Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything

by Kristin Bair

  All is going just fine until Melody Whelan appears at the driver’s side window and startles the bejeebies out of her. At first Agatha thinks she is an apparition, Melody’s round pinkish head bobbing just inches from her face. But when Melody’s voice cuts through the Beastie Boys, she realizes she is not an apparition.

  Agatha turns down the music.

  “Agatha Arch, just what are you doing?” says Melody.

  Agatha makes a few weird blarghy sounds that one tends to make when one is caught doing a not very nice thing.

  “Agatha Arch, are you still stalking this girl?”

  “Blgjhryssssytpsa.”

  “Agatha Arch, you have to stop making this girl’s life tougher than it already is. Stop this at once.”

  Agatha takes a deep breath and revs her engine. “I will not, Melody Whelan. We’ve got to drive this girl out of town. She’s trouble.”

  “She’s not. She’s just a girl in trouble. Now go home.”

  Agatha watches Melody walk up to the Interloper and sit down in the grass with her, just like the nice, somewhat normal human being Shrinky-Dink had referenced. She watches Melody hand a drink to the Interloper that Agatha knows damn well is warm and comforting.

  “Dammit,” she says.

  She lifts her camera and begins to shoot. For a few fleeting seconds, she is one hundred percent sure the prosecution is going to need these photos as evidence when the girl steals, maims, or even kills. The team will be forever thankful that Agatha risked her own life to take the photos. She’ll be lauded as a hero. The Wallingford Townsman will do a cover story on her. And, yes, Dax will fall to his chubby, hairy knees and thank her for protecting their children. Then, brimming with gratitude, he’ll leave GDOG tangled in her sexiest muumuu-maxi and return to their marriage bed. All this shoots through her brain as she click-click-clicks even though she knows damn well, or at least is starting to know damn well, that such projection is simply a way to protect the scared little thing inside her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When the boys find the hammers in the car, they worry themselves silly that Agatha is getting scared of even more things in the world and rat her out to Dax. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about their parents; worrying is a parent’s job, but does it ever work out that way? Being a parent is still being a human and being a human is still making mistakes, and making mistakes means anyone gets to worry.

  At the news, Dax is exasperated but serene. From what Agatha has seen, his relationship with Willow Bean is built on catchphrases like “wing it,” “go with the flow,” and “be in the moment.” It is the antithesis of his relationship with her.

  During their next face-to-face, he lectures her. “Agatha, could you even get to that hammer if you crashed the car and sank into a body of water?”

  Agatha.

  Agatha.

  She tries to remember the last time he called her by her formal name, but can’t. And even though she was the one who’d told him no more Aggie-girl, not hearing his nickname for her hurt worse than all the splinters or toe stubs or neck snaps in the world.

  “Blah, blah, blah,” she says, but in her head she knows he is right. If submerged in a car, would she really have the wherewithal to open the little box, feel for the hammer, cut the seat belt, shatter the window, slip free, and swim, like a mermaid, to safety? And if the boys were with her, would she be able to cut their seat belts, too?

  “Even if you do manage to open the little box,” Dax says, “won’t the hammer float away in the water?”

  “The hammer is attached to the side of the little box with Velcro. It does not float away.” She feels good about this.

  The literature that accompanies the tools insists that adrenalin will help you save yourself and your loved ones. It demonstrates such delightful success in a cartoon, a mom bursting through the surface of a pond with her trusty hammer in one hand and a smiling, soaking-wet tot in the other.

  Plus, there’s the whole “like a mermaid” thing.

  But it’s bullshit. Total bullshit. Shrinky-Dink knows it, Dax knows it, and Agatha knows it. Her adrenalin would do nothing more than make her curl into a ball and sob, causing her to suck in gallons of putrid water and hasten the drowning process.

  In an attempt to counteract this eventuality, Agatha practices. Every day for three days, she drives to a shallow stream not far from the boys’ school where she can manage her fear of water, pretend she’s crashed her car and sunk to the bottom, and go through the lifesaving steps laid out in the literature (while parked safely beside the stream). The first day, she couldn’t have saved a soul. But on the third day, she goes through the steps wearing one of Dustin’s old Halloween masks. The scary kind. Freddy or Jason. The holes don’t line up with her eyes. She can’t see a thing. That’s the point.

  “Go!” she yells, pretending the car is sinking. She whips open the box next to her, puts her hand on the hammer, pulls, and in her excited state, swings the hammer and hits the driver’s side window. Then the windshield.

  In the second between the hitting and the shattering, the second in which she realizes she’s gone a step too far, she says, “Holy shit,” but it’s too late. The glass explodes. As promised in all the videos, the glass stays mostly in a single sheet. Safety and all. Agatha lifts the mask from her eyes and looks at Bear. “Well, it works.”

  * * *

  Two hour later, the tow truck drops her at her house. As it pulls away with Coop firmly on its flatbed, Kerry Sheridan looks up from the yellow mums she is potting at the end of her driveway.

  “Agatha?” she calls. “Agatha, are you all right?”

  Agatha groans, wishes she had an invisibility cloak she could throw over the car and herself. The look on Kerry’s face reflects the state the windows are in, shattered.

  “Agatha, did you get into an accident?”

  “No, no,” Agatha says. “I’m fine. Just a mishap.”

  “A mishap? A mishap? What kind of mishap shatters a car window? And a windshield?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Kerry. I’m fine. Go back to your mums.”

  Two thoughts linger in Agatha’s mind as she makes her way into the house. First, the old adage “Practice makes perfect” may be true after all. Despite the broken windows, she really kicked ass with those hammers. Second, is it really autumn in New England if you haven’t planted your mums?

  * * *

  Agatha’s agent sends another email. Good god, doesn’t this woman have other clients? Doesn’t she have a family to tend to? Doesn’t she have a mountain to climb, a river to swim? Doesn’t she have a wing of dragons to slay?

  As soon as the email pops up on Agatha’s phone, she panics. Sweaty pits, racing heart, urge to run.

  “When can you send me pages? I can’t wait to read this!”

  An exclamation point. A true blue exclamation point. Her agent never ever uses exclamation points. She hates exclamation points. What new madness is this?

  After pacing for a good hour, Agatha writes back: “Not yet! Just discovered a second murder suspect!”

  This will hold her for at least a day.

  * * *

  The music from Kerry Sheridan’s annual “lanterns on the lawn” party is light and twinkly. Perfect for a midsummer evening, but tone deaf for an unseasonably cold autumnal affair. For the ninth year in a row, Agatha declined the invitation, or actually ignored the invitation Kerry slipped under her door, never responding, never offering a yay or nay, but also for the ninth time, from the porch, she half enjoys watching the bare-shouldered revelers shiver and huddle in clumps like macaque monkeys to keep warm. Who hosts an outdoor evening party in New England on the cusp of October? Who trusts Mother Nature enough not to ruin such a shindig with a cold snap? Who sends an invite for such a trusting event but doesn’t add “Bring a wrap”? What numskull attends without bringing a wrap? A silk shawl. A light cardigan. A Canada Goose jacket with a hood.

  When the moon appears from behind a cloud, a tight gagg
le of ten shimmies to the street, then into Agatha’s yard. Usually Kerry’s grilled lobster tails, the highlight, keep partygoers close, but this year the remains of Agatha’s shed lure them away. In the ambient light of the lanterns, the shards of wood look downright ghostly. Paired with the swishy silk skirts and colorful tuxes, it’s a worthy shot. Agatha snaps a photo and posts it to Infidelity: A Still Life.

  As the likes accumulate, she scrolls through her IG feed. The usual nonsense. Selfie of a foiled-up woman who “can’t yet yield to the grays.” [Fist bump, sister!] A freshly minted mom sporting perfectly applied ruby red lipstick, her newborn splayed on her bare chest. [#rubyred #momlife] Rainbows over Montana, Texas, and Illinois. [Can you spell S-T-E-R-E-O-T-Y-P-E?] A luscious lemon meringue pie. [#homemade] The careful curation nauseates Agatha. Where’s the pain? Where’s the struggle? Where’s the honesty?

  Murmurs of the dog walker, her disgruntled husband, and a hatchet reach Agatha’s ears. She can’t make out faces in the growing crowd near the remains of the shed, but she’d know the squawk of the High Priestess anywhere. Poston is out there, for sure. Agatha swipes to the sprinkler app on her phone, then to the “front yard east zone.” As her finger hovers over the “on” button, she considers the wonders of technology.

  When the water bursts forth, the revelers shriek and leap into the crisp arc of the sprinklers. Backlit by the lanterns and the moon, HP Poston arches her back and screams, “Agatha Arch! I’ll get you!” Her lavender gown looks lovely in the light and spray. Agatha adds the shot to her feed, then edits a photo of Melody handing a can of soda to the Interloper. She lightens the shadows, intensifies the contrast, deepens the saturation, adds a filter, and uploads it to the Moms group.

  Agatha Arch:

  “Stop communing with the Interloper, Melody Whelan. She’s a danger to you, our families, and our community.”

  Agatha knows she should be upstairs working on the thriller, not watching a party she refused to attend and writing mean Facebook messages about a kind woman who likes to sing “Kumbaya,” but …

  The Moms come at Agatha like a ravenous cackle of hyenas—jaws snapping, drool frothing. These are the same women who cower in their homes for hours when they witness a fox eating a rabbit in their yard, a perfectly natural part of life. But throw some real danger at them—a potential murderer and thief—and they act like you’re the crazy one.

  Inez Walker:

  “Agatha, get a life. Quit sneaking around with your camera.”

  Cindy Swatten:

  “OMG, this is an invasion of privacy, isn’t it? Any lawyers on here?”

  On and on they go …

  Agatha heads upstairs and curls in bed, turns on Bear’s latest episode, and responds to the Moms’ nonsense while listening to the revelers decimate “Sweet Caroline.”

  An hour later, somewhere near midnight, as Kerry Sheridan’s guests are drunk-slamming the doors of their Ubers, the most unexpected response of all comes through.

  “Agatha, how about lunch at my house next week? DM me.”

  Melody Whelan.

  Agatha sits up, grabs the clicker, and pauses Bear in mid-leap over an icy gulch.

  Lunch with Melody Whelan? At her house? Her house?

  Agatha looks around her bedroom, half expecting a film crew to jump out from behind the curtain and yell, “Agatha Arch, you’re on Candid Camera!” What is this unexpected move by the Kumbaya Queen? Some strategic effort to get Agatha into her grip? An attempt to brainwash her? Kidnap her?

  She has no idea, but she stays up half the night trying to figure it out.

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Agatha pulls herself up on the lowest branch of the pine, delighted to be hands-free. The minute she snapped that GoPro on her head, she knew it was her most brilliant spy investment of the year. Better than her camera. Better than the neon-pink spray paint. Better even, and she can’t believe she’s saying this, than her spy pants.

  Somewhere in the back of her head she imagines Shrinky-Dink saying, “Agatha Arch, get down! You cannot climb a tree across the street from your estranged husband’s new house. You cannot spy on him.” But she ignores the imagined voice and pulls herself up branch by branch, choosing the fattest, the sturdiest, just like when she was a kid. It’s funny how things come back; it’s also funny how her fear of heights takes a back seat to her urge to spy on Dax, to see her sons, to know what their new life in this new house with this new grapefruit-arsed woman is like. Sure, her hands and neck still hurt like hell, and that toe isn’t a hundred percent, but what’s a little pain in the face of an important mission?

  When she’s parallel with the second floor of GDOG’s house, she turns and straddles a branch. Her crotch hurts way more than when she was ten but she can survive it. “What would Bear do?” she asks herself, then pulls binoculars from her pants and lifts them to her eyes. As she suspected, Willow Bean is messy. HOME Magazine would call it shabby chic, but messy is messy. It is audaciously bright, too. Pink throw pillows. Orange curtains. Turquoise everything.

  She guides the binoculars to the second floor. In a front bedroom she sees GDOG sitting cross-legged on a meditation pillow with a single lit candle on a bedside table.

  “Meditator,” she says and adds it to GDOG’s list of sins.

  Then she watches Dax—her Dax—walk into the room, drop another pillow onto the floor, and sit down next to GDOG. He puts his hands on his knees and closes his eyes. “Oh, for Big Papi’s sake. Him too?”

  When she finds the boys’ room with the binoculars, a sob rolls up through her middle and bursts out of her mouth. It’s a marvelous room at the top of the house. Every kid’s dream. The bunk beds are tethered to a treehouse-like structure with rope. There are walkways and cubbyholes. It’s like something out of Swiss Family Robinson. Dustin is swinging on a swing; Jason is lying on a hammock.

  As tears begin to gather in her eyes, she hears, “Hey, lady!”

  She ignores the voice, hoping it goes away.

  “Hey, lady, what are you doing up there?”

  She glances down. A kid maybe seven or eight is looking up at her. He’s got his foot on the lowest branch. “Oh, nothing,” she calls, “just practicing my climbing skills.”

  “Grownups don’t climb trees.”

  “This grownup does.”

  “What’s on your head?”

  Agatha feels the GoPro. “A crown.”

  “Uh uh. That’s a camera. My cousin wears one when he skateboards.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s a crown.”

  “What are you doing up there with a camera?” The kid pulls himself up to the second branch.

  “Nothing. Now go on your way.”

  “I’m coming up, too.”

  “No, no, don’t do that.”

  “Why not? This is my favorite tree. I always climb it.”

  “Well, I’m having some quiet grownup time. Come back later.”

  “But I want to climb up.”

  “No!” Agatha twists a pine cone from a branch and tosses it at the boy. It hits his arm.

  “Ow!”

  “What?” She feigns innocence. It was a super-light papery cone. It couldn’t have hurt.

  “You threw a pine cone at me.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did, and it hurt.”

  “I didn’t. It must have shaken loose from a limb.”

  The boy starts to climb down. He’s crying. “That hurt. I’m telling my mom.”

  “Come back later,” Agatha says. “Sorry about the pine cone.”

  She looks back at the House of Sin through the binoculars. Dax and GDOG have moved into the bedroom with the boys. The four of them look like a family. A cool family. A cool, meditating family. A cool, meditating, treehouse-living family.

  Moments later she hears the boy’s voice again. “That’s her, Mom. Up there.”

  Agatha looks down. She sees the boy and his mother looking up at her through the branches.
“Lady? Lady? Excuse me,” the mother says. “Did you throw a pine cone at my son?”

  Agatha aims the binoculars at the House of Sin again. How in the world is she supposed to get a sense of Dax’s new life with all these interruptions? “Oh, for Big Papi’s sake,” she says. “I’m trying to have some quiet time here. I asked your very sweet son to come back later.”

  “Lady, you do know you’re up a tree, right?”

  “Of course I know I’m up a tree. Now go away. Please.”

  “I am not going away. This is all very suspicious. I’m calling the police. You can’t get away with climbing trees, looking into houses with binoculars, wearing GoPros, and hurling pine cones at innocent children.”

  “I didn’t hurl anything. I accidentally dislodged a pine cone and it fell in your son’s direction.”

  Five minutes later a police car pulls up. Lights, no siren, thank goodness.

  Agatha climbs down, but rips a hole in the knee of her spy pants while doing so.

  Although it seems impossible, the officer is the same one who sat with Agatha on her porch after the shed incident. He looks as young and dumb as ever.

  “You again,” he says.

  “I could say the same thing to you.”

  “Officer, this is the woman who threw a pine cone at my son. She’s been hanging out in this tree with that GoPro on her head. It’s unusual and suspicious.”

  Agatha glances at the boy. “It’s a crown.” She leans down and touches her knee through the hole in her pants. Damn.

  The officer sighs. “Ms. Arch,” he says. She’s shocked he remembers her name. She doesn’t remember him ever using her name. “Exactly what were you doing in the tree?”

  Agatha stashes her binoculars in the pocket of her spy pants and pulls the GoPro from her head. “Nothing. Reliving my kidhood. Having some quiet time.”

  “Ma’am, who lives in that house?” He gestures to the House of Sin with his sunglasses.