Ride a Cockhorse Read online

  A few minutes before eight o’clock, after darkness had fallen, Mrs. Fitzgibbons spotted the Sugrue boy walking under the maples on Nonotuck Street, with his red nylon bookbag slung over his shoulder, his pale hair glowing under the streetlamp, and she pulled up next to him in the Honda. Her heart was thumping when he came over to the car window. She had signaled to him. As so often in the days to come, Mrs. Fitzgibbons hadn’t a notion in mind what she was going to say before she actually spoke.

  “I’m having motor trouble,” she said. “It’s skipping.”

  Obeying her instincts, she took an even franker approach. “You’re the boy in the band! I know who you are.”

  She sat behind the wheel, with her elbow on the window, smiling at him.

  “I’m the drum major,” he said. He was tremendously vain, she thought. She liked that. She liked vain men. Larry, unfortunately, had not been that way.

  “Don’t I know it! The band goes past my house every week. You march beautifully!”

  “Thank you,” said the youth. Being tall, he was forced to lean over.

  “I’m Frankie Fitzgibbons. My husband,” she said, “was an alderman.”

  “Your name is Frankie?” said the boy.

  Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued smiling. She couldn’t help herself. She had never seduced anyone in her life. Larry had been like an appliance; he’d done what he was warranteed to do. The Sugrue boy was another animal altogether. Already she had intimations of success. She would tell him what to do, and he would do it.

  “Do you know anything about cars?”

  “I’m not good at mechanics,” Terry answered. He was staring blankly at the dashboard.

  “Can you drive?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got into the passenger seat. “Drive it around the block,” she said, “and tell me what you think.”

  As he climbed into the car, Mrs. Fitzgibbons admired his long blue-jeaned legs. He looked a little distressed at attempting to correct something for which he had no proficiency. “It sounds okay,” he muttered softly.

  “Well, it’s not okay. It stalled on me twice.” She was lying but gave no thought to it. “Drive it around,” she said.

  The drum major complied. He put the car in gear and started slowly up Nonotuck Street. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was watching him cannily. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Terry Sugrue.”

  “Is that the family with the murderer?” she asked.

  “Murderer?” He looked at her.

  “There was a Sugrue who killed somebody years ago.”

  “I never heard anything about that,” said the youth.

  Mrs. Fitzgibbons was improvising. “A man named Sugrue killed a bookmaker on a farm out in Granby and buried his body in the woods. He owed the man money.”

  “No fooling.” He kept his eyes on the road.

  “Do you know anything about carpentry?” She advanced an altogether new subject.

  “Not much.”

  “You take shop classes, don’t you?”

  “I used to. A long time ago—in junior high.”

  “You can nail two boards together.”

  Terence laughed but continued staring at the road. He affected a keen listening attitude toward the engine, as he gradually speeded up the car. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not watching the road. She was surprised by her own brazenness.

  “I need a couple of boards nailed together,” she said.

  “Engine sounds okay to me.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I think you’d have to ask a mechanic.”

  “You’re doing fine. There! Did you hear that? It skipped. Now,” she said, “it’s going to stall.”

  The boy looked perplexed. “It’s nice and smooth.”

  “Are you sure?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons assumed a doubtful air. “Ever since Larry died, I get a little paranoid.” She sat back. “How is it you’re still in high school?”

  “I’m a senior.”

  “Because you don’t look it.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons addressed him in the way a school principal might. “You look about twenty. Did you stay back?”

  “Me? I never stayed back in my life! I’m first honor roll.”

  “You are? I’m glad to hear that. Turn left on Northampton Street,” she said, “and go a little faster. You’re poking.”

  “Sometimes,” he suggested, “it helps to gun the engine.”

  “Then gun it.”

  Terry shifted into neutral and raced the engine hard.

  “That sounds better,” she said, after Terry released the accelerator. “I think you did it.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “That sounds normal. What did you do?”

  “I gunned the engine.”

  “That did the trick.”

  “I think you’re worrying about nothing, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

  “Frankie,” she said.

  “Frankie.”

  “Gun it again.”

  “It doesn’t need it.”

  “Gun it, sweetheart. Do what I tell you. I think you corrected it. Do you have a car of your own?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What do you do on dates?”

  “Dates?”

  “Dates,” she said. “You can’t go out without a car.”

  “Maureen, my girlfriend, has a car. Actually, it’s her brother’s car, but he works evenings at the junior college.”

  “Who is Maureen?”

  “Maureen Blodgett.”

  “I know Maureen Blodgett,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons lied. “She’s your girlfriend?” She made a face.

  “Well, sort of.” Terry faltered, visibly disconcerted by the perplexed expression on the woman’s face. They had stopped at a traffic light.

  “She’s a little young for you, isn’t she?”

  “Maureen? Maureen’s nineteen. She’s older than I am.”

  “Maureen Blodgett? Not the Maureen Blodgett I know. She looks like a kid.”

  “She looks a little young,” Terry allowed, “but she’s out of high school.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “and her? That is a surprise. If you had asked me to guess, I’d’ve picked somebody completely different from that. Somebody like that Salus girl, the pianist, the redhead, the one who goes to school in New York.”

  “The concert pianist?” Terry glanced in disbelief at Mrs. Fitzgibbons. For just a second, his eyes strayed to her breasts. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was sitting up straight, as though in a physical response to the shock of Terry’s choice of young women. Her violet dress shimmered under the passing streetlights; she was conscious of the effect she had produced.

  “What’s so unusual about that?” she demanded, recalling hastily details from an article in the local Ireland Parish Telegram about the pianist. “She’s in her twenties. She’s beautiful. She has a future. You’d make a wonderful match.”

  “Me and her?” Young Sugrue couldn’t believe his ears. The young woman in question had graduated high school five years earlier and had been known from an early age as a light of the community, a prodigal talent much written about in the local newspaper.

  “Don’t you think she likes men?”

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Of course she does. You can speed up, by the way. We’re not going to a funeral.”

  “I think the car is okay.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Do you honestly think that Lorraine Salus doesn’t like men? Of course she does. It’s hard for a girl like that to make a good match. People who are beautiful and gifted, like Lorraine, or yourself for that matter, find it hard in that way. To locate a proper mate, I mean. You can’t just take anyone who comes along. I mean it. You may be underestimating yourself.”

  The look on the drum major’s face, as he glanced round from the steering wheel at Mrs. Fitzgibbons, betrayed the deep core of vanity in him. He was listening intently. To be so susceptible to flattery, she thought, was really quite sad.

  “It’s your
duty,” she went on, “to make a good match. That’s something that women understand better than men. Women judge men from a breeding standpoint. A woman always asks herself what kind of children she would have with this man. Men don’t do that.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “That’s why Maureen What’s-her-name is chasing after you. She wants to breed up.”

  “Breed what?”

  “Up! It’s instinctive. All females do that. They look to catch a male that is better than they are. It’s called breeding up.”

  Terry regarded her with an ingenuous stare.

  “It comes from nature. That’s why wild animals fight in the breeding season. The males fight, and the females watch. And when it’s over, the females go to the winner. It’s as old as God. It’s the oldest thing there is. I guarantee you, if Lorraine Salus saw you leading the band down to the stadium, she’d go crazy. Even I’m impressed. I’m very impressed. Anyone would be impressed.”

  “Maureen loves watching,” he added.

  “I should think she would!” Mrs. Fitzgibbons belittled the girl in a scathing tone. “You’re her best chance. Who would take her out if she didn’t have you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s what I mean. She’d have to settle for some wimp who studies all night and couldn’t get a girl if you set a pistol to his head.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons cut the air with her hand. “Maureen wouldn’t get anybody. I know who she is. I can see her problems. You have to face up to things, Terry. You can’t let Victorian sentiments fuck up your life.”

  The sudden expletive from Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s lips caused Terry to snap his head around. He was stunned.

  “Use your skin,” she said. “You have your whole life in front of you. You only get one good shot at it. The wheel goes around once, and that’s it. You’ll only be twenty once. You’ll never see these days again. Some decisions,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons stressed, electing to employ an impressive word, “are irrevocable. Where would you be five years from tonight with a girl like that?”

  “Maureen is in college,” he objected feebly.

  “What college?”

  The boy was putty in her hands. Mrs. Fitzgibbons could feel it. Each time he glanced round, his eyes darted to her breasts.

  “Our Lady of the Angels.”

  “Your Lady of the Angels! What’s she studying to be, a pope?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons laughed gaily. She was showing off her breasts now; he seemed to know it. He was just driving and steering. He wasn’t paying any attention to the engine. He kept looking over at her.

  “Why are you so dressed up?”

  “Answer the question,” she insisted. “Where would you be? I don’t mean to be coarse, Terry, but someone has to wake you up to what’s what. The best young women of your generation deserve a shot at you. You can’t tie yourself up.”

  “I’m not tied up —” He hesitated at mouthing Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s first name.

  “Frankie.”

  “Yes. We’re only friends, Maureen and I.”

  “What happens,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons explained, adopting an analytic view, “with a girl like that, you have sex a couple of times, and they become totally possessive. That’s the greatest danger of all,” she added, as Terry’s expression signified the correctness of her last thrust, not to mention her boldness. “They think it’s everything. They think it’s the purchase price of the rest of your life. Is she possessive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she get jealous?”

  “Sure. Sometimes,” he said.

  “I’ll bet she’s jealous out of her brainpan over those majorettes that march behind you in the band.”

  A look of guilt invaded his face. “She imagines things,” he confessed.

  Mrs. Fitzgibbons laughed mischievously. “Those girls are crazy about you. And I’ll tell you something else. There isn’t one of them that Maureen could keep up with. I know that for a fact. I see them going past my house. They’re beautiful! Every one of them. They’re arrogant! They’re sure of themselves! They have beautiful bodies. Compared to your Maureen, they’re like women from another planet.”

  “Some of them are beautiful,” Terry conceded.

  “They’re all beautiful. They’re tall, they’re slender, they’re vain, they know what they want. Can you imagine Maureen in that lineup?”

  “She wouldn’t look right.”

  “Look right?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons loosed a peal of laughter and set her hand over his. “And you wonder why she’s jealous?”

  “I don’t make her jealous.”

  “Of course you do. How could you not? You would have to. Drive down Sergeant Street,” she instructed. “I’m going to show you what happens to people who get roped into unhappy relationships.”

  By now, Terry was clearly enjoying the older woman’s appreciation of his value and was not eager to suspend the pleasure. “Fine,” he replied.

  “And step on the gas. It’s the pedal under your foot. You’re making me nervous. I like a little wind.”

  Terry assumed a more mature tone. “You were right about the possessiveness,” he said after a short silence.

  “I’m right about all of it.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was sure of her intuitions about the young man and his girl. “Two or three sexual escapades with a college kid do not add up to a lifelong commitment. Some may say otherwise, but only because it’s in their self-interest. Funny thing is, it’s the stupid, inexperienced ones that hold onto an idea like that as though it were gospel. The less they know about something, the more scared and dogmatic they get. You must find it embarrassing.”

  Terry appeared unsure of the nature of her query and said nothing, but did capitalize on the moment to look across again at Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s bosom.

  “I would,” she said. “It would make my skin crawl. I’m not saying that a twenty-year-old like yourself is supposed to have a hundred and fifty amorous entanglements, but the views of a little college girl, who is still wet behind the ears, add up to zero.” She fiddled with the radio dial. She changed the station. She liked the look of her hand; her nails were shapely and pink, and the bracelet on her wrist twinkled attractively.

  “I’m not twenty, Frankie,” Terry reminded her.

  She ignored him. “Maureen will find somebody else. Somebody of her own kind. You’ll see. Tell me more about yourself. Let’s talk about interesting people!”

  “Well —”

  “What do you do when you’re not leading the band?”

  Terry shrugged. “I don’t know. I go to school. I wrestle at the Boys Club. I go to the movies with Maureen.”

  “You wrestle?” That interested her.

  “I play golf sometimes.”

  “I play golf!” she said. “Larry belonged to the country club.”

  “No fooling.”

  “I still have his Wilson clubs. Do you have clubs of your own?”

  “I have five or six old ones,” he answered. “A wood, a couple of putters, and three or four irons.”

  “I’ll show you Larry’s. I’ll bet you can hit the ball a mile. Are you on the golf team at school?”

  “I haven’t time for band and golf.”

  “I forgot about the band,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I think you’re better off with the band. Any dummy can play golf, but leading the band the way you do it, darling, is an art. It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen. They ought to pay you a salary.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was smiling at him.

  Terry flushed red. “I love leading the band.”

  “Didn’t I know that already? You look like a dream out there.”

  “When did you see me?” The drum major couldn’t conceal his feelings of pride.

  “I told you. You go right by my house. I saw you last Saturday. With all those flags and drums, and your tall hat and that enormous baton. You looked like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I swear to God.”

  “You ought to go to the football games, Frankie.”

  “I’m going Sa
turday,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons shot back.

  “No kidding.” He looked at her.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Would you like that?”

  “I’d love it.”

  “Who are we playing?”

  “Springfield Tech. I could get you tickets, Frankie.”

  “Would you?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “I’d only need one.”

  “You’d be going yourself?”

  “I have a daughter, Barbara, but she’s practically brain-damaged.”

  He laughed gushingly at Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s remark, appreciative of the profane streak in her.

  “Barbara thinks football is a game for rednecks. She hates bands, she hates sports, she hates bars, she hates pop music, she hates television and movies. She hates everything that’s fun.”

  “I like all those things.”

  “So do I.”

  “What does she like?” said Terry.

  “Causes,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “Barbara likes causes. Somebody over in Burma blows up the Burmese president in a plane, and that’s a matter of great urgency to Barbara. She’s never been to Burma. She’s never going to go to Burma. She wouldn’t know a Burmese from a Mongoloid idiot if she was lying in bed with him.

  “I didn’t spank her enough,” she went on. “I should have whaled the daylights out of her. She’s very serious. You’re much more interesting. I hope you don’t like politics.”

  “I hate politics.”

  “She wants to run for office. She wants to be an alderperson! It’s enough to convulse a cat.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  Terry Sugrue burst out laughing, as Mrs. Fitzgibbons, also laughing, set her left hand lightly on his shoulder. “It’s true, darling. She wouldn’t get twenty votes. She should be locked up someplace. With her frozen dinners and her little yellow and pink vitamin tablets. Every time she comes in the door, I fill up with feelings of discouragement. You can read the bad news in her face. She and Eddie, her husband, subsist on frozen broccoli. They sleep on the floor on a futon. She hasn’t put on lipstick in a year. I love cosmetics! Look at my nails.” She set her hand illustratively on the dark satin of her lap. “Is that pretty, or is that pretty?”