Sussex Drive: A Novel

by Linda Svendsen

  When she woke up, Martha wasn’t beside her. Becky looked around wildly.

  Martha balanced herself in the rear of the Challenger. Corporal Shymanski was with her, his head close, a hand pressed against the magazine rack.

  Becky couldn’t help herself. She unbuckled her seat belt and took three steps. “Excuse me,” she said.

  Martha and Shymanski turned toward her. Both had tears in their eyes.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “There’s going to be turbulence and Martha needs to sit down right now.”

  “Madame Leggatt,” Shymanski said.

  “Mom, please give us a minute.”

  “Sit down,” Becky said, “now.”

  Martha obeyed immediately, seating herself back by the window, and promptly covered her damp eyes with the sleep mask. Her shoulders shook.

  “This is not human,” Corporal Shymanski said to her. He was smouldering, as if she’d displayed effrontery beyond measure.

  “Take accountability,” Becky said. “You’re the man. She’s a girl.”

  “I’m not talking about Martha,” he said. “It is about the government. Your government.” He made his unique way to the front of the cabin to join the rest of the GG’s dozing security team.

  The drive to 24 Sussex was rote, silent and slow, with the Ottawa darkness everywhere. By the time Martha was asleep, and Pablo nested in, snug in his hot-air balloon pyjamas, beside Becky in the master bedroom, and the staff had stored Señor Wuzzy in the empty fridge, Becky had brushed, flossed and surfed all the RSS feeds and news channels. The coverage of the Official Opposition leader’s massacre of basic Canadian English on this particular occasion was phenomenal; the seed had been planted. What if he couldn’t understand a question at the Security Council? What if it was World War III? Would you want him representing us on the world stage? Could he connect with intergalactic aliens? They had been fed the doubt with double helpings of turkey, dressing, cranberry, mashed potatoes and pie à la mode. God bless Can Vox.

  It was freezing the next morning: election day. After the short private funeral, Becky ordered the car, packed their bags, and she, Martha and Pablo headed up to the Harrington Lake house. They stopped at Pharmasave while Becky ran in and bought extra overnight pads; she already had the painkillers with codeine. The hills were frigid with frost. Ski hills talcumed. She convinced herself that she was voting—for her family.

  The house was freshly dusted, with a full larder. She settled Pablo into a marathon Land Before Time rotation and shook out the misoprostol for Martha. The cramps started immediately and the bleeding was heavy. Martha squeezed in beside her brother and Becky covered them both with a Hudson’s Bay blanket. Outside, the inukshuk stood with its stunted stone arms.

  That night, Becky watched Greg, accompanied by Peter and Greg’s father, as he made a few unmemorable remarks about the overwhelming endorsement of the Conservatives. Blue streamers fell, and Peter managed to look delighted and surprised—and even slightly ADHD? Greg’s dad was predictably humble; how had he produced this magnificent and puffy dump of DNA? Indeed.

  Minority. Minority. Minority.

  Late October 2008

  CANADA

  Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan

  Comité spécial sur la mission canadienne en Afghanistan

  EVIDENCE number 1,

  Témoignages du comité numéro 1

  REDACTED COPY – COPIE RÉDACTÉ OCTOBER 23, 2008

  Document Number/Numéro du document: D – 711 – 358 Receipt Date/Date:

  Redacted by: AG

  8

  A WEEK AFTER GREG’S Minority Resurrection, Becky ventured to the National Arts Centre for the ArtsCAN! gala. Incognito. She didn’t tell Greg; she wore a Sudbury nickel ball gown and a long dark witch’s cloak, and entered through a side door after the gin-and bling-saturated reception and speeches, which avoided directly addressing the arts and culture cuts inflicted by Greg. She hunched in the lighting booth far above the sold-out house. She was there when Gordon Lightfoot performed “The Great Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” and the crowd sang the words by heart, and she cracked up with everyone when Itzhak Perlman introduced Cohen as “that old Jew,” and Leonard then sang “The Future” and received a standing ovation. She did the disappearing act when Lise, in an indigenous Bjork-like gown glued together from goose feathers and cedar bark, delivered her closing remarks about the integrity and longevity of Canadian culture.

  In less than two minutes she was home, and Greg, in his Research in Motion hoodie, halted her right at the door. His fingers were dusty with Doritos and he was livid. “Let’s talk in my study.”

  She was ready. “About?”

  “You know what about.”

  He turned and walked ahead of her up the grand staircase, past The Painted Flag. Becky took her time, lifting the thin, flirty hem of her dress. His tread was heavy. It was his executioner’s gait, and so she didn’t wait for him to launch when they walked into his dimly lit lair.

  “I don’t care about your”—finger quotes—”feelings re the gala. You embarrassed me in front of folks I cultivated assiduously, and you threw away years of our work, particularly in Quebec, indulging in petty comments and cuts. So don’t bludgeon me now.”

  Greg installed himself behind his desk, which was clear enough to reflect the portrait of Prime Minister Diefenbaker at his back. The boss. “Wedge issues win.”

  Becky remained standing.

  “This isn’t about any finger-quote feelings.” Middle finger. “Or your finger-quote gala.”

  Becky took a breath. Okay, then no need to confess she’d sequestered herself in the lighting booth, engaging in entertainment espionage on the national and corporate elites. “Then what?”

  He stared at her as if he might actually take action. Her tissues, her muscles, seemed to recollect the kicking-the-gerbil-cage moment and her heartbeat sped up. In the same way she knew where every washroom in Ottawa and Gatineau was located, so did she know the site of every panic button at 24 Sussex, the Langevin Block and Greg’s Centre Block office. She’d never considered, though, that she might push it because of her trepidation re him.

  “Martha,” Greg said.

  He leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. He kept interlacing his fingers different ways, the way he did when he was awkwardly posed in an Asian preschool or gurdwara kindergarten. He looked uncomfortable, as if he were talking to the TV news anchor he most despised. Then he was faux friendly to her, a warning. “I sat down with our oldest child tonight. Asked if she’d like to perform in Temptations at the 2010 Olympics.”

  Adrenalin shot up Becky’s stem and her arms were flooded. “And?”

  “She fricking lost it.”

  “How so?”

  “Said she didn’t deserve to participate in a gospel rock opera.” Greg stopped there.

  Becky stayed still.

  “So I asked why. Why would a beautiful, innocent girl like herself not deserve this?”

  “Right,” Becky said. She noticed that the ridiculous floral curtains were drawn, which was unusual. She had to stand and be able to move quickly, manoeuvre.

  “Do you know what she said, Rebecca?”

  Becky shook her head.

  “She told me she was a murderer.” Becky watched Greg finger the family portrait, the one with the very heavy pewter frame, a gift from Chancellor Angela Merkel on the occasion of the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. “She said, ‘Dad, Dad, I don’t know how to tell you this. I killed my child.’ ” He paused. “ ‘Your grandchild.’ ” Greg’s eyes were fierce and reddened. “Is that true, Rebecca?”

  “Greg,” she said. Then she just nodded.

  He hurled the frame directly at her, and she was only five feet away. Becky ducked, which probably helped her miss Greg’s second throw of a dancing soapstone polar bear, personally carved by the oldest Canadian shaman, because she instinctively stayed low and zigzagged while bolting for the hall. She slammed the study door beh
ind her. “I’m pressing the button,” she said, her voice ragged and bass. “If you come near me, I don’t care what happens.”

  His phone rang then. Through the door, she heard him pick up.

  “Hey, Bob, yeah.” A pause. “Yes, we’re throwing the furniture around tonight.” Pause. “Right, yes, better than an ulcer.” Nasal snicker. “Well, you know what the little women are like with the crockery. It gets busted. You take care now. Good night, Bob.”

  Becky didn’t wait. She slipped off her heels and flew downstairs. In a few minutes she had barricaded the living room and set herself up on the couch. She didn’t care if she slept in her ball gown, covered with her witch’s cloak, holding the metronome from the grand piano with the panic button electronically stitched to the bottom.

  If only the Corpse’s top comedian could see her now. He’d held a fake sleepover with Greg and Peter a few years back, all running amok at the Diefenbunker, and he’d yelled to Greg, “I’m the king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal, husha, husha, we all fall down.” Then Greg had locked them in. Peter had panicked. The comedian had become very irate and ratings for the show went through the roof. Maybe you had to be there.

  She woke up at three in the morning. She smelled something burning, and was disoriented, not knowing where she was, or even who she might be. For a minute she thought she was back in her parents’ home, lying very low in her old room after a parental debacle.

  She looked up to see Greg standing over her in his ridiculous pyjamas. She didn’t know why he couldn’t wear bottoms and a T-shirt the way her first husband had. He wore Joe Fresh checkered flannels, and it was a distinctly unattractive look, unless she actually wanted to jump the bones of Beaver Cleaver’s dad, and he was also holding a plate of scorched toast. Anger. Hunger. The lethal combo pack. She had mentioned this to him in the past, pre-campaigns.

  He spat at her. “Who was the father?”

  She said, very evenly, “I am holding the alarm. If you trust your thugs to keep this out of the National Pest, so be it.”

  He was silent, just breathing over her.

  “I’ll find out,” he said, and left her alone in the room. And then, “What kind of mother are you?”

  Ten days later, on the afternoon of Halloween, in the midst of costume preparations for Lise’s Gory Horror at Rideau Hall—a macabre event for younger Rockcliffe Park denizens, trick-or-treaters and Niko—Becky received an e-mail from Pablo’s teacher. The teacher wanted to talk, the sooner the better, about changes in Pablo’s behaviour at school. Becky understood that to mean today. So she put aside Peter’s Mountie costume, cobbled together from the crew around Sussex Drive, and Pablo’s easy-peasy Zorro, and saddled up and called Ms. Humphries, confirming 3:30 p.m. at the classroom. Peter and Pablo could be dispatched to the librarian and be pressed into service filing books in the stacks.

  She considered calling Greg to let him know about this latest development, but it was four days before the U.S. election and he was on the blower to George Bush, and to both John McCain and Sarah Palin too, trying to broker a truce between them, and the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. also seemed to need constant tranquilizing. Greg was so suspicious he even thought the Democratic presidential candidate had authorized euthanasia for his dear old Kansasvia-Oahu grandmother in order to get a sympathy bump, and asked that CSIS do some quick and dirty undercover in Hawaii toward that end. (Becky had heard about this from Doc.) How about that headline for November 3? OBAMA GRANNY: MURDER OR MERCY KILLING? Greg was talking the ambassador down, promising future glory in a new post as well as pumping him for every nugget of intel. Becky had her own sources for all this, none of whom knew that the PM and his wife weren’t currently connubial.

  It was going to be Greg and the European neo-cons—he counted Gordon Brown and New Labour as bastard Tories—against lightweight Rudd in Australia and the Columbia University–Harvard Law community organizer and, coincidentally, son of a Kenyan goatherd professor.

  So Becky understood why Greg was upset: he was pro-life, big time, whole hog, and this was his first-born, his angel daughter, with her name drawn from Biblical nomenclature, and his own wife had not involved him in this crisis. Also, there was somebody out there, a punk with an erection, a jerk who ejaculated, who had violated the virgin daughter of the Prime Minister of Canada. It was incomprehensible to Greg that this could have happened, be happening, at the same time that it was basically him and the European barrel-o’-monkeys versus the ascendancy of Chocolate Jesus versus Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Chávez et al. Greg didn’t know where to turn, and Becky expected he was having long conversations, when he could manage them, with Pastor Grant in Kelowna.

  She was giving him space. She was marking time. She was praying for discernment. She was loving the children, who, in her eyes, were becoming rapaciously needy.

  At the elementary school, Becky’s conversation with Ms. Humphries, a nouveau hippie with red polka-dot triangle stuck to her head, gladiator sandals on her callused feet and sparkly scarf that kept catching in the queue of sheeted ghosts hung off a clothesline across her desk, was informative. Pablo refused to take part in the Skeleton Boogie, a dance number they’d been working on for weeks, because it made him miss his mother and extended family. He’d fled the rehearsal and Ms. H. had found him crying in the cloakroom. Being an “attuned” teacher—her words—Ms. H. realized Pablo was talking about his biological family in Colombia.

  Becky told Ms. H. how much she appreciated her input. She said the family inevitably wore a mantle of duty, reflecting the role of the PM, and it could sometimes be overwhelming for the children, as they became more aware of the media and people’s expectations of their father, particularly. She also mentioned the recent death of Pablo’s gerbil.

  Ms. H. revealed that Pablo had talked about the sudden demise of Señor Wuzzy. Becky steeled herself.

  He’d told her the gerbil had been whacked, but wasn’t willing to confide the identity of the perp. He also wanted his own room away from Peter and refused to discuss it further.

  Becky could tell that Ms. H. thought Peter had committed the crime of gerbil passion, and Becky herself hyper-reacted into fight-or-flight mode. She thanked Ms. H. again, looked at her watch, coughed and said, “To be continued,” as she fled into the hall. She dropped over the water fountain, pushing her mouth up against the spigot, where a dribble appeared. Before heading into the library, now virtually empty of kids, with only one large overhead light still left on, she watched through the window in the door. Peter manhandled a trolley of books and was ramming it repeatedly into a reading table, knocking those tall picture books out like big cement greeting cards onto the floor. Under that same table, Pablo was folded up, butt tucked in, covering his head.

  Becky shoved open the door. “Peter!” she yelled. “Cease and desist.” She scooped Pablo up and ruffled his hair.

  By the time Becky landed back at 24 Sussex with the boys, they had to rush into early supper and costume-prep for Gory Horror. Martha was watching Sarah Palin and her family on CNN. The very pregnant Bristol was in her final trimester and Levi, the adolescent common-law progenitor who resembled a young Donny Osmond, rested his hand on her stomach and shared a giggle with her. Peter dug into his spaghetti and Becky took Pablo aside to spend some quality time with him.

  “I don’t want to go over to Niko’s,” he said, his accent rendering his apprehension more dire to Becky’s maternal ears.

  Martha abruptly left the room.

  “Why, darlin’?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Why, amigo?”

  “Scary it will be.”

  “Maybe you should go as Yoda.”

  No response.

  Becky found herself submerged in a domestic emo sinkhole. Could nothing just proceed normally? Such as: children eat nutritious meal, do homework, say prayers, disappear for twelve hours?

  Becky headed upstairs to check on Martha. She was in her bedroom watching Greg on her laptop screen. He
played guitar and earnestly sang “Hey Eve,” which sounded like a Beatles tune. “What’s up, honeybee?” Becky asked.

  “I don’t know if I did the right thing,” Martha said, not looking at her.

  “About what?” Becky said, although she knew. “I saw you were watching Sarah Palin’s girl.”

  “They seem happy, Mom. Bristol takes care of baby Trig. Levi supports her in having their own baby.”

  Becky bent down beside her and gave Martha a long hug. She reeked of Angel, a perfume Greg had sent a minion to buy from the Bay to score paternal points. Becky knew Martha hadn’t been in touch with Corporal Shymanski because Becky was now monitoring her phone and all Internet communications. Martha had willingly allowed this. “It’s natural to have regrets, Martha. Truly.”

  Martha said, “Why didn’t you help me, Mom?” On screen, she paused her father, mouth frozen wide. “Why did you let me lose the baby?”

  “We made the best decision on the day, Martha.” Becky was flummoxed.

  “But it wasn’t the best for me. That’s what Dad says.” Although Martha and Greg now appeared to be in agreement on this, Martha hadn’t ever disclosed Shymanski’s identity to her father. She knew better than to do that.

  “It may not feel like it right now—”

  “I hate myself.”

  “Martha—”

  “And if I go over to Rideau Hall, I’ll see him—”

  “Then stay home,” Becky said, exhausted. “Hang with Pablo. Help Daddy with the Republicans. I’ll take Peter over to the Gory Horror.”

  Becky herself was apprehensive about running into Corporal Shymanski, whom she hadn’t seen since the showdown in the Challenger when he made his peculiar remarks about the government. But she knew that her best strategy on every front was to behave as if everything was normal. She’d advised Martha to let things simmer down, for sure. She knew instinctively that if she intervened, or forbade her daughter to see him, or, God forbid, revealed his identity to Greg, then a crisis would be incited that knew no boundary.