Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  With Jack in tow, I pushed my mother down a cement pathway and parked her at one of the many empty, umbrella-shaded tables. It was hot, that oh-so-rare heat wave still in lockdown over Oregon. Jack and I, both on little sleep, sat down listlessly. Within minutes, a wine steward appeared with a bottle. “Champagne for everyone?” he asked cheerfully, blithely unaware of the personal damage that the three of us bore.

  “Oh, yes, please,” my mother said on hearing the magic words.

  He filled the three flutes on the table with a cold, zesty, pale-golden liquid, geysering with bubbles. He ground the bottle into a bucket of melting ice and departed with a chirpy, “Enjoy your brunch.”

  I raised my glass. “Here’s to being seventy-five, Mom,” I said.

  “Happy birthday, Mrs. Raymond,” Jack said.

  We clinked all around. Smiles momentarily returned, though my inner telepath could make out thunderclouds on the horizon.

  “I’m sorry I’m such an old cuss,” she said.

  “No, you’re not, Mom. Liar.”

  She laughed. “You ought to just take me out back and shoot me.” Jack and I looked at each other and laughed. There were those moments her clouded mind cleared and she was downright perspicacious.

  “Mom, you ever hear what Lily Bollinger said about champagne?”

  “No,” she said, enjoying another much-needed sip.

  “‘I only drink champagne when I’m happy, and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it–unless I’m thirsty.’”

  My mother responded with a throaty chortle. “You know what Churchill said?”

  “No.”

  “‘In victory we deserve it, in defeat we need it.’”

  “Well put, Mrs. Raymond!” Jack said, raising his glass.

  My mother consumed her first glass with alarming alacrity. It rocketed straight through the foundered ramparts of her stomach lining and directly up to her half-necrotic brain. Her face all but instantly colored a refulgent red, her mood turned to golden sunshine and the world was once again a magical place where all her cares floated out to sea on a rudderless vessel of alcohol. Seeing this transformation and how elated the champagne made her, I unhesitatingly refreshed her empty glass before she could wheedle. She sipped it greedily as if she, like Jack and me, needed the libation to quell all her anxieties. Why not let us all enjoy our little oasis of peace? It would prove a mirage soon enough.

  The mood turned buoyant. Champagne will do that. The IPNC was almost over. Two days to Wisconsin, dump my mother with her sister, and fly back to L.A. It had been a sometimes Pyrrhic struggle, but we were just about to enter the home stretch, Jack and I happy that we were on the declivity of the trip, as it were.

  Halfway into her second glass, my mother raised her right index finger, shook it in place, and said, with bowed head and furrowed brow, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What’s that, Mom?” A little facetiously–damn champagne!–I said, “Let me guess. The man you met last night fell in love and he wants you to stay in Portland?”

  “Oh, no,” my mother chuckled.

  “What’s the big confession? Spit it out.”

  She took another sip of champagne, and I saw, all at once, that it was a sip for fortification. A look of worry furrowed her brow. Her face pinched shut into an expression of darkening apprehension. Her head bobbed up and down.

  Jack and I waited.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, tears hobbling her words.

  I leaned forward and squeezed her forearm. “What, Mom? You can tell me.” She gathered herself, then dropped the bombshell: “I stole Joy’s money and gave it to Bud.”

  I half sat up out of my chair. “What?!”

  “I took it out of her purse when she was in the bathroom that morning, probably smoking her you-know-what. And gave it to him,” she said through tears of shame. “All of it. Poor Bud. He needed it more than Joy.”

  My chin sagged on my chest. All that anguish and acrimony because my mother had decided to be charitable to her down-at-heel, ne’er-do-well brother.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes now flooded with tears.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me for money? Why did you steal it from Joy, then turn around and blame the poor girl? Mom. Jesus Christ! Have you lost your mind?”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Jesus FUCKING Christ!”

  “I knew you’d be angry with me, that’s why I didn’t tell you,” she said, now crying uncontrollably.

  “I mean, did you even think about the repercussions of such an act–let alone the morality–when you did it?”

  “No,” she peeped.

  “Fuck!” In panic, I fished out my iPhone and hunted up the number for the Brookside Inn. Thank the good Lord I had stored it. Bruce’s wife, whats-herface, answered. I asked her, calmly, if she wouldn’t mind ringing the Rouge Suite. She tried to make small talk, but I cut her short and she cheerfully patched me through. The extension rang and rang. I hung up before Bruce’s wife came back on to take a message. I scrolled through my call list, found Joy’s cell and dialed that. Straight to voicemail.

  “Who’re you calling?” my mother asked, feigning innocence.

  “Joy!” I exploded. “Who do you think, you fucking stroke-addled idiot? Do you think I’m doing this excursion for my health?” I slammed my phone on the table, rattling the cutlery. “I’m sure she’ll be greatly relieved to hear Jack and I know she’s not a lying, thieving OFW.” I also, ironically, was relieved to learn this because I imagined, once Joy was apprised of the truth, that it would go a long way toward mollifying a rightly discontented, and possibly mutinous, if Jack wasn’t bullshitting, traveling caretaker.

  “She’s probably smoking her Mary Jane,” my mother said.

  I brandished my champagne flute at her and locked my eyes on hers. “You’re going to apologize–apologize profusely! abjectly!–when we get back. Is that clear?”

  “Oh, don’t talk to me like some child.”

  “Is that clear, Mom?” I insisted, way more worried at this point about Joy’s welfare–not to mention my own–than my mother’s.

  “I promise,” she said.

  “And I’m going to be there when you do it. And we’re going to offer to buy her all the cannabis she needs to get her to Wisconsin!”

  My mother looked down, shamefaced. I glanced around. The brunch was a buffet. I wasn’t hungry, and doubted Jack was either. Drinking copiously over a period of weeks without respite is an effective appetite suppressant.

  “What would you like to eat, Mom?” I asked gruffly.

  “Oh, a little of everything.”

  I rose and went over to the buffet line. Plate in hand, I piled on scrambled eggs, biscuits with gravy, maple pork sausages, and a ratatouille she probably wouldn’t touch, brought it back to the table and set it down in front of her, hoping that she would have a myocardial infarction on the spot and spare me any more of this insanity!

  “Oh, how gorgeous,” she said, conveniently forgetting the enormity of her confession.

  I noticed her champagne glass was full, which meant she was now on her third. When I looked over for the bottle, it was upturned in the ice, indicating that it was empty. I signaled the wine steward and he glided across the lawn. “We need another bottle.” He pivoted in place and hurried off. My mother dug ravenously into her heaping mound of food. Every now and then she would stop to sing its praises. I had to remind her several times during her private repast to wipe her mouth with her drool-cloth where the food dribbled, which she always immediately did, not wanting to look like what she was: a stroke victim.

  My anxiety mounting, I tried Joy’s cell again, but the call still went straight to voicemail.

  Since it was my mother’s birthday I allowed her to have a fourth glass of champagne, trying to balance the celebratory nature of the
occasion with Joy’s need to be able to transfer her into bed.

  When my mother had finished her mountain of food, the wine steward, in tow with some of his staff, appeared carrying a large slice of cake, a single candle stabbed into it and burning. They broke into an a cappella “Happy Birthday” and my mother glowed, tears forming in her eyes. It was quite possibly the highpoint of her life until… her face froze and went ghostly white. For a sickening moment I thought she was having another episode of congestive heart failure.

  After the wine steward and his staff had drifted off, I said to my still dismayed-looking mother, “What’s wrong, Mom?” She raised her one good hand shakily and cried. “What’s wrong?”

  Through her tears, with champagne flute in hand, she answered mortifyingly, “I made chocolate.”

  Jack looked at me for an explanation. I hung my head in despair, and he knew the interpretation wasn’t good news. “i.e., shit her pants,” I translated in an undertone.

  “Oh, Christ,” Jack muttered.

  “I’m sorry,” my mother blubbered. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ve got to get her out of here and back to Joy,” I said urgently to Jack.

  Jack and I drained our glasses of champagne and straightened quickly from the table.

  I leapt behind my mother, unlocked the brakes, and wheeled her hurriedly down the oak-shaded path and back to the Rampvan with Jack trailing.

  The Rampvan now reeked of excrement. My mother’s new white pants were stained brown on the insides of both thighs. She euphemistically apologized over and over through prodigious tears. “I’m sorry I made chocolate. I’m sorry.…”

  Jack tried to make light of the situation. “Mrs. Raymond, if that’s chocolate, I’d sure hate to be the CEO of Hershey’s.”

  My mother tried to laugh, but humor was beyond her as she sat in pants soaked with diarrhea.

  We sped back to the Brookside, braked to a dusty halt, rolled my mother out and straight into her room.

  “Joy?” I called out. There was no answer. “Joy?” My eyes raked the room. On the dresser I spied a folded sheet of inn stationery. I opened it. On it was handwritten: “I did not steal money. I did not hurt dog. Can’t take care of your mom no more. I fly home–Joy.” With the note was left $2,000 in hundreds, her calculation of a pro-rated payment for services rendered-and now sundered!

  It took a moment for the full force of this development to strike me. When it did, it T-boned me like a Ford Escort plowed into by a Lincoln Navigator running a red light.

  Jack came up behind me while I held my head once again in my hands in despair. “What does it say?”

  “She split.”

  Jack threw a backward look at my mother, his expression growing dismayed.

  I sucked in my breath. “Fuck. Fuck!”

  “What’re we going to do?” Jack said.

  I looked up at him. “We have no choice,” I said. “You’ve got to help me clean her up.”

  “What?” His oversized face disorganized into one of horror. “This was not in the job description, Miles.”

  “Jack. The woman has shit her pants. She has full left-side paralysis. She can’t clean herself, okay? Joy has flown the coop. She’s probably halfway to Manila by now. Do you think Bruce and Susan are going to help us? I don’t. I need you to stand her up in the bathroom while I towel her off. We’ll get her into clean pants. And then we’ll figure it out from there.”

  Jack saw I was at the breaking point and, resigned to the grim duty at hand, grumbled, “Okay. Just tell me what to do.”

  We wheeled my excrementitious mother into the bathroom. Using all weapons at our disposal, Jack turned on the bath water, flung open the little window, and I opened the faucets on the sink. Positioning himself behind her, Jack hooked his meaty paws under my mother’s armpits and stood her up from the wheelchair as one might a heavyset rag doll. I rolled the wheelchair out from under her and, the dirty work being my unannounced responsibility, peeled off her pants. Diarrhea was streaked all down the back and inside of both legs. The stench was overpowering. I shot a glance at Jack and noted that his nostrils were clenched and he was making every effort to breathe through his mouth.

  With warm wet towels I painstakingly cleaned up the mess–my mother, that is to say–while Jack held her erect. She was blubbering how sorry she was, obviously humiliated to find herself in this opprobrious position on her 75th birthday. Jack never once looked down, uncomfortable, and understandably so, at seeing my mother disrobed.

  It took a good twenty minutes–what seemed like an eternity–to get her washed up and into a fresh change of clothes. I sequestered the diarrhea-soiled ones, as if they had come off the back of a Chernobyl technician, in a plastic laundry bag and discarded the malodorous bundle in the trash outside. When we were done and had her back in her chair, Jack excused himself to go to his room.

  I sat down with my mother and broke the news. “Joy left.”

  “It’s my fault,” she said, still a lachrymose mess.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, a nauseating fear welling up in me now that the immediate crisis had been dealt with and the grim implications of Joy’s departure opportunistically sunk in.

  My mother wore a hangdog face, born of fatigue, humiliation, and her own farrago of fears. “You ought to take me out back and shoot me,” she said again, this time sounding like she meant it.

  “Don’t say that, Mom. We’ll get you to Wisconsin.”

  “Me wan’ to go home,” she sang, mimicking Belafonte. But this time with significantly less conviction.

  “I know.” I rose from the chair. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where’re you going?” She asked it in a rising tone of trepidation. With Joy gone, she had quickly shifted all her insecurities about who was going to care for her to me. And the realization of that burden was making me revert to my suicidal outlook, a standard when I couldn’t sell a screenplay or a short story to save my ass.

  “I need to talk to Jack. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m not sneaking off anywhere, okay?”

  “Oh, please,” she cried. I heard the fear that her apprehensions were falling on deaf ears. That and her innate distrust of her dissolute son.

  I plodded upstairs, my mother’s voice calling out after me with a flurry of admonitions. I found Jack lying supine on his bed, fingers interlaced behind his head. The TV was on some sports channel, the volume was muted. A glass of wine stood on the nightstand next to him.

  I slumped onto the bed and bent forward, elbows on my thighs, raking a hand through my hair. “Happy birthday, Mom,” I attempted to joke.

  “That was dark, dude,” Jack said, with none of the usual bonhomie in his voice. “Dark.”

  I raised my head and looked up at him. He was staring into space, the gears in his gourd grinding. I’m sure he was cogitating on the 2,000 miles left to Wisconsin, absent the indispensable Joy. It was a dismal look that accompanied his thought process.

  I decided to preempt the inevitable. “Look, Jack, there’s nothing left for you to do on this trip.”

  He started nodding, as if to himself.

  “With Joy gone it’s not going to be much fun from here on out. The wine part’s over, too. I’m going to have no choice now but to stay in the same room with her. You’ll be all alone…”

  “I don’t want to bail on you, man,” he said, though his tone suggested otherwise.

  I shrugged. “It’s a long drive to Sheboygan. Three gonzo days and she’s home. A day or two of transition with her sister and then I can bid goodbye to the whole deplorable mess.”

  “Why don’t you hang around here in Portland, see if you can find somebody?” he suggested, his mind already on a jetliner back to LA, two double Absoluts in the bar before takeoff, and an Ambien for good measure.

  “By the time I find somebody, train them, I’ll be stuck here at least a week. I’d rather just brutal it out.”

  “If I were you I’d take her back t
o that Las Villas place.”

  “No. This is something I promised her. She’s going to be happier with her sister. I got into this, and I’m going to get out of it.”

  Jack kept nodding, as if his neck were mounted on a spring. “I feel bad, man. It’s a rough gig.”

  “I’m used to it. I’ve done it before. I took care of her when her money ran out and I was trying to get her into assisted-living. I know the drill. You’d just end up in a hotel room all by yourself with nothing to do because”–I reached for his glass and took a healthy swig–“it’s 24/7 with her from now until I deposit her into the arms of her sister.”

  Jack turned and looked at me, his still-unshaven face grizzled with gloom. “Are you sure, man?”

  “It sounds like your buddy Rick’s got an AD-ing gig lined up for you. You probably want to get back and lock that in. I can handle this. Besides, from Portland you can get a million flights back to LA. Once we get out into the hinterlands, your only choice would be Greyhound.”

  “I don’t want you to think it’s because of what happened this afternoon,” he said, all but admitting that he had been thinking of leaving after the IPNC.

  “We’ll be laughing about that one for a while,” I said, chuckling sardonically.

  “Man, that mother of yours has got the bowels of a horse,” Jack said, able to joke now that he’d been excused from his duties.

  I laughed a laugh of evacuating relief. But it sputtered to an end as I envisioned the end of the trip without Joy or Jack… or Snapper.

  Jack sidled close to me and hooked an arm around my neck. “If I were you, when you get Phyllis settled in, I’d go to Spain and just get out of this fucking place. Hollywood’s killing you, man. You’re not the same Miles Raymond.”

  “I know,” I said. “When the movie hit, I vowed I wouldn’t succumb to the cliché of fame and start dancing in the Conga line. Now, look what’s happened to me? I’m a fucking mess.” I pointed at Jack’s wineglass. “Too much of that shit. No writing. Women I don’t remember or who just fuck me because I’m Miles Raymond, author of one overrated novel made into a pretty good little movie that’ll be forgotten in one year. I’m just playing into everybody’s hand, drinking and whoring, and doing what they expect of me, all the while destroying myself, my gift, what vestiges of it remains.” I looked at Jack. “Maybe I need a dose of reality to clear the jets.”