Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything

by Kristin Bair

  But then, in a very preachy, pokey tone, Jane Poston slung the question that had been quietly percolating in every Mom’s mind: “What exactly do you want Officer Ed to do with the turkey?” Saying without saying that the Mom wanted him to remove it. Or worse yet, kill it.

  But wait.

  Kill it?

  Kill an animal?

  Kill an animal?

  Oh, no.

  Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

  There will be no killing of any animal in this politically correct town. Not even that rabid coyote lumbering about with blood and slobber frothing at its jawline and a two-year-old’s leg hanging out of its mouth.

  So with Poston’s question on the table, the gloves came off, with so-and-so accusing so-and-so of not understanding anything about turkeys. Then so-and-so accusing so-and-so of thinking she was the kind of person who didn’t understand turkeys. And within an hour, it had deteriorated into a pathetic slinging of elementary school nonsense.

  Abby Smith:

  “I do so understand turkeys!”

  Tiana Samuels:

  “You do not!”

  Abby Smith:

  “I understand turkeys way better than you!”

  Tiana Samuels:

  “Do not!”

  Abby Smith:

  “Do, too!”

  Tiana Samuels:

  “Nuh uh!”

  Abby Smith:

  “Uh huh!”

  Three hours after the final “Uh huh,” the poor, dislocated tom was accidentally squashed by a passing car.

  Aaaaaaahhhhhh!

  The Mom who witnessed the slaughter posted a photo of the great beast lying dead in the triangle of grass. Stick-legs akimbo; feathers galore.

  * * *

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  * * *

  Just four weeks have passed since the shed incident, or maybe four weeks and a few days. Has it been longer? Five weeks? Six? Agatha is losing track, and the grass now tickles her calf. She turns in a circle with her arms outstretched, like a sundial, although faster, much faster, because who could ever turn as slowly as a sundial?

  In the moonlight, she watches Susan Sontag wade through the grass, Jerry Garcia a few steps behind, a loyal disciple, his sexy shock of white fur blowing back in the breeze. It’s no wonder Susan hangs out with him.

  In the corner of the yard, near the street, Agatha sees a shadow move, a tall, leggy shadow that could be a fox or coyote, but a familiar limp, the backwardish bends in the shadow creature’s knees, the drag in its gait, all make Agatha lean forward and squint. “Balderdash?” she whispers. The creature sidles into the shadows of the forsythia. The leaves shake, then still.

  “Balderdash? Is that you?”

  She inches toward the bush, pauses briefly to reflect on the fact that it is she, the spurned, the rejected, the tossed-away, who is likely spotting the dog that her husband’s lover walks and boards and loves, her husband’s hussy, minx, coquette. Agatha Arch, the woman in the world trying hardest to avoid anything canine, anything related to dogs, leashes, fur, soapy tin tubs, biscuits, peanut butter in toys, soft beds, barks, mournful howls, because right now, in this moment, any reference, even the slightest, to dog-related details makes her hair stand on end. But there he is, she’s sure now. Balderdash. Not more than thirty yards away. Her husband’s lover’s keep.

  “Balderdash,” she calls.

  Susan Sontag stops a few yards from Agatha, almost but not quite to the forsythia, turns her behind to Agatha, raises her tail, and sprays. Agatha drops to her knees, the stench filling her face. Again.

  * * *

  “You again? I knew it.”

  Agatha smiles. “Me again.”

  “Sure you don’t want the bottle of skunk wash this time?” The boy looks so earnest.

  “Nope, I’m sticking with the tomato juice. All fifty cans.”

  The boy grins and hands another can through the window. “I’ll let my manager know to order more. Just in case.”

  * * *

  “Tell me three ways you are different from any other mom in that group,” Shrinky-Dink says. She’s dubious. As usual. Agatha wonders if she was born this way or if she was seasoned into it.

  Agatha takes a deep breath. “Fine. Here goes. One, most Moms do not skulk around other people’s homes. Two, most Moms do not skulk around other people’s homes wearing spy pants packed with spy equipment. Three, if a Mom does skulk around other people’s homes wearing spy pants packed with spy equipment, I’ll bet my last dollar she chooses to carry the slim, sleek Leatherman Juice C2 as her tool of choice, not the Super Tool 300 EOD, like me.” Agatha yanks open the Velcro on a pocket of her pants, whips out her Super Tool, and displays it on the palm of her hand.

  Shrinky-Dink pulls back with that “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look on her face, which, in Agatha’s opinion, she gets way too often. Scrunched-up lips. Squinty eyes. Head cocked like a dog that hears the faraway call of the wild.

  “This baby right here,” Agatha says, tapping the Super Tool, “is designed for Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians. Get it? EOD. Super Tool 300 EOD. For folks who defuse explosive devices. This right here is one serious fothermucking tool.” She strokes the handle. “As they say at Leatherman, ‘An everyday carry tool, with some not-so-everyday features.’”

  Shrinky-Dink laughs.

  Agatha stares. “I do not know what is so funny.”

  “And I do not know why in the world you would need to carry a tool designed for people who defuse explosives.”

  “I’m prepared.”

  “For what?”

  “Anything. Everything. One commenter on the Leatherman Super Tool 300 EOD website is a jungle survivalist. A jungle survivalist! He says that the punch and awl tools saved his life.”

  “Saved his life?”

  “Saved his life.”

  “How?”

  “He was dying of thirst in a jungle. There were coconuts everywhere but he couldn’t get to the coconut milk until he dehusked the coconut with the awl and poked a hole through the shell with the punch. Saved his life.”

  Shrinky-Dink blinks. “He was in the jungle?”

  “Yes.”

  “In Wallingford?”

  “No, we don’t have a …” Agatha eyes Shrinky-Dink. “Oh, be quiet.”

  “Listen, Agatha, if you need to carry the Super Tool 300 EOD, fine, but let’s not pretend that you are in the kind of bind that guy was in.”

  “Not yet. But when I am, when the Interloper decides to make her move, I’ll be prepared.”

  “You keep saying that. ‘I’ll be prepared.’ Every new tool or gadget makes you feel more prepared for danger.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But then that feeling of safety and protection wears off and you’re off in search of the next tool. The next fix.”

  “You’re comparing me to a drug addict?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “Just because I’m making sure I’m prepared?”

  “Yes, because no matter what you do, you can’t be prepared. Not in the way you’re trying to be. These things will not keep you safe. They will not shield you from potential harm. They will not protect you.”

  “They will.”

  “They won’t. Life will still happen. If something dark and dangerous is coming, owning and carrying a particular tool is not going to stop it.”

  Agatha sighs, folds the tools into place, and tucks the Leatherman Super Tool 300 EOD back into its pocket.

  “How are you feeling now?” Shrinky-Dink asks. Her voice is soft again.

  Agatha stands and reaches into one of the deep pockets on her hip. Something jingles.

  Shrinky-Dink sits up straight with her “Oh boy, what’s next?” look on her face, a look she wears almost as often as her “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look. Eyebrows up. Eyes wide. Lips pursed to one side. Or her “I know exactly what you’re talking about, but, oh my god, you’re out of
your tree.” Eyes cast to the ceiling.

  Agatha dives into another pocket and pulls out a ball of purple twine the size of a clementine. “You want to know how I’m feeling now?” she says. “How I’m feeling right now?”

  Shrinky-Dink nods.

  Agatha turns the ball of twine in her hand until she locates the end of the thread. She pinches it between thumb and pointer, then leans down and tucks it under the leg of the table. With the twine firmly rooted, she begins to unfurl the ball. On the floor, she makes large circles and figure 8s. She loops the twine around chair legs and Shrinky-Dink’s ottoman. The office is small and requires her to make curlicue after curlicue. As she does, she remembers doing a similar thing in the woods, looping and twirling and whirling long-stemmed wildflowers into some kind of fanciful creation. She thinks, “Did this happen this morning?” But no, no, it was eons ago when she was a kid, when the looping and twirling and whirling was fun and freeing. It was warm then, too, she remembers. It is cold outside now. Another autumnal cold snap in New England. And this looping and twirling and whirling is different. Much different. Sad and confining.

  Shrinky-Dink watches silently. She lifts her feet when Agatha needs to reach under them, and Agatha accepts this as encouragement. She doesn’t stop until she is holding the tail end of the twine.

  After six minutes, she spreads her arms and looks up. “Ta-da! My life.”

  “And how do you feel now?” Shrinky-Dink asks.

  Agatha tucks the tail of the twine under Shrinky-Dink’s shoe, then holds out her hands, palms up, and shakes them. “Unfurled.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Crap always happens when you try to do too many things at the same time, as in the case of Agatha tripping on the stairs when she reads the text that her agent sends, because her agent never texts, has never texted, could not have been presumed to ever make such a move, and it isn’t just a “hey” text or a “how r u?” text. This text is a piece of art, a stuttering of questions marks, a single purple heart, and a pencil. A line of independently insignificant emojis that strung together mean something, mean everything, especially in the moment when Agatha looks up from the floor where she’s smashed to after tripping on the stair and sees Bear, her bobblehead Bear, her beloved, has been beheaded by their fall. The alliteration of the accident doesn’t escape her, despite the buzz and shock in her own noggin. She’s still a writer through and through, and she lets the words run off her tongue: beloved bobblehead Bear beheaded. If only she’d tucked him into her spy pants before heading down the stairs. If only she hadn’t been gripping him in her hand. “Life is full of if-onlys,” she thinks. She stares at his body lying east of the chair leg in the kitchen, or maybe west, far off, that’s for sure, and, although it takes a moment to spot it, discovers his head lying not far from hers, bobbleneck up.

  That’s what she gets for attempting, once more, to climb the back staircase to the red door that leads into the office that houses the desk that Dax built. That’s what you get, she tells herself. But also the text, at least there’s that. If only she had waited to read it. With her outstretched arm, she takes a screenshot, can’t lose that text, then begins to assess her injuries. A sharp pain in one knee, a sure bruise on both elbows, but, stretching out this limb and that limb, bending her neck this way and that way, nothing broken, except Bear, beloved Bear.

  With one hand, she reaches out and grasps his decapitated head. With the other, she types a reply: a long line of hearts, kissy faces, one margarita glass, three typewriters, one dagger. The last a promise of the thriller to come.

  Her phone buzzes and she opens the Moms group to find, first, that the Moms are raging about Crystal MacLeish’s audacious post about how using a mensural cup has brought unexpected joy and freedom to her menses life, and, second, that Balderdash has likely been spotted in a park not far from Gem Lily’s house on Rodderdale Street. This time there’s a photo of a shadow near a brick wall. A shadow so dark and abstract it could be Balderdash, maybe, or a duffel bag in a wagon or, perhaps, three chickens on the run from a fox. But no matter, the chase is on and Willow Bean reports that she’s dragging a corgi and two mutts behind her on leash as she races to the spot. A hundred Moms, maybe more, are circling the park trying to block all exits from the shadow that may or may not be the missing pooch.

  Agatha saves the mensural cup post in her “The 12 Days of the Wallingford Moms” folder, then shimmies on her belly across the kitchen floor, screeching ouch, ooh, ugh, ouch every time a bruised part bumps or bangs. She sets down her phone and picks up Bear’s lower extremities. She thumbs the bite marks on his foot, rolls onto her back, lifts her arms, and tries to fit his body back onto his head. She shoves it, wiggles it, twists it, but, in the end, fails. The neck is irreparably, foreverly broken. Rolling slightly onto one side, she reaches into a pocket of her spy pants, pulls out a roll of duct tape, rips a piece to fit, then wraps it properly around his neck until his head is firmly in place. He no longer bobbles, but at least he is whole.

  * * *

  “How’s GDOG?” Agatha says when Dax stops by to suggest moving forward with a divorce, as if this is something Agatha would even allow through the door, let alone into her brain or heart. She goes on the defensive, and Dax acts as if this is something he didn’t expect, couldn’t fathom, and she wonders if this dog walker, this Willow Bean, this firm-butted bombshell, has somehow devoured his brain, his memories, his way-he-used-to-be-ness. She’s never heard of such a phenomenon, a devouring of a man’s way-he-used-to-be-ness, even in relationships that have gone awry, but maybe she hasn’t paid close enough attention, for Dax is definitely not the way he used to be.

  “GDOG, Agatha?” he says. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously, Dax. Grande Dame of Grapefruits. GDOG, GDOG, GDOG.”

  “C’mon, Agatha. Please call her Willow,” he says. “For the boys’ sake.”

  “I do call her Willow when talking to the boys. For their sake. I am the only one of us doing anything for their sake. I call her whatever the hell I want when talking to you. For my sake.”

  “What am I supposed to say to that, Agatha?” he says. “My therapist tells me you need to let off steam and that I should allow it.”

  “Your therapist? When did you get a therapist?”

  “Months ago,” he says. “When my feelings for Willow started to grow.”

  “And this therapist supports your recent behavior? Your romp in the shed while the boys and I were in the house?”

  “I admit he was concerned and upset that things with Willow came to light in this way.”

  “Came to light in this way? That’s a merry way of describing the fact that you screwed this woman in our shed while the boys and I were eating lunch, while the boys were watching SpongeBob. SpongeBob, for fuck’s sake.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And is this therapist at all concerned, or encouraging you to be concerned, about how the incident in the shed is affecting your wife and your children?”

  “He is. And he’s suggested the boys may need a little therapy themselves once things calm down a bit.”

  “Ya think?”

  Dax blows out a loud breath.

  “And you? What about you?” Agatha asks. “Are you at all concerned?”

  Dax looks at his hands. “I am, of course I am, but I am equally concerned that you are being cruel, intentionally cruel. Even so, I am trying to take the high road.”

  Agatha closes her eyes. Clearly, irony is invisible to this new Dax, now that the way-he-used-to-be-ness has disappeared. This new Dax who cheated on his imperfect and complex, but still pretty damn amazing wife and dismantled his beautiful family has the gall to say she is being cruel, intentionally or otherwise. She wonders what he’ll think about on his deathbed and kind of, but not really, but, yes, kind of, wishes that were something to which they’d know the answer sooner rather than later.

  “Dax,” she says, squeezing the loaf of raisin bread on the cutting board so har
d raisins pop from each end. “From where you sit, you can’t even see the high road.”

  Despite the morning sunshine, the house is still dark. “Jesus, Agatha, open the blinds,” he says. He walks across the kitchen and pulls the cord.

  When light fills the room, she sees he is wearing a hot-pink shirt with a patchwork pocket on the breast. “Nice shirt, Gandhi,” she says. “Whatever you’re here for, get on with it.”

  He sits across from her, rests his hairy, lumpy forearms on the table, and leans close. She can tell he is working hard to speak in a conciliatory tone but instead sounds so condescending she has to resist the urge to stuff the loaf of raisin bread up his right nostril.

  “Listen, let me help you out,” she says. “Unless you’re here to profess your love for me, declare temporary insanity, and denounce your dalliance with that marriage-destroying monster, I’ve got nothing to say to you.” Agatha is tired. The house is disturbingly quiet. And it is heartbreaking to have Dax at the table without also hearing the boys’ pounding down the stairs to breakfast, banging off the walls and hollering about sticks and forts and the enemy they will conquer.