throat, Mrs. Fitzgibbons took the ballpoint and sheet of paper in hand. News of the award generated interest among staff members and patients alike.

“My father knew your husband,” the nurse remarked.

“Knew Larry?”

“He knew him from their days at the Chestnut Street School. He said that when Larry Fitzgibbons died, it was the saddest day of his life.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons handed the woman the paper and pen. “Larry didn't die,” she said. “He just slowed down terrifically.”

Matthew and Dolores, who were standing by the door waiting to be joined by Bruce and Mrs. Fitzgibbons, shouted with laughter. Others joined in. Even Dr. Cauley could not restrain himself.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons and her friends waited then as Ellen unlocked the outer doors. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not smiling, nor did she even look back from the elevators to acknowledge the salutations called to her from behind. The prospect of freedom and fresh air, and of her return to duty, set all else at naught. She waited solemnly on the gravel walk as Matthew Dean brought the car round. The sky above the distant river was the color of a wet bed sheet. As she did not invite anyone to join her in the back seat of Matthew's black sedan, Bruce and Matthew rode up front, with Dolores between them.

At the outskirts of the city, Eddie Berdowsky was spotted coming the other way in his mud-spattered hatchback. Eddie pumped his horn and swung around on the highway. He fell in behind them. The sight of the filthy compact following Matthew's gleaming, highly polished Buick down Dwight Street toward the business district was curious to the eye. It looked as though the Buick had snagged something under its wheels and was towing it to the city dump.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons's entry into the Parish Bank that morning produced a momentary hush, as she darted across the glassy floor toward her office. Had anyone credited the whispered rumors about her mysterious hospitalization Friday night, or wondered about her physical or emotional soundness, one look at her this morning put an end to it. In all her years at Parish, she had never looked more fit or adequate to her tasks.

“Look! It's the Chief!” Deborah Schwartzwald was the first to give voice to her feelings. Deborah's jewel-like eyes gleamed fanatically. “I knew it! I knew she'd come.”

To Mrs. Fitzgibbons, the grand interior of the bank with its spectacular dome was more welcoming than home itself. Her spirits were bounding. Julie Marcotte came running to take her coat. “It was like death without you here this morning,” she exclaimed. She carried Mrs. Fitzgibbons's coat like a sacred vestment to the closet.

“Get me Lionel Kim.”

“Right away!” Julie snapped.

“I want coffee, the mail, the morning paper, any telephone messages—”

“Mr. Zabac called from Falmouth. He sounded really upset, I thought. He asked what time you were coming in.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons brushed Julie's remark into oblivion. “Get moving.”

“He said that Mr. Hooton had resigned over the weekend. He was speaking in a loud, high-pitched tone of voice. He said he'd call you from the airport. Did you know that Mr. Hooton resigned?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons had no patience for persons in responsible positions who flew off to Cape Cod when a competitor was all but begging to be plucked from the bough. Mrs. Fitzgibbons worked on her feet. She tore open her mail.

“Call Maloney and Halpern,” she said. “Tell them I want a preliminary agreement drawn up for the takeover of the Citizens Bank. You tell them I want a document on which a signature means something. And I want it in an hour!”

“I haven't heard back from Mr. Schreffler,” Julie interjected, remarking on the president's failure so far to agree to Mrs. Fitzgibbons's summons.

Although she was eager to act, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's thinking was very agitated. It took Julie's remark to concentrate her mind. “You get them on the phone,” she said.

Blanching, Julie hurried back to her desk.

“Because if I have to go over there,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons called after her, “they won't like it. I want that man in my office.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons's frustration escalated to the point where she rushed to the door to repeat her instructions about her lawyers. Julie, who wrote down everything, scratched away at her pad before picking up the telephone. “You tell Maloney and Halpern I want a binding document. A preliminary agreement with murderous penalties built in for welshers.”

“Yes, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

Coloring angrily, Mrs. Fitzgibbons returned to her desk. “He'll just be a number in my computers,” she said.