by Kristin Bair
She loves the idea of screwing Mailman, whose name she knows but can never remember. Years before, she called him Rick, but Dax insisted that wasn’t his name. Now she’s spent days fantasizing about dragging Rick-not-Rick into the house by the official mail pin on his lapel, dumping his bag onto the couch, tugging his blue shorts down around his ankles, discovering a pair of jocks covered with stamped letters, then straddling him and bonking the shit out of him, all the while yelling, “Postage due! Postage due!” It’s a ridiculous fantasy, but it’s hers.
Tap tap tippity-tap.
When Rick-not-Rick leans in and says, “Excuse me?” she has a glimmer of hope that things might go her way. But when she repeats herself, this time more loudly, less coo and more caw, with even more swiggle in her bottom, his eyes jolt wide, he jammers, and his face turns a brilliant shade of magenta. Is it possible Rick-not-Rick has never been propositioned by a client on his route before?
To Agatha’s credit, she doesn’t take his wiffley-waffley response lightly. While he backs away as if she has Ebola, jabbing his mailbag at her like a sword, she continues to dip the sweaty iced tea glass into her cleavage, dropping it a little deeper each time. Hinting, hinting. When the glass gets stuck a little too deep, she yanks and tea splashes down her front. Little brown dribbles trail all the way to the crotch of her spy pants.
Desperate, she pitches it as a convenient trail for Rick-not-Rick to follow. “This way,” the iced tea dribbles call. “This way! Follow me! Follow me to a slice of heaven!” But Rick-not-Rick is not following. He is not interested in heaven. He is running away so fast he is already too far to even see the dribbles. He leaps into his mail truck and guns the engine.
Defeated, Agatha looks down. Her spy pants are ruined. She’ll have to pull another pair from the box. Thank god she bought so many extras.
Tap tap tippity-tap.
She turns. The Tush is on the east side of the house, paused on the ladder, paintbrush high, obviously entertained by the exchange. She bends over, wags her ass in his direction, and picks up her mail. “This, baby,” she whispers. “You coulda had this.” Then she tries to take a dramatic swig of iced tea, but the cubes give way and crash into her nose and mouth. She sputters and swears, then sashays into the house, horniness once again humiliated into check.
* * *
Melody covers Agatha with a mottled brown afghan and turns on Beaches.
Agatha snuggles in, but then sits up. “I can’t stay,” she says.
“Yes, you can, Agatha. Relax.”
“I really can’t. I’m still sweaty from yoga. I should …”
Melody pushes her down, covers her again, hands her a cup of chamomile tea, and curls at the opposite end of the couch. Agatha glances at her, still wary of this thing that feels like friendship, but also grateful. It’s the first time she’s felt comforted and cared for since the shed incident. And it’s kind of lovely. She blubbers through the movie, hums “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” and after the credits roll, stays under Melody’s wretchedly ugly, insanely soft afghan and talks about death and love and loss and other friendship-affirming topics.
She’s so relaxed that when Melody suggests going to meet the Interloper the next day, she has barely enough energy to resist. “You have nothing to be afraid of,” Melody promises. “Lucy is young and kind and innocent.”
“She’s deceptive and deceitful and not trustworthy at all,” Agatha says.
“How do you know? You’ve never spoken to her.”
Agatha remembers Jason’s comment about the Interloper looking sadder than anyone else in the whole wide world. His heart is so open, but hers just isn’t. “Any human who comes to a town in which they’ve never lived,” she says, “sets up a begging shop at the busiest intersection, and rakes in cash is deceptive, deceitful, and not trustworthy. If she’s capable of these things, she’s capable of anything.”
“A begging shop?” Melody asks, eyebrows up.
“You know what I mean.”
“Agatha, she’s wounded and homeless and sad and hungry and lost, but she is not dangerous.”
Agatha shakes her head. “There is no way that you can prove this girl is not dangerous.”
“I can. By introducing you to her.”
“Nope.”
* * *
Agatha sets “The Wind Beneath My Wings” as Melody’s ringtone. The first time it sings, Melody says, “Let’s go meet Lucy. If you’re free to answer your phone, you’re free to go meet her.”
Agatha runs to the dryer, presses her head and phone against it, and yells over the ruckus, “JUST STARTED ANOTHER LOAD OF LAUNDRY. NOT A GOOD TIME!” She hangs up.
* * *
The following day when Melody calls, Agatha bangs together a bunch of pots and pans. “I’m cooking. This meal won’t be done for hours.”
“You hate cooking,” Melody says. “You don’t cook.”
“New life, new leaf,” Agatha says, rubbing the colander against the phone.
“Fibber.”
* * *
The third day Dustin answers when the sappy song plays. “Hi, Melody,” he says, then hands the phone to his mom.
“Ha!” Melody says when she hears Agatha’s voice. “Got you!”
Agatha stuffs a dish sponge into her mouth and mumbles, “Toof-ache! Ow. Ow.”
“Yuck!” Dustin shouts.
Chapter Thirty-One
“The Interloper is broken,” Agatha says.
Shrinky-Dink waits.
“She has folded, given in, surrendered.”
“To?”
“To whatever broke her heart.”
Shrinky-Dink nods.
“And?”
“If I’m not mean and tough and mouthy, if I don’t fight like I do, I will fold, give in, surrender.”
“You will become the Interloper?”
Repeat the words. Change the pronouns.
“I will become the Interloper.”
Shrinky-Dink waits again. The chime goes off but she doesn’t call a halt to the session. This is a first. “What other option do you see for yourself?” she finally says.
“I can make the ultimate leap of faith.” Agatha says it in a British accent.
Shrinky-Dink pulls her “eyebrows-up, I have no idea what you’re talking about” face.
“Watch this,” Agatha says. She takes out her phone, opens her Hard Truths file, and scrolls to the clip of the nature show. Shrinky-Dink leans forward and together they watch the baby barnacle goose peer over the side of the cliff, then plummet down the mountain toward its parents and life-sustaining sustenance.
“That’s quite a leap,” Shrinky-Dink says. Agatha can tell she’s impressed. This is a first, too.
When the camera pans to the lying-in-wait Arctic fox, Agatha harrumphs and Shrinky-Dink nods.
“You see? I am the gosling,” Agatha says. She fingers the crease in her cheek.
Shrinky-Dink gets it now. Agatha can tell by the look on her face. “And what,” Shrinky-Dink says, “is your Arctic fox?”
“Huh?”
“Instinctively the gosling is most afraid of the Arctic fox waiting at the bottom of the cliff. What is your Arctic fox? Of what are you most afraid?”
“This again?” Agatha asks.
“This again.”
Agatha thinks about Susie. How do you leave something behind that has haunted you forever?
She returns to thinking about Dax. About expecting so much from him. Too much. Was that it? Does it even matter?
When Agatha finally leaves Shrinky-Dink’s office, the woman in gray is not in the vestibule. This, too, is a first. For three years, they have overlapped in this quiet in-between space. For the five seconds it takes Agatha to close Shrinky-Dink’s office door, cross the vestibule, pull her coat from the rack, put it on, and head out the exterior door, she and the lady in gray have overlapped.
Until today.
* * *
A few more days, a thousand more texts, dozens of calls,
and Melody wears her down. “Fine,” Agatha says. “Fine, fine, fine. I’ll talk to her.”
On the night before the rendezvous, she sleeps very little, and when she does, she dreams about being kidnapped, flown to a secret location, and eaten with fava beans. Hours before the “eaten with fava beans” part, the kidnappers text a ransom note to Dax, “$1,000,000 for the lady to be returned,” but he, her husband, her estranged husband, her husband-who-screwed-the-dog-walker-in-the-shed-and-left-her misses the text and the opportunity to redeem himself even a little bit because he’s canoodling with the Grande Dame of Grapefruits.
Good god.
Despite the dream, Agatha meets Melody in the parking lot of the grocery store at Apple54. It is early Saturday morning, a slow traffic hour, though, as the Interloper explains, the dads on their way to soccer games are often much more generous than the moms, handing over fives and tens instead of their change from Starbucks.
Up close for the second time, but seeing her awake for the first, Agatha has to admit the Interloper doesn’t look quite as intimidating as she expected, shorter and thinner and much more fragile-like-glass than she looked in the Krug. “I can take her down if she tries any nonsense,” Agatha whispers to Melody.
“Agatha,” Melody says, ignoring the takedown comment, “this is my friend Lucy. Lucy, this is my friend Agatha.”
Her friend?
Her friend?
Melody refers to this homeless ne’er-do-well as her friend?
To this, Agatha can barely sputter a response, so to make it easier on herself, thinking nothing of how hard this might be for the Interloper, she employs a tactic Dustin used when he was a toddler. Whenever she tried to get him to do something he didn’t want to do (eat broccoli, brush teeth, say “up,” put away blocks, go to bed, etc.), he refused to look directly at her. No caterwauling, no kicking, no tantrums, just complete avoidance.
Melody wastes no time, perhaps out of fear that Agatha will flee, perhaps out of respect for the Interloper’s work hours, but either way she unpacks a picnic breakfast with cut fruit, cold juice, hot coffee, and steaming bacon and egg sandwiches.
“Agatha, Lucy is from out west,” Melody says, handing Agatha a slice of watermelon, which she can’t eat, won’t eat, mostly because the longer this nonsense with Dax goes on, the harder it is to chew, swallow, consume, but also because the terror stirred by the Interloper makes her belly ache.
In every photo Agatha has taken, the Interloper has had a horribly dour, serious, flat-like look stuck to her face, a look that screams “Watch out, I’m going to get you,” a look that made Agatha sleep with two lights on rather than the usual one, but when Melody says “out west,” the little, glass-like ne’er-do-well smiles a little, not just around the mouth but also the eyes, the brown ones that suddenly shine with a bit of light, a wee smile that gives Agatha a different feeling, a feeling that maybe things aren’t quite what she thought, though there’s no way in hell she’ll admit that to Melody.
“Out west?” Agatha says. “And you believe this?”
Melody nods. “Of course I believe it.”
“Do you have a driver’s license with a home address on it?” she asks the Interloper.
The Interloper shakes her head.
“Agatha,” Melody says, “that’s rude.”
“It’s not rude. It’s a question. If the girl says she has a home somewhere out west, let’s see something with an address on it.”
“Why don’t you show her your driver’s license?” Melody says.
Agatha shoots her a look that could vaporize a demon. She does not want this young woman to know anything about her private life, especially details about her home or her children. Melody knows this.
“My life is private,” she says to Melody, poisoned harpoons shooting from her mouth as she does.
“I hate to tell you,” Melody says, “but no one’s life is private. Isn’t that what you tell the Moms on the Facebook page when they use that defense?”
Agatha grimaces.
“What brought you to Wallingford?” she asks the Interloper.
When Melody leans forward and opens her mouth to speak, Agatha holds up her hand just an inch from her nose. “Stop,” she says. “Let her answer.”
Finally the Interloper speaks. “Money,” she says. Her voice is low but strong. “Money brought me here. I’m homeless but not dumb. I know enough to beg where the money is.”
The Interloper turns and looks at the traffic building up at Apple54. The line of cars now stretches ten long from the light. Without looking at Agatha or Melody, she takes a final bite of watermelon and stands.
“Thank you for breakfast,” she says.
Melody puts a hand on her arm. “Wait,” she says. Then she wraps the three remaining sandwiches in foil, puts them and two bottles of water in a plastic grocery bag, and says, “Take these for lunch.”
The Interloper takes the bag and trudges toward her post.
“Well, that sucked,” Agatha says.
Melody shakes her head. “Only because you made it suck.”
“I made it suck?”
“Yes, you. Couldn’t you have been kind and generous, just for a few moments? Couldn’t you have stepped out of your own crap and seen that others have crap way worse than you?”
Agatha is stunned. Melody never talks to anyone like this. She never even says the word crap. Agatha didn’t know she was capable. “Are you kidding?”
Melody slaps a Tupperware lid on the picnic table and glares at her. “I am not kidding,” she says. “Grow up. Put your ridiculous fears away for a bit. Listen to someone else. And, yes, you will see that lots of people have it worse than you, and everybody deserves some kindness.”
Ridiculous fears?
Ridiculous fears?
“Melody Whelan,” Agatha sputters, “do you know what I’ve been through these past few months? Do you have any idea how I’ve suffered?”
“Oh, shut up, Agatha Arch.”
Melody Whelan says shut up. Shut up. To Agatha Arch.
“Listen, Agatha, yes, your husband cheated and broke your heart. Yes, it sucks. But you’ve still got your wits. And your home. And your boys. Can’t you, you terrible selfish beast, can’t you find it in your heart to show just the slightest bit of kindness and generosity? Who are you? How do you live with yourself?”
Then, without looking at Agatha again, Melody smacks the Tupperware containers into her picnic basket and marches to her car in the grocery parking lot.
Agatha sits there, taking in her words, trying for the first time to balance her fears with the possible truths Melody had just spoken. She watches the Interloper work the intersection without a single flash of expression on her face. If what Melody said was true, did the fact that the Interloper was suffering take away the possibility that she could commit heinous crimes in their community?
She has no idea.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The goats arrive. Finally.
As promised, Thelma and Louise are beautiful and sweet and funny. Thelma is the jumper and proves it when, less than five minutes after discovering the remains of the shed, she decides that atop the hidden ride-on mower is her best vantage point.
“She’ll settle down and start eating soon enough,” the goat lady tells Agatha.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. She’s a seasoned ’scaper. She knows her job and she does it well.”
Just after the boys get home from school, the goat people deliver a third goat, a youngster named Timothy. “An intern?” Agatha asks when the goat lady leads Timothy from the truck on a leash.
The goat lady smiles. “Yes, an intern. You can take him to the pen.” She hands the leash to Dustin.
This is Timothy’s first job, and he has a lot to learn. While Thelma and Louise set to work, nibbling on brush near the property line with the Sheridans, Timothy runs and bucks and mehs, acting like he’s at recess.
“Don’t worry, he’ll get the hang
of it,” Fred says. “Hunger will get the best of him. Never met a goat who didn’t like to eat.”
Agatha’s phone pings. The Moms. She opens FB. The arrival of the goats is breathing new life into the Shed on Sutton Circle thread. “Check this out,” Kerry Sheridan writes with a photo of Thelma and Louise being led on leashes into the fenced area in Agatha’s yard. “The goats have arrived!”
Within an hour, the Moms are lined up on Sutton Circle in their cars. Charmed and curious, they start to park. Pretty soon, fifty Moms are crowded at the streetside fence.
“These goats are adorable!”
“That one is the cutest!” a Mom says, pointing at Timothy.
“Did you know you could do this?”
“Is there a waiting list for the goats? I’d love to book them for my yard.”
“Can the goats clear wetlands?”
“Are these Nubian goats?”
“What is a Nubian goat?”
“Ooh, I’m going to bring carrots and celery scraps tomorrow. They’ll love it!”
As the Moms talk, the goat lady walks up to their group, parts them, and hangs a sign on the fence: “Do not feed these goats. They are working. No treats.”
“Oh, come on,” one Mom says. “No treats at all?”
The goat lady faces her. She is quite stern. “No treats at all. If you’re interested in feeding, the local farm has goats. These goats are working, and we can’t have them filling up on snacks. Think of them like your children an hour before dinner.”
Kerry Sheridan steps forward. “Don’t worry. No one will be feeding these goats on my watch.”
That afternoon, Agatha watches the goats from the porch. The daytime moon hangs in the sky above them.