Aubrey McKee

by Alex Pugsley

  My four sisters—Carolyn, Bonnie, Faith, and Katie—went by the family nicknames of Itsy, Bitsy, Titsy, and Ditsy, although my father often changed that third appellation to Mitsy, especially in formal correspondence. My mother did not always care for formality—nor did she stand on ceremony. “Ditsy,” she called down. “Who was on the phone?”

  “Nan.”

  “She probably wants to know when she’s getting picked up. Not that I haven’t told her three times.”

  “No. She said she’s not coming. And the real estate lady called for Dad.”

  “Not coming? She complains and complains she’s not invited then when she is invited she’s not coming?”

  “She said she’s sick.”

  “Sick?”

  My maternal grandmother, Evelyn Anne Wheeler, known to us as Nan, was spending her first winter in Nova Scotia in some time. She and my grandfather, known to us as Dompa, had wintered in Sarasota but with my grandfather dying of congestive heart failure three years before, and my grandmother suffering a small cerebral hemorrhage at the Triming­ham’s perfume counter in Bermuda—after which she’d been on a more or less constant stroke watch—my mother decided it best to move her back to Halifax and into Saint Vincent’s Guest House.

  “With Nan,” said my mother. “It’s always a little more complicated. She likes to play head games, you know. And she likes to be in control.”

  “She was using her Big Whisper Voice.”

  “And after getting me to give up my hair appointment for her?” My mother came down the stairs, her hand sliding along the bannister. Framed on the walls around her were posters for productions of Deathtrap, Chapter Two, and other plays she’d acted in. “Imagine,” she said. “Thinking you can get a hair appointment the week before Christmas. But you know Nan. It’s all about her hair. She’s on the phone, it’s about her hair. She’s opening a bottle of wine, it’s about her hair. She’s down at Emergency, it’s about her hair.” At the front door, my mother stooped to gather the day’s mail. “Maybe it’s better she’s not coming. I mean Nan’s a wonderful woman. No, she is. Until that third drink. Third drink and she’s peeing on the floor.”

  Standing up, my mother stared through a glass panel in the front door and considered the house under construction across the street. It was vertically composed, made with red cedar and solar panels, and very unfinished. Not only was it out of style with the street’s other houses, but its incompleteness—the lot disordered with backhoe tracks, cinderblocks, and two-by-fours—gave the place a raw, defective quality. “That mess of a house,” said my mother, with fresh awareness of nuisance. “It just looks like shit. Bringing property values down, my God.”

  There was, I should say, a For Sale sign on our house. For four years there’d been a For Sale sign on our house. Some eons earlier, my parents had divorced, only to reunify. But complications—familial and financial—persisted. The material takeaways were an enormous short-term debt and my mother’s wish to move to a smaller, cheaper house. But, to avoid further tribulation, she wasn’t going to buy until she sold. “I wake up in the middle of the night,” she said, sorting through the mail. “And I have visions of that ‘For Sale’ sign blowing in the wind for the next twenty years. By then the roof’s fallen in, the windows broken. No one’s buying houses right now. No one.” Turning from the front door, she said, “Did Carolyn show up with the salmon? Ditsy, where are you?”

  ~

  My sister Katie lay watching television in the living room, her head somewhat acutely propped up by a baseboard, her feet in striped toe socks. Katie was fourteen, but a very young fourteen, and, unlike my sister Faith, who at fifteen was drinking and dating her way through multiple social circles, Katie dwelled in a protracted teenybopperdom. She was slim, quick, “coltish,” as the heroines were described in the YA books she daily demolished, and for the last months she’d been trying out a series of obsessions. Her latest fascination began with my mother’s appearance in a revival of The Gingerbread Lady, continued through repeated viewings of The Sunshine Boys, and recently resulted in her commitment to a dialect I’ll call Generic New York Wisecrack. Which is why, when my mother took a step into the living room, Katie, without shifting her gaze from the television, simply said, “Hey, Ma. Dinner’s when?”

  “Guests are invited for seven. Kids can eat any time. Did Itsy bring the salmon?”

  “She went to the cat clinic.”

  “Cat clinic?”

  “Cat clinic. Bird clinic. Who am I—Marcus Welby?”

  “Ditsy? Enough.” My mother crossed to the television and was about to switch it off when she recognized someone onscreen. “Is that Walter Matthau? Christ, he’s looking old. Katherine McKee—” My mother faced Katie. “Look at me. Where’d she put it? The kitchen or the basement fridge?”

  “I’m fourteen years old! I should know where the fish is?”

  “The salmon, Ditsy.”

  “Fish, salmon. You’re going to nitpick?” Katie rolled on to her stomach. “Adults get salmon. Kids get what?”

  “Shepherd’s Pie.”

  Katie nodded, judiciously. “Is the shepherd fresh?”

  “Ditsy—” My mother shook her head. “I forbid you to watch any more Neil Simon. You’re cut off. Did she drop it off or not?”

  “Yes. Kitchen fridge.”

  My mother flipped the mail on a hall radiator and returned to the stairs. “I’m going to get dressed. If Nan calls again, Ditsy, let me know.”

  Getting up to press rewind, Katie shrugged. “The thing about salmon,” she said to herself. “It’s not funny. Pickerel? Pickerel is funny. Kippers is funny. But salmon?”

  ~

  Not four seconds later, the front door swung open and my father entered the house carrying a box of Perrier. Plastic bags containing bottles of wine were hanging from his wrists and a red Twizzler licorice dangled from his mouth. Without taking off his shoes, he carried his purchases to the kitchen and eased them onto the kitchen table. “Bitsy, Ditsy?” he said. “Which one are you? Could one of you crap-artist kids help with the groceries?”

  Katie came to the doorsill and looked in. “Out of left field he comes running with the craziest questions.”

  “Christ,” said my father, tripping over an empty milk carton. “Could we have one day in this kitchen when there isn’t an open garbage bag on the floor?” He glanced at Katie. “Peanut? Go find your mother. She’s got a dozen people coming over for dinner.”

  “Find her yourself. She’s upstairs.”

  My mother, now wearing a full slip over tea-stained sweatpants, appeared at the stair top and gazed down at my father with—what would be called in the stage directions—an amused air of distant suspicion.

  “There she is,” said my father with an open smile. “Look at you, twisting your hair, you get more and more beautiful every day. How about some kisses?”

  “Did you remember the Campari?”

  “Campari? Who drinks Campari?”

  “I don’t drink it, genius. But your esteemed colleague, Roz Weinfeld, newly appointed to the bench, drinks it and she’s the reason we’re having this dinner. Remember? It was the one thing I asked you to get.”

  My father considered this with narrowing eyes, the Twizzler dangling from his lips. “All right, Little Miss Mums.” He shifted the licorice to the other side of his mouth, like a back-room bookie rearranging a cigar. “Make a list and we’ll get Baby-boy to get it. Because, God knows, whatever Mumsy needs, Mumsy gets.”

  “It’s whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.”

  The line in question was from the musical Damn Yankees and, for my parents, another installment in a never-ending game of name-that-quote. Both had strutted and fretted some time upon the stage and had within their imaginations a number of dramatic parts. So the evening might see variations on Elyot and Amanda, Nathan and Adelaide, George and Martha. My parents
moved within a series of personas but to what extent they were using these personas, and to what extent the personas were using them, was not always easy to establish.

  “Some days I hate that goddamn law firm,” mused my mother. “Do you ever wonder what it’s done to us?”

  “As fun as that sounds, Mumsy, wondering what might’ve been, do you mind terribly if we stick to the here and now? You might want to get dressed.”

  “Oh, McKee. You’ve lost the plot. You’ve lost the plot, kid.”

  “Sure, sure,” said my father. “You contain multitudes, Mums. Now would you mind containing dinner?” He smiled again. “And I better get some kisses around here or there’s going to be real trouble.”

  Just then, Katie bumped open the front door and traipsed in with four bags of groceries. As she moved past my father, he grabbed at her shirttail. “When I met her, Ditsy. She was nothing. She had half a degree and two dirty jokes.”

  “Dad! Don’t stretch my shirt! And that lady called you back.”

  “Just second, Peanut. I’m trying to tell you something about your horrible mother.”

  My mother arrived at the bottom of the stairs and, pushing shut the front door, said to him, “Quit terrorizing the children, would you, darling?” Ambling into the kitchen, she whispered over her shoulder, “And fuck the firm.”

  “Did you hear what you said?” He was staring at her as if her remark were perhaps the absolute zenith of her derangement. “You’re a terrible person.”

  “Honestly, Stewart. Why do you talk? Why do you even open your mouth? Some lawyer.” She opened the refrigerator and searched for the rumoured salmon. “You want to tell me where you’ve been the last hour? The Halifax Club?”

  “For your information, I was taking discovery on a case.”

  “Which case?”

  “Well,” said my father. “I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

  “Stewart—” My mother whirled around to look at him. “Tell me it’s not Gregor Burr.”

  My father adjusted his tie. “I said I can’t discuss it.”

  “Gregor Burr?” She sighed. “What a jerk. I personally can’t stand him. What kind of guy who, when he’s elected Member of Parliament, starts messing around with teenagers? He’s a goddamn sleaze. And such a tendentious son of a bitch. He could be a role model for the youth of this province and instead he’s assaulting high school girls in the stairwell of the Lord Nelson Hotel. Why can’t he go to a prostitute like a normal person?”

  “Do you hear what you’re saying?”

  “Don’t give me that rise-above-it bullshit. Why are you always defending the bad guy?”

  “That’s yet to be determined, my dear.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “And what did you hear, Mary-Margaret Wheeler, pray tell?”

  “Well, asshole, what I heard was a different story. Like the city hasn’t heard a different story.”

  “That’s enough of this talk, thank you.”

  “Oh, I’m not allowed to say anything?”

  “No, you can say whatever you like. You can print it in the paper if you like. But if the people you describe take your remarks to be defamatory you may be forced to prove what you allege in a court of law.”

  My mother tilted her head, unimpressed.

  “This isn’t all my doing, Mums. It’s just we have something here called the rule of law—”

  “I’m familiar with the fucking rule of law, Stewart. I’m also familiar with this man’s history. He stuck his tongue down Caitlyn Jessup’s throat. Marge McLean, he pinned her up against a car in the Sobeys parking lot. Marge McLean! I mean how drunk do you have to be? And Bev Noonan, he muckled on to her at the bar convention, lifting up her dress at the coat check. And God knows how many more there are.”

  “Those are not the sort of stories you want to repeat.”

  “Why? Because they happen to be true? And from what I’ve heard about this teenager, he finally went too far. It’s tantamount to raping her.”

  “Mackie—”

  “Well, what would you call it? The teenager said penetration and the rcmp identified the semen on her skirt as his.” My mother looked at my father, severe. “Did he admit it?”

  “I can’t repeat what’s said in-camera. You know that.”

  “Ian Pulsifer tells Connie—”

  “How would you know that?”

  “She told me!”

  “Exactly. Look, I can’t discuss the facts of a case with you. Or what a client says in discovery. You know I can’t. And that’s final.”

  These arguments, sound as they may have been, did not have a wholly persuasive effect on my mother. “Listen,” she said. “I applaud Tiggy for standing by him but come on, Stewart. Everybody knows what this man’s like. Every single person in the Conservative Party knows what he’s like and they’re all letting him get away with it. That’s what makes me so sick. It’s like with an alcoholic. They’re enablers. If someone doesn’t say, ‘No, this isn’t right.’ Then who’s to stop him? He obviously can’t stop himself. But they won’t say anything because everything’s going so well up in Ottawa right now. Yeah, well, stick around.” My mother saturated her next word with contempt. “Men. Puh. There ought to be a revolution.”

  “I feel it’s underway.”

  My mother glanced at my father before looking up toward what, in a theatre, would be the first row of the balcony. “When the hurly-burly’s done,” she said. “We’ll look back and wonder what we’ve done on this Earth. And what will we say? That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, Stewart. What’ll we say then?”