Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  “Hi!” she said, “You made it.” She gave me a brief hug. “You look so grown up, Miles.”

  “You haven’t aged.”

  She smirked. “I’ve heard so much about you and your success.”

  I nodded, too tired to do the routine.

  Alice stepped down the short flight of steps to greet the sister she hadn’t seen in over twenty years. “Hi, Phyllis. How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” Tears welled in her eyes. She pointed her finger at me and said, “He took good care of me. He got me home.”

  Alice glanced back and forth between the two of us. “I bet he did.” She didn’t seem to know what to do next, no doubt taken aback by seeing her sister in this semi-infantile state. “Well, let’s get inside,” she said nervously. “It’s chilly out here.” Anxiety clouding her face, she stepped back up onto the porch and held the door open.

  I leapt down and got behind the wheelchair. I swiveled it around and bumped my mother up the short flight of steps like a mover with a hand truck. There wasn’t enough room on the porch to turn her around so I pulled her through the narrow front door backward. It was such a tight fit that the outer edges of her armrests grazed the molding, further disconcerting Alice. She smiled to mask her concern, shutting the door quickly against the night air.

  We convened in the tiny living room. Its hardwood floor, half covered by a threadbare rug, was due for refinishing. The couch and matching chairs, coffee table and lone end table were ‘50s vintage and bore commensurate wear and tear. Alice’s husband, whose name was escaping me, had worked at Kohler until a heart attack had felled him, about ten years earlier. They had two sons. One lived in Alaska working for a regional airline, and the other was in a federal penitentiary, serving time for tax fraud. While I’d been aware Alice lived on a fixed income, I’d not expected quite the reduced circumstances confronting us. The small house was surely her only asset; as I was to learn, her criminal son had gutted her savings with all his legal troubles and more or less bankrupted her. I took heart in the thought that the money I had agreed to provide Alice for care of her sister was a godsend.

  My mother was enervated from the journey, but it was plain she was depressed about her new lodgings. After two decades in a cliffside, ocean-view condo in temperate Southern California, this down-at-the-heel house must have felt like a fall from grace. A step up, perhaps, from the necropolis that was Las Villas, but a plummet nonetheless. She had made it home, but this wasn’t the home she had dreamed about singing “Daylight come and me wan’ go home…” along with Belafonte.

  Alice returned from the kitchen bearing the traditional Midwestern welcome for guests: a plate of cookies (purchased, not made from scratch) and a pot of coffee on a green fiberglass tray. We chitchatted a bit about the trip, but my mother and I were so enervated from the day’s 500-plus miles–from the whole journey, with all its lunatic vicissitudes–that she started to grow irritable, grouchy, interrupting even more rudely than usual in the middle of an anecdote I was telling Alice. “I want to go to bed,” she shrieked.

  The way she said it, by her angry tone of voice, I came face to face with the fact that this arrangement might not work out. I was beat, a mere two days sober after a year-long bacchanal, and I didn’t know if I had the stamina to oversee this transition, whatever its outcome.

  I picked myself up off the couch and went outside and brought in her luggage. Alice was looking with an expression of deepening concern at my mother, whose head was slumped on her chest. My aunt had not grasped the severity of her sister’s condition when she signed on, and worry corrugated the corners of her mouth. My mother had fixated on the fantasy of leaving Las Villas and Alice had concomitantly fixated on a fantasy of additional income. The reality of their cohabitation had never been thought out.

  I dropped the two suitcases to the floor. The luggage alone seemed to crowd the little living room. “Okay, Alice, how about I take you through the routine?”

  “Okay,” she said gamely, rising to her feet. She had had many part-time jobs in her life of mounting debt, and she embarked on this one as on any other: learn the ropes. But now she was in her late sixties, and my mother’s needs must have seemed daunting. She was likely thinking what many thought, that my mother should be in full convalescence. Except someone would have to drag her kicking and screaming. And that someone was me.

  “Show me the bedroom,” I said, reaching for that upbeat tone I was decidedly not feeling.

  Alice led me to what had substituted for a guest room–or sewing room, or TV room, it was hard to tell. She had it made up nicely for my mother’s arrival, thoughtfully adding the flourish of a vase of flowers on the nightstand. But the queen bed filled nearly all the postage stamp-sized floor space; there was no way the wheelchair would fit between the dresser and the bed for transfers. As Alice watched, I pushed the bed against the far wall, clearing enough space for my mother’s bulky chair.

  Before I wheeled her in I went to check the bathroom. To my utter dismay, I would be able to maneuver my mother in, barely, but the cramped space made it nearly impossible to reposition the chair and shift her sidesaddle onto the toilet. I would be able to pull off the transfer, standing her up, pivoting her, and sitting her down, but Alice would have trouble, especially given the number of times she would probably be required to get up in the middle of the night before we could customize the bedroom with wall mounts and a portable toilet.

  Naturally enough, my mother desperately needed to go. As Alice watched me execute the maneuver, her consternation visibly mounted. Fearing mutiny, I knew then and there that I would be staying much longer than I had planned.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, my mother holding a cup of water, I administered her meds. I explained each to Alice and told her I would write down how often it was to be taken. She listened carefully, but she kept compulsively dry-rubbing her hands as if she were about to leap out of her skin. Maybe my own anxiety disorder was genetic.

  Finally medicated–the application of the nitro patch gave Alice another start!–and tucked in, she looked up at me and said with a chuckle, “Give me a kiss good-night.”

  I turned to Alice and said, “She always asks for a kiss good-night”–I returned my gaze to my mother–“but she knows we don’t do that, do we, Mom?”

  “No,” she spoke with the voice of a child, “but I can ask.”

  I resorted to what had become my standard consolation move, grabbing her right hand in both of mine and giving it a squeeze. “You’re home, Mom,” I said. “You’re home.”

  “I know. I wish Snapper was here.” She lapsed into tears.

  “Don’t cry, Mom.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You know what happens to big girls who cry, don’t you?”

  “They go back to Las Villas,” she answered, per the badinage struck up in our journey.

  “Or state convalescence. And you don’t want to go there.”

  “Oh, no. I’ll be a big girl, I promise.”

  “You don’t have to worry, Mom, I’m going to stay the night. Okay?”

  “Oh, that’s such good news.”

  Alice, blinking back apprehension, met my eyes.

  Back in the living room, I explained that we were going to have to do some customized adjustments to her house, but reassured her I would stay on as long as she needed.

  “Okay,” she said uneasily.

  “And if it doesn’t work,” I said, “if you find it’s too taxing, I’ll find her a home.”

  “I’ll try my best,” she said, adopting a brave stance. “She’s my Phyllis.”

  Alice made up the couch for me. She handed me the remote, but there really was no need to since she couldn’t afford cable and only received low-band channels. This was going to be another problem for my mother, I realized; she loved her cable TV and its cornucopia of mind-corrupting channels.

  After Alice had gone to bed I phoned Jack. The background noise made it evident he was in a bar.

&nbs
p; “We made it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “We made it. We’re in Sheboygan.”

  “All right. I knew you had it in you, short horn.” He sounded loud and boozy, dragging frequently on a cigarette. I didn’t feel like narrating the ordeal of the last three days and imprinting it on his mind as I would normally be wont to do. Numbed by the alcohol, he wouldn’t get it. He’d try to make jokes. And I was in no mood for humor.

  “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your fun.”

  “How’s the little critter Snapper?”

  “They amputated his leg.”

  “Shit, man, why didn’t you just put him down?”

  “My mother.”

  “Thank God mine did a face-plant with a coronary.”

  “I’m tired, Jack. I just wanted to call and let you know that we made it safe.”

  “Excellent,” he boomed.

  “Yeah, excellent,” I muttered.

  It was another night of wrecked sleep, taking me in and out of dreams whose leitmotifs were loneliness, failure, desolation, madness and death. Twice my mother called out my name; both times I woke with a start and helped her toilet herself. The second time, Alice was roused and stood in the bathroom doorway in her nightgown, watching the routine with a frank mix of determination and despair.

  “Once we get wall grips mounted and a portable toilet, you won’t have to worry about this,” I said.

  The morning dawned a sparkling blue. Alice’s weak Folger’s did little to overcome my exhaustion. With Alice attempting to lend a hand, I got my mother up and out of bed, but bathing her in the small tub was a chore. We had to seat her on the edge of the tub and scrub her, then towel her down. Alice was going to have to improvise to make this work, and her disheartened look inspired little faith in her faculties of invention. Worse, my mother had already taken to ordering her around as if she were the help at Las Villas, not her sister and fellow elderly widow. If not for the thousand a month plus expenses, she would have bailed. On the spot.

  After a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast, I wheeled my mother outside. Alice watched me reverse-dolly her down the steps, her face still constricted in an expression of apprehension, a wrinkled hand tenting her forehead against the slanting sun.

  “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it, Mom?”

  “Yes,” she said, clearly unable to enjoy it with the tension budding in her sister.

  “Alice,” I said, “how about you try to take her up these stairs?”

  She nodded uneasily and came down, got behind my mother and grabbed the steering handles of the wheelchair for the first time. Working in tandem, we backed the wheels up to the first step. I took the reins again for a moment and said, “It’s not that hard. We angle the chair like this”–I demonstrated–“and then we just come up”–I bounced my mother up the first step–“one step at a time.” I eased my mother back down to the pathway and looked at Alice, complete with a big, enthusiastic smile. “So you give it a try.”

  Alice took hold of the handles again and backed my mother up to the edge of the first step.

  “Oh, no,” my mother cried out, “I’m going to fall. She can’t do it.”

  I fought to maintain the infinitely patient voice that I had worked hard to manufacture, but it was at the breaking point. “Mom, she’s going to have to learn to do it until we can build a ramp, okay?”

  “Oh, I’m scared,” she said.

  “Come on, Alice.”

  Doing as I had demonstrated, Alice angled the chair forty-five degrees. As she pulled, I pushed and my mother easily went up the first step.

  “See, it’s not that hard.”

  Alice didn’t look too convinced.

  “Now, how about you try it alone? I’ll be right here.”

  “I’m scared,” my mother interjected, which only exacerbated her sister’s visible anxiety.

  “Mom,” I said, squatting to be at eye-level with her. “I’m here, okay. I’ve got you.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Alice again levered my mother to the forty-five degree angle. Not quite in possession of all my faculties, I failed to see, until a few seconds late, that once she rocked my mother up to the second step Alice would have to jump backward to the porch so there would be room for the chair. She managed to get the chair up to the second step, but she stumbled in the leap back and lost her grip on the handlebars. My mother hurtled toward me and I barely caught the armrests before what would have been a violent collision. It took only a moment to right her, but had I not been there she would have been pitched forward out of the chair and crash-landed on the cement pathway with God knows what injury, fractured hip being the worst imaginable for someone her age and in her condition. If this was going to work, we would need a Plan B.

  I dollied my mother back into the safety of the small house. Alice sat down on the couch next to her, exhausted, out of breath. I remained standing.

  “I’m going to get a ramp built, so you can bypass the steps,” I said. “But first, I’m going to find a medical supply store and take care of this situation in the bedroom.” I continued addressing her twin expressions of shock and dismay. “Alice, do you know someone who does handyman work, someone who could build a ramp from the walk to the porch?” I gestured to the front door, as if Alice had lost her focus. “And maybe take out that molding so the chair fits through?”

  She nodded, all but catatonically. “Yes, I know a fellow who…”

  “Could you call him and see if he can come over? Today?”

  “Okay,” she replied absently.

  I was tempted to snap my fingers in her face to bring her back into the now, but stopped myself from treating Alice the way her big sister did. Instead, I directed my attention at my equally nonplused mother. “Mom, I’m going to go see to these errands.”

  At the mention of my leaving, she snapped out of her trance. “Oh, don’t go,” she said.

  “I’m only going to be gone a couple hours, okay?”

  “Oh, please don’t go,” she pleaded.

  “I have to. We have to get this place outfitted for you, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, surrendering to the inevitable.

  I turned to Alice, “I’ll be back shortly.” I patted her on the shoulder. “This is going to work. Don’t worry.” She nodded. “There’s a routine, and once you get it down, my mother’s easy to get along with.”

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. The stoic Czech in her was trying to buck up, but the realist was foundering her resolve. Miles the glass half empty had suddenly become Miles the motivator. Not a role I had ever envisioned. I was playing it for my mother. This was her last stop.

  In Sioux Falls I had used the Internet to locate lodging as close to Alice’s house as I could find. The best prospect was the Sheboygan Hotel, which turned out to be a cheerless, four-story cinderblock structure offering all of the conveniences of a generic hotel, but little else.

  I checked in and carried my bags up to my room. I lay on the bed, fatigued, and closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep. I wanted a drink. I wanted this whole nightmare to disappear. But every time I opened my eyes it was still there, staring me implacably in the face. Maybe it would be better just to resign myself to the fact that Alice, however well meaning, was never going to be able to take care of her invalid sister, and find another assisted-living facility. But the thought of researching homes in the area, taking my mother around, having her be interviewed and assayed, poked and prodded like a piece of meat, was even more dispiriting than the prospect of what it would take to make Alice and her tiny house work. If worst came to worst, I thought, a flare going off in my head, I’d find a full-time Joy to help out Alice and just bite the bullet on the bill. For a giddy moment I even thought about calling Joy, but when I imagined my mother and her together I decided it was my perfervid brain speaking.

  Panic seized me. I had never been in this helpless position before. I wanted desperately to do the right thing for my mother, and I
wanted to honor her wishes to stay out of a home, but I wondered: had we reached our own Rubicon? Had I let her manipulate me into keeping her away from nursing homes and hospitals? She was dragging me down into the quicksand of her infirmity. I was 2,000 miles away from my life. Agents were waiting on me, with patience that would not hold up long. I had no idea what my next book was going to be. Or if I could even turn on the computer and start writing! The blank page–never a problem in the past–was starting to haunt me. Was Shameless just a fluky success, my career a one-shot wonder?

  I felt overwhelmed. My mother had turned into a great vortex of needs and I had fallen headlong into it.

  I took a half a Xanax and pulled myself together. I thumbed through the phone book and found an agency that hired out nurses. They gave me several names with accompanying phone numbers. Next, I located a medical supply store and drove over and purchased a small portable toilet and some wall mounts. The proprietor directed me to a nearby hardware store where I bought a large screwdriver and a hammer.

  I returned to Alice’s where I found the two ladies sitting together in the living room. Alice was jabbering away when I came in, but my mother wasn’t listening to her. I sat down on the sofa. The TV droned in the background. My mother looked depressed; she had lost her recently reanimated personality. She clearly wanted not to give expression to it, but it was evident to me that she was coming to the realization that Las Villas de Muerte wasn’t so bad, that and the reality of living with her sister was a far cry from what she had daydreamed.

  “Alice, did you get a hold of your handyman?”

  “Yes,” she said, with affected enthusiasm. “He’s coming over this afternoon.”

  “Good. I’ve got the names of some in-home-care nurses. They’ll come on a part-time basis to help you out. Until we can get the ramp built they’ll be able to help you take your sister in and out, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to figure out this bedroom situation.” I turned to my mother. “Let’s go, Mom.”

  I wheeled my mother into the bedroom, transferred her out of the chair and onto the bed. Then I angled her bed as they’d had it at Las Villas. I had her raise her limp arm to the level on the wall where the hand grip should go. I tapped for a stud and mounted the hand grip just within her reach. Next, I went outside and hauled in the portable toilet. I could see Alice’s distraught gaze sweep the room as I hauled the box past her.