The Slip

by Mark Sampson

  “I know.”

  “You’d think she’d go easy on you, Philip, considering you used to fuck her.”

  “Grace.”

  She threw her hands up. “Just sayin’.” We stared at each other for a bit, and then she said, “You really have to do something about this now.”

  I nodded. “Any ideas?”

  “Nope. But it’s going to have to be huge, whatever it is. I don’t think a simple apology is going to cut it anymore.” She bore those spooky green eyes of hers into me. “It’s going to have to be huge, Philip.” And with that, she turned back and began shutting her computer down.

  “Grace, look,” I said, “we haven’t really talked about what I said on Monday. Can we talk? I feel like I have a lot to get off my chest.”

  “No,” she said, getting up. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Really, why? It’s only, like, ten after nine.”

  “Because I’m tired, Philip.”

  “From what?” I asked.

  Her face pancaked in surprise, then crumbled into rage. “Seriously? Wow. Just. Wow. You really have no fucking clue what it takes to keep this household running.”

  My own anger sparked up behind my eyes. “Oh, what, this again? It was this exact conversation that got me into trouble in the first place, Grace.”

  “You know what, Philip, fuck you.” She slammed her chair into her desk and turned to go. “You created this mess, okay? You alone. So you figure out a way to clean it up. I’m not going to help you.”

  And with tears in her eyes, she crossed the living room and tore up the stairs. I watched her go. Thought about chasing after her. But then I didn’t. What can I say? I just didn’t.

  Benazir

  I fear I’ve given the impression that Grace and I don’t like each other very much. You may be wondering: Why are you two even married, if you carry on like this?

  What can I tell you? L’avenir dure longtemps, my friends. I like to think that Grace and I could see the future in one another from the first night we met. We could see the salad days, the smug confidences, the restful assurances that come with two instantly compatible personalities. It happened at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto in the summer of 2007. Tuxedo House was hosting its annual party, and twenty-eight-year-old Grace Daly was there because she had just published her first children’s book under its Tuxedo Kids imprint. Rapunzel Saves the Day! was an inverse of the traditional fairy tale whereby our heroine goes around the kingdom using her long hair to rescue boys who’ve gotten themselves into sticky situations. The book’s release was the culmination of years of struggle for Grace: the disentangling of her life from the man who was Simone’s father; the establishment of a successful freelance writing career; and the quitting of her loathsome communications job at a law firm. By the time she strutted in to the Arts and Letters Club that late summer night, she felt like she had arrived. With her name tag featuring the cover of her book proudly pinned to her chest, Grace ac­tually swaggered into the club, full of all the wide-eyed narcissism of someone who’d gotten three articles published in Toronto Life and now had an ISBN number associated with her name. She was determined to meet everyone important in that faux-medieval room, and to make sure they knew who she was.

  As I say, I was there as well, though somewhat under duress. I always found these events a bit too air-kissy for my liking, but I had just gotten Understanding Islam accepted as part of a three-book deal and felt it necessary to make an appearance. I stayed close to my literary agent, Jane Elton, and my editor at the press, a no-nonsense Judi Dench–lookalike named Rosanna. Jane, wearing her standard ensemble of charcoal power suit and a pair of red-frame glasses too large for her face (so large, in fact, that I often referred to Jane Elton in my mind as Elton Jane) was reluctantly accepting chit-chat from the social climbers who orbited around us. Rosanna, meanwhile, was regaling me with insights on the horrendous glass ceiling that existed in the book publishing business. “Sure, the industry is dominated by women, but only to a certain point in the org chart,” she deadpanned. “At the very top, it’s all men.” Massaging her mouth with a glass of Chardonnay, Rosanna went on to say that women themselves — especially of the younger generation — were partly to blame. “Don’t treat my industry as a way station after your English degree until you land a husband and start popping out babies,” she said. “And don’t presume we’re just going to throw you freelance work so you can stay at home even after your youngest is in school.” She harrumphed. “Still. I do feel bad for the spinster-types who never get hitched and have to work for a living. Their lives must be so dreadful. I’ve seen whole cubicle farms of thirtysomething editors whose menstrual cycles have synchronized from all the overtime they put in together, just to keep the jobs they have. They never advance past a certain point. It’s pathetic.”

  I was horrified to hear all this, and launched into one of my rare screeds about gender equality — and did so just as Grace Daly came gliding into earshot. Working myself into a lather, I nat­urally placed the blame for all this on the shoulders of neo-liberal capitalism. In a fairer system, I said, women would own the publishing business, soup to nuts, considering that they were the ones who bought the majority of the books. In this utopia men would have a harder time getting published, and certainly have no chance of being reviewed anywhere. This seemed to ring a bell for Grace, and she chimed in with how frustrating she, too, found the gender imbalance in book reviewing. Rosanna, perhaps having encountered Grace’s type hundreds of times before, wandered off to acquire a well-earned canapé. Jane Elton, too, was indisposed — listening with neutral patience as yet another balding, bearded writer pitched her on his novel — and so Grace and I were sort of alone together in that crowded room.

  Chat, chat: fairness this and injustice that. Introductions: Wait, didn’t you write — sorry, I’ve forgotten its name. I cringe-smiled. The Movable Apocalypse. Right. I glanced at her name tag. And you’re a writer, as well? A kid’s book — cool. What’s it about? Chat, chat. Truth was, our conversation fit together as easily as a toddler’s six-piece puzzle. No sane person would question what I found attractive in Grace Daly: those smoky green eyes, the cocky jut of her hip, her hair that was, at the time, chopped into a militant Cleopatra bob. She was a witty raconteur, and had me charmed in about five seconds flat. But what, I’m sure you’re asking, did she see in me? I wasn’t much to look at: even in 2007, my comb-over was more performance art than hairstyle, and there was a certain beaten-down, too-much-time-at-the-writing-desk slump to my posture. (She told me, months later, the source of her initial attraction: “You were the first guy I’d met in forever who just let me blather about myself.” Take note, lads.) At any rate, we spent much of the rest of the party talking, and only separated because we thought it impolite not to mingle. But by the time we ran into each other while leaving, on the sidewalk out front near the smokers, we were both grinning awkwardly over the fait accompli that I was going to ask for her number.

  I hadn’t been on a date in a while. My intercontinental encounters with Rani had dried up over the last couple years (though we still exchanged the occasional flirty email) and I had more or less exhausted the Toronto media scene’s supply of least-objectionable bachelorettes. I was nervous as I took Grace out for dinner on Queen West, but my worries proved unfounded. Our conversation flowed as smooth as a fountain pen, despite what she assumed was the bombshell she nailed me with shortly after we were seated. “Okay, so full disclosure,” she said, bracing herself. “I have a five-year-old daughter.” “Cool beans!” was my reflexive response. Of course, this news made sense. Who publishes a children’s book without having a child of her own? Grace painted me then a portrait of little Simone’s general awesomeness, and I sat there, PEI accent banging inexplicably through my mind, thinking, Look at you, Sharpe — being all progressive and dating a chick with a kid. How to be!

  Dating? Hmm. More like: falling for. I had nev
er met someone who could make domestic minutiae — the baking of a pie, the planning of a brunch, the selection of a feminist-appropriate Halloween costume — sound absolutely captivating. Sure, Grace Daly did not know which African country Robert Mugabe was the tinpot dictator of, and her eyes glazed over at the mere mention of Canada’s new right-wing prime minister, but I was surprised at how much I didn’t give a shit. Grace made it sound like her tiny Parkdale apartment was the most magical place in the world, and that she and little Simone (with the help of her upper-crust north Toronto parents and child support payments from her ex) were on the adventure of a lifetime together. There was something about all that quotidian zestfulness that revealed a loneliness in me that I didn’t realize I felt.

  So. More dates: movie; art gallery; poetry reading. Then I cooked her dinner at my huge, book-choked bachelor loft in the Annex, a night of candlelight and Dave Brubeck and al dente pasta. This was followed by — well, you know. She spent much of the afterplay of that first night gently ribbing me about all the single-guy trappings she noticed around my nest: the dust bunnies, the stack of out-of-date takeout menus on the fridge, the dresser drawer that I confessed had been broken for five years. In the morning, she came out of the bathroom holding up the towels I had set out for our showers and laughing uproariously. “Philip, you do realize that these are beach towels, right?” she said, jiggling the faded and frayed items I had bought at Dave’s Cave in Charlottetown back in the eighties. “What, they’re towels,” I retorted. “They’ll dry you off, good as anything.” And she laughed all the more. Truth was, I wasn’t hurt by her teasing; in fact, I kind of loved it, how she went about wiggling her way into all the crevices of my solitary life. She was the first lover, for example, to suggest that my upbringing on PEI was less than normal. She’d say: “Your mother did what?” Or: “You were how old when your father made you start working in his pub? Wow, Philip, you really didn’t have a childhood, did you?” I got choked up by that. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted a woman who visited my bed to notice these things about my past.

  And yet. I kept asking (and you, dear reader, are probably still asking): What was she really doing with me? I mean, Grace could’ve had anybody. She was twenty-eight (fourteen years my junior); she was smart; she was funny; she was very attractive; and she was, it should be noted, insatiably experimental when it came to sex. (And still is. To this day she drags me to an annual sex-toy convention at a downtown hotel, in which I spend the entire time as we wander the metropolis of jellied dildos and various lubes and straps clenched in a panic that I’m going to run into one of my students.) So what did she see in this stuffy, comb-over-sporting bumbler? Well. She made no attempt to hide that she compared me constantly and favourably to her ex, a corporate lawyer at the firm where she had worked, when she used to work. His name isn’t important, though he is Simone’s father. I just call him Richguy. In many ways, Richguy was a good guy: he didn’t drink, smoke, or swear; he went jogging every morning, and had the same 90210 haircut since high school. Grace met him while still a summer student at the firm, and was, for a time, desperately in love with him: from the vantage point of her cramped cubicle, he seemed well-positioned to provide her with the life she really wanted, the life she had been accustomed to throughout her childhood and was determined to reclaim for herself at all costs. And he was certainly enamoured of her. But then came the slow-burn realization — very slow, but very burning — that Richguy was a dullard, and also a bit of a dick. Like many lawyers, he was obsessed with work: it was the only thing that he and his social circles could talk about. He would make snide remarks, often couched in jest, about those who didn’t work — and not just the homeless or unemployed, but also artists and mums at the park. He didn’t seem to care about anything beyond his own ambition. He certainly didn’t read books, and was dismissive of Grace’s dream to one day write some of her own. The moment she decided to tear off the Band-Aid of their relationship came in 2002 when Richguy confessed to being taken with the brash young Conservative leader of the opposition, Stephen Harper, and would vote for him at his earliest opportunity. That, for Grace, was the last straw. Alas, a complication: Grace had also fallen accidentally pregnant with Simone around that time. What to do. Get an abortion? Just marry Richguy and have it over with? Or could she, if she were brave enough, find a third way? L’avenir dure longtemps.

  Find a third way. Be brave. Dare to reach for the life you really want. These were her mantras, and that’s what Grace did. Five years of struggle, of hard work and pitching herself and setbacks and poverty and more setbacks, and then she made it. A published author. And then she met me. Me, the shaggy, shambolic philosopher-about-town. A man who appeared to have read everything. Who thought about things, deeply. Who held passions that someone like Richguy couldn’t even begin to grasp. As far as Grace was concerned, I was lit from within — You are lit from within, Philip Sharpe — and she knew inside a month that I was the man she wanted to build her life with.

  Still. There was the issue, the inevitability, of me meeting little Simone. I was downright nauseous at the thought. I always assumed that I hated children; I mean, I hated them even when I was one. But Grace assured me. She said, You’re going to love her. She said, You’re going to love her. She said, You are absolutely going to love her. And I did. By the end of our first outing together, Simone Beauvoir Daly had me rapt by her little smile. Grace had borrowed her parents’ Prius and taken us out to the African Lion Safari in Hamilton on one of the last days before it closed for the season. That place was off the fucking chain: the giraffes and zebras that were just a stone’s throw from the car; the ostrich that yawp-yawp-yawped right at our window; the monkeys who damn near tore off one of the Prius’ mirrors. At one point, Simone climbed into my lap to get a better look out my side of the car, and when a lion in the distance turned its sombrely dangerous, mane-haloed face in our direction, she squealed with delight and pythoned her little arms around my neck. Then, with the maturity of someone three times her age, she asked me, cheek pressed to mine, “Is this okay?” And I thought, Yes, this is okay. This is very okay. And Grace looked on in gleeful victory.

  The months passed. By Christmas Eve, Grace was introducing me to her parents — high-ranking civil servant dad, librarian mum, good, pleasant NDP-voting people both — in their huge house up in the north end of Toronto. The Dalys proved as warm and clever and generous as Grace had promised. Offered us holiday cocktails mere minutes after we came in the door. As Roland assembled the elaborate concoctions at his bar area (man after my own heart!) he mentioned with modesty that he’d already read two of the six books I had published by that point, even before he knew I was dating his daughter. (Indeed, both he and Sharon treated me — and continue to treat me — like a minor celebrity in their house. We see eye-to-eye on so many things, to the point where they take my side whenever Grace gripes to them about one of our squabbles.) Later, Sharon showed off pictures she had taken of Grace’s appearance at the library branch where she worked to read from Rapunzel Saves the Day! to a group of gathered kiddies. While Grace got Simone down for the night, her parents and I talked about everything from the two-state solution to the genius that was Nina Simone. God, we got on like a house on fire. And the evening was sealed when they insisted that Grace and I kiss under their mistletoe.

  During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Grace and I experimented with having Simone stay with us for a night at my place. The child was not used to sleeping anywhere other than her own bedroom or the ones set up for her at her grandparents’ or at Richguy’s, but we were delighted when she made herself perfectly at home in my book-lined bachelor loft. We spent the afternoon listening to Christmas carols and reading storybooks. We ate an early supper of chicken fingers and fries. Then we put on Finding Nemo, a film Simone had seen seven times before and one that surprised me with its various nuances. After that, Grace got Simone ready for bed, taking her into the bathroom to change into her
PJs and brush her teeth. While they were in there, my land line rang. I picked it up and looked at the call display. It took a moment, but then the name and number appeared: it was the BBC in London.

  I blinked. My heart seized up. I smiled a little. I answered.

  “Rani? Is that you?”

  “Hey, Sharpe.” Her voice was unsteady.

  “Are you calling me from work? It’s got to be like,” and I looked at my watch, “nearly one in the morning over there.”

  “I’ve been here since yesterday morning,” she said. “I haven’t left. This situation is insane. It’s totally fucking insane.”

  “What situation?”

  “Are you taking the piss, Sharpe?” It was then that I realized she was crying. “Have you not seen a newspaper today, or listened to the news on the radio?”

  “No, no,” I stumbled, thinking of all the fun and frivolity Grace and I’d been having over the last several days. “It’s Christmas — I’ve been under a bit of a rock this week. Why? What’s going on?”

  There was a long pause, and then she said, “They killed her.”

  “Who?”

  “What do you mean, who?” She sniffed angrily. “Benazir. They killed her, Sharpe. They fucking killed her.”

  “Oh, Rani, I’m so sorry.” As mentioned, Bhutto had been an idol, a role model, of Rani’s for years. It had been her dream to someday interview the woman, one-on-one. Like so many, Rani had high hopes that Bhutto would bring some peace and civility back to Pakistan, if she got elected.

  “What happened?” I asked, and she told me. “Jesus,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I’m still in shock,” Rani said. “I mean, you know me, Sharpe, I’m not normally an emotional person. And maybe it’s because I’ve been in this fucking newsroom for seventeen hours, but …” And she paused again. “But this means they win, right? This means it’s all over. If they can just catch her coming out of a campaign rally like that and kill her, it means the fucking savages win.”