Sussex Drive: A Novel (11 page)

W
HITEHORSE
, T
HANKSGIVING
M
ONDAY
. In the dining room, from behind her mother’s room-shading California shutters, Becky spied on the campaign media shivering outside. They’d already sussed the backyard of her childhood, a lost bend in the Yukon River, one of them repeatedly kicking the old Canol pipeline marker left by the U.S. Army builders in the 1940s and salvaged by her father.

Upon the appearance of Greg, her mother, Nancy, and the kids, the coven of photographers, cloaked in GoreTex and toques, sank into a group squat to snap pictures. The reporters loitered by the chartered campaign bus parked like a circus caravan in the middle of the crescent. There was a huge close-up photo of Greg on the side, and the reporters, who looked as if they’d been cast into the territory from the dark caves of his nostrils, were now leaning on his colour-enhanced salmon lips. Doc lurked, mouth-reading.

From the kitchen, the aroma of roasting bird combined with butter-larded pie crust made her gag. She would have opened the window but didn’t want to draw a lens.

It was time to talk turkey. Gobble-gobble. The cue to spin the Tory tax cuts—underwritten by the surplus built up by the Liberals but disguised as Conservative largesse. But Greg was in free fall, politically and, well, privately. She could see he was pretending to listen to the kids, raking a few fake leaves hauled in from the riding treasurer’s trailer pad, but he kept turning his back on them and checking his CrackBerry for the latest from a key internal poll.

Tomorrow: the election. Showtime. Leftovers and giblets, oh my.

Becky and Greg were back in their home riding to celebrate the holiday with her parents and to produce a photo op—no Q & A—with the whole family, including the gerbils, who flew coach on the campaign plane. Becky, in full apron, camped in the kitchen, baking pumpkin pies—with real pumpkin! Her father had been kidnapped and taken to Mountain View golf club to be awarded the Pierre Berton Fellowship trophy. There he would be feted with an open bar and serial toasts to keep him far from the home fires. Glenn and Greg were not talking—not since the financial world tilted and Glenn had shed a host of vital retirement shekels.

The next morning, Becky and Greg were to cast their votes together at Audrey McLaughlin Elementary; how Greg wished Elections Canada could find a church
basement in their riding, rather than a school named after the former NDP doyenne.

Becky, too, wasn’t talking to Greg, and hadn’t done so since Doomsday the previous week. The day after the trifecta of gaffes, he took a personal nosedive in the Karp-Deem, which then extended to a party slide on the Rippo, on top of which he didn’t return her call about ArtsCAN! and the kaput co-chairmanship. As Lise had predicted, Greg’s comment about the arts had alienated Quebec and urban voters, all of whom seemed to pursue an artistic sideline, working as extras in American movies with mammoth Canadian tax credits, or crocheting dog vests,
click-snick
, for boutique consignments. It was suddenly a nation brimming with citizen artists or those who knew, had begat or maintained one. Anne Murray and Denys Arcand were insulted and organizing. Even if the PMO itself was able to bury the “punishment” line, Becky remembered it. She heard it in her head.

Greg had criss-crossed his country, bent over backwards, done his utmost, bolstered a nervous Tory newbie, hugged a Sikh there, shalomed a Jew here, and pitched in and pot-latched. He’d relied on blanket apologies for epic errors in governmental history, a smattering of dollars for curling sheets and warming huts, and a stance on crime that buggered everybody’s minds given that excellent statistics shouted that crime had fallen. His stylist was on task keeping him looking consistently Trudeau-esque. Very PET, with the dark fringe highlighting his shiny domed bowl.
The handlers, domestic and international, were simultaneously in premature bereavement and crisis mode. They’d counselled Greg in the debates to drink tepid tap water, stay calm while the opposition chorus Chicken Littled itself, and to sound-byte in the sock-footed singsong of kindergarten English—which had backfired, as the citizens phoned the Communist Broadcasting Corpse to complain either that he was on Ativan or else unbelievably condescending.

The Opposition, whom Becky could not bear to look at, were rising in the polls. These were the ones who’d give out Pampers to every infant born on the gibbous moon or donate their Air Miles to al Qaeda. The female demographic, as ever, eluded her husband. They didn’t want him at their book club or bake sale, buying into the summer timeshare at the lake, at Snowshoeing for Tibet, or Scouts. Even inviting Martha to co-write his gospel rock opera wasn’t switching on the father-daughter wow factor.

The situation almost made Becky wish she were in Victoria with Lise, sponsoring a soporific girls’ conference, with rich radio bytes and pro-feminist op-eds. And the Tory brain trust would not release Becky and let her win the bitches back. She had to perspire in the pantry to appease and please the base.

She hadn’t told him about Martha’s delicate condition. Like her, he was against abortion. They’d had long and frequent discussions about this over the years. She knew that if he learned about Martha, he would send her away to Switzerland to carry the little Shymanski to term, and then give it, their
grandchild, up for adoption to some decent Heidi in Lucerne and forever be done with it. God’s will, wipe one’s hands. A version of breed, flee, love. He wouldn’t have permitted Martha to marry Corporal Shymanski, even if she’d wanted to, because their followers frowned on teen marriage.

Outside, Martha piggybacked Pablo and Peter tried to pick up his grandmother. Greg loomed like a hundred-foot Macy’s balloon float, bobbing and ineffectual.

“Put Gramma down,” Martha said to Peter.

After Becky had assured, reassured and promised her daughter that she wouldn’t burn in hell, Martha had made plans for a medical abortion. Dr. Cambridge’s prescription medications were now contained in Becky’s newest Fossil purse flopped on her mother’s microwave trolley. Becky’s legs shook.

Becky’s cellphone rang. “Hello.”

It was Lawrence Apoonatuk, high on her shit list, and she killed his call.

Then her parents’ phone trilled its ring tone, “I Say A Little Prayer for You.” Becky picked up. “It’s Thanksgiving, Larry.”

“I can’t reach anyone at the PMO.”

“Everyone’s with their families.”

“Let me play you something.”

“Larry, I don’t have time—”

“You will for this.”

She caught the insistent voice of the tai chi master, the Leader of the Official Opposition, so beloved by women in
the country, who probably felt sorry for him and wanted to wipe his brow. She quickly realized that this was the friendly election-eve fireside chat that would start to go national in the east, Newfoundland and Labrador, very shortly.

“Give me a minute, Larry.”

Becky headed out of the dining room and up the stairs, past photos of her mom and dad’s various anniversaries, photos of Becky and her parents in Hawaii, to her girlhood bedroom, preserved in peak high-school Mausoleum. She sat on the edge of her three-quarter bed with the vintage Eaton’s catalogue bedspread and Cabbage Patch doll.

“Play the clip,” Becky said.

She heard Apoonatuk, the interviewer, lead the Leader of the Official Opposition down the garden path of finances, pensions, medical care and the environment, and the answers, in simple English and complex French, were as she would expect. By the book. Stump. And then Apoonatuk asked a simple atomic question. “If you’d been Pierre Elliott Trudeau, would you have invoked the War Measures Act?”

The tai chi master was floored. Becky heard the fatigue in his voice, his awareness of the political tripwire, and she couldn’t tell if he’d drawn a blank on the definition of “invoked.” At first. But then he said that he never would have been Trudeau, and he couldn’t comment on a different time and place, and in trying not to be drawn into a divide between English Canada and French Canada, he ended up sounding moronic. But this was a
taped
interview for television broadcast. He had gone into it at 95% strength
and 95% preparation because he knew the unspoken rule book allowed him to
correct
any mistakes. She heard him ask for a do-over in a most plaintive and unwinning way. “I
dewn’t
understand.”

Apoonatuk punctuated the scene. “Picture this. He’s waving at his handler now. She’s panicking. Drowning man.”

Becky heard the handler patiently disentangle the question, a sapper defusing a bomb.

“I request a do-over,” repeated Tai Chi.

And then, silence. Becky replayed this in her mind. It was delicious.

“Becky, I want to be best friends with you again,” Apoonatuk said. “This will go to air in the next thirty minutes. Up to you—do-over or original?”

Becky considered her options. Greg stood behind Peter and Pablo, awkward, always awkward, looking less like the boys’ suburban buddy dad than a neighbourhood eccentric. She saw the photographers exchanging looks and Doc started to herd them. “We’re done here, we’re done.” And then they all heard a loud car, make that a Hummer, travelling down the crescent toward them. It was Becky’s dad driving, moving in a straight enough line, slowing for the turn into the driveway until he suddenly gunned it and crashed directly into Greg’s bus photo, caving in one of the chins, actually rendering Greg’s face leaner, craggier and more appealing. Cheekbone!

“Call you back,” Becky said.

She hung up and raced downstairs and out into the yard. Glenn, quite stunned, was still behind the wheel, and her
mother was shooing the reporters and photographers away. “The boys are upset,” she said. “Please. Give us some space.”

And indeed the boys, upon hearing that they were upset, commenced crying, Peter the loudest and most distraught. “Grandfather,” he wailed.

Becky took him in her arms, aware that Doc and an aide were confiscating the cameras of the media while flushing them out of the area. Another aide called 911. A reporter blurted out, “Hammered in the Hummer,” but they knew that if they regurgitated the incident they were virtually cutting off their genitals in Ottawa.

Becky saw that Greg had the driver’s door open and was reaching out to Glenn—”I don’t think we need an ambulance, Rebecca”—and then his BlackBerry buzzed. Becky couldn’t believe it, but he turned away from her dazed father to check the message. She released Peter and moved toward Glenn, whom she was quite ready to maim, when she heard it. “Fuck,” Greg said.

She’d heard
fuck
before. That was nothing new, and no biggie to the PMO staff who routinely sought SSRI medications to deal with the stress of quotidian access. She knew he’d just seen the results of the internal poll and that the number wasn’t peachy. She’d got that. But despite her knowledge of his temper, and her prescience about his moods, and her perfect attunement to the pitch of his intonation, she was not prepared for what he did next. He kicked the door of her father’s Hummer, which prompted her dad to get out of the vehicle, very quickly for him, brandishing fists.

Since even Greg mind-blindingly realized he couldn’t deck or be decked by his father-in-law, his foot found something else demolition-ready at knee level. He pulled his leg back and his leather loafer exploded, knocking the gerbil spa out of the lawn chair, where it spun in the cool tundra air, scored with piercing squeaks, and tumbled across the brown lawn. Security couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d pulled one of their weapons and shot at them.

Becky was on the move, but her dad got to Greg first and threw a punch. Missed.

Martha screamed.

Peter started to cry again and Pablo joined him.

Security snapped into position. Glenn, who was none too steady on his feet, finally remembered that the jerk on his property also happened to be the Prime Minister. The RCMP detail pulled Glenn away from the PM with what sounded to Becky like endearments.

The boys were on top of the gerbil palace, Pablo prying open the door. He got Mister Fuzzy out and handed him to Peter, who ran, yelling “Triage,” into the house with his grandmother by his side. Pablo had to dig for Señor Wuzzy, who seemed to be pinned under the wheel. He held out the gerbil to Becky. It wasn’t moving, seemed dead, and Becky didn’t hesitate.

“Give me,” she said to Pablo, his big brown eyes full of too much for one his size. She fell to her knees and thumb-covered the tiny nostrils, pursing her lips to fit around the little stitching of its mouth, and breathed. The taste wasn’t very nice, a
combination of pellets, a vague rotting veggie flavour and the tang of rodent gut, but she was determined. Martha crouched beside her and Becky concluded that her life was beyond bizarre when she was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a pet gerbil while the pills that would abort and kill her grandchild, cells splitting and complicating right beside her, sat in two clear safety-proof bottles in the makeup pouch in her purse on the microwave trolley next to the turkey platter.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale
. Pablo hiccupped loudly in her ear.
Inhale, exhale
. Señor Wuzzy’s precious perfect gerbil whiskers, stiff as a stunted whisk broom, tickled her lips.

She wouldn’t look at her husband or her father. “You’re out of here,” she finally said to them both, heading into the house with the dead pet cupped in her palm and her other arm over the shoulder of her slumped adopted son.

She left damage control to Doc and his team and then she mothered. She spoke to Margaret Lee Yeung, the GG secretary, her old connection.
Have you left Victoria yet?
Lise would have wrapped up her capstone at the young women’s conference.
Can you make a stop in Whitehorse?
What was a lift on a Challenger among friends? Then she folded Pablo into her arms and asked him where he wanted Señor Wuzzy to be buried. This turned out to be 24 Sussex, near the other nonliving prime ministerial pets. Becky found an old mini-cooler in the garage and a pink face cloth from the guest bathroom and a frozen gel ice pack. She lovingly wrapped the gerbil in
the face cloth then tucked the bundle into a sandwich bag. Pablo stuck with her; her mother kept Peter and his annoyingly frisky survivor away from them. “We’ll bury him tomorrow,” she said to Pablo as she closed the cooler.