Sussex Drive: A Novel (9 page)

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 beside 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.”

She didn’t mention he was fun, that she’d never laughed so much.

Martha was quiet. Reflective. Becky prayed really hard for a bullseye.

Security phoned and announced that the doctor had been cleared. Becky started decluttering Martha’s bed. “He was a dreamer,” she said, still feeling Martha watching her. And then came the knock at the door.

During a stolen lunch in her own study, Becky phoned Apoonatuk and disinvited him as token male at the all-gal gathering that night. He’d only been asked to cover Part One—drinks—as he was on his way to a charity event at the Westin, but she wanted to let him know there would be fallout for inviting her father on the show to ambush Greg and quiz him about the supernatural stock market crash. Apoonatuk protested—playing up the humanizing optics of the segment. Becky didn’t touch that one.

Then she tried phoning her father again. She left a message this time. “Hi Dad, Becky here, you were in fine form this morning, love to talk to you.” She ate some celery, picked at the Gouda, and peeled the skin off her gala apple and devoured it.

Her cell rang, she saw it was Glenn and she answered. “Hi Dad, it’s about—”

“Are you calling to give me shit too?” he started. “Your goddamn mother, the goddamn assholes at your goddamn husband’s PMO, they’re PO’d, and since when do I have to kiss everybody’s holy asses to get permission to speak in this country? Last time I voted, this was a free country with free freedom of speech.”

“Dad, calm down.”

“The hell! Here I was trying to do your goddamn husband a favour, maybe insert some family into his campaign, why in hell he doesn’t get you out there with your legs and your looks is beyond me, and those cute kids, and the little South American one too, and the whole global financial system is on life support, and your husband’s lackeys are phoning me and fucking lecturing me right and left and—I’m not donating one fucking cent to this illegitimate turkey called the Conservative Party of Canada. And I’m not shutting up. You’ve never picked the right man, Becky. Your heart’s in your—”

Becky heard her mother in the background, yelling at him to stop, just stop.

The line went dead.

At the party that evening, Becky noticed there was a moment when both sides of the room were engaged in discussing the American election. The corporate wives were exchanging tidbits about Cindy McCain and rumours of a lover and also about Sarah Palin and the nasty interviewing techniques of a certain female anchor.

“Why didn’t she just interrogate Sarah about Dostoyevsky?” demanded a thrice-married high-tech mogul’s wife.

“One of the oligarchs,” deciphered a Cegep-graduated figure skater.

Meanwhile, the hockey wives were full of admiration for Michelle Obama and her Target and Toledo wardrobe mash-up, intermingled with knowing comments about
Barack Obama’s tight butt and cerebral sexiness. “His brain goes right to my clit,” said one, setting them all howling.

They seemed to have completely forgotten that their hostess’s husband was battling for his own return to office. But that didn’t bother Becky. It was something she’d laugh about with Greg on the phone before turning in.
That’s Cana-dumb for you
, she’d say.
So busy gawking on the front porch, anyone could come in the back and rob the place blind
.

The women spilled through the main floor, waltzing between the dining and living rooms, and pieces of epic Canadian art and outdated floral drapes resembling castoffs from Buckingham Palace. For Becky, it was a bit like home, before Ottawa, when a house party meant a keg in the back of the truck and a group howl at the moon.
Mi casa es su casa
. Yes. And the pitchers of
mom-jitos
, the recipe her mixologist had concocted, were going down swimmingly.

All Becky had to do was relax and mingle and foster goodwill among the insipid women. The boys had worked with the tutor and were now off at violin with an aide-de-camp. Martha was resting. Dr. Cambridge had spent considerable time with her, even asking Becky to leave the room for a few minutes, and she’d advised Becky to let Martha stay in bed and skip her internship the next day. If it was Norwalk, it was mild. When Becky had pressed and asked for a firm diagnosis, the doctor said she’d know better tomorrow. She spoke of a swab. “All will declare itself,” she’d said with a shake of her stethoscope.

Lise, as she always did, worked the rooms, the main hall
and the corridors. Outfitted in a sizzling golden shalwar kameez, vintage, a gift from the current president of
PEN
International and one of Mahatma Gandhi’s descendants, she went on a spree of hugs and flesh kisses, posing under Pachter’s iconic flag portrait on the entry stairway, complimenting highlights and new geometric cuts, laughing too forcefully at their jokes, tearing up at a confidence, dragging the Indonesian transgendered chef in to praise the mango-cilantro prawns. She cradled the sweet six-week-old infant, Tiramisu, conceived out of wedlock in a Tuscan villa; nobody knew if it was a boy or a girl. She remembered everything the women had ever implied and shared raunchy confessions about René’s adventures in the acting trade and his day of shooting with, yes, Penélope Cruz! No, they didn’t embrace,
merci, mon Dieu
. Corporal Shymanski, with his limp, shadowed the GG and Becky noticed that he needed to shave. She was relieved that Martha was in quarantine.

Lise kept avoiding Becky, or so it seemed to her, bare shoulder inclined a little the other way, gaze aimed at Becky’s forehead rather than her eyes. Out of nowhere, though, while Becky was in the midst of inviting the first line forward’s main squeeze to a prayer brunch, Lise pried her aside, steering her into the stainless steel kitchen.

“Lise”—Becky sing-songed her name so she wouldn’t sound snarky—”I’m just about to start the movie.”

“It has to wait,” Lise said.

“I’ve wangled a screener, and it’s the singalong version.” This was courtesy of Tory allies at the New York PR firm,
the ones who’d coached her in how not to cry and who’d put Greg so uniquely on Broadway.

“Un moment,”
Lise insisted.

Becky tried to keep cool. Everybody knew that guests hated it when their hostess abandoned them—the backlash could play out passive-aggressively in the deposit column.

Lise planted herself against the huge Fisher & Paykel refrigerator morgue in the industrial kitchen, swishing the staff out into the pantry. In the glittering Indian garb, offset by her gorgeous caffe latte skin, against the steel backdrop, she resembled a glorious animation dropped into a technological wasteland.