Ride a Cockhorse (6 page)

“Yes,” he countered, “it is.”

“All we'd be doing is protecting somebody whose appreciation of you isn't worth five cents.”

“Are you talking about Ruth?” he exclaimed, invoking his wife by name.

“I'm talking about someone who has done nothing to help propel you one inch in your career, except to let herself go to the devil. You shouldn't even
be
in a town like this. Not at your stage of life. You could have done anything. How old are you? Fifty?”

“Yes.”

“In the big banks,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “like the Morgan Guaranty or Citibank, men who couldn't carry your briefcase are promoted at age fifty into positions that pay an annual fortune. Do you know what Wall Street bankers take down in a year?”

Mr. Frye chuckled appreciatively.

“And you think,” she went on, “that I'm going to let the two of us slip backward, now that we've brought this into the open? That's not a solution. I know what I'm talking about.”

Leonard Frye glanced nervously at the closed door of his office, and as before passed his hand before his face.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons couldn't restrain herself. She had a compelling impulse to shock him. “That is not going to happen. I'm not going to let it. I'm not going to be lying home awake nights, masturbating,” she said, “while you're dying of neglect up on Vassar Circle.”

This last remark produced the most ossifying effect imaginable upon Mr. Frye. He turned to stone before her eyes. Although Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued to speak a moment longer, remarking on Mr. Frye's professional chances with an institution such as Chase Manhattan in New York, it was apparent he was not making sense of her words. She left him sitting there, staring into space, as she went to fetch Connie McElligot.

She stood over Connie's desk and addressed her crossly. “Go see Leonard,” she said. “He wants you.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not through making waves for the day. That afternoon she seized her red ballpoint pen and inscribed a most remarkable memo to Mr. Louis Zabac himself, the chairman of the bank, whose big sunlit office on the second floor, with its oil paintings, bronze statuary, and luxurious Chinese carpet, was more like that of a great statesman or national leader than the headquarters of a small-city banker.

She had no more patience for beating about the bush. The pathos of the frightened blue-suited man whom the powers that be had designated as her superior directed Mrs. Fitzgibbons's hand as she dashed off a few choice words:

Isn't it time
, her scrawled memo read,
that an executive change was made down here? This department has fallen asleep!

She signed the note very carefully so there could be no doubt as to its authorship, then signaled to Mr. Donachie, the security guard, to come to her. She liked the idea of the note being delivered upstairs by someone in uniform.

“You don't mind.” She dealt the guard the envelope.

“Not a bit, Frankie.” Mr. Donachie liked Mrs. Fitzgibbons, even though she had overstepped herself twice by commenting tartly on the state of his dress. In fact, in the past two or three weeks, whenever Mr. Donachie had overheard anyone criticizing Mrs. Fitzgibbons behind her back about the way she was puffing herself up and shooting off her mouth, he was quick to defend her. He had begun to admire Mrs. Fitzgibbons. He said he liked the way she had begun to show the assertive hidden side of her nature.

“Must be important,” he cracked pleasantly, and waved the envelope.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons flashed Mr. Donachie a reproachful look that was not devoid of feminine allure. “You're just supposed to deliver it, Alec.”

When she left work minutes later, going out the rear door to the vestibule and street, Mr. Donachie was standing at his post by the outside door. As she came past, he smiled and touched the visor of his cap with his fingertips in the way of a polite military salute. “All serene,” he said. “Mission carried out.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons swept past him, her heels rattling on the marble floor, nodding as she went, acknowledging the genuine respect behind the playful manner. Alec Donachie was someone she could rely on in a pinch.

She stepped briskly across the open-air mall toward the parking garage. It was a lovely October afternoon. The sun dropping low behind the spires of the towering city hall sent shafts of yellow light ricocheting from the store windows to the sparkling granite fountain and igniting the colorful leaves that blew across the red brick walkway that was once the main street of the business district. She was going to get her car. She always walked hurriedly these days, impelled by an unknown urgency.

For all her recent outbursts, and whatever worrisome signs she might have betrayed, the fact was that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had truly always hidden her light under a bushel. She could not remember one instance in all her years when she had been asked to show what she could do. She had played the part that life assigned her, of caring wife and mother, and of responsible employee, an unwitting champion of the very things that had obscured her light. She was just a name that appeared on papers; a person of no special account or personal history—walking up the ramp to the parking garage at Maple and Main.

Sitting alone in her Honda, behind one of the steel columns, Mrs. Fitzgibbons surrendered to feelings of pity for herself; she pressed a Kleenex to the corner of her eye. She was recalling, by chance, an evening many years earlier when, for just a minute or so, she had asserted herself. On a winter night in 1960, as a member of the Holy Rosary High School debating society, she had astonished herself by suddenly speaking out in the midst of a heated argument, and dominated the stage for an impressive interval with a brilliant, impromptu rebuttal of an opponent. To this day, she could remember the silence of the audience of parents and faculty, the hush on all sides, as she held forth in a commanding voice. The words had leaped from her. She could still recall verbatim her impassioned conclusion, and of the way she turned and pointed a finger about indiscriminately, at this individual and that, both on stage and in the audience, saying, “These are not concerns of the so-called general public, but are
yours
— and
yours
—and
yours
.” There was applause when she sat. She was trembling inside, as though the soul within her were shaking its cage to be let out. As it happened, of course, in her subsequent life that episode was not repeated; her triumph was a little candle glow burning somewhere in the past, soft, wavering, impermanent.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons shivered in the car. She wiped tears from her eyes with the tissue and blew her nose.

In the week to follow, events took a turn, or rather a double turn, that even Mrs. Fitzgibbons, for all her surging optimism, could not have foreseen. The first and lesser of these two unexpected developments arrived in the form of an elegant, curly-headed young man who came to her desk to make application for a home mortgage. Mrs. Fitzgibbons knew him by sight. He operated a hairdressing salon and beauty parlor in the indoor section of the mall next door to the bank, an establishment she had patronized herself once or twice. The young fellow, whose name was Bruce, was just a trifle effete in manner and appearance. More important, he showed Mrs. Fitzgibbons an attitude of cordiality and polite deference which she could not help warming to, as it harmonized comfortably with her own mounting self-esteem.

“I've been waiting for you to return from lunch,” he said. “I didn't want to talk to anyone else. I was here one day last week, and while waiting to see Mr. Hohenberger, I heard you talking to someone on the telephone about their late payments, and decided that you were the businesslike sort of officer I'd like to talk to.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons liked him instantly. She liked everything about him. She liked his neatness of person, the good taste of his herringbone suit, white button-down Oxford cloth shirt, and paisley necktie, and his darkly polished, tasseled loafers, not to mention the immaculate, manicured look of his hands. Mrs. Fitzgibbons sat back in her chair.

“You don't remember me,” he started to introduce himself.

“Of course, I do. You're Bruce Clayton. From the mall.”

Her quick retort ignited the young man's face. He was sitting as straight as a rule before her. “You know me?”

Swiveling toward him, Mrs. Fitzgibbons rocked backward at the same time and showed him an expression of executive gravity that she was sure in advance he would enjoy seeing in her. “How can we help you, Bruce?”

“Well,” he began softly, “a friend of mine and I would like to purchase a property. It's an eight-room house up on Homestead Avenue. The asking price is a hundred thousand dollars. It's probably a fool's errand, as we only have a few thousand dollars in cash.”

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons remarked encouragingly. The elegant young fellow was leaning forward stiffly in his seat now, hands clasped, and was fixing upon her a hopeful smile. Something about Mrs. Fitzgibbons's authoritarian manner on the telephone the previous week, when she had badgered and scolded that woman about her late payments, had obviously attracted the young man's interest.

“Who has the money?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon.” Bruce colored guiltily. He couldn't comprehend the thrust of the loan officer's question.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons pressed him more emphatically. “Who is your friend?”

“His name,” said Bruce, “is Matthew.”

“Matthew what?”

“Matthew Dean.”

“And what does Matthew do?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was holding a long yellow pencil horizontally between the tips of her forefingers, her elbows resting comfortably on the padded arms of her chair. She noticed how Bruce repeatedly stole glances at her black pleated dress and stockinged legs. He wanted her to be important and officious.

“He's a computer programmer for the city. He works for Mary Daly, the tax assessor.”

The fact that Bruce's friend worked for a woman brought a smile to Mrs. Fitzgibbons's lips. “Who has the money?” she asked again. “You, or Matthew?”

As earlier, the handsome, curly-headed man blushed. “I wouldn't want to insult you for the world,” he said, “but may I ask, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, what bearing, exactly, that would have on the application?”

“It's simple,” said she. “If Matthew has the money, you're doing the sensible thing to come here as you are. If it's your money, you should apply for the mortgage yourself.”

“Oh, I see.” The candor of the woman, combined with her obvious effort to favor him in any possible arrangement involving his friend, appealed both to Bruce's vanity and common sense.

She was still examining him over the outstretched yellow pencil. “Whose money is it, Bruce?”

“It's mine,” he said.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons opened her hands to signify the obvious and flipped her pencil onto the desktop. “I think we can do business,” she said.

Bruce Clayton didn't pretend to be nonchalant in the face of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's airy reply. His astonishment and admiration showed in his face. “Are you telling me, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, that it's possible?”

“It's better than that,” she came right back at him. “I like you,” she said. “I'd like to do business with you.” Moments like this gave Mrs. Fitzgibbons a warm, flushed feeling that she could not recall having often experienced prior to this autumn. The look on the young man's face alone was worth a thousand dollars.

“Explain to Matthew,” she counseled him, “how it will have to be.” She revolved slowly to and fro in her chair, while wagging the toe of her black leather pump and staring at her admirer with an expression on her lips that bespoke the need for firmness in the face of personal considerations. It was a condescending look. “Tell him I said so. Put the burden of blame on me.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons let that sink in. “It's going to be your house, Bruce.”

The young man looked pale. He was shaking his head in wonderment. “I was so afraid it was all a hopeless proposition.”

“Not at all.”

“Can you be certain of the outcome even at this preliminary stage?” he said.

“We're going to do business,” she said firmly. “This
is
the outcome.”

Up until now, in dealing with a customer like Bruce, Mrs. Fitzgibbons would have portrayed herself as a model of caution; she would have been polite, informative, and attentive to detail; she would have elicited a wealth of background material, got it down on paper, and sent the young fellow away with a dozen different forms to fill out and return. Now she operated differently. Instead of the great abstract institution of the bank arriving at ultimate decisions, to the delight or torment of the applicant in question, Mrs. Fitzgibbons did it herself. Bureaucratic procedures were replaced by flashes of intuition. At this same moment, Mr. Frye had come out onto the floor from his office and was quietly discussing certain specifics contained on the piece of paper in his hand, and Mrs. Fitzgibbons, spotting him, capitalized on his presence near at hand to compel Connie McElligot to do her bidding.

“You're not busy,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons said, and handed Connie the young man's preliminary application form. “Give Bruce what he needs to make formal application for a single-family home mortgage.”

The bossy tone of voice, combined with the presence nearby of Mr. Frye, who had just chastised her in matters concerning Mrs. Fitzgibbons, caused Connie to take the paper in hand without demur. The fact that Mrs. Fitzgibbons's dictatorial voice caused the vice president himself to glance over in astonishment only heightened the air of menace, and further encouraged the other woman to do as she was told.

As Bruce got quickly to his feet, to follow Connie's pink blouse back to her desk, Mrs. Fitzgibbons halted him with a word. “I want an appointment at your salon,” she insisted, “for a consultation and a shampoo.”