Ride a Cockhorse (42 page)

Mrs. Fitzgibbons, with the weight of her torso on his face, continued to apostrophize the fates that bedeviled her. “A woman could talk herself blue in the face. Nothing sinks in. Words aren't enough. He has to be shown. He has to be wrestled to the floor and shown.
I
run the bank!” She tightened the grip of her fist round the knot of his tie underneath her, while bouncing up and down atop him, and repeating this last assertion, over and over. Mr. Zabac's little glassy shoes jumped and twirled in the air behind her back. “Mrs. Fitzgibbons runs the bank,” she said. “Mrs. Fitzgibbons runs the bank.”

Not surprisingly, Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued to ventilate her emotions during the long car ride back to town that afternoon. Even Emily, who had often shown herself to be fearless, gave Mrs. Fitzgibbons a wide berth; she sat against the back door on her side of the Buick and stared with a dark, idiotic expression at her boss. In truth, Mrs. Fitzgibbons did present an alarming aspect. Her hair was disheveled, her makeup smeared, her coat thrown wide. She lamented the extremity of circumstances that required the taking of such extreme measures. Like many a rape artist, she was experiencing powerful feelings of revulsion toward the victim, in his want of appreciation, his ineptitude. She stared at her upraised palms. “I could have strangled him with my bare hands.”

By the time she reentered the bank at a few minutes before closing, signs of the violence that had taken place at Mr. Zabac's house were still evident upon her, not just in the disorder of her clothes and hair, but in the mortal whiteness of her face. She pushed her way rudely through lines of last-minute customers queued at the windows. Unknown to her, hostile forces were already gathering against her, when she started up the back staircase to Mr. Zabac's office. The first clear sign of trouble in the air came when Jack Greaney, the head teller, ordered his staff to close their windows. He then buttonholed Emily Krok, who had followed Mrs. Fitzgibbons into the bank by a few seconds, and had just returned her pea coat to the ladies rest room, and let fall the news that something in the nature of a descent upon the bank by a unit of the local police was imminent. Emily was on her way upstairs, when Jack told her to stay put. Of all those persons in the bank that witnessed the events that were about to unfold and later recounted them, none would have omitted as the starting point of it all the quick, violent altercation that flared up between Emily and Jack Greaney.

To begin with, Emily had probably grown frustrated in this past week by her never being called on to show Mrs. Fitzgibbons her love and loyalty in other than tacit, symbolic ways; Emily was a hooligan at heart. For another thing, Jack Greaney made the mistake of laying his hand on Emily's arm while talking to her. This restraining gesture, to the mind of the stooped, churlish girl, was nothing less than a signal to combat. The brutality of what followed would haunt the young bank teller for a long time to come. The fact that she caught him off-balance, just as he was turning on his heel to point a finger at the staircase to the second floor, was likely noted by nobody. Not only did Emily sock him flush on the temple with all her might, but as Jack Greaney's foot caught on the leg of the desk behind him, and as he started to go down, she continued to slug away at his head with the most astonishing dexterity. As he was rolling sideways over the edge of the desk, Emily connected a left hook to the jaw that was so brilliant in execution — thrown with her head up and a sudden violent clockwise snap of her hips — had it been delivered at ten o'clock that night at Madison Square Garden, it would have brought ten thousand fight fans to their feet. Jack went down before her like a dead man.

As if the hideous sight of Jack Greaney's unconscious form stretched out on the marble floor (just his shoes sticking up from behind the desk) was not enough, the arrival of eight uniformed policemen, with Mr. Zabac himself walking along hurriedly in their midst, was more than sufficient to convince all who saw it of the magnitude of the drama unfolding before them. Mr. Zabac was so small amongst the strapping men in blue, as he darted his way forward, aiming them toward the staircase, that he was all but hidden from sight. The overall impression of the moving mass of sober policemen was one of great urgency. One of the onlookers, Felix Hohenberger of the home loan section, stated later that the dramatic rush of police, intent upon apprehending the woman upstairs, seemed less like the arrest of a small-town banker than the lightning seizure of a national leader. Others must have shared Mr. Hohenberger's impression, as scores of staff members and customers of the bank stood about the main floor in silence as the last of the police officers vanished up the staircase.

Notwithstanding her prescience up until now in anticipating the actions of others, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was nevertheless caught off guard. When she first heard the commotion from the foot of the stairs, she was brandishing in her right hand the sheaf of papers that Curtin Schreffler had earlier signed, and waving them in Julie Marcotte's face. She appeared insane as she stomped back and forth in a threatening manner. She had lost one of her gloves, and her shoes were badly muddied. Her eyes held a smoky glow. “I'm not an unreasonable person. I'm not an ogre. I have the right to expect obedience. I have the duty to expect it. Who will obey my lieutenants if my lieutenants disobey me? That's why I'm here,” she chanted. “That's what I do. There are people out there who profit from being shouted at.” She slammed the papers down on Mr. Zabac's desk. “A man who experiences terror will sign his name to anything you put in front of him — at any hour of the day — at any hour of the night — in any language —” She swept the air with her arm.

Led by Mr. Zabac, the police came bustling into the room. While the chairman had not specified the type of attack that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had perpetrated upon him in his house, or that his wife had been wheeled about outdoors in the frigid air for a quarter hour during the course of the debauchery transpiring indoors, his fear of the woman in the gray leather coat was writ on his face. It was clear that Louis Zabac's appreciation of human nature as something fundamentally decent had been dealt a devastating blow. “
That's
her,” he cried, and skipped nimbly to one side as though to avoid a bullet.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons recoiled instinctively, certain in her paranoia that she was about to be murdered.

“That's the one!” Mr. Zabac repeated. “She's the one!”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons retreated to the windows. “You weasel!”

The sergeant in charge, Bill Daley, who answered to the odd nickname of Chandler Bill, was known in the department for his skills at defusing violent domestic fights. Employing an authoritative voice, Chandler Bill positioned himself at the center of things. “Now, there is no need to shout. That's why I'm here.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons's face was contorted. Her heart was going like mad. The room was full of policemen. Her brain dimmed and brightened. “I'm not leaving here,” she said.

“She's a criminal!”

“Hold on, I said.” Officer Daley reproached the small man behind him.

From time to time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons lost sight altogether of the chairman behind the mass of uniformed bodies, only, however, to see his head pop out once more. He was peeking at her round a policeman's elbow. “Get her out,” he said.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons railed at him. “I'll see you in Hell with your back broke, you treacherous —”

Suddenly, Mrs. Fitzgibbons darted forward, her coattails flying, snaked past the astonished Officer Daley, and clubbed Mr. Zabac four times with the solid heel of her fist. The downward blows came thick and fast. “Fucking dwarf!”

A bright spurt of blood flashed in a scarlet jet from the chairman's nose, as the policemen grabbed Mrs. Fitzgibbons and wrestled her to one side. They were handling her roughly.

Mr. Zabac clutched his face with both hands, a dark thread of blood leaking over his knuckle.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was shouting now in a tremendous voice, her arms pinned behind her back. “I'll chop his fucking spine off! I'm the Chief here! I'm —”

By the time the police got her into handcuffs, and started marching Mrs. Fitzgibbons through Jeannine Mielke's outer office to the stairs, the great rotunda of the bank below was packed with people. The four empty police cruisers, pulled up on the brick walks of the pedestrian mall, with their doors flung open and their roof lights still flashing, had created a sensation. Word spread so rapidly that shoppers from the mall were streaming curiously into the Parish Bank when Mrs. Fitzgibbons was brought to the stairtop. Her hands were cuffed in front of her waist. Chandler Bill Daley was gripping her arm.

Propelled forward through the crowd on the main floor, Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked at no one. She was deathly white. Her features manifested intense scorn. She marched with her head up. The manacles on her wrists glittered in plain sight. No one present, stranger or friend, could have gainsaid the presence behind that cold, milk white demeanor of a proud and resolute spirit.

She spoke only once, as the crowd parted to make way for the solid wedge of policemen surrounding her. “They wonder why banks are in trouble!” she flung out.

Two or three of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's most ardent, fanatical followers hurled encouragement at her as she was sped across the floor.

Deborah Schwartzwald was crying openly, beside herself with grief. “You'll be back, Mrs. Fitzgibbons!”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons maintained her self-control with heroic forbearance, a grim expression on her lips, till she was locked in the back seat of a cruiser. The police cars started up and seemed to be moving about in every direction possible. However, pictures of the most frightening nature were erupting in Mrs. Fitzgibbons's mind. She imagined her tongue being torn out. She had a vision of a severed head in her lap. She tore at her manacles. The naked trees flanking the road to Smith's Ferry offered a grotesque parody, with their frozen limbs, of a loving world. She was by then crying like a child and throwing herself against the Plexiglas barrier. “Don't take me to the hospital!” She beat on the glass with her fists. “Don't take me. Somebody help me.”

From that Monday in November, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's days of glory were over. After this, there would be no return to prominence. There would be no subsequent struggles to wage against detractors or the status quo; no chauffeured car; no band of zealots to implement her will; no executive dicta to issue. She passed quietly into a shadowy region of featureless rooms and iron-screened windows. Her days that winter were spent in a quiet, narcotic stupor. The Thorazine, one of her medications, dried her out so badly that the skin on her fingers turned yellow and cracked open. Her hands and feet were a sight. She slept twelve to fourteen hours a day, ate tasteless meals from a Styrofoam tray, and gained several pounds. Her hair lost its luster. In behavior, she was reticent and thoughtful. The days melted one into the other.

At first, in the weeks before Christmas 1987, many of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's admirers and hangers-on visited her at the Smith's Ferry hospital, bringing flowers and candy, little mementos of their devotion to her during her season of triumph. However, the transformation of the vivacious leader into the smiling, acquiescent lady seated on her green plastic chair in the sun room was too shocking for most of them. They could not reconcile the distressing spectacle of Mrs. Fitzgibbons, looking wan and sedated, with the happy authoritarian figure they had known. If anything, she may have represented to them a living symbol of the darker side of their mortal hopes.

One of the most startling changes was the lack of curiosity she showed in matters concerning the Parish Bank. The fact, for example, that Mr. Hooton had never returned to his job, and that Lionel Kim had indeed succeeded to his post as treasurer, inspired no more of a response from Mrs. Fitzgibbons than an appreciative smile. She was pleased for Mr. Kim. She was confident, she said, that he would succeed brilliantly and be a credit to all. She was similarly indifferent a few days later to the front-page news of Mr. Louis Zabac's takeover of the Citizens Bank. Julie Marcotte brought the paper to the hospital and expressed indignation that Mrs. Fitzgibbons's name did not appear anywhere in the article. Mrs. Fitzgibbons, though, was blissfully indifferent to the omission. “I never wanted to be in the paper,” she said. Julie was left shaken by the experience.

The only person capable of upsetting Mrs. Fitzgibbons's equanimity was her daughter, who was brimming over with sour feelings. Typically, Eddie stood behind Barbara, nodding sadly over his wife's wisdoms, a picture of the errant, penitential husband. He wore a big baseball cap covered with environmental patches and a new pair of rather lumpy machinist's shoes made of a synthetic material that shone like glass and squeaked when he walked. He jangled keys in his pocket nervously, while Barbara castigated her mother. At such times, Mrs. Fitzgibbons just stared into space and winced.

The happiest moment of her day was immediately after supper, every evening, without exception, when Bruce arrived in the ward like clockwork; he came striding to her, looking his fashionable best, and always bearing some precious trifle or other. He brought her a tiny radio, a scented handkerchief in a box, perfume, a tea rose, a pretty scarf. Besides being a picture to the eye, he was exuberant. He was the soul of good cheer. If Bruce's behavior was indicative, one might have surmised that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had suffered nothing more debilitating than a nagging head cold. It was Bruce, too, who telephoned Dr. Cauley and complained insistently about the dehydrating effects of Thorazine, which led to the painful but timely discovery that Mrs. Fitzgibbons's system was dangerously impacted. Bruce did everything for Mrs. Fitzgibbons that anyone who cherished her might conceivably have done, not to mention the way he fussed over her hair for an hour or so each evening. He also repeated candidly to her the doctor's description of her condition. Although Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not able to focus upon or grasp the larger significance of what he was saying, she was comforted by the way he said it. She had suffered a severe manic episode, triggered by psychological changes she was undergoing. That was how he put it. It was Dr. Cauley's informed guess, he said, that Mrs. Fitzgibbons would not remit her symptoms gradually, over an extended period, but rather all at once, virtually overnight, at some point in the weeks to come. “Then,” said Bruce, “we'll take you home.”