Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything

by Kristin Bair

  Some shine. A woman in Tennessee sang on stage to 5,000 people, realizing her lifelong dream. The people clapped and cheered. Another published her first book of poetry.

  Agatha doesn’t share her triumphs. She’s not sure she has any.

  * * *

  When the Tush finally arrives, a few days later than expected, he and his team, sporting painterly whites, pull ladders from the truck.

  “We’ll be scraping and sanding for the first few days,” he tells Agatha when she steps out to greet him. “Sorry for the noise.”

  “Make as much noise as you can,” she says. She misses noise, kid behavior, farting, peeing behind the shed, burping, big laughter, yelling things you can say just as well in a conversational tone, “I NEED BUTTER!” instead of “I need butter” and “WHERE IS MY BASEBALL GLOVE?” instead of “Where is my baseball glove?”

  “Bring it on,” Agatha tells the Tush. He looks at her funny. She doesn’t explain.

  Closing the door, she continues with the list of things she misses: sharing donuts with Dax and the boys, Friday family pizza night, falling into an exhausted lump on the couch with Dax after finally getting the boys to bed, listening to Jack Johnson as they wait for the boys to stop coming downstairs for water/snacks/hugs/a lost ball, and sex, yes, yes, that, the sex.

  Dax calls just after she adds sex to the list. Bad timing. He’s upset about her visit to the school before swimming class. “You’ve broken the agreed-upon rules of our co-parenting situation,” he says.

  “Baloney,” she says. “I haven’t agreed to any rules of co-parenting. I haven’t even agreed to co-parent. I’m still back at, holy shit, my husband cheated on me and left me to rot.”

  “I didn’t leave you to rot.”

  “Well, you left and I’m rotting. And while I’m sitting in our house rotting like a discarded piece of cauliflower under the table, you came up with a bunch of co-parenting rules and assumed I would adhere to them.”

  She heard Dax chuckle, hold back a chuckle, guffaw in the back of his throat the way he does, has always done. “Dax, are you laughing at me? At my rot?”

  “No, Agatha, I’m not laughing at you. I wouldn’t laugh at you, especially right now. I’m laughing at the discarded piece of cauliflower rotting under the table.”

  Agatha smiles a tiny bit, the teeniest, tiniest bit possible. He’s always loved her descriptions, as exaggerated as they may be. But then she gulps down the smile because this man, this used-to-be-husband who has morphed into somebody-else’s-lover, doesn’t have the right to enjoy her creativity, her brilliance, her humor. “You don’t get to laugh with me anymore, Dax. You gave up that right. And I’ll tell you here and now, I’m going to see my boys as much as possible, even on days when they are technically yours. If you try and stop me with lawyers or rules or judges or anything, you’ll be sorry.”

  It’s a threat. And while Dax is brave about his love fest with GDOG, she’s pretty sure he’ll do anything to protect it.

  “Agatha,” he says, his voice much less I’ll-take-you-to-court-ish and more I-wish-we-could-work-this-out-over-pancakes, “I am sorry. This isn’t what I wanted to have happen, not how I wanted you to find out. I am …”

  Agatha hangs up, gathers her boombox and Beastie Boys CD, and heads to the House of Sin. The boys are at school and Dax is at work. She parks under the umbrella of yellowing maple leaves. One window in the living room is open. A light breeze bustles the white sheers. She pops in the CD, cranks the volume, and props the boombox in the open car window. She leans her head back. She knows every bounce and run in this song.

  At minute 1:38, the dog walker’s turquoise-y self appears in the window. The woman thinks she’s a piece of Southwestern jewelry. Agatha waves. Willow Bean doesn’t wave back. Then Dax appears behind her and places a hand on her hip. What is he doing home from work? He was talking on the phone to her from GDOG’s house? Agatha seethes and boosts the volume. He shakes his head, says something in Willow Bean’s ear, and slides the window shut.

  While Agatha waits out the song, she checks the Moms page. Raquel is once again fascinated by the mundane wildlife in her yard.

  Isabelle Fish:

  “Four deer today. Nibbling the leaves on the bushes. Any known deterrents?”

  Rae Stein:

  “I have some excellent repellent (aka poison) that can help with that problem.”

  That no-kill policy in Wallingford goes out the window when the garden is affected.

  Melody:

  “Oh, the deer are beautiful, aren’t they?”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Agatha starts the car and heads off, offering up a double beep to Dax and the Grande Dame of Grapefruits as she goes.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Just when it seems Agatha can’t get any more invasive, she buys a drone. An ultra-fancy drone equipped with a state-of-the-art camera, which, with the right touch, the literature promises, can hover close enough to a subject to record even the most intimate of moments.

  “Whose intimate moments?” Shrinky-Dink asks when Agatha slips it out of her bag.

  “Dax and the Grande Dame of Grapefruits.”

  “You’re going to film them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your ex and his lover?”

  “He’s not my ex.”

  “Technicality.”

  So blunt.

  “Yes, my estranged husband and his hussy.”

  “Where?”

  “In the House of Sin.”

  “In Willow Bean’s house? Now their house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Whatever they do.”

  “You want to film them doing whatever they do?”

  “No, but I want them to see me filming it.”

  “Agatha, I can’t condone this.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “Yes, you are. You brought the drone to your session. This implies you’re looking for support or permission.”

  “I just wanted to show you my new toy.”

  “This is not Show and Tell, Agatha. It’s therapy. You know I feel that way, so I assume that subconsciously you’re uncomfortable with your drone acquisition and you wanted to be confronted about it.”

  Agatha grunts. Subconsciously hadn’t she just been looking for a friend to say “that’s so cool,” but forgot that she didn’t have a friend so accidentally turned to her therapist and is now feeling like more of a failure than ever? She could say this, should say this, it would save them months of unraveling the thread, but instead says, “Wasn’t there a ‘make your tone nonjudgmental so your client/patient doesn’t know when you’re unhappy with her’ course offered when you were in school?”

  “I’m not unhappy with you. I’m unhappy with your choice. And, no, there’s not a class like that.”

  “Obviously.”

  Shrinky-Dink waits.

  “Listen, it’s a cool drone. The best on the market.”

  “You said the same thing about the hammers and the Leatherman.”

  “The Leatherman Super Tool 300 EOD.” Agatha smiles.

  Shrinky-Dink does not. “Yes,” she says. “The one that saved a man with a coconut in a jungle.”

  “And you hate those tools, too.”

  Shrinky-Dink opens her mouth to speak, but Agatha jumps in first. “I know, I know. You don’t hate the tools; you hate my decision to buy the tools.”

  “I don’t hate anything.”

  * * *

  Determined, Agatha takes to practicing in a nearby park with the gaggle of nerdy teens who congregate each day for drone practice. Most are working toward dive-bombing their friends’ unsuspecting mothers or stealing answers to next week’s test from their teachers, but tech-obsessed teens know their shit.

  On her first day at the park, Agatha crashes the drone into the statue of Wallingford’s esteemed founder so hard it busts into pieces. “Holy crap,” she grunts, panicked that she’s ruined the most expensive and most ad
vanced drone on the market. But within five minutes, those marvelous magical teens have it back together and are skating it along tree branches and around corners of the park shed. It draws significant attention. “Wow,” one kid says, turning it this way and that. “What did you pay for this thing? It looks like NASA built it.”

  Agatha doesn’t tell him because she knows he won’t be able to afford this particular category of drone for at least fifteen years. “I got a good sale,” she says.

  A girl named Blue becomes her primary tutor. All the kids jockey for the position but since Blue is the only one who compliments Agatha’s spy pants, she gets the gig. Once their partnership is established, Blue swoops in each afternoon on a well-worn skateboard carrying two coffees. Agatha brings cookies.

  “My mom hates my drone obsession,” Blue tells Agatha. “She’s a librarian and she thinks drones signal the end of society as we know it. ‘Why go to a library when a drone can deliver books to your home?’ she says at least once a day. ‘Why go to the mall if a drone can drop socks at your door?’ She goes on and on about the end of society as we know it. Just what is so damn great about society as we know it?”

  It’s a worthy question.

  Blue then lists the atrocities the world has seen during her lifetime: school massacres, terrorist attacks, Malala getting shot in the face, racial profiling, the proliferation of Starbucks, Zoolander 2. She is a smart, well-informed librarian’s kid, and she has her own ideas for making the world a better place. Agatha gets it, but she gets her mom, too. She can understand why she is working so hard to make sure Blue touches library shelves and walks through a mall to pick up socks in the hosiery department in Macy’s.

  Agatha likes hearing about Blue’s mother and all the ways she makes her crazy, but it gets her thinking about the things that will someday drive Jason and Dustin mad. She imagines them playing baseball with their friends and saying “My mom is afraid of everything. Everything. She is even afraid of butterflies. Who can be afraid of butterflies?” Maybe they say this already.

  Blue’s big question sticks with her. What is so damn great about society as we know it? Not much, as far as Agatha can see. Even if a human manages to create a cozy nest of a life, Dax has proven it can be blown to smithereens in an instant.

  Kapow! Kaplooey! Kaboom!

  While Blue teaches Agatha about the ins and outs of controlling a drone, they make a list of the things they do think are great about society. Ginger ice cream. Coffee. Free Wi-Fi. Blue: skateboards. Agatha: her sons. It’s a powerful but pretty short list, which makes Agatha realize that she and Blue aren’t as far apart in their lives as one would think.

  “What are you going to do with this thing anyway?” Blue asks one day.

  “Impress my kids,” Agatha says.

  “Liar,” Blue says. She’s a keen kid an eye for honesty, but how can Agatha tell a fifteen-year-old girl that she plans to film her estranged husband and his lover?

  Agatha smiles. “What about you? Why are you so big on these things?”

  “I’m designing drone programs that will deliver food, water, technology, and education to people in remote areas,” Blue says. She looks Agatha right in the eye as she speaks. This girl has vision. And know-how. And drive. Yes, she is only fifteen, but she’s doing the work.

  By the time Blue is done with her, Agatha can maneuver her drone between branches of trees, around tight corners, and into the smallest of small spaces. She can hover it a mere inch from a window, so still the images it shoots back are as clear as if the camera were sitting on a tripod. She can even make that thing fly alongside a car in motion, filming the driver and the passenger. Blue dubs her Hummingbird.

  Agatha likes this nickname. She’s never had a nickname other than Aggie-girl, and that no longer counts.

  With her new skill set, she is going to glean even more information about the lovers and see as much about her boys’ life as she needs to.

  This is powerful. And totally screwed up.

  * * *

  “If you can’t come up with anything nice to say, parrot someone’s words back to them,” Shrinky-Dink advises.

  “If you can’t come up with anything nice to say, parrot someone’s words back to them,” Agatha says.

  “Change the pronouns,” Shrinky-Dink says.

  “Change the pronouns,” Agatha repeats.

  Shrinky-Dink smirk-smiles.

  Agatha smirk-smiles back at her. “If I can’t come up with anything nice to say, parrot someone’s words back to them.”

  Shrinky-Dink smile-smiles. “You got it.”

  “I got it.”

  * * *

  Scrape, scrape, slide. Scrape, slide, scrape.

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  Slide, scrape, scrape.

  Slide.

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  Between the Tush’s team and the woodpecker, all the noise sneaking in the window sounds like a jazz tune.

  Agatha hates jazz, always has, hates its dissonance, its wonky rhythms, its improvisation. She depends on structure and form and routine and doing what is expected.

  Dax used to say she listened to it wrong, but that was a load of bullshit. She listened just fine.

  She sips her coffee.

  Scrape, scrape, slide. Scrape, scrape, slide.

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  Gggrrr.

  The doorbell rings. She tiptoes to the hallway, peers around the corner, and sees the top of Kerry Sheridan’s hot-pink babushka through the window. Kerry calls it a workout kerchief whenever Agatha calls her out about it, but it’s no different than the babushka Agatha’s grandmother used to wear.

  Dammit.

  Agatha throws open the door. “Hello, Kerry.”

  “Hello, Agatha.”

  Shrinky-Dink’s words echo in Agatha’s head: If you can’t come up with anything nice to say, parrot someone’s words back to them. A timely challenge if ever there was one.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Change the pronouns. “You need to talk to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  Tap tap tippity-tap.

  Scrape, scrape, slide.

  Scrape.

  Slide, scrape, slide.

  Agatha looks at Kerry.

  “It’s about that.” Kerry points toward the yard-cum-meadow that surrounds the shed.

  “It’s about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your yard.”

  “My yard?”

  “It’s still a mess. A bigger mess.”

  “A mess?”

  “Yes, Agatha, the giant, hideous, gnarly mess full of poison ivy. When are you going to clean it up?”

  “The problem is that it’s ugly?”

  “And full of poison ivy! Thomas is finally over it and he wants to play ball in the yard again.”

  “Why don’t the boys play ball on the other side of your house? You’ve got loads of yard.”

  “You know very well they play ball right here, on this side.”

  “Well, they should change yards. Change is good.”

  “Agatha, they’re playing ball with your boys.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ll tell my boys they have to play on the other side of your yard.”

  “Agatha, that’s not the point. Not the only point. It’s the mess. It’s the poison ivy. It’s the weeds. Rats are going to come, you know.”

  Agatha stops. Her heart seizes. Rats? Rats? She hadn’t thought of rats. “Do you think so? Have you seen one?”

  “No, but they’ll come. That’s what this kind of mess draws.”

  Agatha slams the door in Kerry’s face and leans against the wall. Rats. She’s got to get the yard cleaned up. “Well played, Kerry Sheridan, well played.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Hey, Hummingbird, are all ladies your age afraid of so many things?” Blue asks. She’s tightening a screw on the drone, the tinies
t screw Agatha has ever seen and the one that proves getting older stinks. Agatha can’t even see it let alone tighten it.

  “I doubt it,” Agatha says. “I’m a bit of a special case.”

  Blue nods. “Maybe you should ask them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It might help to know you’re not the only one in the world afraid of butterflies.”

  There are so many reasons to like this kid. Vocabulary is one. Honesty another. Huzzah is a third. Agatha suspects she’s likely right about the Moms having their own fears, but asking is like admitting out loud that there is just so much to cower from in the world. So much that can break you.

  That night, after obsessing about the boys, butterflies, the Interloper, the rogue grizzly cub, and, ugh, the rats that are right now marching to their new life in her yard-cum-meadow, Agatha sucks down a glass of wine and opens the Moms group on her phone.

  Agatha Arch:

  “Unexpected question, Moms, but what are you afraid of in life?”

  She expects guffaws, smirks, and whatnot. She’s never actually used the Moms group as a soft place to fall; that was Dax’s domain, he was her soft place. She waits, but instead of a raking over the coals, she gets a landslide of honesty.

  Erin Abel:

  “Oh, god, perfect question for tonight. I’m petrified of having my seventeen-year-old daughter drive by herself. I’ve been sitting here waiting for her to come home. I made her text me before leaving the mall. Now I wait, like I do every day, staring at the front door, waiting for it to open. It’s ridiculous. I know she’s a responsible kid and she has to grow up, but I’d like to keep her in the passenger seat until she’s thirty.”

  Katherine Stot:

  “I’m afraid of the dark. My husband died last year, and I never realized how afraid I was of the dark until then. Maybe I wasn’t before. Maybe the dark was different. Maybe I was just fine in the dark. I’m not now.”