by Dave Connis
—
I wake up at 4:30 in chills. I stare at the ceiling. Dad comes in a few minutes later.
“You’re already awake?” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to enjoy going over to Mr. Cratcher’s house. You’re getting soft already.”
“Dad, too early for insults.”
“Time of day has never stopped you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the wizened adult. I’m supposed to be the foolish sixteen-year-old. If you act like me, it throws the earth off its 23.5-degree axis.”
“If you keep talking to me like this, I’m going to kick your ass so hard you’ll be put on a 23.4-degree axis.”
I laugh because it’s the first glimpse of Old Dad I’ve seen since The Woman left. “There we go, that’s better,” I say. “Apocalypse not now, world saved.”
Downstairs we both pour ourselves bowls of Cocoa Puffs. As I’m lifting a spoonful to my mouth, my phone buzzes. I drop my spoon into the bowl, causing milk to splash onto the table. I jam my hand into my pocket.
It’s Addy.
I’m coming to see you tonight.
Addy, I’m so sorry.
We’ll talk about it tonight, Papi.
I put my phone back in my pocket. Even though I don’t know what it means, just seeing her use the word Papi makes me feel like someone turned on a light. The amount of rightness that fills me makes me realize I can’t shut Addy out anymore. I love her too much to lose her. Even if she disappeared thinking it was for the greater good, I can lose everyone else in the world, but not her.
Dad’s eyes twitch back and forth between his cereal and the Nicholas Sparks book on the walnut mail table pressed against the corner of the wall.
I let out a small laugh. “You really want to read it, don’t you?”
“I really want to.”
“Why?”
“So I know what a good manuscript looks like.”
“Bucket’a’bull, Dad. You rep Allison Beaker, Charles Mematiane, and sci-fi extraordinaire Colt Cax. You already know what a good MS looks like.”
He throws his hands in the air defensively. “Fine, so I still want to figure out how to get your mom back. There are so many men who just give up on love, though. Why can’t I be one willing to fight for it? Doesn’t the world need that?”
I let out two good, fake throw-up noises and point at my neck. “Sorry. Cluster of Cocoa Puffs stuck in my throat.”
“Grow up, kid,” he says, shoving my head to the side.
The annoyed smile on his face makes me laugh. I’ve got to admit, I’ve liked my dad a lot more since I got suspended from school, and I don’t say either part of that sentence a lot.
—
I wait until 5:05 to knock on Mr. Crotcher’s door, but after five knocks, he still hasn’t answered.
“Hello?” I say, reaching for the doorknob. It’s unlocked.
I peek into the living room.
“Mr. Crotcher?”
I walk up the stairs on my tiptoes, trying to keep the old wood from groaning under me. I push the study door open, and Mr. Crotcher is in the corner, sitting at his computer. He isn’t moving. Is he dead? I wouldn’t be surprised if he was. The guy probably worked with the hottest roving minstrels and bards in the medieval ages.
I walk up to him and poke him in the shoulder.
He snaps awake, taking inventory of his surroundings. I glance at an open notebook by his hands. He’s written something, but all I have the chance to read is “Dear God, why am I” before he slams the book shut and places it on a shelf above his desk.
He stands and stretches. “Adam, my apologies. I stayed up late last night trying to work out why some microphones weren’t recognized by the DAW.”
“The DAW, Mr. Crotcher?”
“Yes, it’s an acronym for Digital Audio Workstation. The program you mix and record in.” He pauses like he’s just realized I’ve been calling him Mr. Crotcher. “What are your thoughts on the group last night?”
I don’t want to talk about last night. I actually want Mr. Crotcher to go on another rant about music and how it’s like life.
“It was fine.”
“Fascinating.”
“Why do you say that?” I snap. “You said that yesterday, too.”
“Say what?”
“‘Fascinating.’ It’s like I’m a lab experiment or something.”
“Maybe you are.” He gives me a knowing look. “Would it be a problem if you were?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be fascinating. I’m not just a result in some experiment. My reactions aren’t just … fascinating.”
Mr. Crotcher smiles. “How right you are. So then, answer me this. If you aren’t fascinating, what are you?”
This may be the stupidest question I’ve ever been asked.
“What?” I say, disgusted.
“You are not a fixed outcome or a result. Correct?”
“Right. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you?”
“I—I don’t know. Why is that even a question?”
“Think about it for a while. When you have an answer, let me know. Now, let’s record the first track of our album. Just give me a few minutes to go over the lyrics first. I have some things I want to change.”
—
Addy pulls into the driveway, her favorite singer, which also happens to be The Woman’s favorite singer, Amelia Hunt, is blasting out her windows. I’m sitting on our stairs waiting for her and the first thing I see is that there’s a bunch of stuff in the passenger seat.
She turns off the truck. Amelia Hunt stops singing “Ain’t No Man Worth Your Soul” as Addy gets out and walks straight over to me.
“Okay, I’m going to get a little preachy, but you’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to like it, because I’m me. Capiche?”
I nod. I don’t feel like finding out what would happen if I said, “No capiche.”
“I miss my little brother. I miss him a lot, and I want him to come back. I get that the divorce hurts, Adam. I really do. But you’re letting it kill you, and me. I haven’t heard an honest feeling from you in two years, and I haven’t been pushy because I didn’t want …”
“I know,” I interrupt. I feel more of a need to make sure I never have to go as long as I have without Addy again than to keep her from my feelings. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry.”
Addy’s head snaps back. “Really? That’s it? I didn’t even get to my ultimatum.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve been a bad brother. Person. Just let me try to tell you stuff again.”
“Well then,” she says, walking back to her truck and grabbing a box and a duffle bag off the passenger seat. “I guess I’m moving in.”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘moving in’?”
She points to her truck. “I take bag and box, and I move back into my old room. Honey child, I stay with you for an indefinite amount of time.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She smiles. “It was the ultimatum. You agree to be honest with me, and I move back for a bit to help you straighten out. You don’t, I leave without saying another word.”
The news makes me feel like my veins are flooded with light, but I play it off. “You wouldn’t have silently left. You would have said something. You’re incapable of just walking away.”
She drops her stuff on the ground, gets in her truck, and drives away.
I watch the street, waiting for her truck to pull back around. My phone rings after a good five minutes.
“See?” I say, “you couldn’t do it.”
“Yo woman is here.”
“Dez?” I yell. “Addy, where are you?”
“Yep. Ooh, what’s this? She’s waving me over to sit with her? Look at me. I’ve arrived.”
I hear Dez’s voice over the phone. “Where’s Frenchie?”
“On the phone,” Addy says.
“Tell him to get over here before I retrieve my computer from the pool.�
�
“Papi,” Addy says. “Dez says—”
“Yes, ma’am!”
FOUR LES CLOVER
I walk into Pritchett’s and see Addy and Dez sitting over in a corner booth, both balancing french fries on their noses. As I approach, I quickly realize I have to choose a side. Do I sit next to Dez or Addy? If I sit next to Dez, it will be like climbing Mount Everest and putting my flag at the peak. I’ll be declaring something I’m not sure I want to declare: I like you.
I’m a foot away.
“Which side will you choose?” Addy asks, drawing even more attention to my predicament.
Dez points at the french fries. “Either way, we have the chosen food of your people ready for you.”
I sit next to Dez.
Addy lets out a shout of victory and, much to my frustration, Dez groans.
“Now I have to pay for the food, Adam!” Dez says.
I smile. “You were betting on where I was going to sit?”
Addy nods. “Yep. And my guess was right. Adam, tu tienes cojones grandes.”
Dez laughs, choking on the ice cube she’s chewing on. She slides the fries closer to me. “I like you, so I think you made a great choice.”
The three of us talk about everything. The Bothell, Washington renovation. People from Bellevue. Addy’s boss. How each of us has a different visceral reaction to rain. Finally, an hour or so later, Dez has to go, so I slide out of the booth to let her out.
“I’ll see you guys later?” she says, the booth squeaking as she stands.
“Certainly,” Addy says
I point at Addy. “What she said.”
Dez smiles. “Bye, Hawthornes.”
She disappears out of Pritchett’s along with the thousands of forest animals that sing her name.
“You ready to go home?” Addy says. “Now that your love is gone, how could you ever survive one more minute out?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m totally suffocating under the weight of my unrequited love.”
“Looks like it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I’m not ready to go home.”
“What are you ready for, then?”
I know Addy deserves my honesty, so why does it feel like I’m latching on to a tooth with a pair of pliers and yanking? Is the hardness a sign I’m not ready? A sign that no one can ever understand me? That people will only ever leave me on curbs at intersections and on trees in Puget Sound? I close my eyes. I can’t lose Addy. So whatever the result, I know I need to try, and I decide that I’ll carve my words and feelings out with a Swiss Army knife if I have to.
“I’m ready for talking, but I’m going to need another shake. A strong one.”
She smiles. “Mint Butterfinger?”
“Stronger.”
“Whoa. Oreo Butterfinger?”
“I think so.”
We order a second round of shakes, and when my Oreo Butterfinger slides onto the table, I shove the straw in my mouth and take a giant, slow, and agonizing first milkshake gulp. I close my eyes, and take a breath.
“Adam, it’s okay. I don’t want you to feel like you have to castrate yourself in order for this to work. Let it come natura—.”
“Home life has sucked. I’ve ignored it since you left, but it’s sucked. For a while, I tried to get Dad to snap out of it. Making jokes and stuff, but it never worked.”
Addy grabs her shake and then settles into the booth. Her eyes are focused on me. Her ears, all mine. The look on her face is one that says, “I’ve missed your heart” and suddenly I’m brought back to our actual vacation to Deception Pass. Where I’m telling Addy everything.
I talk to Addy about my frustrations with Dad and The Woman. What it’s been like since she left. I talk to her about how they both hurt me, but I don’t talk to her about how she hurt me, why I was suspended, and I definitely don’t talk to her about porn. As weird as my relationship with it is right now, I want to keep it safe. It’s the one thing I have that’s never frustrating. If I’m mad, Addy might not be there, but a million naked girls are. Always.
She doesn’t press me for information. She doesn’t try to unnaturally shove herself back into my brain. She asks clarifying questions every once in a while; she even orders me a third milkshake. What she does might not seem like much to anyone watching, but, to me, it’s everything.
She loves.
And after the last two years, the literal sight of her sitting there soaking in everything I say, feeling my hurt, being with me, is like finding a river running through the middle of the desert. It’s like being told things that seem wise, but I can’t understand.
—
The next morning, I wake out of another Deception Pass dream. This one feels so heavy that my unusual and unexplainable stint of not looking at porn ends before I go to Mr. Crotcher’s.
It’s 4:56 on a Sunday morning so no one’s on the roads. Unlike yesterday, Mr. Crotcher’s waiting for me at the door when I pull into his driveway, so I pretend I’m on the phone. I don’t want to go into his house early or on time. Traditions are sacred. My traditions have been off lately, and I’m afraid to find out what would happen if I mess with this one.
We go up to his study, and he sits down in his office chair. “So I’ve been considering songs, Adam. Some songs on this album have the same title, but the lyrics have changed so much that they’re completely different. Some songs I’ve replaced entirely. I know there’s some lost in my journals and books that should probably go on the album, but I’m just too tired to look. Right now, I have nine picked out, but historically, the album has had eleven songs.” He opens the DAW and starts clicking around. “I’m considering writing a twelfth, but I’m not sure if I’m the one who should write it.” He looks at me, waiting for me to volunteer.
“I’m not going to write anything. I suck at that kind of stuff.”
“Ah, but you don’t. Despite your fork tapping, one of the reasons I brought you here to help me with this is because I am very aware of your poetic capabilities. I grade your papers.”
“Do you make everyone in your programs write songs?”
He smiles. “No. You are the only one who I’ve subjected to this elegant torture.”
“Why me?”
“A songwriter’s heart is a forest of glass,” he says. “The people we invite into them must know how to walk among the trees.”
I laugh. “So you decided the kid who hates you the most was the best choice? The fork thing was when I started hating you, by the way.”
“I know,” he sighs, “and I’m sure I didn’t make it better by being persistent with you.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“You just remind me of me when I was your age, and I wasted most of my young life. I haven’t …I don’t want to see you do the same.”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.
“What if we cowrote a song?” he asks, changing the topic for me.
“Doesn’t this album have personal significance to you? Why would you want a co-writer who can only rhyme ‘do’ with ‘I love you’? That’s like, the oldest and most overused trick in the lyrical book.”
He looks at me with disbelief but then says, “That trick could work considering I want to write a love song.”
“A love song?”
“Yes, I’ve never had one on the album. I have many songs that take honest looks at my failures as a husband. Lots of songs about love, but all of them fixated on how bad I am at it …”
He stares out window but snaps back a few seconds later.
“I have no songs that just simply praise Gabby for being loveable. You’ve heard the type before, the sappy songs people play on anniversaries and wedding days.”
He rubs his temples. “It’s a flaw of mine that I cannot look at things without seeing dichotomy. Every coin has two sides. I just happen to have a fixation on the worn and beaten one. It was often a sore spot for Gabby. She often said someth
ing like, ‘You’ve written a jingle for a Styrofoam manufacturing company, but you can’t write a pure romantic song about your wife?’”
He shakes his head. “It is true, there is a shortage of men who write love songs specifically about their wives. Ha. Amazing. Five years after her death, she continues being right.”
“What are the album’s song titles?” I ask.
“Always different, though I would very much like to return to …”
Instead of finishing his sentence like a normal human, he closes his eyes for a second, and then opens them and stares out the window again.
“Mr. Cratcher?”
“Yes, let’s record. I apologize.”
—
It’s nighttime. Addy’s doing some telecommute work at the nearest coffee shop, and I’m staring at my computer, itching to surf some videos. After my porn fiesta this morning, I thought I was done feeling guilty about it, but there’s something pushing against my gut, making me feel a tiny bit of unease about my normal ritual. It isn’t much of a feeling, but it’s enough to have stopped me from typing “free porn” into the search bar three times now.
My phone lights up with a number I don’t know. I pick it up as fast as I can. “Hello?”
“Adam?”
It’s not Dez. It’s definitely a guy. That’s incredibly frustrating.
“Trey?”
“Hey, man, Elliot and I are going to head over to Pritchett’s for a milkshake. Want to come?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Good.
Lord.
Has the sky opened up and begun to rain down fire and smoke? Why would I pass up my sea of digital women?
“Alright,” Trey says, “we’re heading over there now. Meet you there?”