by Kristin Bair
“We’re doing yoga in a barn?”
“Why not?”
The quintessential New England vibe warms Agatha’s heart. The brown hills behind the barn. The scent of rotting apples from an orchard. The scent of cider donuts.
“Donuts?” Agatha says. “Now you’re talking.”
Melody opens the barn door and pushes Agatha in first. It’s cozy and bright with sunshine streaming through skylights. They settle on their mats and a teacher comes in, then the goats, trip-trop, trip-trop.
“Goat yoga?” Agatha says, grabbing Melody’s arm. “Goat yoga?”
“Not just any goat yoga. Look.”
Just as Agatha turns, Thelma trots through the door. Then Louise.
“Louise!”
It’s hard to know if the goats recognize her or if they are simply gluttons for attention, but they trot right over and snuggle as she feeds them grub from a nearby “Feed Them This” bucket. “I’ll bet Hans Christian Andersen never considered this as the future of goats,” she says.
“You might get peed on,” the teacher says. “Or pooped on. It’s all part of the joy of goat yoga. Call out if you need a clean-up.” She gestures toward a young man with a spray bottle and rag.
The next hour is the best yoga ever. During Warrior pose, the baby Nigerian dwarf goats skitter under Agatha’s legs. In Upward Dog, a sweet one nuzzles her neck. In a perfect Plank, two leap onto her back. “Hold it, hold it,” the instructor encourages.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” Agatha says.
Tabletop is a favorite among the goats.
In Downward Dog, Louise has a snack under Melody. Then she nibbles on Melody’s shirt and piddles. The young man wipes the floor, then breaks up a head-butting tussle in the corner.
Even Timothy makes an appearance.
During the more vulnerable poses when chests are exposed, the young man lures the goats to the corner with sliced carrots from a hip pouch. “We don’t want any injuries,” the assistant says.
“Let go of control,” the teacher says as Thelma steps on Agatha’s finger.
They move into Child pose, not the easiest to do with a goat on your back, but a good challenge.
As they leave, Agatha hugs Melody. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Anything to help you avoid Murderer Face.”
* * *
A day later, Edward texts Agatha: “Coffee before I head back to Wisconsin?”
“Soup?” she texts, not-so-secret code for “let’s have sex again.” But the whole time she’s thinking how weird it is that sadness and happiness can consume a human at the same time. That those two gigantic feelings can reside in the same heart. That a human born in this world is expected to manage so much of both.
Edward sends back a long line of smile emojis, not-so-secret-code for “Yes, yes, yes! Sex again!”
They meet at a café that offers both soup and coffee.
“You are so cute, even without your cold!” Agatha says.
“What’s in the bag?” she asks, pointing to the large tote on the chair next to Edward.
“Your books!” he says, and shows her a copy of each book, even the middle-grade series. “I can’t wait to read all of these!”
Three Moms of preschool kids—protégés of High Priestess Poston—are having coffee and gossiping about the other preschool Moms who are not as great as they are, and they openly stare when they see Agatha give Edward a big smooch right on the kisser.
A waitress delivers a bowl of noodle soup and a steaming mug of black coffee to each. “Nutrition and octane,” Edward says. With a red, swollen, crusty nose, he’d been super cute, but now that his cold has passed, he is downright handsome. And still so funny and kind.
“What now?” he says, getting down to noodles and business.
Agatha grins. Everything about him and their encounter is good. Delicious. Warm. Steamy. Happy. She doesn’t want anything to screw it up. She doesn’t want to get embroiled in something that may eventually make her think a single dark thought about this guy. She wants him and their encounter to be pure. She doesn’t want to talk about Dax, and she doesn’t want to talk about the departure of the Interloper.
“What now?” Agatha whispers, thinking how complicated it would be to try to have a relationship between Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
“We’re grownups,” he says. “We know the reality of our situation.”
Agatha nods. She’s feeling more like a grownup than she’s felt in a long time. Maybe ever. It sucks. And it doesn’t suck.
“Even if we decided this was the relationship of all relationships, neither of us would ever leave our kids,” he says.
She nods again. “What do we do?” she says.
“I propose we have one more afternoon together, then I go home. We flirt via text for a few weeks, then we go back to living and working on our own separate lives, leaving us a delicious salty, soupy, soggy memory.”
Agatha stands, picks up their bowls of soup, and carries them to the counter. “Can we get these to go?” she asks the girl.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later they are back in her just-perfect queen-size bed, and hours later, when Edward is readying to leave, Agatha says, “We can’t sext, can we?” Thinking of how often her boys mess around on her phone and figuring his daughters do the same.
“No,” he says, “but we can come close.”
Later that night, he texts a photo of a can of Frozen soup.
She sends a photo of her Leatherman, then the reel of fishing line.
He sends one of his knee.
And sometime in the middle of night, his nose.
* * *
Dustin and Jason see Edward’s text of a photo of his ear.
“Whose ear is this?” Jason says.
Agatha grabs her phone.
“No one’s.”
“No one’s?” Dustin says. “It’s somebody’s ear. Why would someone send you a photo of their ear?”
“It’s just a friend’s ear, that’s all. He’s having a lobe issue.”
“A lobe issue?”
“Yes, it’s embarrassing for him. Please don’t talk about it.”
“Really, Mom?”
“Really.”
Thank god they’d agreed not to sext.
“Who sends a photo of their ear?” Jason says an hour later. “That’s gross. There was a bunch of hair inside it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Agatha says. “It’s a grownup thing.”
They head outside, and Agatha sends Edward a photo of her ankle.
* * *
“You survived your Arctic fox,” Shrinky-Dink says.
Agatha smirks. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“And you had sex.”
Agatha smiles. “Yup. Without hiring an escort.”
“What now?”
“The thriller,” Agatha says. “I know exactly where to begin.”
* * *
When she gets home, she sees Kerry traipsing through the yard. The poison ivy is gone. The grass is trim. There’s just a big pile of tools and wood stacked up like a sculpture.
“What are you going to do with all this?” Kerry says when Agatha reaches her.
“Why?”
“Well, Agatha, it is an eyesore.”
Agatha turns and walks away. “Oh, Kerry.”
* * *
The next morning, a thick frost covers the grass. Agatha calls We Haul It All, and the truck arrives within an hour. The same three men disembark. Agatha nods at the good guy as he hands her a blueberry muffin.
“Gracias,” she says.
“Ready?” he says.
“Ready,” she says. “Take it away.” She turns her back and starts walking to the house, but from the porch, she calls, “Wait!” Then she runs back to the shed debris. She lifts the tarp that just a few months before had covered naked Willow after she’d run from Agatha. She digs through the bucket of screwdrivers and hammers. She dumps a drawer
from the red toolbox.
“Ma’am, what are you looking for?” the man says. “Can I help?”
She doesn’t answer.
When she moves the rakes, she sees it. The hatchet. The hatchet she used to destroy the shed. She grabs it, then turns to look at the crew. They eye her, a little nervously.
She marches to the truck and hurls it into the bed.
“Now I’m ready,” she says. “Take it. All of it.”
* * *
Later in the day, Melody shows up, puts her arm around Agatha, and says, “Let’s go sashay past the Tush. He’s painting a house on my street this week. We’ll remind him of the glory he missed out on.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
When Agatha decides to redecorate her office, she starts with the desk that Dax built, the monstrous beautiful beast with so many memories stuffed into its cubbies and drawers it should be writing its own book by now, and despite the tears that well every single bloody time she thinks about the men from the donation house hauling it off in their bright yellow truck, she calls and schedules a pickup time for it and the bookshelves and the purple stuffed chair by the window and the rocking horse on which the boys rocked while she wrote and even the lamp with scarlet fringe. She calls and says, “It’s a roomful, for sure, and you must send a gaggle of men to move the desk,” then hangs up and for the last time opens the door of the wee chamber on the side and removes the photo of her three boys. In its place she puts a silver coin with “fear sharpens us” stamped on one side, “fear propels us” on the other, Etsy again, with hopes another writer will find it at the precise moment she needs a boost to continue creating and writing and believing.
By the time the bright yellow truck pulls up two days later with four Zeussian men, Agatha is well past nostalgia and on to “Get it all out of here” so that only a few tears drip as the truck pulls away. With the absence of the oak blocking the window, the office is bright and sunny and new.
Agatha redecorates the boys’ rooms as well, replacing every piece of furniture that she and Dax had bought or acquired in their eleven years together.
Dustin is flabbergasted. “Mom, even your desk is gone?”
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s only stuff. Objects. Wood and cloth and fiber.”
“Only stuff?” he says. “All my life you’ve lectured me on the importance of symbolism in the things with which we surround ourselves.” His tone mimics hers.
She clears her throat. “Well, things change. People change. I’ve changed.”
“Because of Dad and Willow? Because of what Dad did to you?” Jason says.
This is the first time either of the boys has initiated a conversation about what their dad has done. Agatha is caught off guard. “Yes, because of what your father did,” she says.
“Well, just so you know,” Dustin says, “we think he’s a butthead for all of it. We still love him and all, and Willow’s nice. But we know butthead when we see it. We’re not little kids anymore.”
Agatha looks at her boys. Though she hadn’t been able to see it earlier in this mess, trying as she had not to cry in front of the boys, not to say a bad thing about their dad in their presence, not to drive the cleaver through their dad’s head, to use Willow’s real name instead of GDOG, to at least look like she was holding it all together, it is now clear that they’ve been hurting too. That they’ve grown and changed. Both boys are looking at her with more seriousness in their eyes than she’s ever seen. In some ways, she is sad about this. Every mom wants their kids to stay innocent and naïve, not be hurt by the realities of life. But really, it is impossible to be a human and not be a little bit broken.
“No, you’re not little kids anymore, are you?” she says, then apologizes for doing some of the things that scared them, like the painted HEART on Willow’s tree and the window-shattering hammers in the car. “Your dad kind of broke my heart,” she says, “and I couldn’t control my emotions for a while. I’m so sorry. I’m doing much better now.”
Both boys curl in for a long hug.
“Now,” she says, “go check out your brand new rooms.” The sound of their feet stomping on the stairs and their fists pounding on the walls makes her grin. It feels good.
* * *
Edward texts a photo of a red and white swirly pillow. “New pillow!”
Agatha texts a photo of the gnarly bump on her elbow. “Bruised elbow. Altercation with nightstand.”
“Favorite fork!” Edward. It is an awesome fork with only three tines.
“Enormous clock banished to basement.” Agatha.
As predicted, things with Edward, quite naturally, begin to cool. It is hard. These two humans are too touchy-feely for long distance, and their relationship has served its purpose.
“Should we talk?” he texts one evening.
“Definitely,” Agatha says.
When her phone rings, her heart bumps around in her chest like a teenage girl’s. She loves this guy. Loves him for a million reasons. Loves him for cracking her open.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
For long minutes, they small-talk about colds and furniture and soup and their kids and how things are going in their everyday lives. Then they go silent.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” he says. “Time for us to say goodbye.”
Little baby tears leak out of Agatha’s eyes. Oh, she loves this man. His nose. His snot. His mucus. His hands. His willingness to hold a woman he just met in the soup aisle in the grocery store, a woman whose pockets are inexplicably stuffed with fishing line, a Leatherman Super Tool 300 EOD, duct tape, waterproof matches, and so much more.
She nods.
“Are you nodding?” he says.
She nods.
“Hang up. I’ll FaceTime you.”
She does. He does.
“Too hard?”
She nods.
“Too far away?”
She nods.
“I know.”
They pause there for a long time, looking at each other, silently considering the possibility of moving to the same place and starting a life together, but then once again realizing how tied they are to their separate places and how neither could ever uproot and change that. At least not for fifteen years or so when their kids have grown and gone. Neither is up for long distance. They are lovey animals. They need lovey animals every day. Not once every three weeks after a plane ride and promises of “I’ll see you soon.”
“You can call me whenever you need help or if anyone hurts you or if the world gets too big or if you need a picture of my ear.”
“And you can call me if you ever need advice on which can of soup to buy. Star Wars or Frozen.”
Edward laughs.
“You saved me,” she says.
“You saved me,” he says.
“You saved me,” she says.
“We saved each other,” he says.
They both know they will never talk again.
“All right, my sweet Agatha, with fishing line around her toe,” he says. “You hang up first.”
She nods and closes her eyes.
“Wait,” he says. He stares at her. “I’m memorizing.”
She cries big gallumpy tears.
“Okay, I’m ready,” he says.
She nods again.
“Wait! Wait!” he says. “Do you still have your spy pants?”
“Yes,” she says, “but I’m going to burn them.”
“Good,” he says. “They’re sexy, but you don’t need them.”
Agatha thinks about the way he’d tried to slide them off her, with finesse and seduction, but then all the stuff had started tumbling out of the pockets and the Leatherman Super Tool 300 EOD had poked him in the hip. “No,” she says. “I really don’t.”
After a final pause, Edward whispers, “Okay, Agatha Arch, I’m ready now. You first.”
Agatha takes a deep breath, blows him a kiss, and presses “End.”
* * *
Twi
tter
Later on Twitter, Agatha tweets her idol. “Bear, I’ve enhanced your mantra. Fear sharpens us. Fear propels us.” She’s shocked when, a few minutes later, he responds, “Excellent addition. Stealing it!”
Chapter Forty
Agatha decides that the Transitive Property of Equality (if A = B and B = C, then A = C) actually does work with humans as well as math. It goes like this:
If Human A is kind to Human B.
If Human B is kind to Human C.
Then Human A is (most likely) kind to Human C.
“It’s the Transitive Property of Love,” she tells Shrinky-Dink. “It really does work.”
* * *
With Christmas and Hanukah barreling toward them, Agatha and Melody send an evite to the Moms for the first-ever sing-along of “The 12 Days of the Wallingford Moms.” The tune promises to be as biting and mocking as ever, but instead of rancor and resentment, they receive smile emojis and lots of yesses.
For refreshments, they order twelve dozen Minion cupcakes from Penis-Maker-Baker, and they coproduce two gifts for each attending Mom (or dad or grandparent or stepmother or so on):
A recipe book: Pulled Pork Recipes for You and Yours, which includes every pulled pork recipe ever posted to the Moms page, even the strangely simple “Pour a can of Coke in the slow cooker. Add pork. Walk away for six hours. Best pulled pork ever.”
A T-shirt. On the front, “Fear sharpens us.” On the back, “Fear propels us.”
* * *
“Stop being creepy,” Shrinky-Dink says at their second-to-last session. It’s very direct and un-shrink-like.
“What do you mean?” Agatha says.
“I mean stop being creepy.”
“I’m not being creepy.”
Shrinky-Dink rolls her eyes, an even more un-shrink-like move.
“Are we ending therapy?” Agatha asks. “Is this shorthand for ‘we’re over’?”
“You know we’re ending therapy. We’ve discussed it numerous times. I’ll see you today and then next week and then we’re done.”
