Ride a Cockhorse

by Raymond Kennedy

  “Go back to your job.”

  “I’d do anything for you,” Emily added, not hearing. “You’re fair to everybody. You’re honest and beautiful. Ever since you changed, we’re all behind you.”

  “Since I changed?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons appeared puzzled.

  “When you became different,” Emily explained. “When you changed. When you started talking out — scolding people for this and that. When you were in the newspaper. When you were on television. We were so proud of you. I was so proud of you. I could have killed Mrs. Wilson that day.”

  Transformed by her own words, Emily Krok was left gazing abjectly at Mrs. Fitzgibbons. The light of reverence showed through her distorted features. She wanted to say more. “You ought to wring her neck.”

  Mrs. Fitzgibbons reached with a fingertip and brushed a tear-stain on Emily’s cheek.

  “You ought to break her back,” Emily said.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons soothed the girl. “I’ll destroy Mrs. Wilson.”

  “She should be chain-sawed. She should be killed in her sleep.”

  “You’ll work for Julie from now on. You’re going to be Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s little spy.”

  “I’d like that. You’re beautiful. In every way,” Emily added, in raptures.

  “Julie is very loyal to me, and so will you be. You’ll keep your eyes and ears peeled and report to me in secret everything that’s going on. This afternoon, I want you to go up to my house and give the place a good cleaning.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got her purse from her desk. “It hasn’t been touched in a month. Make everything sparkle and shine. I’ll be home at five.”

  With Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s house key in hand, Emily paused in the rear doorway of the office, her knees bumping and the toes of her sponge-soled shoes turned inward. She reminded Mrs. Fitzgibbons of an old painting she had seen of a knot-faced medieval peasant, stooped with hardship, her body afflicted with premature age. She was the exact opposite of how Mrs. Fitzgibbons saw herself, a stylish modern-day woman commanding the fortunes of a powerful institution. “Go along, darling,” she said, with charity for the pigeon-toed girl hunched in the doorway in her forest green jumper. “I know how miserable you are.”

  Emily stared back with a fixated expression. “I’d do anything for you, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. Honest.”

  “Start in the kitchen,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “and work your way toward the front of the house.”

  By closing time that Wednesday, when she called Leonard Frye into her office to brief him on his Hartford assignment, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had regained her confident outlook. The ghastly look of Mr. Frye standing in her doorway startled her. It did not occur to Mrs. Fitzgibbons that the man whom she had replaced and demoted half expected to be fired, or, for that matter, that Mr. Frye, in the interim, had developed a severe middle-aged crush on his boss.

  “You look like you’ve donated a gallon of blood. Shut the door behind you. I have an important assignment for you.”

  She regarded him across the lamplit, dark-grained surface of her big desk and shook her head in dismay at the notion that two weeks ago this fellow was overseeing her work and giving her orders. The impression was unsettling.

  “You’re not ill, are you?”

  “Not at all.” Mr. Frye glanced about for a chair, but Mrs. Fitzgibbons had ordered Julie to take the chair out of her office following the episode with Desmond Kane. No other employees would abuse their welcome by remaining seated after she had finished with them if there was no chair for them to sit on in the first place.

  “This will only take a minute,” she said, and instructed him then on the matter of his visit to the George Hitchings Corporation.

  “You want me to do that?” Mr. Frye was clearly impressed by the size and reputation of the firm she was talking about.

  “I think you can handle it.”

  Ironically, of all the employees who had felt the impact of Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s regime, it was Mr. Frye, her fallen predecessor, who appeared most convinced of the validity of her success. It showed in his face.

  “Look your best,” she told him. “Be personable down there. They know you’re a good technical man because I told them you were. We’re looking for bigger game,” she boasted. “Under me, Leonard, everyone on my staff is going to get an equal chance to show me what they can do. Everybody starts at go. And don’t think I won’t be cracking the whip.”

  “You’re doing a fine job,” he put in quietly.

  “I’m going to increase the spread between costs and yields if it kills me.” Her spine tingled. “Everything rides on my ability to do that.” She touched off essential points on the fingers of her left hand. “Unprecedented publicity, lower operating costs, low-cost funds in volume, low-risk loans with a solid yield, and a lean, hard-hitting staff underneath me.”

  For the first time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons detected the distinct look of romantic infatuation that left Mr. Frye’s temples tinged with pink. The realization embarrassed her and led her to address Mr. Frye in a manner quite different from her earlier suggestion about his career possibilities in New York.

  “You’re not twenty-five years old, Leonard. I have to be shown that you can still cut it. This is your retirement job. You can’t pack up and run off to Hawaii. You can’t decide overnight to become an oceanographer or a pineapple grower. You’re over fifty,” she said, “and you’ve got yourself a hard-driving boss.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons could restrain her tongue no longer. For two hours, the compulsion to mouth an obscenity had been building within her. “Don’t think for a second that I can’t be one motherfucker,” she said.

  Mr. Frye swallowed hard over that one, but succeeded at maintaining his balance and an unruffled expression.

  “I’m your future.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons swung round to face the door, as Julie entered with a folder in her hand. “What is it, sugarplum?”

  Across the face of the manila folder, in bold black letters, was the legend, “Background Report on Laurence and Morris De Maria. Confidential to Mrs. Fitzgibbons, from J. Greaney.”

  “What have we here?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons peeled open the folder and regarded its contents with a self-satisfied smirk.

  “Has something happened with the De Marias?” Mr. Frye had caught sight of the lettering on the folder and spoke up instinctively.

  She ignored him, as she turned a page of the carefully typed report and began scanning the section titled “Current Activities, Employers, Organizations, Social Acquaintances.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons felt a voluptuous thrill over her power to commission such a detailed document on such short notice. She liked, too, the way Jack expressed some of his findings in the secretive language of undercover intrigue. The last sentence of the first paragraph read, “A ‘friend’ of this institution reports that the latter, Morris De Maria, was refused employment at the firm of the Nicholson Wire Co. over his inability to explain the cause of his dismissal from his previous post. Our ‘friend’ reported further that Mr. M. De Maria and his wife, Marie, later engaged in a vicious shouting match in their car outside the wire plant.”

  “This is exactly what I wanted!” Mrs. Fitzgibbons slammed shut the folder and rapped on her desk for Julie. “Tell Jack I’m pleased. Tell him I’ll thank him tomorrow. Tell him to get in here in the morning.” She turned to Mr. Frye. “I’m going to put Laurence De Maria in jail. I’m going to put him in state prison. I’m sending him to trial,” she said, “and he’s going to jail.”

  To Mr. Frye, the woman behind the big lamplit desk looked genuinely scary. The flesh of her face was drawn back with mask-like tautness. Her blue eyes flared and sparkled.

  “He’ll rot in there,” she said harshly. “And don’t think I won’t have a couple of million-dollar lawyers pressuring the district attorney. I can afford the cream of the crop. I’m going to lock him up. I’ll put him away for years.”

  “But what did he do?”

  “He can beg for mercy till he’s blue in the face,” she said.

  TWEL
VE

  When I come into the room,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed Emily in a kindly manner, “always step to one side. It’s impolite to stand in my way.”

  Emily Krok watched as Mrs. Fitzgibbons glanced cursorily about the kitchen at the gleaming floor and appliances and stepped on into the next room. Outside, darkness had fallen, and a cold autumn rain was coming down. The rain increased in intensity, hitting the bedroom windows, while Mrs. Fitzgibbons changed clothes. She wanted something sporty for a change, and settled on a black turtleneck and black pants. Both Matthew and Julie were waiting outdoors in the Buick. Mrs. Fitzgibbons didn’t want to eat alone tonight. She had made plans to meet Bruce for supper out at the Monarch Club, a rustic gin mill three miles north of town, but then decided to invite the others, as well. She wanted to be surrounded by her intimate circle.

  “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.