Dependent
Drip
Drip
Drip
The echo of the dripping sink faucet reverberated through every part of Vicki Levitt’s being as she scrubbed the bathroom. It was basically unused since Gavin had last been there; maybe a year, maybe two since the last relapse. Tim, her husband, had made it clear: if he goes out again, he doesn’t come back.
He hadn’t been back since.
It had been decided that morning; they’d find him, wherever he was, and keep him until it was out of his system. No matter how crazy it would get, they wouldn’t let him leave this time. He’d be either sober or dead.
It was an old building. The fixtures were dimming with the years, adding a dreariness and level of decay that seemed to multiply the actual age of the structure substantially. She couldn’t tell if the browning in the creases between tiles was the aging of the material, or blood. The chances of the former were slim; it was old, dried blood.
That night was decidedly unexpected, even for Gavin. She could still hear Nadine’s shrieking clearly as she scrubbed harder and harder, as if the scrubbing would turn down the volume of sheer agony reverberating through her skull.
---
Gavin was propped up on the toilet seat, unconscious. “In a nod” as one of the past decade’s counselors, therapists, 12-step sponsors, might’ve called it. Their experiences with recovery found a name and catchy phrase for everything related to the cycle of addiction. Didn’t make any of it any less true, but didn’t make it any less painful either.
When Vicki walked in, he was still unconscious. Nadine, up against the shower wall, the curtain in a pile around her feet, hands and face covered in smudged, dried blood hysterically crying.
Blood was staining down from his nose and mouth across Gavin’s shirt.
I let him hit me in the neck and --
He had more color in his face than usual, but this was different. Unexpected. Maybe he’d been doing better. Wishful thinking can override common sense in these situations.
Vicki slapped his face; once, twice.
Gav -- Gavin baby, I need you to wake up
He was motionless. She pulled up his sweat-drenched eyelid -- pupils were barely present.
“Stay with him. I’ll get some Narcan” Vicki croaked.
Nadine nodded her head. Vicki ran -- this was back when they thought it was still just OxyContin and heroin. She was pretty sure there was a spare in the kitchen cabinet, and if there wasn’t, a washcloth and ice cubes to the balls would do the trick at least half the time or keep him breathing until an ambulance showed up.
As she walked down the hall, turning into the kitchen, she heard it. The shriek that permeated her nightmares and perception of what they were actually dealing with for the years to come. The shriek that, to start, kept her from entering that bathroom again for years after.
At the time, she couldn’t focus on that -- her baby boy was not responding. Again. This was a child, a bright light with an unwavering smile and spirit, of bountiful promise. A backload of Roxicodone from his father’s medicine cabinet wasn’t going to change that; he was still her son. Her living, breathing beacon of unlimited potential and opportunity. And he wasn’t breathing.
When she came back, ice cubes wrapped in a paper towel, they were gone.
---
Vicki entered Gavin’s bedroom. When he was younger, she used to tell him it looked like a pig sty. Cut to twenty years and eight rehab stays later: Jesus Christ, who gives a fuck?
As she picked the room up; starting with the loose drawer boxes ripped from their dressers, paneling torn from the walls and wood floors, a bloody, shredded matress hoisted upright against the windowsill; the questions hammered into her head like a choir all singing different songs to different rhythms:
Were we too overbearing? Did we not pay enough attention to the right details? Maybe if we let him out a little more when he was younger, he could’ve gotten this shit out of his system? Was he just fucked from the start? Did Tim do something? Did something happen to him we never heard about? Did he ever have real friends?
Looking at the mattress, a feeling of hope swept over here. This is it -- it can’t get any worse than this. This is finally the end.
As she bagged up the piles of trash, pulled the mattress onto the bedframe (until someone could help her toss it into the dumpster), the room began to reach a level of normalcy it hadn’t achieved in some time. All the while, a single thought went through her head:
This is it. This is the end.
As she turned to face the substantially cleaner room, the echoing from the bathroom continued as she closed the bedroom door.
Drip
Drip
Drip
---
The lock on the front door cracked before Tim entered the apartment. Gavin, face almost completely covered in a hood, was hoisted over his shoulder, cold as ice. Los Angeles was rough enough without a kid on the streets. They’d moved here at least for warm weather and some good times. What they got was a broken family and winters below seventy.
He met Gavin in a public place; the Korean barbecue spot on Hobart and 3rd. It was loud and cheesy; big neon lights out front scrolling promises of fresh steak, chicken; buckets of Tecaté they’d drink through during Gavin’s college years. It was a shithole but they loved it. A past life well-lived; this one be damned to hell.
He told Gavin to meet him in the parking lot this time, as opposed to on the sidewalk outside. A little unexpected, but no matter. Tim waited in the car, his nerves racked by what he actually planned to do once Gavin got in.
There wasn’t much of a struggle. Gavin was frail, meek. Not aggressive this time. Maybe he hadn’t fixed yet and was hoping maybe his old dad might have something to keep him from getting sick again. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Tim knocked him out cold; a convenience store lighter clenched in his fist to the center of Gavin’s left temple. He expected to have to bash his head against the door jamb, but Gavin must’ve been in bad shape, because he went out like a candle. Clenching a Bic in his punching fist added a little extra kick that he hadn’t expected. Little trick he learned in college. Not the way he expected to pass it onto his son.
Walking into the kitchen, he could hear the kitchen faucet dripping again as he nursed his fist. Alphie was supposed to look at these faucets this week, he thought. What’s the point? Would he fix anything? Or just go on about charging another sixty-five to unclog the drain? Why even have a superintendent when I should’ve just joined the fucking plumber’s union?
Drip
Drip
Drip
Vicki entered the kitchen, hair frizzed with sweat and anxiety.
“Where is he?” she asked. “Did you find him?”
“Vick -- slow down.”
“Did you find him? Is he here?”
“Vick -- I just got back. Slow down --”
Vicki choked up, sadness overcoming rage.
“Tim”, she asked, softer than before. “Where is our son?”
Tim took a moment, oft-handedly looking back at the dripping faucet.
“I found him”, he began. “He’s here”.
Vicki put her hand to her mouth. It was true; she could see it in his eyes. She embraced him, tears streaming from her face.
“He’s...in his room...”
Vicki pulled away. “What? What do you mean...”
“Vick, our son has a disease --”
Vicki’s happiness evaporated into rage with the blink of an eye.
“I want to see him.”
“Vick, please. You know as well as I do --”
Vicki pushed, then clawed into Tim’s sweater and face before:
“What else can we do? You wanna go through another round of the same shit again? Detox? Rehab? Then right back to doctors and therapists and all these other fuckin’ people in our ear with no clue what’s going on with our son? I’m done with it, Vick! No more!”
She stopped in his arms, knowing just how right he really was.
“Is he hungry?”
“He’s asleep. I promise, this -- this is gonna work.”
“This...has to work.”
---
Tim had borrowed some iron handcuffs from their next-door neighbor, Stan Ebersole. Stan had previously been a bail bondsman, running Ebersole’s Bail Bonds from 1983 until mid-2017. He was used to dealing with people in Gavin’s situation: desperate, angry, hopeless; perpetually in some state of unwelcome transition. He had offered to join Tim, assist with handling Gavin in the physical manner Tim scarcely elaborated on, but he declined. This wasn’t some jail-bailing scumbag. This was his son.
He handcuffed Gavin to the bedframe in the old bedroom, a little thrown off by how well Vicki had tidied it up. Maybe it was too much; too much space to move around in if he did get free. Might be a bit too easy. The idea was get him better, not pamper him. The posh transitional living in Westwood had already tried that; it didn’t work. And that was before his roommate was found dead in the private, post-modern bathroom they shared for fifteen-hundred a week out-of-pocket.
He only hoped that his son would get enough sunlight through the window to make the nightmare of getting him back here worth it.
---
Drip
Drip
Drip
The clock read 3:45 A.M. Vicki was wide-awake; she hadn’t slept all night. She thought about Gavin, handcuffed to the bedframe, hungry, tired, sick. It ravaged her mind like a cancer: She desperately wanted to take all that agony and bear it for him, even if it meant her own life. All for the thought that her only, adult son might even be mildly uncomfortable in his childhood home.
She stepped out of bed. Tim was still asleep; he likely would be up around five to start the shower up, at which point he’d sit on the toilet reading emails while the water got hot, maybe send her a Venmo request for a bill he’d paid the day before. So thoughtful. Alphie said he was going to look at the boiler. At present, they were still waiting a good five minutes for lukewarm water pressure, staring at yet another dripping bathroom faucet.
Vicki turned out of the master bedroom and walked down the long hallway. Tim had instructed her to stay in their room while he secured Gavin in his old bedroom, but she saw which combination lock he secured the door with; Gavin’s old high school locker. She could tell from the bashes and scratches around the frame.
She tried the old code. 26...32...22... The lock collapsed. She pulled it off the newly-bolted lock hasp and turned the knob.
Looking into the open doorway, her only son stood in the center of the room, a pair of handcuffs hanging from one hand, the moonlight shining through the window portraying an ominous shadow across the room.
“Gavin...”
She couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
---
5:45 sounded the digital alarm clock on Tim’s smartphone. He turned to his side.
He thought he had heard Vicki get up and go to the kitchen, maybe? Get some Melatonin to go to sleep with? She was doing that more and more often. Maybe she was making an early breakfast?
He started the shower. She’s never up this early, he thought. Letting the water run, he walked out into the hallway.
Flipping the hallway light switch achieved nothing. Well, that’s that.
He continued down the hall, the light in the kitchen shining through the doorway.
What he saw when he turned the corner froze him in his tracks.
Vicki lay face up on the floor, blood pooling around her shredded throat. Blood and gore covered the kitchen walls and surface tops, some dripping from the volume accrued in the struggle.
Drip
Drip
Drip
“Gavin?”
Gavin Levitt, his 32-year old son, stood in the kitchen. His eyes, blood-red, dilated in a way only Satan would’ve intended, crimson overcoming any other color in his eyes. Blood leaked from his mouth, staining his hands and face. Razor-sharp canine fangs gnashed in his grin. He found what he was looking for.
Tim stood in his tracks, in a state of catatonia. With what hope and optimism he had left, he reached his arms out in embrace as the lights went out.