Sussex Drive: A Novel (8 page)
“Unfortunately, he’s not available either. It’s that time of year.”
“Constitutional scholars—they all flee civilization as they define it,” Greg said.
“They’re in Muskoka,” Margaret Lee said.
“Or maybe they’re all on a cruise too,” said Clark.
“The fixed election is a new law.”
“It’s not a law, Lise. It’s not binding. Language, language, language.” Greg added gently, “It’s not in your prerogative to deny me.”
Clark nodded, which she took as a threat.
Margaret Lee stared at her.
“I’m not comfortable,” Lise said.
“What would make you so?” This from Greg.
“A conversation with the constitutional adviser.”
Greg turned to Margaret Lee. “Peggy, who can you reach?”
Margaret Lee scurried from the study.
“
My
concern,” said Greg, “is that we’re into a delay of hours or days. I’d like to dissolve the House of Commons before the MPs file back for the fall sitting and give everyone the time to prepare. If the writ drops right after Labour Day, the election can happen quickly, following Thanksgiving.”
“Before the U.S. election,” Lise said.
“Well, it’s not timed to that,” Clark sputtered.
She had a quick thought for the Leader of the Opposition, Monsieur Triste, whom she sometimes saw jogging with his dog, a brown Labrador, past the Princess Anne Gate. He was a decent chap, despised by the corporatariat in his own Liberal Party. He’d been handed the reins to the losing team after the last election (when the RCMP announced a criminal investigation of an ex–Cabinet member, revealed to
voters at the dawn of the campaign). Monsieur Triste was also from Quebec.
Une sorte de frère
. Maybe he could pull this off, win a snap election?
“All right,” Lise said.
“You’re sure you don’t want the adviser?”
“No,” Lise said. “Do it.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Clark.
Greg leaned over and performed a somewhat clumsy high-five with the Clerk.
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
.
M
A-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.