Sussex Drive: A Novel (15 page)
Lise led the way into the Red Chamber, past the oak doors displaying the insignia of the provinces and territories, with Nunavut a last-minute, oddly shaped addition, hanging in its own row. The walls of Tyndall limestone
from Manitoba, embedded with the fossils of an ancient sea, closed in, as did the fossils occupying the seats. The Senate was also known as the home of sober second thought, a phrase she found thrillingly ironic.
She sat down, and René followed suit, and then Greg, occupying the dunce chair: approximately two feet lower than her 1916 reupholstered throne and three feet away to her right. The Supreme Court judges, ciphers in their Christmas regalia, were also present. The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod bustled off to knock on the door of the House of Commons and advise the MPs that it was time to face the music of the umpteenth parliamentary session.
Greg tried to get René’s attention.
Bonne chance
.
Still no Throne Speech. In the distance, she thought she saw teal-shaded Margaret Lee talking to Greg’s Chief of Staff and Director of Communications at the entrance. She never retained their names; they came, they went, and René just referred to them collectively as Jekylls and Hydes. Margaret Lee was
très
cozy with those boys.
Lise leaned over toward Greg, pointedly staring down on his buffed and powdered bald spot. “Maybe I’ll make up the Speech.”
“Ha,” he said. “Good one.”
Lise looked up, way up, at the paintings hung on the walls. Eight sober images from World War I, when Canada militarily came of age and wholeheartedly spilled the blood of its young. Supposedly, as the political grandchild of the House of Lords in the English Parliament, the Senate’s carpets and
seats were red to symbolize the colour of royalty. For Lise, the ruined cathedral at Arras, the demolished Cloth Hall in Belgium, the troops at the railway station and even the smoke in the air served to remind her that the Red Chamber was drenched in the brotherhood of common blood.
“Prime Minister, is Becky—” Lise cast her eye toward the private gallery. Usually Becky brought Martha and listened, smiling with her lips closed, in the front row.
“Pas aujourd’hui,”
Greg barked.
“For God’s sake, give me the Speech.” Lise was desperate.
At the entrance to the Senate, Margaret Lee seemed to be shouting.
Suddenly a Senate page delivered twenty-five sheets of paper so hot off the King’s Own Printer press that they scorched Lise’s palms. “Your Excellency,” she said.
“Merci beaucoup,”
said Lise.
But when Lise turned the cover sheet, she found a dense, single-spaced document from the Department of National Defence with a series of acronyms: ANP,
NATO
, RCMP. Words randomly drew her eye:
Kandahar
,
prostitution ring
,
drug lord
,
murder
. This wasn’t the Speech from the Throne. She raised her eyes in horror as Margaret Lee bore down upon her.
“Désolée,”
Margaret Lee whispered, and slipped her a thinner, cooler stapled packet.
“Donnez-moi l’autre.”
“No.” Lise wouldn’t let go of it.
“Ça va, merci.”
Lise tucked it behind the Speech.
Margaret Lee shot one glance toward the rear of the Senate and then raced in her sturdy pumps past the cameras.
“Honourable Senators, Members of the House of Commons, Ladies and Gentlemen …” Lise began, with Oscar-worthy conviction and warmth. She shifted to the edge of her throne, where her shapely legs could inspire national lust. Whatever it took. She faced down the assembled non-blinkers.
“And reconsider our fiscal duties …”
Nobody saw these political elites from her singular perspective—not the cameras trained upon her benevolently non-partisan facade, not the press, fascinated with their technological toys and holstered by their corporate sheriffs, not the citizens of this blindfolded gentle giant, this ventriloquist’s dummy of a country, with the middle-class populace in a systemic funk about their mortgages, pensions, kids’ educations, cruises and replacement hips.
“Renforcer le gouvernement …”
She’d met the Canadians in their mosques and colleges, at their theatres and barracks and gyms. Talked the talk with the senior citizens, Canada born, who were watching the Arctic ice melt and trickle down to their suburban postage-stamp lawns, flooding the forty-ninth parallel; they’d confided in her about the dilution of the Canadian brand, a public broadcaster now showing
Jeopardy
reruns. Hugged the new Canadians, her fellow immigrants, who’d happily sworn allegiance, those who shrugged on their earmuffs and carried on as if they were in the Punjab, only it was much cooler here, and bought boots that sounded as if they were named after a curry:
mukluks
.
“Guard our citizens …
“Beaucoup d’emplois
…
“Also, we will aim …”
She saw the weary face of the separatist leader; he was such a good dancer. Ditto, the trim socialist dude. Such a sweet ass. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stared at the ceiling; he was Asian, Alberta born, the rebel son of a famous dim sum chef. Lise couldn’t bring herself to steal a glance at the rigid RCMP commissioner. Or Greg’s Cabinet: the left-wing media called them Old Testament golfers, moose stalkers and misogynists.
She met the eyes of the Leader of the Official Opposition, Monsieur Triste. He regarded her with an unwavering sort of unrequited trust.
What would happen if she switched the documents?
The thought lounged upon her
langue de bois
.
She faltered.
Greg scratched his calf, a brow, the other calf. Her pause made him nervous. “Give me,” he said.
“Pardon?”
Lise turned.
“The Speech.” Greg grabbed for it.
A sudden commotion overhead. Shouts from the gallery.
“Murderers!”
Lise craned her head to see. MPs ducked. Senators jerked awake, wondering where they were.
Security scrambled and a phalanx of RCMP and other operatives charged toward Lise and the PM, ready to escort them to the safe room.
“Murderers!” A gut-wrenchingly familiar tone of voice.
Then she spotted Niko. In the front row, wearing a black toque with skull and crossbones, and he was not supposed to be there, he was supposed to be in pre-Calculus 11. In a quick second he was apprehended and hustled out the side door by security. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. And neither could anyone else in the Chamber.
René stood on his throne, ready to run out after his stepson.
“Assieds-toi.”
Lise waved him back down. “René.”
The Speaker of the Senate rose to take charge. Lise waved at her to sit too.
“Silence, s’il vous plaît,”
Lise said to the gathering. “Silence, please.”
She was shocked when they obeyed.
She’d never felt so strategically African, so black, so
other
, and it had to do with being the mother of the outspoken boy now being manhandled off-camera and, oddly, the improbable death of his Cree father, who’d been in his intellectual and legal prime when his canoe capsized in shallow water on the calmest day of the year.
And everyone in front of her was so very very shocked and
blanc
.
She took a deep breath.
Then, from the sidelines, where she’d repositioned herself in the ruckus, Margaret Lee flagged a special parliamentary page, who ran like a nimble ballgirl at Wimbledon to shove a glass of water into Lise’s hand. Lise reacted, taking a sip only
to save face for the girl. As she watched the CPAC camera tilt to focus in on the brass and gold mace, the page artfully reclaimed the Defence document and bounded away.
“Holy shit,” Lise said nationwide.
René secured Lise’s arm as they descended in a private elevator to the bowels of Centre Block. It crossed her mind that it was likely no Governor General had ever visited the jail in the basement of the House of Parliament, at least not to spring his or her child from custody after a Senate meltdown.
It was tooth-achingly cold. The halls were a fluorescent labyrinth with the layered scent of decades of aftershave and possibly French fries. Lise’s legs were those of a newborn Bambi, bendable drinking straws, not suitable for charging behind this very apologetic RCMP liaison.
“Ici,”
he said, and carded them through into a locked-down zone, a room crammed with men staring at live Hill images on their computer screens, and on into a tinier office where a plainclothesman sat vigil with Niko. He left when René swept her in.
Lise bundled her boy. She couldn’t say anything to him; she just hung on to him and dry-heaved.
René patted her on the shoulder.
“Don’t,” she said. “What about him? What about Niko?”
When she stopped, she sat up in the plainclothesman’s chair and took in her son.
He looked exhausted and wired at the same time. In his thug’s clothing, with the acne, the grimace and the furtive
turn to his eyes, she didn’t know what to make of him or this situation. Where had he found that toque? She prayed that Margaret Lee and the PMO were burying the incident. If she had to, she was going to use the fricking government Challenger to bring back Dr. Pelletier, Niko’s shrink, from wherever he was burrowed away. Ministers often used the jet like a cab, so there was precedent.
René sat down, cross-legged, on the floor. He seemed to have forgotten he was wearing Excellency haberdashery. He had to look up at Niko.
“What is going on with you?” Lise asked Niko. “You need to tell us.”
“I’ve told you,
Maman
,” Niko said. “You don’t believe me.”
“What’s this about?” René asked.
“It’s Shymanski, isn’t it? I don’t know what you think you thought you saw, but you didn’t,” Lise said.
“Let Niko talk, Lise.”
Niko looked René directly in the eyes. “At Rideau Hall on Halloween, I saw four men in masks come out of the bush and attack Corporal Shymanski. He was handcuffed, ankle-cuffed, if that’s what you call it, and thrown into a van.” Niko mumbled, “Becky saw too.”
“You didn’t mention that before,” Lise said accusingly.
“Maybe you should talk to Becky about it, Lise,” René said.
“I’m not talking to her right now.”
“Isn’t Niko staying with her when you’re in Africa?”
“I plan to talk to her before I leave and not a moment before.”
“Perhaps Niko shouldn’t be staying at 24 Sussex then?” René said.
“
Je n’ai pas d’autre choix!
I want a pair of maternal eyes watching him! I want security!
Vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre!
”
Niko’s shoulders slumped.
Lise felt like
merde
. “I’ll talk to Becky, then.
Tout de suite
.”
Niko and René didn’t respond.
“I’ll get to the bottom of it,” Lise declared.
René contemplated all of this; Lise could see his mind somersaulting as he passively stared at the limestone wall. “Niko,” he finally said, “it doesn’t make sense that you witnessed this and yell at your mother when she’s giving the Speech from the Throne, in the Senate, on television.”
“René. She didn’t take me at my word.”
“This is serious, Niko.
C’était fou
.”
“René. I am not crazy. I’m mad.”
“You mean angry,” Lise said.
Niko nodded.
“So angry you’d leave a note in my underwear drawer?”
“Lise.” René was shocked.
“What are you talking about?” Niko said. “What note?” It was clear he didn’t know what she was referring to.
“I have to go and be the Governor General,” Lise said. “And fix this. Then René will take you home. I’m going to locate Dr. Pelletier and we will deal with—how you’re feeling. And I promise you I will talk to Becky about Corporal Shymanski and find out what happened. I love you, Niko,
more than anybody in the world, and René and I stand with you. We’re with you.” She pincered him in her embrace.
When she released him, he looked ruined.
Then she left him with his stepfather, who wouldn’t look her in the eyes.
At the reception in the Speaker’s salon to celebrate the opening of the parliamentary session, there was contagious relief that it was only the GG’s half-Indian son snapping like a pine-beetled twig and not al Qaeda. Scotch flowed.
Lise was held hostage by the Chief Justice, George, who lived in fear that Greg would stack the Supreme Court with pro-life/capital punishment justices. He was one of Lise’s biggest boosters by default, given that they were the two top non-Caucasians in Ottawa. He also very sweetly dismissed Niko’s bizarre behaviour as adolescent attention-seeking.
“Kids,” he said, which he could safely say because his offspring were filed at Johns Hopkins, Brown and McMaster in postgraduate programs.
Greg appeared at Lise’s elbow. She mustered her courage.
“Excuse her,” he said to George. “I need to speak privately with Her Excellency.”
George disappeared immediately.
“How’s Nick?” Greg asked.
“Functional,” Lise lied. “What was that classified document I almost read to the country?”
“Listen, Lise—your shots up to date?”
“Oui, oui, toujours.”
“Très bien.”
“Pourquoi?”
“You’re going to Afghanistan.”
“When?” said Lise.
Greg looked at his watch. “Thirty-six hours,” he said with a bow.
“Inshallah.”
