Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything

by Kristin Bair

“No idea. He must have jumped the fence.”

  “Jumped the fence? There’s no way this dog jumped the fence. Look at him.”

  “He didn’t walk in, Willow. I know that. The gate is always closed and latched.”

  Agatha opens the gate and Willow runs to Balderdash. She kneels and runs her hands over the dog in the same way Agatha imagines she runs her hands over Dax. Balderdash lifts his head and licks Willow’s cheek.

  “He’s okay,” GDOG says. “Just scared.”

  “I heard the coyotes last night,” Agatha says. “Maybe they chased him and he leaped over the fence. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “I can’t imagine this dog leaping over a blade of grass, let alone a fence.”

  “Fear does funny things to you,” Agatha says. This is a big truth she’s just starting to reckon with.

  “Why wouldn’t the coyotes follow him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  From the road, a car beeps and a Mom jumps out. Agatha recognizes her from her avatar, but can’t come up with her name. Carol? Cathy? Catrina? She’s sure it starts with a c.

  “Hey!” the woman yells. “You found him? You found Balderdash? He’s still here?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Willow yells. “Are you the one who posted last night?”

  “Yes!” The woman jogs to the fence and snaps a few photos with her phone, then jumps back into the car and drives away. Seconds later, Agatha’s phone beeps. The Moms.

  “Don’t look,” Willow says.

  “I shouldn’t,” Agatha says. But she does. She can’t help it. She pulls her phone from her pocket.

  “Balderdash found!” the post says. In the photo, Agatha, the goats, Willow, and Balderdash are all staring at the camera. The remains of the shed clutter the yard.

  Agatha turns and looks at the shed, what’s left of it. Willow’s eyes follow. She lets out a breath. “Agatha, I’m sorry about so much.”

  Agatha swallows hard. “Sorry, Willow? You’re sorry?” She yells it so loudly, Balderdash twitches and Timothy jumps up on the ride-on mower. “You screwed my husband in the shed on our property with our sons inside our house, with me, the wife, inside our house, our home, and you’re sorry? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “I know,” Willow says. “None of this happened the way I wanted it to.”

  “Willow, I need to say this once. I don’t ever want my boys to hear it from my mouth, but I have to say it to you, once. I hate you. I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anything in my life.” She takes a deep breath and lowers her voice to a whisper. “I hate everything you’ve done, everything you’ve changed, everything you’ve taken.”

  Willow drops her head onto Balderdash’s body. “I get that, Agatha,” she says. “I deserve that. But please know that I didn’t plan to fall in love with Dax. I didn’t plan for us to do what we did in the shed. I didn’t plan any of this. And I’m so sorry.”

  Agatha is pretty sure these same lines have been spoken in hundreds of sappy movies to jilted wives. She also knows the hatchet is somewhere nearby, under a bucket or buried in the stack of sticks, likely within easy reach. “Here’s the thing, Willow,” she says. “Hating you for the past few months hasn’t helped anything. It hasn’t helped make life peaceful for my boys. It hasn’t helped make life peaceful for me. It turns out I’m not good at hate and hate is not good for me.”

  Willow rubs Balderdash’s ears. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, I can’t speak to the future, but right now I don’t want that hideous shot of us to be the talk of the day,” Agatha says. “Stand back.”

  Moments later, just as she snaps a photo, Timothy leaps over Balderdash, creating the best goat photo bomb ever. GDOG texts the pic to Gem Lily, and Agatha uploads it to FB.

  “BALDERDASH!” the Moms cheer, and the photo garners more likes than any photo in the history of the Moms.

  “I don’t have a leash,” Willow says. “I ran out of the house so fast, I left it behind.”

  “Use this.” Agatha hands her Thelma’s leash. “Just bring it back when you’re done. I have to walk Thelma to Kerry’s yard later for a poison ivy snack.”

  As GDOG leads Balderdash back through the gate and to the street, Agatha considers how some things—Balderdash, Melody, Kerry, Shrinky-Dink—come closer, while others—Susie, Dax, the Interloper—move farther and farther away.

  * * *

  When Dax calls a few hours later to thank her for helping Willow, Agatha doesn’t yell or curse or seethe. She stands in the living room with her face pressed to the pane of glass looking out over the yard and the remains of the shed.

  “Agatha,” Dax says, “this thing, this thing with Willow, it had nothing to do with you, with anything being wrong with how you are in the world. You’re perfect in this world. Your fears didn’t drive me away. I just walked away. All on my own. And I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  And suddenly, just like that, there he is again, her Dax, her beautiful Dax, without the armor, the defensiveness, the bravado, just Dax. “It’s not okay,” Agatha says. “It will never be okay. But it’s okay.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes into the delivery of Agatha’s new bedroom furniture, the stubby man with cute dimples, says, “Ma’am, I apologize, but there’s been a mistake. We only have one bedside table on the truck for you.”

  “No mistake,” she says. “I only ordered one.”

  “One? Just one? Are you sure? I don’t think I’ve ever delivered a set without two stands.” He squints at the packaging slip. “Everybody wants two.”

  “Even single people?”

  “Yes, ma’am, even single people. Symmetry.”

  “Well, you’ve probably never delivered to a pissed-off wife whose husband left her for a dog walker and who wants just enough furniture for herself and no one else. You only need two bedside stands if you have two people sleeping in a bed. If there’s only you, and your husband is sleeping in the dog walker’s bed not more than a mile away, well, there’s really no need for the bastard to have a bedside table, is there?”

  Agatha is quite sure a spiky thornbush springs from her tongue as she speaks.

  The guy’s eyes widen.

  “As for symmetry,” she continues. “It’s overrated. It’s for people who can’t take a little imbalance in their lives. Weak ones. You know what I mean?”

  The man eyes her, then steps back and says, “Yes, ma’am, I do indeed.” The other two delivery men stop, turn, and stare. She’s taken them all off guard.

  “Okay, ma’am,” Stubby says, giving a nod to his pals. “Whatever you say. I’m sorry to hear your news, but I’m glad you’ll have a new bed to rest in.”

  “Do you have my new pillow?” she asks.

  He pointed to a single box on the floor. “I do.”

  “I only ordered one of those, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  From then on, the men keep at least three feet between her and them. Perhaps it’s a rule they were taught at headquarters that applies to both aggressive dogs and crazed, brokenhearted women: “Keep a piece of furniture and at least three feet between you at all times.”

  * * *

  She has the men set up the bed in a new spot in the room. She wants a different view when she wakes. While they are still there, she lies down to check out the perspective. Instead of the door, she now faces the wall with two windows. Lots of blue sky to ogle. “Yes, this works,” she says.

  All three men nod slowly. Symmetry.

  Once the furniture is in place, the pillow is unpacked, and she’s signed the “yep, I got it all” paper, the men rush out the door to their truck as if they are being chased by a raptor.

  * * *

  Alone, she puts her new lamp on her new bedside table and sets Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars next to it. She puts a few things in the drawer, journal, pen, lip balm, vibrator, then places a box of tissues next to the lamp, for crying. She shakes out the new set of cornflower blue, 700-thread-c
ount sheets that she’s already washed three times for softness, pulls the fitted sheet into place, stretches the flat sheet over, and finally lays out her new sunflowered comforter on top. Pillow in place, she strips down, crawls in, and closes her eyes. It is 4:30 PM.

  The next morning at 11:00, she wakes, sun piercing the window. “These are the softest sheets I’ve ever slept under in my life,” she says to herself. “Like fog.”

  * * *

  “Where are you?” Melody texts. “Yoga starts in 5.”

  “Not today. Lounging in new bed. Watching Bear’s latest season of Running Wild.”

  “ Melody texts. “Take notes.”

  Agatha scans Bear’s Twitter feeds for gems as she watches. The @NBCRunningWild feed is fine, but the good stuff, the juicy stuff, is from @BearGrylls. She heeds Melody’s advice.

  Tweet:

  Something about actress Courteney Cox eating a rotting sheep carcass with Bear Grylls?

  Note:

  G-R-O-S-S

  * * *

  Tweet:

  An invite to explore a jungle filled with heart-stopping danger with Bear?

  Note:

  Um, no, thank you. I’ll enjoy him from my new comfy bed.

  * * *

  Tweet:

  Bear says he never gets tired of the mud.

  Note:

  I could have used this during that last climb in the Krug.

  * * *

  Tweet:

  Bear says that birch bark contains so many oils that it will take a spark, even when wet.

  Note:

  Get birch bark.

  * * *

  Tweet:

  Advice about not setting up your tent in a river bed in the desert because of flash floods.

  Note:

  Duh!

  * * *

  Tweet:

  For Big Papi’s sake, he found a frozen bird and has to thaw it out.

  Note:

  OMG, he stuck it down his pants!

  * * *

  Tweet:

  Some nonsense about having to dig deep in order to reap the rewards of the wild.

  Note:

  yeah, yeah, yeah

  * * *

  Tweet:

  Bear swears that storms make us stronger.

  Note:

  Bite me.

  * * *

  Tweet:

  Bear says you can eat a gecko but you have to squeeze out the excrement first.

  Note:

  Show this one to the boys.

  * * *

  Tweet:

  “Fortune favors the brave.”

  Note:

  More rubbish about fortune favoring the brave.

  After a few more tweets about tenacity and strength, Agatha starts sliding down the “Bear rocks; I suck” road, but midway down that very slippery slope, she recognizes that in some ways she and Bear aren’t too far off. Granted, their goals are different, but each goes at them with gusto. Bear thaws a bird by sticking it down his pants; Agatha tries to score by donning a pair of roller skates. By the time the show is over, she is jumping up and down on her new bed and hollering “Yeah!”

  Then she tweets:

  “@BearGrylls, just binge-watched last season of ‘Running Wild.’ Inspired!

  Needed to be! Life sucking right now. Grateful!”

  Then:

  “@BearGrylls, consumed by fear over here. Any advice for a petrified woman

  trying to piece her life back together?”

  A few minutes later, she looks at her phone. Bear Grylls has tweeted her back.

  From the man himself:

  “@AArch, fear sharpens us”

  Then this:

  “@AArch, I believe”

  Bear Grylls believes … in her.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “You were right, Agatha.” Shrinky-Dink looks more excited than Agatha has ever seen.

  “About what?”

  “About what? Haven’t you seen it on Twitter?”

  “What? What?”

  Shrinky-Dink hands her iPad to Agatha. A first.

  It’s open to an article about a lion tranquilized in a town not twenty miles away.

  Agatha’s mouth falls open. “Oh my god. This is a lion. The lion. From that guy in New Hampshire.”

  “It sure is.”

  Agatha pulls the iPad closer and reads. “Holy shit, they found it alive. Eating local pets.”

  “Yes, they thought they were looking for a mountain lion, but got a tried-and-true African lion.”

  “There could be more.”

  “There could be more. Anything else today?”

  “It’s permanent,” Agatha says.

  “What’s permanent?”

  “This.” Agatha points to the crease on her cheek.

  “Your dagger?”

  “Yup.”

  “Who says?”

  “The esthetician.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup, she says I’m like Harry Potter.”

  “That’s kind of cool.”

  “I’m trying to think of it that way.”

  Shrinky-Dink waits.

  “I’m not sure I want a permanent reminder of the day of the shed incident. I’m not sure I want to be reminded every time I look in the mirror.”

  “It sounds like you don’t have a choice.”

  Agatha smirks. “Neither did Harry. But at least he got to go to Hogwarts.”

  “Consider life your Hogwarts.”

  The chime dings. Agatha stands, gathers her things, and heads for the door.

  “See you, Harry.”

  * * *

  Agatha is putzing around in the canned soup aisle on a boys-with-Dax Friday night, trying to decide between Star Wars chicken noodle and Frozen chicken noodle when the guy beside her sneezes so big that he tips over the giant R2D2 display of noodle soups and hundreds of cans clang and bang to the floor. When a Star Wars can rolls to a stop at Agatha’s feet, she laughs, picks it up, and says, “Guess it’s me and Darth tonight.”

  “This isn’t for you, is it?” he says through a hot-red stuffy nose.

  She nods, trying not to look like the most pathetic person in the store. “Yup, I’ve got a thing for R2D2.”

  The guy chuckles.

  “And you?” she asks, eyeballing the can featuring Elsa and Anna in his cart.

  “Sick,” he says. “Terrible cold, away from home.”

  “It must be hard to be away from your wife when you’re sick,” she says. Shrinky-Dink will smile when Agatha shares this fishing line.

  When he meets her eyes, holds them, and says, “No wife,” a hot bubble of passion throbs between Agatha’s legs. She imagines throwing the guy and his snotty, swollen, crusty nose onto the floor of the grocery right then and there, whipping down his britches, and straddling him as Olaf croons “In summmmmmerrrrr …”

  “This may sound a little crazy,” she says, “but would you like to share a can of soup with me tonight?” She catches him in the middle of blowing his nose. He gives it a final wipe.

  “You want to share a can of soup with a guy whose temperature is over a hundred and who is losing half his body weight in snot?” he says.

  She appreciates his humor and honesty. She needs both. “Better than having a can of soup by myself.”

  The man pulls a tube of hand sanitizer from his pocket, squeezes a bit onto his hands, rubs it in, then offers a hand to her. “Edward,” he says. “Edward Weltz. Usually a healthy specimen of engineer who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, but today, on a business trip, I’m a snoggy mess in …” He looks around for a sign of where he is in the world.

  “Wallingford, Massachusetts.”

  “Yes, Wallingford, Massachusetts.”

  His hand is perfect, Agatha notes. Not too sausage-y, not weirdly bony and skinny. Just a nice, well-sanitized hand. It is promising.

  “Come on,” she says. “I live nearby. You can follow me.”

  As she settles on two cans of soup, one
Star Wars and one Frozen, Edward pulls his license from his wallet. “Just to show you I am who I say I am,” saying without saying that he totally gets that she is taking a strange man to her house and he wants to make it clear he is not a serial killer who stalks his victims in soup aisles at grocery stores.

  Agatha snaps a photo of it, and they head for the parking lot.

  After climbing into her car, Agatha texts Melody. She is horny, not stupid. “Melody Whelan, project Who Can I Bonk? is about to get real! Taking an engineer from Madison, Wisconsin, back to my house. Met him in the soup aisle at grocery store. Name = Edward Weltz. Has an awful cold. Rental car is a …”—she pokes her head out the window into the rain and squints—“dark blue Honda Pilot. If you don’t hear from me again, send the cops after him. If he decides to kill me, hopefully he’ll screw me first.” She attaches the photo of Edward’s license.

  By the time she pulls into her driveway, with Edward close behind, she has a text from Melody. She expects a reprimand for her impulsive, libido-driven behavior, but instead she gets, “What? Seriously? This is wonderful! Don’t forget to yell olé!”

  “What?” Agatha texts.

  “Olé! Yell it whenever you feel like yourself.”

  Agatha laughs.

  Then from Melody. “Check in so I know you’re alive. And DO NOT talk about he-who-should-not-be-named. xo”

  * * *

  The early moments of the evening are uneventful. Two grownups sharing a can of too salty soup, stale oyster crackers, and a bottle of pinot noir. Agatha almost says, “Just broth for me,” but for the first time in weeks, she’s actually hungry. They talk about their kids, hometowns, and work. By the time they start on a third glass of wine, they move to the couch and are sitting side by side, watching rain hit the window. Edward’s cold medicine has kicked in so his nose goop is more of a trickle than a roaring stream. He is cute. And like Agatha, lonely.