Ride a Cockhorse (43 page)

The only time that Mrs. Fitzgibbons caught a glimpse of Bruce's temper was the evening in December when he got into a shouting match with Barbara. It had been snowing, and he stood in the middle of the ward, with the snow on the collar of his winter coat and glistening in his hair, and commanded the younger woman to shut her mouth and leave the hospital. He was beside himself to such a degree that his voice actually cracked. After that, Bruce prevailed on both doctors on staff to prohibit Barbara from visiting her mother. Mrs. Fitzgibbons's daughter was only too happy to oblige.

At last, toward the end of January, Mrs. Fitzgibbons fulfilled Dr. Cauley's prognosis to the letter, when, literally overnight, her symptoms faded and vanished like the snow on the window sash. To Bruce, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's return to soundness was like a gift from the gods. She sat before him as a pale but thoroughly rational copy of the woman she had been. She was exhausted and weak, but the bond between her mind and realities external to it was clearly intact. She made perfect sense in everything she said, for the first time in twelve weeks. More puzzling than Mrs. Fitzgibbons's rejuvenation and return to lucidity, by then, was the depth and pertinacity of Bruce's devotion.

The sight of the two of them walking in the enclosed quadrangle outdoors, on sunny weekend afternoons, became a commonplace that winter. Weather allowing, Mrs. Fitzgibbons wore a big woolen sweater and an olive scarf; she held him by the arm. It was apparent to Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself by that time, in her rational understanding of him, that Bruce was devoted to her in a way that went beyond conventional descriptions. Whether his love and steadfastness were occasioned by some blind obstinacy in his makeup, or some hidden frailty — or by some equally recondite virtue in herself — she would probably never know. He allied himself to her to a degree impossible to comprehend. To Mrs. Fitzgibbons's mind, it was not dissimilar from the theological concept of grace, which, at one point in her school years, she had striven to comprehend.

The pathways of the quadrangle were faintly derelict. The bricks underfoot were cracked and icy; patches of black snow lay beneath the ragged privet hedges like dirty newspapers. The sun over the hospital wing was a white wafer in the sky. During these interludes, Bruce entertained her with stories about persons of their acquaintance. By this time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's exciting triumphs in the banking business, when she had lit up the local media with her flamboyance, her oratory, her good looks and indomitable will, were spoken of, when at all, with a mixture of humor and nostalgia. To Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself, that short era was thoroughly anachronistic, as though the memory of it were just a facet of her troubled spirits in the hospital. Still, she couldn't help laughing, however embarrassedly, on learning that Dolores Brouillette had gone away to New York for the Christmas holiday, taking with her her new Oldsmobile Toronado and the balance of the Brouillette checking account, and had never come back. Also, since Bruce seemed not to care about it, the fact that Matthew had begun leading a brawling life, frequenting the most notorious bars in town, and had subsequently left Bruce and moved into a room of his own down by the Public Library, was nothing more than the stuff of delightful gossip.

The strangest anecdote that Bruce retailed that winter was his account of how Jack Greaney had been seen going into a movie house one Friday night with Emily Krok, and that they were seen again, a second time, not two days later, going side by side up Beech Street, looking for all the world like a fond young couple.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons took a surprisingly charitable view of this report, even after Bruce explained how Emily had knocked Jack out at the bank. Bruce found the story incredible. Mrs. Fitzgibbons thought otherwise.

“Jack's a very nice boy, delicate,” she said, “and well behaved. He needs someone rough and ready. He's very bright. He hides his light under a bushel. Emily is a diamond in the rough.”

“She talks about flattening him,” Bruce said. “That's how she introduces him. ‘This is Jack who I coldcocked.' ”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not dissuaded. “I find no fault with that, if they're happy. I think they're lucky. The best thing to be in this world is lucky. If you're lucky, you'll be happy. You can't not be.” She tightened her clasp on Bruce's arm. At the iron gate, they turned and started back. “The last thing I would want written on my gravestone would be, ‘She was unlucky.' ”

“You're right about that.”

“So far,” she said, “I've been lucky.”

In fact, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not quite the same anymore. That spring, after going to live with Bruce for several days, then returning to her home, her reticence and her indifference to the future were readily evident. She was accepting of everything, even to the point of apathy. Bruce managed her daily affairs and never ceased paying the most sedulous attention to her appearance. By midsummer, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's weight was in fact down to normal; her hair had regained its shine; she was still capable of fetching admiring glances in public. A memorable moment for Mrs. Fitzgibbons was when she asked Bruce if she might not help out at the salon, by looking after the cash register and handling the incoming calls of women seeking appointments. Bruce appeared genuinely appalled by the suggestion, so much so, in fact, that Mrs. Fitzgibbons was never so convinced of the depth and genuineness of his adulation of her as at that time. Even after he had acceded, and she had begun to spend her afternoons with him at the salon, the extent of his attachment continued to mystify her. Many months had gone by, and a thousand different instances of his regard for her had come and gone, before Mrs. Fitzgibbons successfully grasped the whole of it. There was something in her that he adored; something he worshiped. There was no other word for it.

It showed in his dealings with her every minute of the day; he leaped to open doors for her; waited at dinner till she was comfortably seated before seating himself; deferred instantaneously to her preferences, whether in tuning a television channel or selecting a jar of olives. Bruce was as close to perfection in consistency of behavior as nature ever intended anyone should be. In time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons accepted his passion, as it fueled and nourished an ancient childhood narcissism within her, and she dealt with him in the way that pleased him most; she showed him a gentle aloofness, an air of certitude, the quality of a superior being that he strove so hard to engender. On the summer day when he framed the handsome gold-edged certificate of award that had been conferred on Mrs. Fitzgibbons by the Massachusetts State Council of Women and insisted on hanging it in a prominent spot on the wall in his salon, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was conscious of the thrill she imparted to him by showing him a trace of dissatisfaction. It was closing time on a Saturday in August. They were alone in the salon. Bruce had removed the paper and string and was holding the framed document in his two hands.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was standing at his side. She had just switched off the air conditioning and cut the power in the cash register. The only lights left burning were those above the several wall mirrors behind him.

“I hope you like it,” he said, and then looked at her questioningly. He wanted her to reject it, and she knew it. Currents of concern rose and fell in her breast. She saw the color in his cheeks. He was testing her.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked at the frame, conscious of the impressive purse of her lips and the expression of hopeful expectancy on his face. Her reply, when it came, was as soft as a thought. “I don't,” she said. “You'll have to frame it differently.”

Bruce nodded resignedly, as though her rejection of his choice had confirmed his own better judgment. He looked up then into the steely, dark blue eyes. “I'll bring it back.”

“You do that,” she said.

“I'll order the gold-leaf frame.”

And that, on balance, was how it went, through the late days of summer and on into the fall of the year. In fact, from that time forward, the sight of Mrs. Fitzgibbons emerging from the downtown mall at closing time, with Bruce beside her, the two of them coming out the walkway past the darkened storefronts into the silent, lamplit street, was nothing more extraordinary than that of any two people anywhere on earth, coming out any door.

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Copyright © 1991 by Raymond Kennedy

Introduction copyright © 2012 by Katherine A. Powers

All rights reserved.

Cover image: Tim Davis, Searchlights (Illilluminations), 2005; courtesy of Tim Davis and Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York

Cover design: Katy Homans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

Kennedy, Raymond, 1934–2008.

 Ride a cockhorse / by Raymond Kennedy ; introduction by

Katherine A. Powers.

p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

ISBN 978-1-59017-489-0 (alk. paper)

I. Title.

PS3561.E427R5 2012

813'.54—dc23

2012008640

eISBN 978-1-59017-504-0
v1.0

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