Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  “Stop being dramatic, Mom. Jesus.”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” She had also rediscovered religion after her stroke.

  “If there were a god you wouldn’t be in Las Villas, would you?” I teased her. She fell silent. “Anyway, Mom, I talked to Jack yesterday and he said he’d come and help with the driving. But we need Joy. Remember last time I was down and we all had lunch and talked about this?”

  “I thought you were fooling me,” she said.

  “Maybe I was then. But I’m not now. Do you want to get out of Las Villas and be with your sister or not?”

  “Joy’ll come,” she chirped. “She hates it here as much as I do.”

  “Okay, Mom, I’m sorry it’s such a hellhole. Stop guilt-tripping me. I know I’m a bad son. Even if you are setting me back three grand a month because you refused to go down like a good soldier.”

  “Oh, stop joking me,” she said, laughing at my sometimes twisted sense of humor, which she had grown accustomed to, and which, startlingly, she enjoyed.

  “So, Mom,” I said, “you’re not lying”–she also had a conniving side now–“you have been talking to your sister?”

  “Yes, every night,” she replied.

  “And she’s still willing to take care of you if we can get you back to Wisconsin?” I asked rhetorically, knowing the answer.

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “Does she know what’s involved? The toileting? Preparing all your meals? The frequent doctor visits? Your waking in the middle of the night and calling out? Not to mention your cantankerous new personality.”

  “I am not cantankerous,” she bristled.

  “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

  “I think Alice can handle it,” she replied.

  I wasn’t completely convinced. “Well, we’ll definitely hire someone to help her out if you’re too much for her. But I want to make sure she knows what she’s getting into here.”

  “I think she does,” my mother replied meekly.

  “Does she drink?”

  “Oh, no. Never.”

  “And she knows you’re a wine lush?”

  “Oh, stop that. You should talk,” she snapped.

  I laughed. “Yeah, well, it’s making me a good living.”

  “Oh, I want to go on this trip so badly,” she pleaded.

  I got back to business. “And you know for sure that Joy’s still willing to make the trip?”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied, back in her lilting voice. “It’s all she talks about. Getting out of this shithole.”

  “Okay, Mom, let’s get off the subject.” I paused and took a sip of my wine. What was I getting myself into? I wondered. Maybe Marcie was right; I should rethink my priorities. “All right, I’m coming down to speak at my alma mater. We’ll have a nice lunch and talk about it, okay?”

  “Oh, please, don’t disappoint me.”

  I sighed to myself. The three-day Shell Beach wine-and-sex wickedness had worn me out. Marcie’s shunting me from one wine-related event to another was not only diverting my focus from my writing, I was so overbooked I didn’t know if I was coming or going anymore. Maybe I needed this ten days away. Maybe it was the most foolish thing in the world.

  “You really want to go back to Wisconsin? It’s cold there in the winter.” I found myself trying to talk her out of it.

  “I need to get out,” she shouted. “I don’t feel human anymore!”

  “I understand. All right, Mom, I’m tired, I need to return a few calls, okay?”

  “You’re not going out drinking, are you?” she admonished.

  “No!” I replied peevishly.

  “And you’re coming down?”

  “Yes!”

  “And we’re really going to Wisconsin?”

  “Yes. If all the pieces fall into place, Mom, yes.”

  Her voice went slack. “Oh, that’s such good news.”

  After quashing a few more of her neurotic apprehensions, we hung up. I lay in the dark sipping the wine. I felt sorry for my mother all alone in that small room at Las Villas de Muerte, sleeping next to a puddle of urine and feces. However, without the ability to toilet herself, she would have been in a nursing home–and the ones I had visited were like necropolises where the near-dead were still breathing. Taking her back to Wisconsin, however foolhardy an idea it was, seemed like the least I could do for her. Her poignant words, “I don’t feel human anymore,” reverberated in my head and distressed me to no end.

  Three years earlier my mother had suffered a massive stroke. The fallout: all the cells in the right side of her brain became necrotic, to use the neurologist’s term, and she had been rendered totally left-side paralyzed. After two weeks of touch-and-go in the ICU she was moved into a rehab unit where highly trained physical and occupational therapists were helping her relearn how to eat, how to speak, how to perform the simplest of functions a healthy person takes for granted. The doctors, worried there was the likelihood of another “event,” offered me and my two brothers the option of putting her on what’s called a “no code”: if she were to suffer another stroke they would only give her morphine and let her go. There had to be unanimity among the family members and my younger brother, Doug, didn’t want to go along with my older brother, Hank, and me. As fate would cruelly have it, halfway into her stay, still dependent on a feeding tube, she suffered a heart attack in the presence of a PT. Because she was on a code blue, she was cardioverted, flatlined for thirty seconds, then the cardiologist employed all-out heroic measures to resuscitate her. After another stint in the ICU she resumed her grueling physical and occupational therapy regimen. All in all, she spent three months convalescing in the hospital before they felt she was fit to be released into the world.

  When she was well enough that we could resume custody of her, she had relearned how to eat and how to talk–though her speech was still badly aphasic and her needs were copious. Hank and I wanted to put her in a nursing home, but Doug, out of seeming altruism, wanted to bring her back to her seaside condo in Carlsbad, offering to oversee her care. Out of pity for our mother, Hank and I agreed. Doug, unemployed and weathering an emotionally, and financially, draining divorce, went into action. He installed 24-hour care, then hired himself to oversee that care. Because of my mother’s semi-paralytic state, she could not walk; she could not, initially, go to the bathroom without assistance; common reason said she should have been in a convalescent home. But Doug was adamant. He had visited my mother every day of her three-month stay in the hospital and the two of them had forged a kind of co-dependent bond. She wanted to come home; he needed the work.

  For a while things seemed reasonably under control, but the money pulled from her savings to fund this in-home 24/7 care was astronomical, and after a year and a half all she had left was the equity in her condo and her Social Security. It had become clear that Doug, who was destitute and rudderless at the time of her stroke, had used her as a cottage industry to provide a stable income for himself. He lived it up on her dime. They dined out often, they bought a new car, and, in no time, the money was frittered away on the 24-hour care and other extravagances she couldn’t afford. She had no concept of money and she let Doug run riot with her savings. When they had bottomed out, Hank, a five-o’clock alcoholic and unable to deal with the situation, implored me to come down and take over. Reluctantly, I did.

  I moved down to Carlsbad where I found my mother virtually warehoused in her condo. The 24-hour care had been slashed to part-time. A girl came in the morning to get her up, bathe her, fix her breakfast, then leave. For the next three hours my mother sat parked behind her desk in her wheelchair, babbling incessantly to Snapper, her darling Yorkie terrier, and staring benumbed at a TV, waiting for Doug to come and make her lunch. After he left she sat all alone for another five hours before the second shift arrived to fix her dinner, administer her eye-popping cocktail of medications and then put her down for the night. It was a sorry, pathetic situation I had inherited.


  My goal was to get her into an assisted-living facility as soon as possible and return to LA. Because she had learned, through using a series of handgrips strategically mounted on the wall, to toilet herself, she might be saved the horrors of full convalescence and go into the more benign world of assisted-living. But, it wasn’t easy. Some were too expensive, others turned her down, and some my picky mother didn’t approve of. The appointments were depressing. At the time my life was in shambles. Shameless had been turned down by every publisher and every film company to which my indefatigable agent submitted it. My money, along with my patience, was running out.

  Living with my mother, I was sleeping downstairs on a couch, and she was upstairs listening to her radio. Several times a night she would call out and I would rush up to see what the problem was. Sometimes she had toppled to the floor in trying to transfer herself to her small portable toilet. Sometimes she just wanted to tell me a dream she had had. The stoic, unfeeling mother who had raised me now wore her heart on her sleeve. Nothing was too unimportant to express.

  One night, three months into my stay and still striking out at the assisted-living facilities where we were making the rounds, I woke around 4:00 a.m. when I heard someone faintly calling out. The husky voice just said over and over again, “Help me. Help me.” I threw my covers off and climbed the stairs, still in my underwear. I found my mother propped up on her pillows, her breathing stertorous. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” she kept intoning over and over. I asked her if she wanted me to call 911, but she just shook her head. She was struggling, suffering, but I thought I would wait until it passed. I held her hand and stroked her forehead, but the labored breathing grew worse. Suddenly, her breathing ceased, her head slumped forward, and she slipped into unconsciousness. It was as if someone had lowered a dimmer on a light and her world had transited the Rubicon of life and was forever plunged into darkness. I sat transfixed, straddling the worst decision in the world. Did I let her go? It seemed like the humane thing to do. My God, stroke, heart attack, and now whatever this was. I was frantic. Or did I call for the paramedics? A huge part of me wanted to let things be. A peace, the likes of which I had never experienced, had descended over her. Her face was almost haloed. It was the weirdest sensation I have ever experienced. She had died. I was convinced of it. And, in death, she had finally found the serenity that all her infirmities had warred against. But another part of me didn’t want to have this decision weighing on my conscience the rest of my life. As she lay there, her chin slumped on her chest, I broke down and dialed 911.

  Five firefighter paramedics arrived and, again using all-out heroic measures, barbarously brought her back to life. Once in the ER she was stabilized. It turned out she had suffered congestive heart failure. She spent another two months in the hospital undergoing occupational and physical therapy in an effort to, once again, bring her back to some semblance of normalcy. During that time, I put her condo on the market, found an assisted-living facility that would take her, gave her precious Yorkie terrier Snapper to Melina, an attorney I was dating, and made the transition upon her release.

  Mom was not happy. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t go back “home.” On a daily basis, she berated me in her puerile manner over the phone. Eventually, her caviling abated, but she still hated Las Villas de Muerte, and she longed to escape. When she finally realized that she was never going to go back home, her new scheme was to be with her sister, Alice. Once she had hatched it, it grew into an obsession, as if her mind needed a hopeful fantasy to help her get through the dreary days at Las Villas. In part, my final agreement to take her was simply so she wouldn’t talk about it anymore. She was driving me insane. That, and the fact that my fortunes had dramatically changed in the year she wasted away at Las Villas. She had suffered so much, nearly died three times, that my sentimental side–yes, I have one–truly believed she had the right to live out her life with some kind of dignity.

  I picked up my cell and auto-dialed the nurse I’d liked. She answered on the fifth ring.

  “Is this Joy?”

  “Yes,” she said, somewhat warily.

  “This is Mrs. Raymond’s son, Miles.”

  “Hi,” was all that came back in her high-pitched voice.

  “Look, the reason I called–and this might sound a little weird–is that I’m thinking of taking my mother back to Wisconsin. We’d have to drive. Remember we talked about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still interested?” She would be. She was making barely above minimum wage attending to the needs of depressed, moribund elderly, drooling, urinating in their pants, kvetching at the world, which they were soon to exit. Every week someone died.

  “Yes. I’m interested.”

  “You think you can handle her all by yourself for ten days, Joy? I mean, I’ll pitch in, but….”

  “I can handle it,” she said confidently.

  “All right. Okay. I’ll pay you $500 a day to accompany us and take care of her.”

  “Really?” she said, perking up. “$500 a day?”

  “A day. However, we’re not going to be going directly to Wisconsin. I have to attend this big wine festival in Oregon. From there we’ll head to Wisconsin. You’ll probably be gone about two weeks, maybe longer if I need you to stay on to help with the transition. Can you take a leave of absence?”

  “$500 a day?” she said, apparently disbelieving what she had heard.

  “Yes. And all expenses paid. No Motel 6’s. No Mickey D.’s.” That at least got a giggle. “You’ll travel in relative luxury, Joy. I’m a generous guy. These days.”

  “When would we go?”

  “End of the month.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask Yvonne.” My mother usually referred to Yvonne, her nemesis and Las Villas’ nurse, as Nurse Ratched.

  “She’ll probably be happy to get rid of my mother.” Joy chuckled at that. “But don’t tell Yvonne the reason for the two weeks off. All right?”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t talk about this with my mother until the plans have been set. I don’t want her spouting off about it. There’re probably a lot of formalities before they’ll release her into my care. I’m just going to kidnap her and walk away, okay?”

  “Okay, Mr. Raymond.”

  “Miles. Please.”

  chapter 4

  We launched the “cockamamie” Oregon/Wisconsin wine/invalid journey from my house the last week in July. Since hatching the plan I had been extremely busy. I conducted two sold-out signings/tastings at the Wine House, one of which ended with Jack and me being spirited away high up into the Hollywood Hills by two sirens of the thespian world, both of whom wanted me, but one of whom had to settle for Jack, now drafting off me, pleading his case by telling riotously funny stories about himself, as the inspiration for Jake in Shameless. The evening was mostly a blur, ending with traded phone numbers, drunken endearment, a floor littered with empty bottles of wine from the owner’s cellar (turned out the woman I did was one of ten mistresses of an eccentric and peripatetic tycoon!).

  I also made the trip down to my alma mater, UCSD in La Jolla, for a faculty wine (of course!) dinner/book signing that had been sold out weeks in advance. I drank my way through the event, delivered what I was told was another funny, extemporaneous speech, recounting how in my college days I couldn’t get laid while all the foul-smelling Marxist/socialist professors had their way with the female undergraduates. They offered me a visiting professorship in creative writing, but I told them it wasn’t time to put the cowbells on just yet.

  While down there I also visited my mother. I took her and Joy out to lunch. I wanted to make sure they could work as a team, and Joy proved she had no trouble transfering my mother from her wheelchair to the car and back again. Joy may have been slight of stature, but she was surprisingly strong, and she had transfer technique down to an art. Reassured, I asked Joy, a few days before the departure, to gather up, as unobtrusively as possible, my mot
her’s personal effects and hold onto them. I also inquired about her meds. Joy, excited about the trip now, had quit her job, but she had a close friend who said she would get them for me the day of departure. I gave Joy some cash to take my mother shopping and buy her some new clothes for the journey.

  My mother’s main concern was reclaiming her dog. I told her I would try to do my best, but that Melina had grown attached to Snapper and probably assumed he was her pet now. My mother didn’t understand. Snapper, in her fragile and deluded mind, was merely on loan until the day she could get better and move back to her condo.

  On the Hollywood side of things, my new flotilla of agents was all over me. The TV guy kept telling me “funny is money, funny is money.” The film guy implored me to write a comedy in the spirit of Shameless, after ascertaining that I didn’t have anything in my filing cabinets that he could peddle immediately. My publishing agent, to whom I felt a certain fealty, kept pushing me to come up with a one-sheet, anything that could score a book contract. And Marcie had big plans for me once I was able to conquer my fear of flying, a project she had made her express mission.

  On the appointed day, Jack showed in ebullient spirits. He was easily twenty-five pounds heavier than in our Shameless days and he sported a wild, untrimmed rust-colored beard that made him look like some kind of satanic Santa Claus. In his customary slovenly manner, he was wearing a white button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled back to his meaty elbows. His girth obviated fastening the lower buttons so he just left them open, his hairy belly exposed. Describing him as “gone to seed” would be an understatement. But he was still Jack: he still had that infectious laugh; he still lived for the moment; and when he was in the right mood, he was still the life of any party.

  “Give me a hug,” he said as I opened my front door and greeted him on the porch. Without waiting, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me toward him tightly. “This is going to be great trip,” he said into my ear, the twin odors of tobacco and wine enveloping him in a miasmal stench.