Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  “You hungry?” I asked Jack. “It’s going to be a drag to find a restaurant at this hour.”

  “Let’s just order some room service,” Jack said, rummaging around in the nightstand drawer for the hotel directory. He flipped to the restaurant menu, but quickly closed it shut. “Fucking room service ends at 9:00.”

  “Maybe I’ll go down the hall and get us some candy bars and chips from the vending machine.”

  “Fuck that, Homes,” Jack exploded. “And I don’t want to get back out on the street looking for some fast food joint.”

  I saw that Jack, too, was growing unappeasably irascible and ready to close ranks with Joy over my incontinent, frequently lachrymose, and downright bitchy mother. The trip, like so many vacations people plan, wasn’t unfolding as one’s imagination fantasized when slouched in the comfort of one’s home, combing through brochures and surfing the Internet. Cross-country trips in the summer with my brothers and parents, ensconced in a small camper lashed to a 3/4 ton Ford pickup, had been ordeals. All I remember was driving and driving and driving and impatience to get home. “Well, tomorrow we’ll be in the Willamette Valley at this great B&B,” I said. “Bivouac for a couple of days. We won’t have to worry about driving because the IPNC has buses that take the participants on the winery visits.”

  Jack nodded sullenly. He was worn out, no doubt calculating how far we still had to go to get to Wisconsin, and the catastrophe that leg of the journey with my difficult mother and her procession of needs could turn out to be. “I look forward to this IPNC,” he said unenthusiastically. “I’m going to get fucked up. Then I’m going to try out my new pecker.”

  “And I look forward to hearing the results.”

  Jack raised his glass in a mock salute.

  “Well, at least we got the tooth out.”

  “We got the tooth out,” Jack aped. “Can’t wait until she has the heart attack. It’ll be like Weekend at Bernie’s all the way to Sheboygan.”

  “And–I shouldn’t say this because I’ll probably be struck by lightning–we got that fucking nightmare of a dog out of the equation. Though thank God he’s alive. We would never have heard the end of that.”

  “I think it would have been better if you’d put him down,” Jack said without remorse.

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have been the guy in there with my mom while they gave the little critter the pentobarbital. I mean, she breaks into tears enough as it is. I can only imagine the blubbering if we had had to euthanize him.”

  “Why the fuck did you bring him?”

  “I don’t know.” I sipped my wine, reflected. “I thought it would keep her occupied. Also, I worried that she’d be lonely in Wisconsin without him.”

  That shut Jack up.

  “How’re you feeling down there, big guy?” I asked in a whiplashing shift in inflection.

  Jack reached his free hand to his cock and squeezed it through his jeans. “It’s not too bad,” he said. “And I had a pretty promising little junior erection this morning.”

  “Good.” I sipped my wine. “How long did it last?”

  Jack lolled his head in my direction. “Fuck you, Homes.” Then he turned his head back to the muted baseball game. “Unfortunately no receptacle.”

  I laughed and continued to work the Anne Amie.

  “Are there going to be any chicks at this IPNC?”

  “I’m sure there will be. There’re nearly a thousand participants. Totally sold out.”

  “Probably mostly married, huh?”

  “The husbands are going to be bombed and passed out on Pinot. The wives will come out and play.” I pointed my glass at Jack. “And there’s no better fuck than a married woman.”

  “Amen, brother. Amen.”

  “But I’m sure there’ll also be pods of female oenophiles–their husbands and boyfriends fornicating back East–looking for some fun. Throw in allday wine tasting, my undeserved celebrity, I’ll hook you up, Jackson. Don’t worry.”

  “Good. ’Cause this thing’s like a spill off a horse. You got to get back in the saddle as soon as possible, otherwise you’ll never ride again.”

  “You’ll ride again, big guy,” I said, slithering off the queen-sized bed and standing. “I’m going to go check on my mom, send Joy here, split ’em up.”

  “Excellent idea! That’s a time bomb waiting to go off.”

  “Keep her company, okay?” I stopped at the door and shot Jack a backward glance. “And don’t try to seduce her and see if that healed member of yours is back in operation.”

  “Fuck, man, I’d split that little Filipina in two.”

  “Plus, Asians scream. And they don’t care who hears. Get my drift.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.”

  “I’m going to stay with my mom until she goes to sleep, then maybe we can go down and take a whirlpool or a swim or something.”

  I went next door and knocked. Joy answered, her face still enshrouded in a dark cloud. “Why don’t you go hang with Jack, smoke some herb, I’ll sit with my mom until she falls asleep, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll have your money back in the morning.” The lovely rosé must have gone to my head because I added, “And I’m going to give you a thousand dollar bonus because of how shabbily my mother has treated you. All right?”

  She nodded, then looked up at me with her face clenched in a scowl. “I did not steal money, and I did not kill dog,” she stammered.

  “I believe you, Joy. Okay?” I said, exasperation in my voice. “And the dog isn’t dead.”

  “That’s what your mom say.”

  “She’s had a massive stroke, Joy.” With my hand I clutched the left half of her head and said, “The whole left side of her brain is gone. Dead tissue.”

  She blinked, shook free from my grasp and went next door to be mercifully entertained by Jack.

  I came into my mother’s suite. She was lying on her back, remote in her right hand, watching the local news on TV. She muted the TV when I dragged over a chair next to her and sat down. I glanced at the muted TV: raging conflagrations fueled by Santa Ana winds, charred and mangled interstate pile-ups, abducted children…. “How you feeling, Mom?”

  “Okay. Tired.”

  “Did Joy give you your meds?”

  “Yes,” she said without looking at me.

  “I’m sorry about Snapper.”

  “She murdered him.”

  “No, she didn’t, Mom.”

  “She might as well have,” she pouted. “I’m never going to see him again.”

  “You don’t know that,” I snapped. “And you’ve got to stop this right now,” I reproved her, hating to have to scold my mother as if she were a child. Which she, essentially, was. “Joy was not responsible for the accident. There was an argument and I tried to stop it and Snapper took advantage of the situation and scampered out. That’s what happened. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.”

  Her face hardened like a dried stone fruit, but she held her tongue.

  “Let me see where your tooth was pulled.” Still depressed, she wouldn’t open her mouth right away. “Let me see it, Mom. Because if it’s bleeding I’m calling 911.”

  At the mention of hospitalization, she opened up. Using the tips of the fingers of both hands, I pried her jaw wider, turned her toward the nightstand lamp and peered inside the cavern of her mouth. The Vetspon and the herbal powder must have been working because, to my infinite relief, I saw no evidence whatsoever of bleeding. “It looks good, Mom. Do you taste blood when you swallow?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Snapper’s going to die,” she said, still fixated on her pet.

  “If he does, when we get to your sister’s we’ll get another dog to replace Snapper.”

  She hoisted her head and looked up at me like an old judge about to deliver the sentence. “That’d be like if your kid died and I said I would get you another one from an adoption
agency.”

  “Okay,” I said, holding up both hands in emotional surrender, “okay. Not that I would know, but I guess I misspoke.”

  A silence descended. My mother wouldn’t look at me. There definitely was something missing without Snapper in the room, cuddling up to her on the bed. I’ve never had pets, never wanted pets, but their inevitable anthropomorphization by their owners only made their loss that much more grievous and I could empathize. Somewhat.

  “Are you glad you came, Mom?”

  Her mood completely changed like a mercurial thunderstorm, “Oh, yes.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  “I know you’re busy, and I do appreciate everything you’re doing for me. I’ll try to be a good girl.”

  “All right, Mom. We need Joy. Just bear that in mind before you tee off on her again. When you yell at her, think about this: you’re giving me a panic attack. Remember that time at the V.A. Hospital when I had to leave you and go into the ER?”

  “Oh, yes. I was scared.”

  “You were scared? I was the one crying and calling out for Mother Mary and Jesus. I thought I was having a heart attack.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But you’re better now?”

  “Yeah, but once you’ve had one of those, it never leaves your memory. It lies like a slumbering beast.” I pointed my finger at her, hating to be a scold to my parent. “Think about me, Mom. Don’t always think about yourself.”

  Her chin slumped to her chest. “I’m sorry you have to replace the money.”

  “We can’t lose Joy, Mom. The goal is to do whatever it takes to get you to Sheboygan. Things don’t always go as planned. I mean, who would have thought a veterinarian in some podunk town would be extracting your abscessed molar?”

  My mother laughed a gravelly laugh. “Your dad would have liked that story.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, he loved the bizarre.” She nodded to herself as if conjuring the image of her dead husband and holding it in her imagination. “And he loved his wine at night.” She kept nodding. I was glad she had shifted her thoughts to something other than her badly-injured dog and, in her confused mind, that supposed devious-minded, scheming Joy. She went on nodding until her lids drooped and the remote slipped from her limp hand. I picked it up and switched the TV off. In a few minutes she was snoring. I turned off the nightstand light, rose from the chair and quietly slipped out the front door.

  I found Jack and Joy passing a joint and laughing about something, probably the tooth extraction at the vet clinic. I knew Jack was ripped because his voice boomed when he said, “Miles! You’re back!”

  “Shhh,” I said, raising an index finger to my lips. “She’s asleep. I don’t want to wake her. But the tooth looks good. No bleeding I can see.”

  “Excellent,” Jack said, not really interested–probably hoping I would have to hospitalize her so he would be relieved of his co-piloting duties.

  I said to Joy, “You should probably go back.”

  Without protest, she packed up her little tin of skunky-smelling buds, Zigzags and half-smoked joints and left the room in her typically wordless comportment.

  When she was gone, Jack said: “Hey, Miles, do you know what O.F.W. stands for?”

  “Yeah. Overseas Filipino Worker.”

  “No. Outstanding Fucking Woman.” He drained his wineglass. “That chick’s cool. Ever done an Asian?”

  “Once. Never again.”

  Jack, his libido evidently on the rebound, said, “You could have that chick if you wanted.”

  “I don’t want to do my mother’s nurse. What’re you, crazy?”

  “I bet she’s hot,” Jack sang, drawing out each syllable.

  I did my best to ignore him.

  “You want to hit the Jacuzzi?”

  “Nah, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.” I slipped out of my pants and peeled my shirt off and got into bed.

  “What’re you wearing your underwear for?” Jack wanted to know.

  “I don’t know, I just…”

  “Man, you don’t think I haven’t seen your pecker before.” I could tell he was pretty drunk by now. “Remember that time at that wine event, you got so sideways I had to hold you up and take your pecker out so you wouldn’t pee your pants.”

  “All right, Jack. All right. Unless you want me to start bringing up all that shit with Terra up in Santa Ynez and how you almost blew off a wedding to a society girl by getting all obsessed with some tasting room manager who’s now a meth-addicted slattern in Reno, I suggest you can it.” I switched off the light, plunging the room into darkness. I heard Jack wrestle out of his clothes. Soon, he, too, was snoring.

  I lay awake staring into the darkness. The reflection from the pool formed sinuous Rorschach shapes that shifted and changed in a silent aqueous dance on the white acoustic ceiling. I tried to analogize the amorphous images to life, but failed to find expression. I worried I was drawing further and further away from my writing, like a boat with a blown engine at the mercy of strong currents. It’s the last thing I remember before toppling disquietingly into darkness.

  chapter 11

  Bright sunlight poured through the diaphanous drapery and exploded our suite into white. Jack was still asleep when I emerged from the shower. I glanced at my watch: already 8:30. My trusty iPhone zeroed in on a nearby Wells Fargo that opened at 9:00. I roused Jack, who spluttered awake, as if plucked out of a fairy-tale world of beautiful nymphs and great ogres only to discover himself in a hospital with his limbs in traction.

  “Wha-, wha-, what?”

  “Get up, Jack.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Redding. And it’s going up a degree every five minutes and I want to get the fuck out of here. I’ve got to go to the bank. I want you to shower quickly, pack up, take our bags down to the lobby and meet Joy and my mom for breakfast. I’ll join you in an hour, tops.”

  Jack pulled a hand over his face as if some bit of prestidigitation would magically transform him into a prince, then, coming fully into consciousness, said, “All right.”

  At the open door, I threw him a backward glance, admonishing, “I’m sure my mom’s already up, so don’t make them wait, okay?”

  I closed the door on him before he could answer.

  Unlike the parched and desolate-looking Fresno and Merced, the modestly-populous Redding is nestled in a valley surrounded by picturesque mountain ranges. It’s not as aesthetically condemnable as the former two. As I followed the GPS instructions to the Wells Fargo branch, I noticed how the city itself was lush with foliage. Still, it was mind-bendingly hot.

  I withdrew $10,000 in cash. No fewer than three bank employees were involved in the transaction. First, it couldn’t be done (the teller); then I needed to show three IDs (the supervisor); then I needed to sign my signature on a score of documents. Then, that still not sufficient to get my hard-earned cash, I had to wait while my home branch faxed a copy of my original signature up to this Redding branch I had wandered into unshaven and dressed like an artist who probably wasn’t one. Since the original signature card was dated by fifteen years, and since I had drunk thousands of bottles of wine in the interim, my signature had deteriorated alarmingly. Eventually, after much hand-wringing, they went back into their vault and brought out the cash. The supervisor, nervously looking around at the other customers waiting through this interminable transaction, actually asked whether I wanted to call someone for a security escort.

  “This isn’t Vegas, Stu,” I said, reading the name off his ID plate, irritable that they had dragged this out so long. “Just give me the ten Gs and I’ll take my chances with the local recidivists.”

  He threw me a suspicious look, then counted out–with deliberate slowness–the hundred Ben Franklins.

  Back at the Holiday Inn I found Jack, Joy and my mother chowing down in another corporate-looking dining room–green carpet, fake wood tables, disc-herniating chairs, insipid food pr
epared by minimum wage earners with little or no cooking experience, and dilatory service.

  By ten o’clock we were back on I-5, barreling for Oregon. Jack said he felt refreshed and wanted to drive the first half of the final leg to the Willamette Valley. I agreed to take over for the second half and guide us into the B&B the nice organizers of the IPNC had booked. Having only 400 miles to cover, even with my mother’s frequent pit stops, we should easily make it by five, I calculated–barring another calamity!

  Thinking of Joy and worried about rekindled acrimony over missing money and comatose pet, I turned around and said, “Would you like to sit up front?”

  She smiled expressively for the first time in two days and nodded.

  “Why can’t I sit up in front?” my mother said, with a plaintive look.

  “Because it’s a tough transfer up here, Mom. And I’m not going to sit in your goddamn wheelchair,” I barked back, mostly for Joy’s benefit.

  “Oh, you’re no good,” she shot back.

  I ignored her–which was getting easier to do–and slipped through the wide opening between the two front seats, letting Joy pass by on her way to the front. She retrieved an iPod from her purse and plugged the earbuds into her elfish ears. A few minutes later she was bobbing up and down, elated to be separated from her cantankerous charge. Elated not to have to stare in a single direction to avert her gaze. And that, going a long way toward mollifying my rising anxiety, made me elated.

  “How’re you holding up, Mom?” I asked, in an effort to win back her allegiance.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I miss Snapper.”

  “I know. But he’s not with us for now. Life goes on, isn’t that what you always told me?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Can I see the tooth again?” This time she turned to me unhesitatingly and opened her mouth as wide as she could. I craned my neck forward and looked into her mouth. The Vetspon had already disintegrated and I could make out the lacuna left by the extraction. A nice scab looked to be forming, in a vivid, dark magenta. “Looks like normal coagulation.”

  “That’s good news,” she said, and closed her mouth.

  “No hospital.”