by Kristin Bair
“I cannot bark at Kerry Sheridan?”
“You cannot bark at Kerry Sheridan.”
“This is what I pay you for?” Agatha says.
Shrinky-Dink nods. “Money well spent.”
* * *
The drone bumps into the downstairs window at the House of Sin and Agatha turns on the feed. No one is home, of that she is sure, this time, because after the boys’ bus departed, she waited in the pine tree across the way until Dax kissed his lover at the door then climbed into his Honda and until GDOG left for work on foot, a bag of dog treats strapped to her hip.
She cowers behind the tree with HEART painted on its trunk. She didn’t know until right this moment that Dax had tried to sand off the word, but up close she can see his efforts. Funny that it didn’t work, but here it is, HEART, still clear and bold, as if written in hot-pink blood.
On the feed, she sees the dining room table with four plates of breakfast leftovers. Pancakes and yogurt, blueberries, pineapple, slices of orange. The boys’ plates are nearly empty, and the fact that they are eating fruit salad for GDOG when they won’t eat an apple for her unless she slathers it in Nutella sinks her heart.
She sends the drone to the window of the boys’ room, studies the tangle of pajamas on the floor, Dustin’s plaid flannel and Jason’s SpongeBob tatters which he refuses to give up and insists on toting between his two homes like treasure. Tears start to drip so she calls the drone back and slumps to the ground just as a police car pulls up. It’s him, as always, him, the same officer who sat with her on the porch and called her down from the tree and waved with Their Eyes Were Watching God at dusk, as if Wallingford has only one officer who goes out to do any work. That’s what she wants to ask him: “Are you the only officer on our force? Aren’t there others? Why you? Always you? Who else is keeping our citizens safe? Who else is watching the Interloper?”
“Ma’am?” he says. “Ms. Arch?”
Agatha stands. “You might as well call me Agatha.”
“And you might as well call me Henry. We got a call you were here again.”
“Henry?”
“That’s my name.”
“Okay, Henry, so who called you? The lady with the kid who got hit with the falling pine cone?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just a call.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong.” She holds the drone behind her back.
“You do know spying with a drone could be considered trespassing, right?”
“Yes, of course, I wouldn’t do that. I’m just watching. Making sure my boys have a safe and healthy life in this second, unexpected house.”
Henry nods. “I understand that need,” he says. Perhaps he is not as young and stupid as Agatha thought. “But I also need to make sure you stay safe and healthy.”
Agatha feels like he’s telling the truth. She turns to go, tucking the drone under her shirt.
“Ma’am,” the officer calls. “Agatha?”
Agatha stops, pretty sure he’s going to bust her for the drone. She considers taking off through the trees and into the back yards and remembers doing that very thing in high school when cops busted an underage kegger. That officer had grabbed her arms from behind and she’d peeled right out of the yellow cardigan she was wearing, leaving it in the officer’s clutch. Then she’d run and hid under a bunch of bushes. The president of the class was hiding there, too. “Wanna make out?” he’d said while they waited for the police cars to go. He’d never spoken to her before, and she’d declined.
“Yes, Henry,” she says.
“That book? Their Eyes Were Watching God?”
Agatha smiles. “Yes?”
“It’s good. Thanks for the recommendation.”
* * *
“Put your phone in here,” Melody says when Agatha walks into the house, along with many other things that Agatha doesn’t hear because she has to zigzag herself around in the foyer to avoid the weird, white basket Melody shoves at her.
“No, no, thank you,” Agatha says, as she tucks her phone into the hip pocket of her spy pants where it will be safe from Melody’s grip. There’s no way she’s going to enter the enemy’s lair without access to communication with the outside world. She practiced her emergency call on the way to Melody’s house and she’s ready: “This is Agatha Arch. I’m being held against my will at 164 North Circle Street by Kumbaya Queen Melody Whelan. Please rescue me.”
Once the weird, white basket disappears, Agatha says, “Thanks for inviting me, Melody.”
“Thank you for accepting my invitation.”
And after that there’s a long, awkward pause that Melody tries to fill with a description of the stone turtle that serves as a doorstop and the dozen tiny stone turtle babies around it.
“Beautiful house,” Agatha says, following Melody into the living room, not meaning beautiful at all, really wanting to say there are a lot of doilies and knickknacks and padded rocking chairs and weird-ass shit cluttering the house, but trying, really trying, to channel Shrinky-Dink’s advice about kindness.
“You don’t mean that,” Melody says.
“You’re right. I don’t. But it does make me feel nostalgic for my grandmother’s house. And you do stop short of plastic couch coverings, which is nice.”
When Melody turns her back, Agatha peeks around a corner, sure that while the Moms weren’t waiting in the foyer, they are going to jump out of the shadows soon enough.
Once in the dining room, Melody carries out two plates of salad and perfectly cooked tuna to the table. “Let’s eat. Do you like tuna?”
“Love it.”
And Agatha does love tuna, but it hits her that she should have brought a taste tester, the kind kings and queens employ to test their food for poison, the kind paid to take the fall. Despite the uneventful opening ceremonies, Agatha is still quite sure Melody’s motives are devious and deceptive, except that from time to time she finds herself lured into comfort by Melody’s warmth and seemingly genuine care. Is this some kind of intervention, she thinks, or the beginning of a zephyr?
Melody smiles and takes a small bite of tuna, then excuses herself to get the salt. While she is gone, Agatha switches their plates. Knowing that Melody took a bite and hadn’t keeled over comforts Agatha only until she figures out that Melody may have done this purposely, that she’d taken the only non-poisoned bite of her tuna, then conveniently left the room, knowing Agatha would switch the plates during her absence.
Good god, life is complicated.
When Melody returns, Agatha doesn’t mention the possibility of poisoning, but she does spend the rest of the meal pushing the tuna around on its greens.
“Not hungry?” Melody asks. Her tone is so banal Agatha knows she made the right decision about not eating.
“No, I had a big breakfast. A late breakfast. Really a late brunch. No offense.”
Melody forks a piece of tuna into her mouth. “None taken. It is delicious though. I got the recipe from the Moms.”
Agatha imagines the post: “Best tuna recipes in which you can successfully hide the flavor of poison? Go!”
No way, Melody Whelan. No way.
* * *
When the cheesecake hits the table, Melody finally broaches the subject of the Interloper. Agatha knew it was coming.
“Her name is Lucy Strums,” Melody says through a mouthful.
“Please don’t talk with your mouth full. I can’t understand you,” Agatha says. Melody’s mouth isn’t really full. Just kind of full. The kind of full people talk through all the time. A bit of cheesecake tucked in one cheek. But Agatha needs a minute to channel Shrinky-Dink’s advice about barking.
“Don’t bark,” she chants silently. “Don’t bark. Don’t bark.” She mashes a spot of possibly poisoned cheesecake into oblivion.
“Okay, you can talk now,” she says to Melody in the most non-barky tone she can summon. She can tell she’s achieved an unprecedented level of non-barkiness because Melody looks at her like she has three
heads. Agatha considers smiling. Shrinky-Dink says that particular maneuver will catapult her to new heights as a human, but come on. Smile? She just can’t do it. Not yet. The amount of self-control it takes to offer up that non-barky tone has just about done her in.
“Her name is Lucy,” Melody repeats. “Lucy Strums.”
Channeling Shrinky-Dink’s advice a second time, Agatha simply parrots Melody’s words back to her. “Her name is Lucy,” she says. “Lucy Strums.”
At the sound of her voice delivering the Interloper’s name, Agatha swears she hears a bell ring somewhere in the distance at the same moment satisfaction merges with joy on Melody’s face.
“Do you like cheesecake?”
“I do, but, again, I’m just not hungry.”
“I should have served cupcakes. I know you like those. The chocolate especially.”
“How do you …” Agatha starts to ask, but then it hits her. Melody had left the cupcake on her stoop.
“You left me the cupcake?”
“Of course I did. You needed one. You deserved one after all you’ve been through. Probably should have left you a dozen.”
Agatha stares at her plate and fingers the crease still deep in her cheek.
It becomes obvious as Melody happily shuffles Agatha out the door with a Tupperware of cheesecake in hand that she has achieved her unspoken goal. Agatha said the Interloper’s name out loud, therefore, in Melody’s mind, she has acknowledged her as a person. A fellow human. A soul.
As Agatha bolts down the walk, Melody waves vigorously from the porch, pearls bouncing on her bosom, and calls, “See you next time,” as if lunch together is going to be a regular occurrence. And then, as if that isn’t enough, she adds, “Let’s do a yoga class together next Tuesday.”
“Sure,” Agatha calls back without turning. “That sounds great.”
Yoga class?
On Tuesday?
With Melody?
When Agatha finally gets to the end of the stone walkway and leaps into her car, she drops her head to the steering wheel and sobs with relief. She hadn’t been kidnapped, brainwashed, poisoned, or made to talk to the Interloper. She hadn’t been subjected to an intervention. She’d simply eaten lunch. Or rather, she’d simply sat with Melody Whelan while Melody had eaten lunch. And, although the experience wasn’t so bad, she tosses the Tupperware of cheesecake into the first garbage can she sees. Just in case.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tap tap tippity-tap. A single life does not happen in isolation. Humans are connected to fish are connected to whales are connected to flashes of lightning are connected to trees and ants and roots of the tallest stalk of corn and sunflowers and raindrops and exploding stars. Humans are connected to one another. This human to that human. Big human to little human. Black human to brown human to white human. Newborn human to ancient human.
For better or worse, Agatha is connected to the Interloper. The Interloper is connected to Melody. Agatha is connected to Melody. As Carl Sagan said, “We are made of star-stuff,” connecting the matter in our bodies to the previous generations of stars in which it was formed.
WTF is it all about?
Agatha is also connected to Willow Bean, despite the fact this is the woman falling more and more deeply in love with Agatha’s husband. It’s an unwelcome connection, but an unavoidable one. Even Jason and Dustin are beginning to like Willow. Not love. Not yet. But like? Yes, like. “It’s hard not to,” Jason says.
Tap tap tippity-tap. Agatha is also connected to the woodpecker.
* * *
The guy from TreeLife strokes his beard. He’s shocked the oak came down. “I apologize for the misdiagnosis,” he says.
“What didn’t you see?” Agatha says.
“The tree was diseased on the inside, but it wasn’t visible on the outside. No symptoms.”
Agatha knows exactly what he means.
“Someday we’ll be able to x-ray a tree and diagnose sooner, but that technology is still developing. We’ll give you six months of tree work to compensate you for the loss.”
“No need,” she says. “I’m just glad no one was hurt.” Really she wishes Dax had been standing under the tree at the very moment it fell, but she can’t say that out loud.
* * *
Without the tree in front of the window, the northeast part of the house is fresh with light. In an unseasonable surprise, a charm of goldfinches gathers on the sill.
Agatha warms to this. A charm of friends.
* * *
“Agatha, just keep a lid on it,” Shrinky-Dink advises. Her tone is more abrupt than usual.
* * *
When Stella Bender posts photos of her two identical desk lamp options, Agatha does the unthinkable. She grabs Bear, marches up the back stairs, passes the FEAR SHARPENS US note without even a glance, throws open the red door, snaps three photos of her desk lamp, slams the door, marches back down the stairs, slaps Bear onto the counter, and posts the photos to the Moms group.
Agatha Arch:
“This, Stella Bender, is a desk lamp. A fine desk lamp. Any desk lamp will do. I warned you.”
Fifteen minutes later, the truth hits her. She just walked into and out of her office, the first time since the shed incident, and she didn’t melt, explode, spontaneously combust, or even cry. This is something.
* * *
The following day, Agatha gets a text from Melody. “Agatha? Agatha? Did you write this?” A photo of the piece of paper Agatha had tucked into one of the chocolate bars is attached. The message is still legible. “Time to move on, Interloper. Time to move on.”
Agatha’s heart races as she types. “Where did you get this?”
“Agatha, please answer. Did you write this?”
Crap.
If you’re not impulsive, it’s easy to be evasive in a text exchange. You simply choose not to answer right away. Later, once you’ve gathered your thoughts, you make up a lame excuse:
Totally missed this!
Big meeting at work. Couldn’t talk. More soon.
Kids hid phone. Just found it.
Was driving. Never text while driving.
Phone dead when you texted. Thx for waiting. What’s up?
Sorry so late! Feet in stirrups for annual pap smear when you texted.
But when you’re impulsive, like Agatha, evasion rarely works. Since she immediately wrote back “Where did you get this?” Melody knows damn well she isn’t in the middle of her annual pap smear. She also knows her phone isn’t dead.
“Low on phone juice,” Agatha texts back. “More after recharge.”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
How in the world had this note gotten into Melody’s hands? She’d thrown the notes out the car window, watched them blow away, never to be seen again. But what’s worse is why she is so upset that the note got into Melody’s hands. So what? Who cares? Who cares if Kumbaya Queen Melody Whelan is upset? Who cares if she read the nasty note?
Agatha’s hands and pits are sweating. She is upset, truly, honestly upset. What is happening? She paces the kitchen.
Her landline rings. Normally she wouldn’t pick up because who answers a landline nowadays? But she does …
because …
because …
Oh, for fuck’s sake, because it’s Melody! And like it or not, she realizes she has started to care about Melody.
Agatha Arch cares about Melody Whelan.
Agatha doesn’t say anything, just holds the receiver an inch from her head, grimaces, and thinks about this realization.
“Agatha Arch. Did you write this note? You cannot avoid answering this question.”
“Melody? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me.”
“Oh, hi! Sorry about my cell phone. You know how it is.”
“Agatha, can you please tell me if you wrote this note?”
Agatha paces back and forth in front of the empty space on the wall where the clock used to be.
There’s a long pause.
“Agatha Arch!”
“Oh, for Big Papi’s sake, yes. I wrote it. I’d planned to get it to the Interloper via the candy bars. But after running into you on your porch that day and having you invite me in for tea, I felt guilty. That’s why I grabbed my bag and ran away. It didn’t have anything to do with wanting to give her broccoli. Then I ate the candy bars and threw the notes out the window of my car.”
“You wrote a horribly mean note, decided not to give it to Lucy, then tossed it out the window without a thought to littering our world? Do I have it right?”
Good lord. Agatha hadn’t even considered the littering issue.
Agatha leans her head against the pane of the living room window. She stares out at the remains of the shed.
“Agatha, do I have it right?”
Agatha nods, but doesn’t speak.
“Agatha Arch, do I have it right?”
“Yes.”
The line goes quiet.
“Melody? Melody?”
Then Melody Whelan, the Kumbaya Queen, hangs up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Alexa, what is an interloper?” Jason asks when he overhears his mom bemoaning the Interloper to the tomato plant.
Alexa: “An interloper is a person who intrudes or becomes involved in something in which they are not wanted. An interloper is considered to be someone who doesn’t belong.”
At first Agatha feels a little pleased—smug even—that she chose a perfectly fitting moniker for the ne’er-do-well, but then she sees Jason staring at her. He’s close to tears.
“Mom, who is this Interloper you’re talking about?” he asks. “Why doesn’t she belong?”
As a family, they’ve spent enormous amounts of time talking about the importance of including everyone, about how every person brings something unique to the table.
