Sussex Drive: A Novel (23 page)

“I tried to make eye contact, like, ‘Hello, anybody home?’ but no answer.” Becky gave Lise’s shoulders a quick squeeze, then: “Drop me off here,” Becky commanded Lise’s driver.

Lise muttered,
“Vingt-quatre promenade Sussex.”

Her driver pulled up to the gate, which wasn’t quite as impressive as the U.S. embassy’s fort-like stanchions. Becky dug back into her purse as if looking for a tip. The exterior Christmas decorations were already up: a manger with Wise Men, and shepherds, and—hark!—caribou, and buxom angels with longish, bouncy curls who resembled country and western singers, an Indo Santa wearing a bright red turban and bearing a sack of what looked like dolls and plastic deep-sea oil rigs, and a massive unlit menorah centre stage.

“Here’s the note from Niko’s school,” Becky finally said, producing an envelope. “As acting guardian, I took the liberty of reading it. Not good. And,” she added, “he totally stopped taking his meds.”

“What?” Lise croaked.

“He refused to take them.”

“For how long?”

Becky shrugged.

The gate opened and she disappeared.

She had Niko’s school schedule on her phone; this block was PE. She ploughed through the doors and inhaled boy BO, which smelled wonderful to her, so healthy, hormonal and full of life, and also the weirdly comforting aroma of cafeteria cheeseburgers. The boys were in blazers, trousers and ties, and pranced through the halls like
jeunes
multicultural captains of industry; they were the sons of ambassadors and deputy ministers and IT lone rangers. Lise had emptied her afternoon, ditching Clark.

In the gymnasium, a basketball drill was under way, and she spotted Niko—she always did. He didn’t seem to be in the regulation uniform; he was wearing voluminous swim trunks under his T-shirt and purple pinny. She couldn’t follow what special play they were practising, darting in and out of the key, making shots, but Niko was involved, participating, and how good was that?

She climbed up into the bleachers and sat down in the same row as a hunched, engrossed parent, a father who looked as if he’d just come in from shovelling the driveway. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes. And she realized it was Monsieur Triste! She remembered that his son had transferred to this school from Sherbrooke in order to be able to spend more time with his dad. Monsieur Triste was probably picking up his son too. Indeed he was, he was waving to the boy, who was not paying a whit of attention—chattering away to his teammates in broken English. And then Niko was benched, it looked like. Sullen, glowering at his phone, perhaps reading her earlier message about a rendezvous and pickup.

Monsieur Triste eventually recognized her. “Ah,” he said, “here you are.” As if he’d been expecting them to hook up at their sons’ gym all along.

“Oui,”
said Lise.
“Enfin.”

“The Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the House of Commons,” he leapt right in with excellent English. “He cancelled the Opposition Day so that we wouldn’t be allowed to hold this non-confidence vote. Now he wants to deny the right of 169 elected Members of Parliament, whose job it is to vote on behalf of Canadians. He wants to lock up the House of Parliament.” Monsieur Triste was definitely more pissed than
triste
. “Tomorrow he will ask you to prorogue.”

“I am here to pick up my son,” Lise said.

“I too am here to pick up mine.”

An announcement blared over the loudspeaker. “Niko Neeposh, please report to the office.” And again,
en français
.

Niko barrelled toward the double doors, giving them a kick as he orbited out of the gym.

Lise stood, trying to distract from his exit. She was caught between flying after him and finding closure with Monsieur Triste.

“Excellency, I’ve just learned that you refuse to meet with the coalition.”

“That is correct.”

“Would it be fair to ask why?”

“No.”

Triste’s body wore this heavily. “We so wanted to give you the opportunity to understand our agreement.”

“The Governor General has her own advisers.” She paused, feeling the rise of nausea. “It will be a long night.”

He nodded grimly. “As it should be.” Then added, “I hope, though, that you will read the letter which contains the agreement. The coalition’s strong and united, and it is the viable alternative. The Prime Minister’s position is a perversion of our democratic principle.”

Lise raised her hands. “Enough.” But then she had to say it. “I respected your words last evening.”

“Oh,” he said, and she was disarmed by his surprise. “Seen but not heard.”

Triste’s son, now loaded with a heavy backpack, thin spectacles, not cool, very non-Niko, leapt up the steps and plunged into his father’s wide arms with huge tenderness. Monsieur Triste scooped him up while Lise stole away to find her boy.

Lise found Niko in the principal’s office, which was bright and overwhelmed with student art, much of it verging on porn. The school was much vaunted for its fostering of creative expression. The jet lag was starting to swamp her; the despair—it wasn’t far behind. The principal, Mademoiselle Lebrun, who, like all Niko’s teachers, resembled a character from
The Simpsons
whether Lise could identify them or not, provided the synopsis, in case Lise hadn’t been aware of how her own life, and that of her son’s, was going. Niko’s behaviour in class had been borderline, she told Lise. The school was aware that Lise and Niko’s stepfather
had been abroad and that Niko had been staying with close family friends.

“Not friends,” said Niko. “Definitely not.”

In Niko’s social studies class, there had been a discussion of current events, and apparently many students believed that the Governor General would have to cave and do whatever the Prime Minister asked because that’s what GGs generally did. Niko had raised the King–Byng constitutional crisis, wherein Viscount Byng of Vimy, the then Governor General, overruled Prime Minister Mackenzie King and refused to call the election, and then asked the Leader of the Opposition to form a government. Niko’s classmates thought that Byng’s move, essentially, sucked. Niko became quite voluble and insolent in his remarks, and even rather derogatory of both prime ministers. As a result, for Niko’s own protection, as well as that of his peers, the school was asking Lise to consider a break for Niko.

“A suspension,” Lise said.

“You could call it that,” said Mademoiselle Lebrun.

“Is that what’s contained in the letter?” Lise held it up. She hadn’t had a chance to read it yet.

“Pretty much.”

Niko slumped beside her in his bathing suit, his face aching with acne and acrimony and his own defencelessness in this monstrous pickle of academic proportion.

“Niko and I will reflect with René,” Lise said. “On this suspension. And also on whether this school is serving his needs.” She folded her hands in elegantly loud viceregal
deliberation. “We will reflect tonight and talk to you tomorrow.” She turned to her son. “Niko, do you have anything to say to Mademoiselle Lebrun?”

“Yes,” he said, “I do.” He crossed his legs and tilted himself toward her. “This is a pussy school.”

Lise and Niko had a quiet dinner together. She asked the cook to prepare a simple thin-crust pizza marguerite with butter lettuce salad, Diet Cokes, and they ate in their private family dining room with
Pirates of the Caribbean
on Blu-ray. Johnny Depp and his swordplay made everything better, really. Niko was voracious and she ended up ceding her slices to him.

“I appreciate you defending me in your class,” she said when he was done.

“De rien.”

“Niko, I have to know. Why did you stop taking your medication?”

“I never took it.”

“What?”

“I faked it.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to be drugged.”

“Does Dr. Pelletier know?”

“Ask him.”

“No. You tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

Lise drained a whole glass of Diet Coke. Yes, she’d be asking him. Given that she was supposed to be on a statutory update. She fumed.

“It’s better if I’m not on SSRIs,
Maman
.”

“Not if you’re acting like a terrorist in the Senate. Not if you’re holding your mouth open wide with sushi in it
comme un fou
and calling your school pussy.”

He took the remote and paused the PVR. “It’s a defence,
Maman
.”

“Tell me why you need it. Please, Niko. Why do you need a defence?”

“Taylor,” he said.

Corporal Shymanski,
encore
. Niko started to describe what he’d witnessed at the Gory Horror.

“I know this, Niko, you’ve told me before.”

“I didn’t tell you that Taylor was being held by Becky.”

“Held,” Lise repeated. “How held?”

“She was kissing him.”

Lise’s breath stayed in her lungs.

“In
that
way.”

Lise knew right away what way he meant.

Niko couldn’t talk about it without becoming breathless, agitated. “And then he was seized by Special Forces. He was probably taken abroad to a black site. Waterboarded for fooling around with the Prime Minister’s wife.”

“Mon Dieu,”
Lise said.

“Et c’est pas tout,”
he said.

She waited while he chewed the last slice, noticing his mouth was completely closed.

“When I was staying at the PM’s, Martha noticed I was down and she asked me about it,” he began, watching his mother’s face.

“Okay.”

“I told her about what I saw happen to Taylor, without mentioning he’d been
avec sa mère
.”

“Okay,” Lise said.

“She became very upset. She told me she had her own relationship thing with Taylor.”

Lise nodded.

“She’d fallen in love with him, even though he only had one leg. She’s a strong Christian. And one thing led to another—”

Lise kept nodding.

“—to a baby, then to a therapeutic abortion that her mother kept secret from her father, and then Martha—she confessed this to her dad.”

Lise reeled. More than she’d wanted to know, more than anyone would want to know. And definitely more than she wanted her vulnerable son to have to deal with. Her mind didn’t know where to go next. She focused on pretending to be serene. “Did Martha tell her father before or after the Gory Horror?”

“
Avant
. That was when I started thinking Taylor had probably been killed for making the Prime Minister’s daughter pregnant and also fooling around with his wife.
But I didn’t know how to tell you. Or how to tell anyone.”

Lise crossed over to him and put her arms around him. “I’m so sorry, Niko. I’m sorry you had to carry this.”

She felt him relax in her grip. “
Maman
,” he said, “it was so hard to live there.”

She soothed him. She told him she wished she’d never left him, which was true. She really wished she hadn’t over-guessed herself and let him stay there under Becky’s wing, and it was because Becky had seemed so secure, grounded, and had been the superior manipulator.

“And I’m afraid Taylor’s dead,” Niko sputtered.

Lise felt so helpless. This had everything to do with Niko’s deceased father, and how people he looked up to, adored and admired tended to disappear off the face of the earth.

“Niko,” she said, “I’m sure Taylor’s just fine.”

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Look at me.”

He did.

“I want you to have faith that Taylor’s okay. Will you do that for me?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you don’t really know what’s going on.”

“Neither do you.”

“No, I don’t.” She couldn’t tell him about Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. It was an official secret, part of her oath; it was a Big Deal. She said, “But I can say that I find it incredibly unlikely that anything like that is going on with Corporal Shymanski.”

“He has one leg. You didn’t see them beat him up,
Maman
.” He pointed dramatically toward the window.
“Là-bas.”

“Niko, I’m telling you, giving you my word, about Corporal Shymanski, and you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Mrs. Leggatt doesn’t sleep with him.”

“Pardon?”

“Madame Leggatt doesn’t share a bedroom with the Prime Minister. Martha told me. She sleeps on a different floor of Gross-Piss-Off. Twenty-four Sussex. They barely talk to each other—well, they talk to each other now, but Martha told me they didn’t even look at each other for days and days.”

“Niko, listen to me. Do this for me. You just selectively forget anything that did or didn’t happen while you stayed there. Do you hear me?”

Niko looked away.

“Do you hear me? And never ever speak of this again. To anyone. Not even to Dr. Pelletier. Have you told Dr. Pelletier?”

“Non.”

“Jamais, tu m’entends?”

“What are you going to do,
Maman
?” Niko pinned her with his stare. “Are you going to prorogue? For him?”

To Lise, he might as well have been asking,
Are you going to be his bitch?
Then he made the face. The one that Becky had described. As if he had a very bad, dead-rat taste in the middle of his life.