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Agatha was in a great mood. It was the first day after the Thanksgiving weekend, and their funeral home had six wakes booked for the week and four more the following weekend, and she'd managed to get every family to upgrade to something premium, whether it was embalming or in-house floral arrangements or the expensive caskets. Rio was busy downstairs with the cadavers, but Agatha was done for the day and having a nice chat with Nicky while he ate his after school snack when he mentioned the thing that would be her own personal hell for the next few weeks - the school's winter pageant.
But she didn't know that at the time, so she just asked him, “What part did you get?”
“Penguin.”
Agatha blinked. “Sorry, what?”
“I’m a penguin.”
“I heard that, but why are you a penguin? Don't they have any human characters for you to play?”
“It’s s'posed to be in the North Pole with Santa Claus, so they wanted some penguins.”
“I think penguins are in the South Pole, and isn’t that too Christmas-y for a non-Christmas pageant?”
Nicky shrugged. “Ms. Kale says it’s okay ‘cause Santa's not litigious.”
“I think you mean religious, and sure, I guess Santa is not so religious these days, although he is, y'know, Saint Nick. Whatever. You excited to be a penguin?”
“Not really.”
Agatha frowned. “Then why are you a penguin?”
“We had to remember lines to say and I forgot mine so that's the part I got.”
“Ah, you got that from Mommy. She can remember every single plant she's ever seen in her life but she can't remember the names of our poor bereaved patrons for love nor money. Or even love of money."
Nicky tilted his head. "But Mama, you're the one who keeps calling my art teacher 'Mrs. Hart' 'stead of Mrs. Davis."
"Well, sweetie, that's because she isn't paying me, and she isn't a very interesting person. So what part did you want?"
"Santa. He gets to sing the best songs."
"And you have an amazing voice, kiddo. Who'd they pick instead of you?"
"Danny."
She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, that kid who plays right fielder on your baseball team? The one that went running after a butterfly so they had to stop the game to find him?"
"Uh-huh."
"Then I'll be doing Ms. Kale and your entire class a favor by convincing her to make you Santa instead."
Nicky stopped eating and looked up at her with narrowed eyes. "You're not gonna be mean to Ms. Kale, are you? I like Ms. Kale."
Something that didn't seem to bother him when he was trying to get Rio to scare Ms. Kale into giving him a good grade on his science project; but Nicky was a sweet kid and a stubborn one to boot, and he would put his foot down if he thought she was going to torture his teacher too much. So she pasted on a big smile. "Of course not! I'm just going to sell her on it. Like when I upsell people on the fancy coffins."
"Oh. Okay. Thanks, Mama." And then he went back to his snack.
"Of course, sweetie."
She felt pretty pleased with herself until she caught sight of Rio standing in the kitchen doorway, her eyebrow raised and a knowing smirk on her face.
Agatha huffed. "What?"
"Nothing." Rio pushed off the wall and sauntered over to her. "Just can't wait to find out how you, in a extremely nice way, are going to upsell Ms. Kale into changing the pageant casting."
"I can be nice."
"You can. But will you be?"
"I will." When Rio laughed softly under her breath and Nicky started looking suspicious again, she assured them, "I will. You'll see."
*
When Ms. Kale saw Agatha walking towards her classroom, she spun on her heel and started walking down the hall in the opposite direction.
Agatha started walking double time, calling after her as friendly as she could. "Ms. Kale? Ms. Kale, hi, it's me, Agatha! Jen! Jenny! C'mon, don't make me run in heels."
"Then go home, Mrs. Harkness-Vidal. School's over and I'm off the clock."
"But it's for Nicky!"
Ms. Kale stopped, groaned dramatically, then turned. "If your kid wasn't so sweet, that wouldn't work."
"I know, he's an angel, right?" Agatha said, beaming as she finally caught up with the teacher. "So kind, so generous, and one might even call him ... jolly?"
"Seriously? Of all the parents I expected to come in here complaining about pageant roles, I didn't think it would be you. Although maybe I should've after the career day incident."
Agatha winced. She may have gone over the top, a little, convincing Ms. Kale to get in a coffin and then locking her in for their entire presentation. Who knew she was claustrophobic? "But I'm just trying to help you! Nicky has a beautiful voice and he can work on the memorization thing. But Danny ... you know I hate to speak badly of anyone else's child -"
Ms. Kale snorted.
"- but, Danny, he's not reliable. He gets spacey and sleepy and if there are any interesting bugs around, he's a flight risk."
"Even if you're right, and I'm not saying you are, I have to be as objective as possible. Danny had the best audition, he got the lead. That's how it works."
"C'mon, teach, I know you know I'm right. Just figure out some excuse and make your life easier. Maybe Danny needs too much help with his homework and shouldn't be too focused on the play. Or maybe you heard him saying a bad word - his mom curses like a sailor, it's totally possible he could've picked one up and used it at school - and you have to demote him as punishment."
"If you didn't love your family so much, I'd call you a sociopath," Ms. Kale said, the look on her face somewhere been terror, disgust, and begrudging respect. Then it morphed into something calculated. "You have a lot of flexibility at your job, right? Your wife can take over for you at the funeral home when you aren't there?"
"Uh, sure. I don't recommend it, she made one lady so mad she busted a vein and another guy so sad he tried to climb into the coffin with his dead mother - although that guy had issues before she got there - but yeah, I guess I can be flexible when I need to be. Why?"
"Because Christmas is a very busy time for my side business - I run an indie skincare company," she explained when Agatha looked confused, "and it's only me and my girlfriend and we're both teachers -"
"You're dating that morose fourth grade teacher with the red streaks in her hair, aren't you? I knew it!"
"Anyway," Ms. Kale continued, rolling her eyes, "I don't have to do the pageant if I can get a parent to run it for me."
"Oh. Oh, no," Agatha said, as the awful quid pro quo Ms. Kale was suggesting became clear. "Trust me, you don't want me. I got booted from Nicky's last three baseball games for harassment of the refs, okay? I made a kid who came to our door last Halloween cry because I thought his costume was stupid."
"What was the costume?"
"Couldn't decide between a mummy and a transformer so he just wrapped some toiler paper around a Halloween Spirit robot thing."
"Oof. Look, it's just an hour after school and Ms. Calderu doing the music and Mr. Maximoff is doing the direction, so all you need to do is take attendance and make sure nobody wanders off and bring the snacks and take kids to the bathroom if they need to go. Even you can't screw it up."
Agatha considered her options. She didn't want to leave Rio alone at the funeral home too long, especially around Christmas when everyone was extra sensitive, and this sounded like a much more annoying thing to be doing than making money. But on the other hand, it did sound like an easy gig and Billy was one of the only people she might consider something like a friend, and she'd already promised Nicky. And Rio would be so annoying if she backed down.
"Fine. You've got a deal."
*
"Stop laughing."
Rio didn't do as she was asked, instead reclining on their bed, chuckling, as Agatha finished changing into her pajamas. "Can I come watch you be a pageant mom? Pretty please?"
"Not that kind of pageant, and no, you have to be here running our business."
"Then I'll ask Billy to film it."
"He likes me better than you, and he'll be busy anyway." Agatha dramatically collapsed on the bed next to her wife and pouted. "You have no faith in me."
"Sweetheart, I have all the faith in you. You're brilliant and creative and amazing and you'd be the best pageant mom in the world if you wanted to be. But you really don't want to be, and that's what makes it funny."
"It's for Nicky. I'll make it work."
"I know you will, gritting your teeth the whole time." Rio slid over to Agatha, dipping her head to nip up Agatha's neck. "Want me to distract you from how awful it's going to be?"
"Please," Agatha said desperately, and didn't even mind that Rio was laughing again when she kissed her.
*
Agatha had been the director of the winter pageant for three days and she was ready to quit.
Three of the kids were out with a cold, and two more of them had the cold too but had shown up anyway and were put their gross, snot-covered hands on everything. Then there was the kid who kept asking to pee every twenty minutes like clockwork, which meant she spent half her time taking him there and back to the cafeteria, which was the room where the stage was, for some reason. Then he'd get another cup of juice as soon as they got returned to rehearsal, beginning the cycle all over again. Which was another problem - the kids were going through the snacks at twice the speed she anticipated, and she was already low. A huge Costco trip was in her future, which meant even more time away from work and less time for everything else she needed to get done for the holidays. And kids, as it turned out, were prone to wandering, especially Danny almost made it off school grounds following a particularly speedy beetle before she tracked him down.
And there was a kid that kept singing too loud in the group songs and was off-key while doing it, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer kept forgetting his lines and crying about it, and the dreidel kid spun too much and threw up on three of the elves, and everything was too loud and everyone was annoying and she wasn't going to survive the next two and half weeks at this rate.
Billy found her hiding in the library after the rehearsal, sitting in the reading corner because it was the only part of the library that couldn't be seen from the windows.
He leaned on a bookcase. "Nicky's looking for you."
"Thought he'd be distracted by the snowball fight the kids were having."
"Nah, Ms. Calderu put the kibosh on it. Something about kids getting hurt and parents suing and tracking slush in the cafeteria and the janitor threatening to quit after the dreidel puke incident."
"Who knew one kid could have that much throw up in him?" She looked up at Billy, who was smiling at her, kind and open. "Would it be awful of me to quit?"
"No. But I think Nicky likes you being involved in one of his school things."
"He's just excited about being Santa."
"Maybe, but I think he's also excited about having you around. And of all the parent activity stuff you can do, it's one of the shortest commitments with the least amount of responsibility."
"That is a hell of a selling point. So you're saying I should stick it out?"
"I'm saying I do this kind of stuff every day without hiding in a library about it. I think you can handle it for eleven more hours."
She glared. “Didn’t you used to be scared of me?” She distinctly remembered him stuttering every time she talked to him back when Nicky was in kindergarten.
“Oh, yeah,” Billy said easily.
“What happened to that?”
“I realized what a softy you can be.”
Agatha drew up as tall as she could get while sitting on the an alphabet rug on the floor, absolutely galled. “Excuse you, I am not soft! Didn’t you hear about the whole locking Ms Kale in the coffin thing? Or what I did to Mrs. Hart last year? She starts shaking every time she sees me!”
“Which has definitely made this whole pageant thing so much harder, since she’s supposed to be making the backgrounds but refuses to be in the same room as you.” Billy nudged her with his knee. “You are a softy, Agatha Harkness-Vidal, but only for the people you like. And if it helps, you don’t like a lot of people.”
That did make Agatha feel a little better, actually. "Alright, I'll go back."
"And you'll keep a better eye on Danny?"
"Fine."
"And I can tell Mrs. Davis that if she comes and works on the backgrounds, you won't do anything awful to her?"
"... no promises."
*
For the next couple weeks, Agatha became the perfect winter pageant mom.
She kept the snacks stocked. She put a package of Kleenex in her pocket for the many sniffly kids as the cold continued to make its way through the cast. She bargained the bathroom kid into only going every forty minutes, and she managed to fight off the other parents at Costco for the good cookies and bulk boxes of apple juice, and she taught the dreidel kid how to spot while turning and convinced the off-key kid to be a very silent Christmas tree. She kept an constant eye on Danny and managed to stop him from following a ladybug into the school kitchen.
And every time someone came up to ask her something, she tried to genuinely listen and answer their questions to the best of her ability.
It was awful. This nice stuff was so much easier with adults who gave her money.
Billy tried to encourage the kids to come to him instead of her with any non-bathroom and snack questions, and Rio was very skilled at de-stressing her when she got home each night, but Agatha still felt like she was vibrating with how much she wanted to yell at someone, anyone, everyone, all the time.
But it was all worth it to give Nicky the perfect winter pageant. To hear his beautiful voice even if it was singing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town for the hundredth time that week. To see how he beamed as he got fitted for his Santa costume. To hear everyone tell him what an amazing job he was doing and see his face light up.
And then, at the start of the penultimate rehearsal, their first dress rehearsal, Nicky came up to her and said, "I don't want to be Santa anymore."
At first, it didn't register. She was watching the pee kid down his fourth juice and wondering if she had time to restock the M&M cookies before he'd need to go to the bathroom again. "Sorry, what did you say, sweetie?"
"I don't wanna be Santa. I wanna be a penguin."
Agatha went cold all over. A moment ago, the din in the cafeteria had been deafening; now it was like it had receded, fuzzy static noise compared to the blood pounding in her ears. "No, you don't."
Nicky's bottom lip pouted out, a look she normally found adorable but now made her want to break something. "Yes, I do. Being Santa's too hard. James can do it."
"James, who the hell is -" She sucked in a sharp breath, trying to find some sort of calm.
"Nicky," she tried, her voice pitched higher than usual, "I did all of this so you could be Santa, remember? You really wanted to be Santa and that's why I'm doing all the work for the pageant, to get you what you wanted. You're being ungrateful."
"But I don't wanna do it anymore," Nicky said, his voice also rising, his eyes filling with tears. "You said I never have to do anything I don't wanna do -"
"But you did want to do it until five minutes ago!"
"Well, I don't want it anymore and you can't make me do it!"
Agatha exploded. "I've spent the last couple weeks in snot-nosed kid hell for you and you're gonna bail two days before the stupid pageant? God, I can't believe I'm raising such a selfish, spoiled -"
And that was when Nicky started crying.
It felt like Agatha had been kicked in the stomach. "Oh, sweetie. Nicky, I'm so sorry, I -"
She took a step towards him, and he turned and ran away, up the stairs of the stage and behind the curtain.
"I'll get him," Billy said, squeezing her shoulder before taking off after her son.
The room was silent now, everyone staring at her.
"I've got more cookies in the car," she said, and left, feeling disapproving stares burning the back of her neck.
For the first time, she thought they might be right. That she might be as awful as everyone had always told her she was.
*
This time, it was Rio who found her in the library.
"You're supposed to be at the funeral home," Agatha said hoarsely. She'd cried her throat raw, not to mention run her hands through her hair until it got staticky and rubbed most of her eye makeup off. She knew she must look like a mess.
Rio didn't say anything about that. She just sat on the alphabet rug next to Agatha. "Billy called. And I scared away our last customer anyway."
"Is it because you called the bereaved family 'customers?'"
"... no."
Agatha snorted a laugh, but it was halfhearted and mostly made her throat hurt again.
"Nicky's okay. I checked in with him when I got here, and he's confused and upset, but he's safe and eating his feelings in the cafeteria."
“He hates me.”
“No, my love, he doesn’t,” Rio said, serious and sincere, “he would never.”
“Why not?” Agatha asked with an unhinged chuckle. “I was awful in there. I yelled at him, the things I said - he was scared of me. Nicky’s never looked scared of me before.”
Rio smiled sadly. “I know. I remember the first time he looked at me like that.”
Agatha turned wet eyes to Rio. “What? When did that happen?”
“There was an incident in the park a few years ago - there was an annoying man yelling on his phone on the bench next to us and I lost my temper, at him and at Nicky.”
“And what happened to the guy?”
“Karmic justice,” Rio said simply, wearing a slightly deranged grin.
Agatha didn’t know what it said about her that she found that kinda hot, but she was long past worrying about it. “Mmm, wish I’d been there.”
Then she frowned. “And it scared Nicky?”
Rio nodded, a faraway look on her eye. “He didn’t talk to me for a couple days afterwards.”
“When the hell was this? Why didn’t I know?”
“It was when you had the flu.”
“Ah,” Agatha said, wincing. When Nicky started kindergarten, they’d discovered that both Nicky and Agatha's immune systems were pretty frail; Nicky had caught everything from sniffles to bronchitis from his classmates and if he caught it, there was a fifty-fifty chance Agatha was catching it, too. It was an exhausting year for Rio, not least of all because Agatha wasn’t exactly the best patient. The flu had been particularly awful - Agatha vaguely remembered cursing Rio out for giving her the wrong soup in between having fever-driven conversations with their plants and throwing up in anything she could find to hold it, including Rio’s slippers. “No wonder you snapped.”
“Yeah, well, snapping at the phone guy was one thing. That was actually pretty fun. But snapping at Nicky … I don’t want him to ever look at me like that again.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because,” Rio said, shrugging a single shoulder, “you were sick. And …”
“And what?” Agatha prompted, her stomach sinking.
“And being a parent comes more naturally to you than it does to me. I guess I didn’t want to admit I was struggling.”
“Hey,” Agatha said softly, taking Rio’s hand and squeezing, “you are an amazing mom to Nicky, okay? Never doubt that. I know I can be a little competitive with some of the mom stuff, but only because you’re such tough competition. And because I’m … I’m scared of being … I don’t want to be …”
She couldn’t finish, but Rio didn’t need her to. There was no one who knew Agatha better, including her worst fears. “You could never be like Evanora, sweetheart. Not for a second.”
“I talked like her today. I basically was her today.”
“No, you weren’t. You know how I know?”
Agatha shook her head, desperate for the answer.
“Because you’re sitting here beating yourself up about being mean to our son once. I don't think your mother ever did that, no matter how many times she was cruel to you. And you’re going to do your best to never do it again, aren’t you?”
“I will,” Agatha promised, to Rio and to Nicky and most importantly to herself. "I swear I will."
“See? Besides, Nicky’s not like us, not as assertive or ambitious, but you’ve never asked him to be.”
“Again, not completely true. Remember when some kid had the same Spiderman costume as him and got all upset? And I told him to just mess up the other kid's costume if it bugged him so much?”
“But when he didn’t, you didn’t get mad at him or push him to be more ruthless,” Rio pointed out placidly. “You accepted it. Because you love him the way he is. You don’t want him to change and you would never make him feel like a disappointment or a failure for it.”
"Yeah." Agatha dropped her head on Rio's shoulder. "I probably shouldn't've done this in the first place. I should be one of those parents who tells their kid to accept the part they're given or work harder, not bribe teachers to get him what he wants."
"I don't think teaching him to game the system to get ahead is a bad thing, but yes, that might be better left for when he's older." Rio smoothed Agatha's hair back before saying, gentle, "I think Nicky was okay being a penguin."
"Until I pushed. I should work on that, too."
"You want good things for him. That's part of what makes you such a good mom."
"Am I still a good mom if I hide in here until everyone goes home?"
"Probably not the best idea, but we can stay another ten minutes or so."
"Thank you."
"Anytime, my love."
Rio wrapped Agatha in her arms and pressed her lips to the top of Agatha's head, and for the first time since she yelled at her son, Agatha thought maybe things would be okay.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Agatha slowly made her way into the cafeteria. Nicky was sitting on his own at one of the back tables, staring at a pile of cookies, and even from the doorway she could see his eyes were rimmed red.
Taking a fortifying breath, she walked over to his table and sat down across from him.
“Hey," she said softly.
“Hi,” Nicky said, subdued, his eyes still avoiding Agatha’s.
“Went with the gingerbread snowmen, huh? Good choice.”
Nicky nodded, but didn’t speak.
Agatha cleared her throat, her fingers fidgeting with the bottom of her sweater. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”
She hated that it was hard for her to apologize sincerely, even though she meant it. Yet another thing she needed to work on.
“It wasn’t nice,” Nicky mumbled.
“No, it wasn’t.” Agatha sighed. “I’m not always nice, Nicky, and I’m usually okay with that. Nice doesn’t always get you ahead in life.”
“Ms. Kale says we should always try to be kind and polite.”
“Well, Ms. Kale should take her own advice,” Agatha muttered, thinking of how she'd been roped into this whole thing in the first place. Then she thought about what Billy and Rio had said. “But I do think that we should do our best to be kind to the people we care about. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, with Mommy and with you, because I want to be part of a family that's kind to each other, but I think I still need to practice.”
“Practice is good.”
“It is. And if I get upset, I’ll try to … I don’t know. Count to ten? I think that’s a thing. Or take a deep breath. Or even leave if I need to.”
Nicky frowned deeper, worried eyes finally meeting Agatha’s. “No, Mama, don’t leave!”
“No, no, I don’t mean leave leave, just … walk around the block or something. It can help you calm down when you’re mad.”
“Oh. Can I walk around the block?”
“No, but you can walk around the yard.”
“Okay,” Nicky accepted with a little disappointed sigh. He was starting to push against his limitations, especially things like crossing the street by himself or going to the bus stop alone. That was also something Agatha was getting used to, her sweet little boy starting to have a mind of his own. She needed to wrap her head around it before hormones kicked in or they'd never survive his teenage years.
"The point is, I'm going to do whatever it takes to never talk to you like that again. And it's okay if you're still mad at me for a while."
"I'm not mad," Nicky said. "And it was nice of you to help with the pageant so I could be Santa. But I didn't ask you to, and then when I did ask you for something, you yelled."
"Yeah, I did. That doesn't make a lot of sense." Agatha cleared her throat and considered her words before speaking. "I thought I was doing what you wanted, but I got ahead of myself and did things my own way and got mad at you for it not turning out how I expected. So now I'm listening. Can you tell me why you don't want to be Santa anymore?"
"Because James wants to be Santa."
"And who is James?"
Nicky pointed at a kid standing by the vending machine.
Agatha's eyes bugged out in surprise. "The bathroom kid? Really? If he wants a better part, he should sing more and drink juice less, or at least work on bladder control. He's barely even in the rehearsals."
Nicky avoided her eyes again, saying nothing. He was blushing.
Suddenly it clicked. She leaned in close and whispered, "Nicky, do you like James?"
Slowly, his eyes darting around to be sure no one else was looking at him, Nicky nodded. "He's nice and he's funny and he shares his books with me and he's the best draw-er in our class."
"If you say so. It's not like most people get your mom, so who am I to judge? But sweetie, it's not okay that he asked you to give up your part."
"He didn't. His best friend Tina told me he wanted it, and she told me that Danny was gonna give it to him 'cause he didn't want it, and then I got it instead. And how he's been trying not to be sad about it so I won't feel bad but he was anyway and now Tina's mad at me."
So Agatha's meddling had set off a chain reaction of second grade drama and was probably the reason the kid was trying to drown his sorrow in juice. Fantastic. "Kid, I'm sorry. I didn't realized. But I don't think it's a good idea to switch parts this close to the pageant."
"But we're already gonna have to switch a bunch of roles anyway, 'cause of the kids that're sick and can't come."
Damn, this cold was no joke. "Which kids are sick now?"
"Um, Anton and Keisha and Lily."
"Wasn't Keisha Mrs. Claus?"
"Uh-huh."
Agatha smiled. "I have an idea. But this time, I want to run it by you first. And we'll make sure all your friends are okay with it before I do anything this time. Okay?"
Nicky nodded, and she explained. And then Nicky smiled as bright as the lights on a Christmas tree.
*
On the day of the pageant, Agatha and Rio watched with rapt attention as their son sang Santa Claus Is Coming to Town next to James, who was a pretty decent Santa, Agatha had to admit.
"Your plan worked out," Rio whispered. "Our son is a perfect Mr. Claus."
Nicky caught sight of them and, in spite of being mid-song on stage under a spotlight, he waved at them.
Agatha's heart hurt with how much she loved him.
"He is," Agatha whispered back. "But he also would have been a great penguin."