Sideways

by Rex Pickett

  “Excuse me a minute.” I was growing queasy at the prospect of hearing my mother’s Dionysian revelation of an amorous tryst in Mexico too many margaritas ago. I drained my champagne and rose from my chair. “I’ve heard this one, Mom. Tell Jack. He’s fascinated by all things R-rated.”

  I left Jack with my mother and escaped into the house. Jack’s voice, urging my mother to continue, grew fainter and finally faded out as I made my way down the dimly lit hallway toward the study and the true, pathetic purpose of my visit.

  In the study I switched on a green-shaded desk lamp. I knelt down on all fours and crawled under the desk. With both hands I felt around for the edges of a detachable flap of carpeting about the size of a book. I peeled it back, revealing a floor safe with a combination lock. Drawing from memory, I rotated the dial to the first number, turned it left to the second, then the gears in my head seized up. The third number wouldn’t come. Shit! Shitshitshit! Why did I drink so much at the damn tasting, this is a number I should know by heart, for God’s sake, it was my own mother’s date of birth. Maybe Jack was right, I didn’t think about her enough.

  I replaced the carpet patch and padded back down the hallway and into the kitchen. At the sliding glass door that

  “What’s up?” Jack asked through the crack in the sliding glass door.

  “Ask my mother when she was born.”

  He jutted his large head forward. “Huh?”

  “I need to know. And I can’t ask her for reasons I don’t want to go into,” I said quickly and urgently.

  “I thought her birthday was today.”

  “I need to know the year.”

  “What the fuck for? What are you doing in there? I’m getting hungry. Let’s get on the road already.”

  “There isn’t going to be any getting on the road if you don’t get me the year. I’ve got to get some money to pay the rent and pull my weight on this trip. She’s got a safe teeming with cash and the combination is her birthday, but I forgot the fucking year. Okay?”

  “Jesus, Miles,” Jack said.

  “It’s a short-term loan against my inheritance—which, as you can probably guess, is in the offing.”

  Jack glanced at my poor mother, lost in the mesmeric light of the pool and talking to a yelping Snapper. “Fuck, man, I don’t know.”

  “Just do it for Christ’s sake.”

  Jack’s head went slack in disgust. He turned, walked back onto the patio, and sat down next to my mother, who was refilling her Marie Antoinette with the rest of the Byron.

  While Jack worked his magic, I drifted into the hallway and stopped in front of a posed wedding photo of Victoria and me. I looked young and handsome in a black tuxedo, and she was stunningly beautiful in a veil and classic white gown. We both wore radiant smiles on our faces, flush with the promise that married life supposedly had to offer. It struck me just then how photos mock the present by staring back at us with their immutable luster of our youthful past. I studied Victoria’s face more closely; if only I had known what she was thinking at that moment, what was going on behind those large, sparkling eyes, maybe I would have tried harder to avert the eventual dissolution.

  The sliding glass door opened, jarring me out of my reverie. I broke away from the photo gallery and hurried into the kitchen where I found Jack shaking himself all over like a wet seal, as if to say: This is too crazy for me. He grudgingly relayed my mother’s birth year—’33—chided me for not remembering such an easy number, then urged me to hurry up, that my mother was starting to ask about me.

  “Open the Veuve. It’s on me,” I said.

  Jack smirked, turned and walked back outside.

  I retraced my steps back to the study. The tumblers on the lock slid effortlessly into their grooves and the lid of the safe popped open, revealing the unreported Raymond family lucre inside: gold Krugerrands (my father was a lay eschatologist

  “Snapper, shut up,” I said sharply. Not only didn’t he shut up, but he inched aggressively forward and nipped at one of my pant legs, growling ferociously. I shook him off with a vicious kick. He leapt back, but retaliated by barking even louder, certain to draw my mother’s concern. I pointed my finger at him. “Snapper, go get your comida.”

  My words worked like open sesame to him, and he turned and raced out of the room.

  I quickly finished counting out the two grand, rewrapped the rubber band around the packet, then dropped it back into the safe and sealed it up.

  Snapper rejoined me in the kitchen and trailed me out to the patio, barking and nipping at my heels.

  “Miles, where have you been?” my mother asked.

  “Had to make a phone call, Mom. Long distance. Important.”

  Jack glared at me and shook his head slowly.

  My mother sloshed back another glass of champagne, rose wobblingly to a standing position, and announced, “Well, shall we eat?”

  Jack leapt to his feet and steadied her. “Are you okay, Phyllis?”

  “Woo, that champagne went to my head. I’m flying with the angels.” Jack and I both laughed hard. The transfusion of money had instantly lightened my mood and made me almost giddy. The immediate future looked rosy and laughter came tumbling out of me now.

  We trooped inside, Jack chivalrously escorting my zigzagging mother by the arm. I trailed with the champagne and the Marie Antoinettes.

  In the kitchen my mother hummed while she plated the meal. Jack dispatched me out to the car to get a red—“Fucking champagne’s going to give me the runs”—and I slipped outside and dipped into my Ace Case: a wooden box containing six bottles that I was saving for special occasions. Heisting the two grand was reason enough, I rationalized, to liberate one. I selected a ’95 Williams Selyem Olivet Lane and took it inside along with two Riedel Burgundy glasses that I had brought along for the week.

  Inside, my mother carried out a roast chicken garlanded with carrots and green beans and baby new potatoes on a silver platter. It smelled delicious; my mother always was a good cook. I uncorked the Williams Selyem, poured two glasses, and handed one to a smiling Jack. I held up the bottle to my mother. “Would you like to try some Pinot Noir, Mom?”

  She scrunched up her face. “I’ll stick with my champagne.”

  Jack imitated me swirling the wine around in my glass, then poured some into his mouth. We both tasted. His eyes squinted and he smacked his lips approvingly.

  “It’s a ’95 Williams Selyem. Two guys working out of a shed up in Sonoma, sourcing grapes from the best vineyards,

  “Where did you learn so much about wine, Miles?” my mother asked as she served us each a plate. “I thought you were too broke to buy expensive wine.”

  Jack broke out laughing and I even chuckled. “I have friends in high places, Mom.”

  “I’ll say,” Jack wisecracked.

  We tucked into my mother’s succulent roast chicken, which paired nicely with the velvety Pinot. Life was spoiling us once again.

  In the middle of the meal, my mother suddenly turned to me and asked: “Miles, when are you going to get remarried?”

  “I just got divorced. Once I figure out where I went wrong I might be able to give the idea some renewed consideration.”

  “If he can find someone,” Jack needled.

  “Why do you ask, Mom?”

  “Well,” she said, setting her champagne glass down, “I was reading this article and it said that people who live alone and don’t believe in God have higher risk factors for all kinds of diseases and don’t live as long.”

  I held up my glass of Williams Selyem. “I believe in God.”

  Jack laughed, but my mother didn’t. “But you don’t go to church anymore, do you?” she persisted.

  “Every Friday, from five to seven. The Church of Epicurus. We worship Bacchus and sing hymns in the nude.”

  “Oh, stop joshing me,” my mother said. “I’m worried about you, that’s all. You should go to church and pray.”

  “Pray? For what?”

 
; “That you can get a good job and find a nice woman.”

  I pretended to weigh her words thoughtfully for a moment. “A regular-paying job and a nice woman,” I intoned. “What a novel concept!” I smiled warmly at my mother and toasted her across the table. Jack seemed to concur with my mother’s words of wisdom, punctuating his agreement with a short raise of his Burgundy glass. He glanced from my mother to me and back to my mother.

  I took another quaff of the Williams Selyem and closed my eyes to concentrate on what I was tasting. There were other Pinots, transcendent red Burgundies I couldn’t afford, but this was silky and layered and eloquent in expression and it spoke to me with the voice of a siren in a dream.

  I surfaced from my reverie and excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  As I stood over the toilet with one hand planted against the wall to steady myself, I could overhear them talking about me.

  “Do they see each other anymore?” My mother was asking Jack about me and Victoria.

  “I think they’re trying to get back together, Phyllis,” Jack lied.

  “Do you think she’d take him?” my mother asked. “He’s got so many problems.”

  “Miles’s got some good qualities. He’s damn funny when he’s not down.”

  “But he’s always down, isn’t he?” I heard my mother say.

  “Last year’s been kind of rough on him. He’s a creative artist. They get bummed out a lot.”

  “I don’t understand why he just doesn’t go and get a normal job. That damn writing of his is what caused his marriage to fail.”

  Hmm, maybe, I thought. The toilet flushing mercifully masked the rest of their critique.

  I let a few minutes pass, then returned to the kitchen, sank into my seat, and reached for my wine. I was prepared to launch into a defense of my impugned character, but decided as I gazed into my mother’s rosy face—the countenance of a birthday girl sloshed on her favorite champagne—that she was entitled to her opinion of me, especially given that she had unsuspectingly paid $2,000 for the privilege.

  After dinner we went back outside and sat in the dark. At one point I noticed my mother staring up at the night sky as if it had just been unveiled for the first time since its creation. It made me sad to hear her tipsily reminisce about my father almost as though he were still alive. Her sorrowful recounting of old times spent with him, times that she so dearly missed—the bottle of wine at five, the Sunday mimosa brunches, the steak-and-martini socials with other couples who had moved on—caused me to long for a life less alone.

  “Do you need any money, Miles?” my mother charitably asked as the evening wound to a close. “Because I could loan you some if you do.”

  “No, I’m fine, Mom.”

  I shot a look at Jack. He had his fist supporting his chin and was staring off into the darkness with a puzzled look.

  Snapper trotted over and looked up at me expectantly. Then he rolled over on his back and dog-paddled his forepaws in the air and smiled at me with his fangs,

  SATURDAY: TWO GUYS ON WINE

  The morning dawned bright blue, sunlight slanting harshly through my mother’s diaphanous drapery, rousing me early. I found myself on the living room floor in a twisted pile of sweaty sheets and a musty comforter. I shook Jack, who had somehow finagled the couch.

  He propped himself up on his elbows, his hair a tumbleweed on his head, a crooked grin smeared on his face. “Huh? Where are we?”

  “My mother’s.”

  “We’re not in Santa Ynez?”

  “No.”

  Jack yawned in my face. “What time is it?”

  “Time to get out of here,” I said, “before she wakes up and corrals us into one of her home-on-the-range breakfasts. I don’t think either of our stomachs is up for the challenge.”

  “I hear you, brother.”

  We pulled ourselves together as quickly as our hangovers would allow. I scribbled a hurried note to my

  We decamped the Montecito mausoleum and barreled out the front door, sans sunglasses, to meet a fierce early morning sun that had us squinting our way to the car.

  Inside the 4Runner, we groped immediately for our sunglasses, now a vital necessity. They quickly restored the surroundings, torched by the glaring light, to some semblance of normalcy. I turned the engine over and gunned it to life.

  “Man, I don’t even get a shower. Jesus.” Jack scratched himself all over in imitation of a zoo chimp.

  “Tonight you’ll be sitting in a Jacuzzi with a glass of wine and you’ll be worshipping me for this early departure,” I replied as the car lurched out of my mother’s driveway and set off down the hill.

  “Got to get something in my stomach,” Jack moaned, jackknifing forward. “Man, you’re right about champagne hangovers. I feel like someone pounded a railroad spike into my head.”

  We pulled into a coffee shop just before the on-ramp to the 101, close to a Union Bank where I needed to conduct some emergency business. Jack tried to focus on the sports page of the L.A. Times, moving the paper in and out in front of his haggard face.

  “Do we really have to wait for this bank to open?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Got to get a money order in the mail or I’m going to be evicted.”

  A moment later, our order of toasted bagels, sides of cream cheese, and coffees was carried over on a tray by a

  “Fuck, man,” he shuddered affectedly. “That’s just too early in the morning, you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t look at women like that anymore,” I said.

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  “Not that age.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Okay, the girl’s pretty, so what? It’s just a visual thing, it has nothing to do with reality.”

  “What’s the reality?”

  “You wouldn’t have anything in common.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “It’s purely an illusory thing.”

  “Don’t do your Kierkegaard on me this early. I’ve got to get a couple of cups in me first.”

  “I’m serious, like that excites you?” I asked.

  The waitress now was moving with a tray to another table where a threesome of construction workers was ogling her.

  “Yeah, like I’m not normal,” Jack said, nodding his head in the direction of the construction workers.

  “And besides, you’re getting married.”

  Jack raised the newspaper in response, blocking his face from view.

  At 10:00, the doors of Union Bank finally opened. I dragged myself inside as Jack drove off to find a gas station. I requested a money order made out to my landlord

  I let Jack take the wheel out of Montecito. We were both working our go-cups of steaming Kenya and were starting to come to life. We coasted down to the 101 where the traffic was light. The sky through the windshield was an intense, unmarred shade of blue. The steeply rising hills of Santa Barbara glittered where the sun reflected off the windows of the beautiful houses scattered among them.

  “Where’s your cell?” I asked Jack.

  Jack produced his Nokia and handed it to me. I dialed Roman back in L.A. His gruff voice, forged from years of tenant harassment, answered on the third ring. “Yah?”

  “Roman. This is Miles. I’ve got the rent.”

  “Who?”

  I spoke more slowly. “Miles. Your tenant on twelfth. The writer. I’ve got the rent.”

  “You got rent for me?”

  “I had a money order made and I’m putting it in the mail.”

  “The check’s in the mail?”

  “No, the money order’s in the mail. That’s better than the check’s in the mail.”

  “Okay,” my landlord was saying. “If it don’t come by …”

  “It’s coming, Roman,” I chopped him off. “It’s coming. All right? Don’t evict me. I’m about to be famous.”

  “All right. I try to believe you this time.” And the phone rudely went dead in my ear.

  I punched
the cell off, flung both arms in the air in mock exasperation, and commanded, “Get thee to a winery.”

  Jack laughed. “Amen, brother.”

  I leaned back and stared at the highway unfurling in front of us. Jack slipped the new Flaming Lips CD into the dash and raised the volume.

  We settled into the rhythm of the road. North of Santa Barbara the terrain grew increasingly rural. The hillside homes gradually disappeared, giving way to gentle slopes covered with swaying grasses. The confluence of broad colors resembled a constantly changing impressionist painting.

  Midway to the Santa Ynez Valley Jack picked up his cell and punched a single autodial number. There was obviously no answer on the other end because Jack adopted the affected tone one uses when leaving a message: “Hey, Michelle, it’s Jack. How are you? I’m heading up to the wine country with my friend, Miles. I don’t know if you and Stacy were still thinking about rendezvousing with us, but give me a call, we’d love to see you.” He recited his cell number and then signed off.

  I was staring at him when he turned to look at me.

  “What?” he said.

  “Who’s Michelle?”

  “Set P.A. I met.”

  “Does she know you’re getting married?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Vaguely? Is there a looser version of married that I’m unfamiliar with?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  We listened to the engine hum in the silence for a few moments.

  “Nervous about the wedding?” I probed.

  “Nope,” he said, shaking his head confidently.

  “Nervous about the bonds of holy matrimony?”

  Jack cocked his head a quarter turn and shot me a suspicious look. “No.”

  “Get along with the in-laws?”

  “In-laws are cool. No complaints there. Why?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You think I’m making a mistake?”

  “No.”

  “You’re jealous?”

  I snorted a laugh.

  “You wish you were still married to Victoria.”