Agatha's Monday

Agatha Parlane stumbled into the Bean & Brew drunk off her ass at 9:18am Monday morning. Her millennial pink tracksuit clashed terribly with the lime green Crocs she’d slipped on as she rushed out the door just after eight, worried she wouldn’t make it to work on time. Halfway to her car she remembered she’d retired 20 years ago and didn’t need to be anywhere at anytime anymore. She grabbed a half pint of rum from her cupboard and drove to the park downtown to enjoy the cool, foggy fall morning. Rum was her favorite drink, and she kept a healthy stock in the cupboard above the kitchen sink. She’d grown accustomed to the taste of the liquor during happy hour with her late husband, Chester.

Agatha spent almost an hour just sitting on a bench, sipping from her bottle in a brown paper bag while watching dogs chase down frisbees and children run around with those fake guns that shot strange foam bullets. She’d finished a little more than a quarter of the bottle when one of those fake bullets struck her in the shin. The little boy who’d fired the damn thing came over, plucked it off the ground, and ran away before Agatha even had a chance to frown at him. Grumbling about miserable little brats and their violent toys, she shoved her brown paper bag into her pink crocodile purse and walked down the street to the Bean & Brew for her morning cup of coffee.

Now, Agatha stood unsteadily in the lobby of the coffee shop and stared at the menu board, trying to figure out which of the numerous items was a plain ol’ cup of joe. She was so confused by the menu that she didn’t notice another elderly woman get in line behind her. The other woman smiled brightly when she saw the phrase “Sweet Bitch” bedazzled on the back of Agatha’s tracksuit.

“Good morning, Agatha!”

Agatha swayed and squinted at the menu before finally recognizing her name. She turned to face the short, perfectly put together woman behind her. At almost 90, she still did her makeup every day and wore matching jewelry whenever she went out. Her bone white, coiffed hair towered above her head like a pyramid of donuts, listing a little to the right. It looked shockingly thick for her age, and Agatha wondered whether she wore a wig. Agatha snorted and forced a half-assed smile. “Morning, Pearl.”

“It’s such a beautiful day, isn’t it? The fog broke and the sun is out, finally. I’m sad I won’t be able to enjoy it though.” She paused as though she expected Agatha to ask what she meant. Agatha stared at her, looking much like a disinterested cow. Pearl soldiered on: “Well, I’ve been called in as a replacement for the Silver Foxes bowling team this afternoon. June, bless her, caught a nasty cold and can’t make it. Such a shame isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Agatha said, not entirely certain what Pearl was prattling on about. Agatha just wanted a cup of coffee.

Pearl nodded her head solemnly. “It’s just a real shame. I hope she gets better soon. Although, I’m sure the team will do fine with me as a replacement.” She smirked slightly, the wrinkles in her cheeks becoming more apparent. “I bowl regularly with my girlfriends. It’s an easy weekend activity for us. I even belong to a summer league too, with a couple of old guys. Those old guys are younger than me, but they seem old, you know?” Pearl arched her perfectly plucked white brow.

Agatha stared at Pearl, wondering what she’d done to deserve this on her fine, lazy Monday morning. She had known Pearl since they were little girls. They’d lived on the same street, a boring cul-de-sac at the edge of town. Every house had at least two children. At 20, Marie Mercer was the oldest kid on the street, helping her mother with her seven younger siblings and desperately waiting for a nice young man to steal her away to the city. Agatha had been the youngest for a few years until the Sextons moved in when she was eight. Ruth and Joseph Sexton had three children: Shirley, a quiet, book-obsessed 13-year-old; Pearl, a classically beautiful girl only a year older than Agatha; and Kenneth, a happy baby who could hardly walk but crawled after his older sisters with a dog-like devotion.

Agatha didn’t care much for other children, preferring to wander through the grove of trees at the end of the street. She liked to stare up into the branches and dream of visiting far away places filled with beautiful people, like the ones in the magazines her mother got in the mail. The new family down the street didn’t interest her, but she dutifully followed her mother to the Sexton’s house, carrying a home-baked spice cake and wearing a sullen expression. Ruth answered the door with a magazine-worthy smile and ushered them inside to meet the family.

“Thank you so much for the spice cake! That’s very kind of you,” Ruth said to Agatha’s mother, setting the cake on the kitchen counter and leading them to the living room. All three children were gathered there, lined up on the sofa like they’d been told to sit and look pretty for visitors. Shirley had her nose in a book and Kenneth was rocking back and forth, clutching his toes and smiling vacantly up at the ceiling light. Pearl sat primly in between them, her back straight and her face organized into a mask of pleasant neutrality. The facade broke when she spotted Agatha, a bright grin popping up on her face. She sprang from the sofa, startling Kenneth into dropping his toes, and raced over to Agatha.

“Hello!” Pearl said. “I’m Pearl Sexton. It’s a pleasure to meet you!” She stuck her hand straight out, just inches from Agatha’s chest. Her smile was so large Agatha’s muscles ached in sympathy.

Agatha didn’t move or smile back until her mother gently nudged her on the back. She slowly raised her own hand to meet Pearl’s and said: “I’m Agatha Parlane.”

Pearl shook her hand with a ferocity Agatha had only ever experienced from the older boys on the street and their constant stream of friends. Agatha thought they were strange, terribly noisy people and avoided them whenever they were playing outside. Pearl was also strange. Her enthusiasm tired Agatha, and she’d only known her for a few minutes.

“Let’s go play in my room!” Pearl said, smoothly switching from shaking Agatha’s hand to grabbing it and tugging her along. “I have some pretty dolls Mama made new dresses for. I’m sure you’ll love them!”

Agatha turned back to her mother and tried to get her attention, but she was engrossed in conversation with Ruth, settled in the armchairs by the window. Pearl dragged her down the hall to her room and Agatha suffered through three hours of playing with dolls. She didn’t get to say much, just whatever dialogue Pearl told her to say for the redheaded doll she was given to use. Agatha left that house feeling like she’d just run ten laps around the school track. She vowed to avoid Pearl at all costs.

That proved difficult, however. Pearl joined her school in the grade ahead and followed her around at recess, talking and talking and talking. Agatha hoped she could escape Pearl at home by staying inside, but the persistent girl would knock on her door until someone answered and forced Agatha to go out and play. This continued until Pearl entered high school. Without Agatha at school to annoy, and with her good looks, Pearl quickly made new friends and stopped playing with Agatha. When Agatha started at the high school the next year, Pearl didn’t pay her much attention, so Agatha took the opportunity to find more suitable friends, like Helen, a soft-spoken poet in Agatha’s English class. Pearl married shortly after graduation and moved a few towns over to start a family. Agatha hadn’t seen Pearl much in the decades that followed, and had barely even thought of her after she married Chester.

The barista coughed and said, “Next in line, please.”

Agatha turned to the barista and hiccupped once before swiveling her head back to face Pearl. “Pearl, I don’t give a damn. And frankly no one else does either.” With that, she stepped toward the counter. “Can I just get a plain cup of coffee?” she asked the barista.

“Of course, ma’am. Small, medium, or large?”

“Large.”

“That’ll be $3.50.”

Agatha dug a few crumpled dollar bills out of her purse, careful not to jostle the brown paper bag. She told the barista to keep the change, picked up her cup of coffee and moved to the side. She took a drink immediately, wanting to make some room for more of her rum. Ignoring the burn on her tongue, she headed toward the big glass doors at the exit. Agatha glanced back as she opened the door.

Pearl was still standing where she’d left her, looking like she’d just been told she was going to die next week. The barista waved her hand, trying to get her attention. Eventually she gave up and motioned the young man behind Pearl to step up to the counter. Agatha snorted. Served the bitch right for ruining her damn morning.

Shuffling toward the bench outside of the European shoe shop down the road, Agatha clutched the hot coffee between her hands. The shop didn’t open until ten, and she never wore nice shoes, not since her husband died, but she liked to sit on the bench by the door and watch people come and go. The owner brought his two golden retrievers, Arnold and Meredith, to work with him. They greeted customers at the door, enticing them to come in with their sweet faces and happy eyes. The shoe shop had been there since she was a girl. It was where the wealthy businessmen bought their penny loafers and Oxfords, sleek black shoes they wore to meetings in the city.

When she was in high school, Agatha had worked across the street as a soda jerk at the drugstore soda fountain. She spent her weekday afternoons making sundaes and root beer floats and watching people walk by the storefront window. Mothers came in with their kids for a treat and men dropped by on an afternoon break, taking a few minutes to drink a Coke and read the paper. Sometimes Helen and her other friends would stop by, order a large milkshake with five straws and they’d sit around chatting with her while she worked. She met the man of her dreams at that soda fountain. He was tall and broad like the shapely wardrobe that sat in her parents’ bedroom. It had been a wedding gift to her parents from her mother’s father; he’d built it himself and carved their initials into the inside of the doors.

She sensed a sudden growth of something in her heart when she saw this man, something just as sturdy and beautiful as that wardrobe. When he smiled at her, his soft hazel eyes smiled too, drawing her in and making her feel a sleepy kind of happiness. He came up to the counter and sat down right in front of her, that soft smile still on his face. “Afternoon, sweetheart,” he said with a voice like caramel, a sweetness that lingered in the air.

Agatha leaned onto the counter, a flirtatious smile hugging her lips. She was a beautiful girl. Her fine brown hair was coiled on top of her head, a few strands falling free around her ears. With bright eyes the color of honeydew and plump, peach lips, she drew the attention of every young man in town. None of them stood up to her standards though. But this man, he was handsome enough to warrant a date, if only she had the chance to ask him. “What can I get you, sir?” she asked, fingering one of the Coke glasses.

“I’ll have a chocolate ice cream soda, please. And an extra cherry.” He winked at her and she blushed, her heart beating a little faster.

“Coming right up, sir.” Agatha set about making the drink, drizzling the chocolate syrup in the glass, then two scoops of ice cream, and finally pouring carbonated soda water over it all until the foam was almost falling over the rim. She’d just finished adding whipped cream and dropping two cherries on top when Pearl walked in to the drugstore.

“Oh! Stanley, how lovely to see you here,” she exclaimed, smiling and rushing towards the man at the counter, sitting right next to him and ignoring Agatha.

“It’s nice to see you too, Pearl. How have your folks been?” Stanley smiled that sweet smile at Pearl and Agatha knew she’d lost. He was already enchanted by Pearl’s beauty, by her thick blonde hair and that damn blue bow she always wore. Stanley finished his ice cream soda, and they walked out of the store together without so much as a “goodbye” or “thank you” to Agatha.

Two years later, she heard from Helen that Pearl and Stanley were due to be married. The day after the wedding, Agatha went out and asked the first decently attractive man she saw to marry her. The fellow, an accountant from the city who was in town visiting his parents, looked her up and down and said, “Well damn, hun. Sure, I’ll marry you. You don’t mind living in the city, do you?” He gave an amused smile when she said she didn’t and held out his arm to take her to meet his parents. On the way to his folks’ house, he marveled over her perfect timing; his father had given him a long speech that morning about how it was time for him to find a wife.

Agatha didn’t learn the young man’s name until three hours into an impromptu lunch with his family, when his sister asked how she’d met “Chester.” She smiled sweetly at the girl and said she met him at the soda fountain, where she worked. Never mind she hadn’t worked there in months since getting a job as a secretary at the bank. They married four months later, after finding Agatha a new job in the city and convincing her parents that she wasn’t crazy, and yes she really did want to marry Chester. Although he hadn’t been perfect—he snored too loudly and was strict about her appearance, demanding she wear painful heels at all times—she had loved him. He wasn’t Stanley, but he was her husband.

Setting her crocodile pink purse on the bench beside her, Agatha pulled out the brown paper bag and rested it against her thigh. She slipped the lid off her cup of coffee and sipped the steaming liquid a little more until she had about an inch of room left. Gently squeezing the cup between her thighs, she uncapped her rum bottle in the paper bag and poured some into the coffee.

“You really shouldn’t be drinking out in public, Agatha.”

Agatha dribbled some of the rum onto her pant leg and cursed, capping the bottle and placing it safely back into her purse, still hidden away in the brown paper bag. She didn’t look up, choosing instead to pick up the lid and snap it back onto her coffee cup. She carefully removed it from the grip of her thighs and brought it to her lips. The first sip stung pleasantly, the combination of the heat from the coffee and the burn of the alcohol tingling on her tongue. The second sip was less intense, and the third just a calming warmth flowing down her throat. Agatha sat there for another minute before sighing and resting the cup on her thigh, next to the rum stain.

“Why do you care what I should or shouldn’t be doing, Pearl?”

“Because you’re my friend.” Pearl nudged Agatha’s purse to the side and sat next to her on the bench. “At least, I’ve always thought of you as a friend. I suppose that was my mistake.”

The heat from the coffee seeped through the cup and through the fabric of her tracksuit, warming a palm-sized patch on her thigh. Agatha lifted up the cup and took a sip, staring straight ahead at the building across the street. The drugstore and soda fountain were long gone. A quaint little café occupied the space now, serving vegan breakfasts and lunches to the young people in town. “How’s Stanley?” she asked, grasping the cup between her hands and rubbing her thumb against the rough cardboard. She could smell the alcohol on her own breath. It mixed terribly with the coffee odor and she dimly wondered when she had last left her house without a brown paper bag.

Pearl looked at her, foundation flaking where her brow creased. “Stanley’s dead, Agatha,” she said. “He’s been dead for almost three years.”

Agatha stopped rubbing the coffee cup and turned to face Pearl. Her honeydew-colored eyes were brighter than they had been in years, a girlish softness returning to them. She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly parched despite the coffee still lingering on her tongue. “Is he really?”

“Yes, yes he is.” Pearl frowned, a wispy white strand of hair falling free and curling around her temple.

“That’s good,” Agatha said, turning forward to watch a girl, no more than 16, leave the café hand in hand with a young man the same age. “That’s good,” she repeated.

Pearl stared at her, her frown deepening. She closed her eyes and sighed, leaning back against the bench. “I don’t know how my husband’s death can be a good thing to you, Agatha. But you’ve always been a strange one, haven’t you?”

Agatha watched the girl giggle and kiss the boy on the cheek before they turned the corner, heading toward the river. “I suppose I have.”

The two women sat in silence for a few minutes, both staring across the street but not really seeing anything. “Why don’t you come bowling with me this afternoon?” Pearl asked, a softness to her voice Agatha had never heard before.

Agatha tightened her grip on the coffee cup. “I don’t think I can, Pearl. I’m very busy, you know?”

Pearl snorted. “Oh I’m sure you are, Agatha.”

Agatha looked at the other woman, at her painted face, her white hair, her thin frame. Up close she could see patches of red skin behind Pearl’s foundation and dark bags under her eyes. She wondered how well the older woman slept without Stanley in her bed. Agatha woke up every morning cold despite the layers of blankets she buried herself under, the other side of the bed untouched.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” Pearl repeated, raising her eyebrow.

Agatha nodded. A hint of a smile appeared on Pearl’s face. Agatha glanced at the coffee cup still in her hands. She held it out to Pearl, staring at the other woman with a certain hopefulness in her eyes. Pearl looked at the cup skeptically. After a moment, she took it from Agatha’s hand and sipped. She winced but then smacked her lips, taking another sip and relaxing into the bench. Agatha sat back as well and smiled.