The Temptation of Adam: A Novel by Dave Connis (3)

PULL AWAY

Is it weird that my dad’s yelling at me and I’m kind of enjoying it? I don’t think I’ve been yelled at for at least two years.

He crosses his arms. “Really, Adam? What do …”

Addy walks into the house. I look at her. She avoids my glance and lies on the couch, playing some game on her phone.

Dad slams his fist on the table. “If you think …”

When The Woman left, I came up with these two formulas in Mr. Crotcher’s Bio 101 class.

My dad throws his hands up in disgust. “… You are going to go to everything Colin Cratcher has …”

This seems true by logical deduction; however, I’m pretty sure it’s false. Why? Because my dad’s warier than I am about the bucket’a’bull life dumps on you from day-to-day. I mean, look at him. He’s yelling, but the slouch of his shoulders and his half open eyes are saying “this is the last thing I need right now.” Lately, what he thinks he needs is Nicholas Sparks. Yes… My dad loves Nick Sparks. He’s read all of his books. Twice. But none of that romantic bucket’a’bull helped him when The Woman said she wanted a divorce. Getting your relational acumen from Nick Sparks is about the same as getting it from Cosmo.

So, according to Conclusion Two, it doesn’t matter how you carry yourself, because somewhere between the plus and the equal sign in Adam’s Formula of Life Screwage A and B, everything goes up in flames.

Sounds pretty accurate to me.

“If your mother were here …”

I stare at him. Is he really going to use The Woman as a discipline point?

“She’d be appalled. Come on, Adam why would you—”

“But she isn’t here,” I say.

“That’s not the point. The point is women are—”

“People who leave you. It’s all BS, Dad. You did everything right, and look at you. You’ve been reduced to reading Nicholas Sparks to figure out how to get her back. She’s destroyed your life, and you did nothing but treat her like a celebrity. You cared about someone, something, and it got you nowhere. Same goes for everything else. Why bother?”

Addy’s sitting up now. Staring at me. Hurt. I see it shimmer across the lines between her eyebrows. I see it in the tears pooling at the side of her eyes. I want to tell her “This isn’t about you,” but if I was honest? The pie chart of what this is about would have a slice, albeit a smaller one, designated to Addy.

Dad runs his hand through his silver hair. They come to rest over his eyes. When he says, “I’ve taught you better than this,” his voice is muffled as it escapes from behind his palms.

He hasn’t taught me anything in the last year that makes me think otherwise. He’s barely looked at me since The Woman left. He’s obsessed with being the best he can be for her, all while she’s with some other guy. I refuse to end up like that.

With nothing else to say, I shake my head, leave my dad at the table, take the steps two at a time to my room, lock my door, and dig my computer out of my bag. This is me. This is how I relax. It’s not an addiction; it’s how I relax. Tell the guy who relaxes by doing the dishes after dinner that he’s a dish addict and needs to go to an AA group for it. After today, I need a naked girl named Glitter to remind me that the world isn’t just a useless pit of obnoxious misery.

—

There’s a man in my room. This man looks like my dad. He never comes into my room.

Dad + my room = never.

“It’s 4:50. You’re late for Mr. Cratcher’s.”

“I didn’t set my alarm for a reason,” I mumble. “I’m sure you can deduce what it is.”

“I’m sure you can deduce that this is me overriding that deduction.”

“Dad.”

“Adam.”

“You’ve been ignoring me for the last year. You can’t just get interested when all the fun starts.”

“Adam, get out of bed, put your pants on, and go. We’ll talk about my shortcomings as a father when you get home.”

I make my way downstairs. Addy isn’t here. I look out into the driveway. Her twenty year-old sky blue Ford F-150 is gone.

I made her leave. I hate myself.

I put together some breakfast, but Dad doesn’t let me eat because I’m too late.

—

The early morning lullaby of NPR and random thoughts of that Dez girl distract me from my impending counseling session with Mr. Crotcher. I pull into his driveway, but I don’t get out of Genevieve. I’ve never been early to his classes, so why should I be early to our love-is-all-you-need session? I pull my phone out of my pocket and send Addy a text.

I’m sorry.

I stare at the screen, touching it when it tries to shut off, but after five minutes of staring, she hasn’t texted back. It makes my brain and heart bicker back and forth like Gollum and Sméagol:

Addy’s just trying to help you.

My feelings are mine, Precious. I’ll hurts them. They’ll hurts me.

Do you care?

Glitter doesn’t hurts me. Gollum! She protects me, it does.

But you’re still a mess.

Nothing changes mess until heart burns red and you are dead.

So why not feel as good as possible?

Yes! Gollum! That’s it, it is. I swears.

I stare at Mr. Crotcher’s front door. I don’t think I’ve ever come here by myself. Back during the frequent dinners with Mr. Crotcher, we came here ia few times. After The Woman left, and took Addy with her, our interaction with the outside world died. It’s not that we didn’t want to go places; it’s just that she robbed us of table conversation not based on the divorce. She turned dinner into a scratched CD, repeating, “How are you holding up?” or “How can I help?” or “I’m sure it’s been hard.”

I know people were trying to help, but that doesn’t change the fact that certain kinds of tragedies—divorce and losing a limb being two examples—have a tendency to make people treat you like a toddler. Encouragement starts sounding like, “You’re such a big boy for dealing with this,” or “Wow, look at how strong you are. Good job eating all your food!” After a while, that kind of interaction gets old.

At 5:09, I climb Mr. Crotcher’s stairs. As I ring the doorbell, I accidentally drop the discipline report paperwork. He opens the door while I’m scrambling to pick up the pages stuck to the railing slats before they blow into the street.

“Good morning, Adam,” he says, his voice bright and wretchedly cheery. “Come in.”

His living room is lined wall-to-wall with books. He has no TV.

Of course.

“You haven’t been here in a while,” he says. “Not since your mother left, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve added a study studio in the attic, but that’s about all that’s changed. Haven’t felt like changing much else. So,” he continues, “you’re starting everything on a Thursday. That means tonight is the Addiction Fighters meeting at the Civic Center. I really am sorry you won’t get to interact with your Transparency Forum beforehand, but in my defense, we had an extra night last night so we could finish discussing that book before you joined, and you had a chance for introductions then. However, I have faith that tonight’s group sharing time will be as good of an introduction as you can get.”

We walk up a dark stairwell. The walls are covered with pictures of him and Gabby. I never met Gabby. Also of note, there are no pictures of kids. So either Mr. Crotcher and Gabs didn’t get down or they never had any. As a guy who doesn’t have a TV in his house, my guess is the former.

At the top of the stairs, we turn left, walk down a long hallway, and step into his study. The room’s wide and open. Instruments line the walls, and a computer desk the size of Noah’s Ark sits in the far right corner. Behind the computer, by a rectangular window with a clear view of the neighborhood, is a small room. The door is open, and the inside walls are covered with gray cubes of wavy foam. A microphone rests in a stand pointed toward the back wall.

“Is that a recording studio?” I ask.

Mr. Crotcher nods. “Yes. It’s taken me a while to decide which pieces of my equipment I wanted to switch from analog to digital. Digital equipment is much easier to work with and has an incredible amount of capabilities. However, I will always be of the opinion that analog equipment has a warmer sound more conducive to the kind of music I play. That’s why, when I record, I use both.”

I poke one of the gray sheets of foam. My finger disappears. “Why do you have a recording studio? Do all your … people … record with you?”

“No, no. Just you. It takes a poet to keep up with the demands of the studio. You’ve always seemed to fit the bill. Music production has always been a passion of mine. In a past life, I was a sound engineer.”

That’s not something you hear an ancient high school chemistry teacher say every day.

He points to the walls. “I mixed and recorded a few of Johnny and June’s albums.”

Tons of framed records hang around the room, Johnny Cash and Roger Miller among the names.

“You’re about to lay into me for eighty days about how I need to stop wasting my life when you had the chance to be a music mogul in Nashville?” I’ve got to admit, the man just ascended a few levels of awesome in my head, but not enough to lose the name Mr. Crotcher.

“My life would’ve been a waste if I didn’t choose to teach high school chemistry.”

“Why would you choose teaching over being a giant in the music industry?”

“I’d just gotten engaged to Gabby and was in the process of destroying myself with alcohol and drugs. She made me choose between lives. Luckily, I chose her, and we left any trace of that old life behind to come here and build a life we both wanted. Our story is much more complicated than that, of course, but what isn’t complicated is that choices change you. Especially the life and death ones, and life and death choices are exactly why you are here.”

I study his clean-shaven face and note that he’s incredibly dramatic.

He crosses his arms, his familiar sternness showing. “Here is what to expect from our meetings. I’m not going to ask you about your feelings, your father, or your mother, and we’re not going to talk about what you did or didn’t do. For eighty days, from five to seven a.m., you are going to help me record the album I’ve been working on for the last forty years.”

Recording an album > talking about feelings.

“You’ve only recorded one album?” I ask.

“Indeed, though it has changed quite a bit over time. Can you sing?”

“Yeah, sort of, I guess.”

“Do you play anything? Banjo? Guitar?”

“Guitar, but I’m not very good.”

“It’s no matter. You will probably make a better sound engineer and lyricist, anyway. Alright, let’s waste no more time. You need to be brought up to speed on how to run a studio.”

For the rest of our time together, Mr. Crotcher gives me a rundown of all the recording equipment. He tells me what things do, how things do what they do, and the difference between one thing and another. Eventually, we do some test recordings so he can teach me how to use the recording program. I record him singing a few times, and as much as it pains me to say, he has a good voice. I expected it to be shaky and outdated, but it’s rugged and wise. If his voice was a thing, it’d be a solid hike in a rustic forest, or every character Denzel Washington has ever played.

At seven, he walks me to the front door and says, “See you at the Civic Center.”

I leave my first morning with Mr. Crotcher without a single lecture or guilt trip. He didn’t mention the fork tapping or tell me all about why I’m throwing my life away by being late to his classes. He didn’t even mention our forever rivalry. I get in Genevieve and stare at Mr. Crotcher’s house.

He’s tricksy, that hobbits.

Maybe he’s just genuinely nice.

He wants your precious. Gollum!

Maybe he can help.

Helping hurts us, it does.

You’re right.

I text Addy another apology, turn on NPR, and pull away.