Sussex Drive: A Novel

by Linda Svendsen

  Margaret Lee could be seen through the door to her office, back turned, on the phone. But with her sixth sense, she adjusted, read their body language and shot her fist up high as she hung up.

  Greg took Lise’s hand. “Becky wants me to tell you that you should come over while René’s away. I’ll take Niko and the boys to a Sens game.”

  Lise managed to smile. “Oh, yes. That will be nice.” She retrieved her hand from his slightly sweaty grip. Va te faire foutre.

  October 2008

  6

  MA-JOR-ITY.

  Ma emerged from her pressed lips like mother, maman, ma belle, while jor sat, take-no-prisoners, final as force majeure, followed by the double-beat, put-a-skip-in-her-step rhyming cousin of I Am Pretty, the closer: ity.

  Majority took her whole mouth to say. It was so worth it.

  In the four weeks since the writ dropped, Greg had lost thirteen pounds and gained ten and twelve points, respectively, on the Tory-friendly Rippo and Karp-Deem polls. He was almost as Bic-skinny as the whiny Grit leader and surging ahead in all the prime-ministerial-attributes categories, while a Green Party candidate had been discovered on YouTube caressing the banjo in what looked like a marijuana forest, inspiring the appropriate ripostes. The country hadn’t even blinked when Lise predictably crumbled and dissolved Parliament; after all, the NHL teams were back in training.

  Greg was at the airport in Charlottetown, P.E.I., this morning, an hour ahead of Ottawa time, and he was being fully covered by the campaign media, which was how Becky could keep tabs on her front-runner as she climbed a mountain in the home gym at Sussex. She flipped between the news channels and watched “Follow Our Leader,” as Greg cajoled the country not to worry about the financial cratering occurring everywhere in the world.

  She could taste it: majority. The word she dared not wish for aloud in non-Con company. She wanted to celebrate.

  She would, in fact, be celebrating that night. With Greg on the road, and Ottawa’s civil service sitting stunned in pubs, 100%-cotton knickers in a twist over the election call, she’d invited a couple of the corporate wives—Sonja, Maya and Sasha—along with some lively hockey-forward live-ins and spouses—Avalon, Atlantys and Tamberlyn—and the Cohen twins and, of course, Lise, and Apoonatuk, all of them Sussexing it over to 24 for appies, highballs, flirtations with the secret service, and a suitable chick flick to give them ninety-three minutes to sober up and walk a straight-ish line to any Lexus. The goal, beyond neighbourliness, was to thank the chequebooks for their largesse and the ongoing show of Tory support. She saw such nights as her country’s equivalent of a one-night-only bonk in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. She and Lise also wanted to ask the gals to pony up for ArtsCAN!, which now loomed large on their calendar—right after the election. The gals seemed pathetically star-struck about the GG.

  Of course, Becky knew the media would go gaga over her, Becky, if Greg would only allow it. The country would fall in love with her infectious snicker, quasi-Olympian health, sunny self-deprecation and stilettos. His fear, and it was one she shared, was that she might be too candid in her remarks and send them back to the drawing board. They only allowed Becky to play to the extremely loyal base, where she could extol motherhood, gerbils, crampons and croutons.

  Becky was also secretly pleased that the unleashing of Lise’s consort for his Euro vanity project had clinched Becky’s dispatch of Corporal Shymanski to Rideau Hall. Greg had asked questions, but then consented; Shymanski wouldn’t be too far away. As for Martha, Becky had kept her busy. Her daughter was quieter than usual, if that were possible, and going to bed very early, but Becky thought this was a plus. She always knew where she was.

  Lise had cooled to her since René’s Lévesque movie clip had conspicuously surfaced. They had seen each other at a few official occasions and been dutifully friendly, as one would expect, and Niko had chilled with Becky’s boys. But Lise had cancelled their statutory yoga date. Also, perhaps more tellingly, they were both at Hair on George and Lise had pretended not to see her, even though they were kitty-corner to each other and visible through the checkerboard glory of the dazzling mirrors. The GG had left first, darting into the dodgy elevator. Becky would make it blow over.

  Becky had also invited some of the female Cabinet members, who had Greg’s back on the Hill. They were the ones with glossy, nipple-grazing hair, uniformly haughty demeanours, suits with satin blouses and an uncanny ability to mea culpa at a crispy finger-snap from Chief. (It had been her idea to “photo prop” the young women and stash the plump crusaders in the Antarctica of the backbench.) None of them could attend, though, because they were stuck in their ridings fighting for their seats. Pity.

  Becky stepped off the Stairmaster and downed a glass of water. Through the window she could see the Gatineau hills, trees screaming with their customary autumnal fire, and the first tremble of morning traffic on the Alexandra Bridge and buses bearing workers to the Hill. And vice versa: drones from the Glebe on the schlep to Gatineau.

  Sarah Palin was on the TV. There was ye olde clip of her at the Republican convention. “Lipstick on a pig.” Great line. Viral. Too bad she had to wear glasses. Although maybe it made men pause to mentally remove them, and a pause was as good as a vote.

  It was almost time to wake the kids. No practices that morning, no Pro-D, no anything extracurricular. She had time for crunches, a pelvic series, maybe a plank. She slid onto her yoga mat and positioned herself facing the TV screen hung from the ceiling, and started her count.

  The coverage was back on Greg and a mystery voter, on the other side of the country, who had some pressing questions for him. Suddenly her father appeared live from Whitehorse, and was he in those horrible golf pyjamas? Were they shooting in her parents’ Yukon living room? Wasn’t that her blown-up high school grad photo with her hair in a zombie perm? And then Greg, whose big head filled the other side of the split screen, waited while Apoonatuk breezed through the coy and obligatory intro; Greg didn’t know he would be dialoguing with his father-in-law until Glenn spoke.

  “What in hell are you doing about this economic meltdown, Prime Minister?”

  Becky saw Greg blink in recognition of the voice. She heard Doc curse in the background.

  “Not to worry, Glenn, uh, Dad. Frankly, with stock prices dropping, it’s a good time to buy.”

  Greg raised his lip in Smile 101 and Glenn glared directly into the camera.

  Becky’s heart hammered. WTF and who the fuck. How had this breach happened? She was off the mat, reaching for her phone. But then she hit her brakes: in a campaign, this was essential to the tool kit. Greg couldn’t control every byte and bump, and neither could she. It was a sneak attack by the usually obsequious Apoonatuk, who worked for a broadcasting corporation asking for the moon from the CRTC, but it was not her job to control Can Vox, and God knew nobody could muzzle her father. Was Greg handling it? Yes. Grimly.

  “Oh, they’re saying it’s time to board the plane,” Greg said. “Save a place for me, Becky and the kids for Thanksgiving dinner, Dad.”

  Was it likely to impact the final outcome? No. She wanted to text Apoonatuk and cut his Sussex family access, but held off. The PMO was actually very resourceful in these instances. They spanked bad.

  The interview ended without Glenn resorting to any further inappropriate word usage. Greg gave his stock wave and climbed aboard his Airbus. Doc ran up the stairs behind him. They were taking off for Montreal. Apoonatuk waxed on, in his studio, reminding the audience that Becky’s dad was a successful entrepreneur, as was Becky herself, with her former Party Time business, which catered birthday bashes for underprivileged kids and theme parties for, quoting Becky herself, “those special children known as adults.”

  Where did Apoonatuk get off? Breathe.

  Then the breaking news. Headlines about the plunge of the stock market in Asia. The Hang Seng. The Nikkei. The DAX. Wall Street was diving into the raptures of the deep. The TSX tagged along for the dip.

>   Becky swallowed hard. Mamma Mia! would be the best flick for her party. Meryl Streep, who really should have gotten a handle on her menopausal weight, nonetheless was pursued by three handsome middle-aged men, mouths wide open, packages apparent.

  She hit speed-dial to her dad and got his voice mail.

  After breakfast with Peter and Pablo, with contraband cantaloupe snuck to Mister Fuzzy and Señor Wuzzy, their gerbil castle-condo placed carefully on the buffet in the dining room, and after signing Pablo’s ESL test, which he’d been invited to redo, and ensuring that clean gym uniforms were squished into backpacks that couldn’t be over so many crippling kilograms, Becky walked her sons to Rideau River Elementary. Martha had already been chauffeured to the National Gallery of Art, where Greg had “volun-told” her to do an internship during the gap year. Actually, Becky and the boys were driven as far as Acacia Avenue and then followed by security as Becky led them—the boys arguing loudly about which book was more evil, Warlock or The Giver, both of which Becky had domestically banned for pagan content. For the ten minutes it took to travel the route, she inspected the front doors of the various ambassadors’ residences—the nation who needed to launder (and hem!) their flag, another country whose mansion could use Debbie Travis for a colour makeover—and Stornoway, where the Leader of the Opposition could be seen swaying in his tai chi poses on the raked lawn, intimidating the Iranians across the street.

  The public school, predictably, was composed of older buildings, portable classrooms and an afterthought sort of playground. At the entrance, Becky made nice with the other moms, none of whom ever mentioned the election. Everyone also pointedly avoided talking about the markets and their instantly eroded net worth and dramatically scaled-down foreseeable futures. She lent her purple Sharpie, fished out of a foxhole in her Coach hobo bag, and highly recommended her own Ottawa U. orthodontist to a newcomer from the Netherlands. She always looked out for the NATO allies. A text dinged in her pocket. Her dad, getting back? But no, it was the National Gallery curator’s senior administrative assistant, who had just sent Martha home with flu symptoms. Becky didn’t linger. Some of the women were avoiding eye contact with her.… Whatever.

  Martha rested her forehead on the toilet seat in her personal bathroom, which Peter had taken to calling the Ben. “Martha’s in the Ben again,” he’d say when they were summoned to supper or for a prayer circle. Martha’s bedroom had been Ben Mulroney’s room, Peter informed her. Becky thought that the former prime minister’s son had done well by the Mulroney name, unlike his own father. Greg couldn’t bear to hear the surname in any variant and even flinched at macaroni.

  “How you feeling, honeybee?”

  “I don’t feel well, Mom. Thank you for checking on me.” Martha was subdued.

  “Of course, sweetie.” Becky crouched beside her and stroked her hair. “What are your symptoms?”

  “I threw up at the gallery. On my blazer. I feel as if I might faint. I’m tired.”

  Becky felt her daughter’s forehead, which was slightly pimply on the hairline, oily and coolish, clammy.

  “Do you think you might vomit again?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I wish I could tell you.” She dropped her chin and retched.

  As Becky pulled Martha’s hair back, the hair band slipped into the bowl and Martha gripped the edges of the toilet. Becky didn’t think twice. She plucked the hair band out of the puke, a mash-up of Martha’s tiny breakfast, and tossed it in the sink. Then she washed her hands, dried them and squatted back beside her daughter, rubbing circles of mother comfort onto her back.

  That was the downside to galleries. Tourists were attracted from godforsaken parts of the world, embarking and debarking through a diabolical maze of germ hubs—airports. Or groups of schoolchildren, with their sneezes and snot, contaminated door handles, benches, water fountains and toilet seats. Martha had probably picked up a virus, which would be contagious, but more importantly, time-consuming for the prime caregiver.

  She stayed low beside her daughter, aware of the beeping vehicles outside. Vans delivered booze and bouquets.

  Martha flushed the toilet, pushed down the lid and rested her head upon it.

  “I’m calling the doctor,” Becky said.

  “No, Mom. Please.”

  “Yes, Martha. I don’t want everybody to get this.”

  “They won’t. I promise I’ll stay in my room. I don’t want to see anyone anyway.”

  Martha looked up at her for the first time. Her daughter’s face was pasty, puffy and pale green. Becky took her hands in her own and almost got brain freeze from the chill.

  And so it happened, in the middle of the day, when Becky had umpteen demands upon her, especially in the fervour of a campaign and in the waning hours before a gathering, that she hauled up a tray of hot tea and digestives, crawled onto the bed of her daughter, snuggled an arm around her vomit-scented girl and hung out. The doctor was on her way.

  Martha’s room was comforting in its Martha-like ways, with the unicorn poster, collector spoons from her father’s relatively recent international treks and the ubiquitous stuffies. Her laptop, with CSIS-installed controls, sat cold on her desk under a Jesus wearing jeans and hanging from a mother-of-pearl cross—Martha’s hip memento from Bible boot camp. Like a princess behind her moat, Martha had a view of the Ottawa River, the steep drop and the secret service decoy boats.

  “So how did you fall in love with Dad?” Martha asked.

  “Boring,” Becky sang.

  “It’s not boring, Mom. It’s as good as Genesis.”

  “Well,” Becky said, “we’d only been dating for a little while.”

  “How dating?”

  “Oh, going to a movie, Sunday brunching—that sort of thing.”

  “He never goes to movies.”

  “He did then. And then our dating took off and became more regular because we both belonged to the Federal Agenda party. It was brand new and he was magnificent.”

  “How regular?”

  “Well, we’d see each other every weekend and talk during the week.”

  “Did you fool around?”

  Becky went on super-high alert. “No.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  “No. What do you mean by ‘fool around’?”

  “Kiss.”

  “And?”

  “Hold hands.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Okay,” Becky said.

  “So, how did you know it was love?”

  “It just gradually occurred to me. To us.”

  Becky wasn’t about to reveal that moment, even though she remembered. It was Greg’s oldest stepbrother, Paul, the verbal one, who’d introduced them. She’d always thought Paul was sort of sweet on her. She’d met him a few times at political fundraisers and he’d caught her eye. Paul, however, was engaged and on his way to clerk in the Attorney-General’s office in Australia, and she suspected he’d asked if she wanted to meet his brother to somehow corral her, to keep her in the circulatory system of the Federal Agenda.

  The son of Becky’s parents’ friends was tying the knot and Becky roped Greg in as her date. Her dad had started reminiscing at a spontaneous champagne breakfast. He remembered when Lance, the bridegroom, had brushed a pony’s teeth with his toothbrush, he remembered when Lance had stolen a penguin; there was an animal piece to Lance. By the time Greg arrived, in a suit jacket that was scrunched and too short in the sleeves and had a distinct Zellers air to it, and Glenn drove them all to the church in his buff waxed Cadillac, it was clear that Glenn would not be driving the Cadillac to the reception. Becky had thought it would be her. If her mother, Nancy, had intervened with Glenn, he’d have had a fit, which would have been tricky.

  But Greg approached her father in the parking lot. “Glenn,” he said, “I’ve always wondered how this model handles …” And, so easily, Glenn slid into the back seat, gloating; Nancy scooted in bes
ide Greg and patted his shoulder appreciatively; and a few minutes later Greg had looked at Becky in the rear-view mirror, her father oblivious beside her, and Becky had felt a stirring heat between her legs.

  Later that week, coming home from a Federal Agenda meeting, she asked him to pull off the road. He did, and she climbed onto his lap and kissed him into the shock of her lust and, it had to be said, wantonness. He’d started to cry. Becky wasn’t a virgin, so there was God’s overview to factor in; she was fallen, a divorcee. He told her he also didn’t know if he could love again. He wasn’t over his former girlfriend. They’d had a long-term relationship, but Nina’s illness (she’d been diagnosed with depression) had sapped his political purpose. When he abruptly terminated their engagement, she’d been institutionalized. He didn’t want to talk about it. Becky observed he was typically male in that he couldn’t stop talking about it. There, there. That’s in the past, Becky had said. And then he’d surrendered to her. “Miss Riding Secretary,” he called her in the heat of it. In the morning, he proposed by fax.

  Martha said, “So the first time you consummated your love was on your wedding night?” She dipped her cookie into the tea and it softened and melted away.

  “Actually, the day after. After the wedding party, we fell asleep.” And she’d been woken up in the night—that unforgettable snore. “This is intimate stuff, Martha. Between a mom and daughter.”

  “I understand, Mom. So who was your first husband?”

  “His name was Aidan van der Merwe.”

  “From South Africa.”

  “You’ve been googling.”

  Martha nodded. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “That’s okay,” Becky said. “It’s best just to ask directly, though.”

  “So why did you divorce?”

  Becky took a breath. “I am so glad you asked that. Thank you for inquiring. That’s a really good question, honeybee.” She paused. “I married way too young, sweetie.” She sighed, dropped her chin. “He was older. He was experienced. He’d travelled. And I made a premature and purely emotional choice.”