The Fourteenth Resurrection

The Fourteenth Resurrection

by E. W. Shannon

At 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday in June the telephone woke me up. I didn't have to look to see who it was. It was either Christopher calling to confirm he was alive, or it was his mother calling to say he'd been found alive or dead. I wasn't sure which call to be more apprehensive about. The phone vibrated as it played Madonna's "Celebration" and identified the caller as "Unknown." I made a mental note to change my ringtone. Perhaps Mahler's "I've Become Lost to the World." I pressed the green phone icon and hoped for the best.

"Hey, it's me." Christopher sounded high and tired and on-edge all at the same time.

I tried not to sound like I cared, but somewhere deep inside me the little bit of feeling I had left for him came out. "Where have been? Your mother has been worried sick."

"I don't need the sermon. Can you just come get me?"

Sermon? This from a man who had been missing since Wednesday night. I almost hung up, but the tattered strained little thread connecting us wouldn't let me. I tried to make my voice as flat and unworried as I could. "Where are you?"

There was a little pause of shame before he told me. "The Easy Inn by the freeway. Room 116."

There was a little pause of disgust before I answered. I interrupted him just as I heard him inhale to speak and confirm I was still there. "Okay." I shook my head in disbelief this was my life on a Sunday morning. "I'll see you in a bit."

I ended the call and laid there for a bit staring at the crack in the ceiling running from the wall to the base of the ceiling fan. Maybe if I turned the fan on high it would break free from the ceiling, kill me, and I wouldn't have to make the journey. Eventually, I ended my contemplation, took a deep breath, and hoisted myself into an upright position. I got dressed (well, as dressed as one needs to be to retrieve a crackhead from a motel), climbed into the car, and headed to the shitty part of town.

At my first stop light it occurred to me to call Christopher's mother, Janet. The phone rang through the speakers in the car. I imagined her being pulled from whatever little sleep she had managed to get.

"Christopher?" The fear in her voice was obvious.

"No Janet, it's Dan." I turned west putting the hot summer sun at my back.

"Oh hi. I thought you might be..." Her voice trailed off when she realized she didn't need to explain. Especially to me.

"He called me. I'm going to go get him and then I'll bring him up to your place."

Her sigh filled the interior of my car. She paused as I heard the sound of her ever-present tissue rattling on the other end. "Thank you."

"No problem. See you soon." I ended the call. "No problem?" There was a big problem sitting in a motel right now and I was stupidly headed towards it.

I continued west on quiet Sunday morning streets and thought about how everything had so quickly turned to shit. On Wednesday night everything had seemed so normal. Janet had invited me to a Fourth of July barbecue and told me what a great influence I was on her son. In retrospect, this should have been my first clue something was amiss. Nobody tells you you're a great influence on their son unless he was really messed up at one point or another. Actually, no, the first clue should have been Christopher was in his late twenties and still living with his parents. As they say, live and learn.

Friday evening, I had stopped by his parents' house to see if they had heard anything from him. At this point he'd been AWOL for forty-eight hours. His mother just shook her head in the negative and started to cry. When she had composed herself, she sat me down and told me the sad saga of their lives. "When Christopher was fourteen, he completed his first stint in rehab. Every year since then he's completed another stay at rehab." Janet half-heartedly chuckled to herself. "If they had loyalty programs, he'd have gotten a free stay by now." 

She shook her head, dabbed her ever present tears, and continued. "He's a binge addict. He can stay clean for months and then fall off the wagon. Not just fall off the wagon but set it on fire. It's like I can almost feel it in my bones when he's about to ruin everything. Every six to eight months he disappears into the seediest part of whatever city we are living in. Eventually he comes home, he goes to rehab, and the 'reset button' gets pressed. It's become so ordinary to me I don't even bother the police any more. You were lucky to catch him at the beginning of a sober period."

Lost in thought, I missed the light turning green and the car behind honked to remind me I needed to go. The word 'lucky' stuck with me. When she had told me the story, I felt sorry for her as we sat, and she cried. After I had left, however, I started to feel anger creep in. Why hadn't I been told about this? I had been a fixture in their house almost daily since day one of our relationship. Why wasn't his problem ever talked about? What if the fact they treated him too normal between rehab stints contributed to his failures with addiction? Perhaps when he left for work, she could have said something like, "Have a great day at work and stay away from meth sweetie." Eventually my anger subsided, and I remembered no matter how bad I thought I had it, at least I had the freedom to leave.

I mean I liked him. Okay, maybe at one point I thought I loved him, but searching around scary parts of run-down neighborhoods at night will change a person's feelings. At this point he no longer had my heart, just my sympathy and my new pair of Nikes sitting in his closet.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Easy Inn and made my way around to the back of the complex and found 116. I got out of the car and my nose instantly filled with the odor of warm aging urine and vomit around and God only knows what else.

The door to 116 sat slightly ajar. I used the toe of my shoe to gently kick it open. I held my breath as the door swung open and revealed what I thought would be a scene out of a TV crime drama. The fact the bed still remained unslept in caught my attention first. For some reason it made me feel a little better. My boyfriend may be a crackhead, but at least he remained faithful. Of course, later, I would learn the term "crystal dick" and realize crackheads aren't so much faithful as they are impotent.

Except for the freeway buzzing behind me, a heavy silence filled the room along with an overpowering smell. The chemical smell of meth plus two packs of cigarettes (judging from the empty packs on the floor) plus the general odor of, what I assumed, the room smelled like in general. The whole scene struck me as rather odd. Nothing had been touched. He had rented a motel room with the sole purpose of having a quiet place to smoke his meth.

Christopher sat in a chair covered in green fabric looking as though it would itch. His eyes were glazed over. If it hadn't been for the fact his body moved with every pounding beat of his overtaxed heart, I would have thought he died. From across the room I could have easily taken his pulse. Eventually he realized my presence, his eyes met mine, and I started to cry.

I'm not entirely sure why I cried. Perhaps I needed to release all the stress of the past three days. So many times, I imagined finding out he'd died. Just Wednesday he looked healthy and now he resembled something closer to a cadaver. Part of me cried knowing once I dropped him off to his mother it would probably be the last time I would see him. Another part of me cried at the knowledge the cycle wasn't over for him or his mother. Whatever the reason, I cried so hard I ended up squatting with my back resting against the wall. Somewhere, deep inside me, my OCD said a little prayer I wasn't getting an opportunistic infection from touching the wall.

When all the tears had left, I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt and stood back up. Christopher hadn't moved. He looked around like a person coming out of anesthesia after surgery. Coming down from a high is the same no matter if the drugs came via legal means or not.

"Well, let's get you out of here," I said, trying to get him a little more motivated.

He slowly met my gaze as if it took all his concentration to focus on one thing. Then he smiled at me, but it didn't convey happiness. Instead, it contained evil and made me worry a little for my safety. "Yeah, okay. Sounds good," he whispered.

Still in his state of slow-motion, he picked up his backpack, checked his pants for his wallet and keys, and made his way out the door. As his body became silhouetted in the early morning sunlight, he reminded me of Jesus leaving the tomb. Christopher's fourteenth resurrection.

I exited the parking lot of the Easy Inn, hoping never to return again, and entered the freeway going north. In his partially inebriated state, it took him a moment to realize we weren't going to my house. "Where are you taking me to?"

I looked at him with one eyebrow raised. I had assumed, especially after fourteen years of this sad cycle, he would think it only logical he was going home and eventually on to a rehab to spend the rest of his parent's retirement money. "I'm taking you to your mother's house."

His eyes widened. "No, you can't."

In my best singsong-like voice, so as not to piss him off, I asked, "Well then, where would you like to go?"

Rhetorical questions are lost on crackheads. "Take me to Van Buren. I need to get my car."

The funny thing about getting too high is you don't always remember you've sold your car for drugs, despite having a loan against it. Funnier thing still, when you're high, you don't answer the phone when the police call to question you about your car being involved in a drug bust. I only knew these things because the police had called Janet since she co-signed the loan. I looked at him and shook my head. "Your mother said it was impounded." I neglected to tell him it was being held for evidence and the police wanted to question him, but, as they say in recovery, one day at a time.

He pounded his feet into the floorboard like a child throwing a tantrum. "Ah fuck!" He shook his head and started to mutter to himself. The fact the crazy level had just gone up tenfold became palpable. "Just drop me off here."

Given we were whizzing down the freeway at seventy miles per hour, I looked at him rather perplexed. "Here, where? We're on a freeway."

"I'll just walk on the shoulder." Surely this was his brain on drugs.

"I'm not dropping you off on the shoulder. Besides, your mother is expecting you."

At the mention of seeing his mother the level of crazy in the car expanded exponentially. Suddenly the low raspy voice turned into a full-on scream. "I don't want to see my mother!" I laughed a little, because who does half the time? "Just drop me off on the side of the road!"

I started to get pissed. I had gotten up early on a Sunday, driven all the way over to the crappy side of town, and now basically served as a cab service for a meth-head. I didn't raise my voice, I didn't even look at him, I just kept my eyes forward on the road. "Sorry, but I'm taking you to your mother's."

Christopher put his hand on the door handle and screamed, "If you don't let me out of this car, I'm going to jump!"

I looked in the rear-view mirror and, behind me in the lane to the right of me, I saw a giant Ford van from a church carrying a bunch of seniors. I had passed it only moments ago. In a flash I deduced there were three possible outcomes. First, he could jump, get run over by the church van, and die, which seemed rather poetic. Second, he could jump, get run over by the church van, live, and find Jesus. Third, he could be like most people who talk about suicide and never actually go through with it.

I quietly reached down and pressed the button to unlock the doors. I looked over at him as he pulled his hand away from the door. I had called his bluff. He quietly muttered to himself for the rest of the trip.

Entering the gated community where he lived with his parents, the irony of delivering this junkie to such a pristine and manicured place made me shake my head. All the retired ladies wearing yoga pants and walking their dogs on rhinestone leashes all waved and smiled at the junkie and his chauffer. As we rounded the corner onto his parent’s street the fountain in the little man-made lake sprang to life as if Christopher were royalty returning from a heroic battle.

I pulled in front of the house and Janet came out to confirm her baby's return. When she saw Christopher’s, greasy unwashed brunette head pop up out of my car, the look on her face somehow conveyed relief, anger, frustration, sadness, and love all at the same time in a tense, yet blank stare.

Before he shut the car door, he leaned in. "I'll call you later."

I couldn't speak for fear of crying again. Instead I just nodded.

He shut the door and I watched as his mother waved at me, took his bag, put an arm around him, and ushered her baby into the house. I took a deep breath and thought how this time tomorrow he'd be in a rehab in Malibu watching the waves while I curled up in the fetal position on my couch, ate ice cream, and took a sick day.

I put the car in gear knowing I would never see him or my Nikes again.