Page 5

On the day the Kats moved out, Suzie came out of her room, plopped down next to me on the couch, and said, “Thank God they’re

gone, right?”

“Well, except for the rent money part,” I said.

“I have some friends who could maybe move in,” Suzie said. “I have to check on their lease situation.”

I dreaded having Suzie’s weird nerd friends move in. They’d be fucking LARPing all over the living room. But I nodded. “Go

for it,” I told her. Anything so that I didn’t have to post ads and interview people. Anything so that I could stay half awake

and perpetually nursing. After two weeks, it had started to become real to me that Jinx wasn’t going to call me back, and

the sadness was like quicksand.

“Hey, I saw Mark on campus,” Suzie said.

“Yeah?” I didn’t want to talk about Mark. Every time I thought about him it hurt. Not because I missed him or loved him; it

just hurt.

“He looked rough, ” Suzie said. “Real rough.”

I shrugged, but I was a little bit glad that he wasn’t out there thriving.

“Did you know they made him chair?”

“Good for him.”

“No,” Suzie said, “everyone hates being chair, it’s so much work. He’s fucking miserable. But he’s in all the faculty meetings

now, so I get to give him the stink eye.”

Part of Suzie’s job was keeping minutes at all the meetings for the dean. It was so weird how I had been a part of that world,

campus and college, and now I never left the apartment except to go to the gas station. I’d finished out the spring semester,

and Bodhi had been born in July, so I hadn’t registered for any classes in the fall. I had always assumed I would go back

at some point, but now that idea seemed ridiculous.

“Can I hold him?” Suzie asked. She’d never asked that before. Bodhi had finished nursing and was soundly asleep in my arms. I rolled him onto her chest, grateful for the chance to stand up and stretch.

“My lower back is fucked,” I said.

“Oh my God, it’s like having a cat sleep on you!” Suzie cooed. “A person-cat!”

“Can you stay like that?” I asked. “I haven’t pooped in, like, two days.”

“You bet,” Suzie whispered, relaxing a bit, tucking Bodhi’s fuzzy head under her chin. “But if he wakes up, I’m barging in

there and handing him back.”

“Deal.”

Margo waited until ten days before the rent was due.

Then she swallowed her pride and wrote to Mark, asking to borrow $3,000. She wondered if he would write back.

“Of course we can email,” he had said, “we can email for the rest of our lives!” As though what they had was real. Had it

been real for him, though? She’d never been able to tell exactly; he seemed so caught up in his fantasy. Maybe she’d been

the one being foolish. Of course, it had been real. Just look at this real baby in her arms, this real rent money coming due.

She remembered a day Mark and Derek had argued in class. Derek had tried to claim that third-person omniscient narration “felt

more honest.”

“Honesty and fiction are incompatible,” Mark had said.

“But, you know, like unreliable first-person narrators and all that.” Derek motioned with his pale, soft hands.

“Fiction is always a lie,” Mark said. “Look, I’ll do it right now: An opulent table lay heavy with meat and fruit, wine and

cakes. Is there a table?” Mark looked around himself, pretending to search for the table.

“Yeah, but...” Derek said.

“Yes?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You like your fake things to be more real feeling?”

“I guess,” Derek said.

“Not me,” Mark said, “I like the swagger. I like the bravado when the author says, ‘Hey, look at how fake this is, now I’m gonna make you forget all about it.’”

Margo knew everything that had happened with Mark was as fake as it got. But that didn’t make the result any less real, and

she was going to need help paying for it.

A day went by, and then another, with no word from Mark or Jinx. Then Margo received a call on her cell phone from a local

number she thought might be Bodhi’s pediatrician, Dr. Azarian. It was Mark’s mother, and she wanted to meet to discuss Margo’s

“demands.” Even as it was happening, Margo couldn’t believe it, that he had taken his problem and handed it over to Mommy.

It was surreal. “I don’t have any demands,” Margo said.

“Well, I do,” Mark’s mother said. And she told Margo when and where she wanted to meet.

The building Margo pulled up to almost looked like a medical center. When she went inside and found the suite number, she

saw it was a law office and thought, Oh. She went in, Bodhi alert and smiley in her arms. The secretary asked for her name.

Margo couldn’t believe this girl would know her name and have an actual appointment for her, but evidently she did, and the

girl showed her into an office that contained a rich, old woman in a pink skirt suit and a curly-haired lawyer with a long,

horsey face. The lawyer’s name was Larry. Larry the Lawyer. The woman’s name was Elizabeth, and she was Mark’s mother, who

was clearly surprised and appalled that Margo had brought Bodhi with her.

“We certainly weren’t expecting this!” Elizabeth cried, fake laughing.

Where did they think she would leave the baby? With her twenty-four-hour Swedish nanny? Margo was so overcome with panic at being in this room that she missed almost the first five minutes of what was said. It was overwhelming how oddly similar Elizabeth’s and Mark’s mannerisms were. They both had a way of looking down so you could see the twigs of their straight, brittle eyelashes and pursing their lips before starting a sentence. When Margo could finally hear over the sound of her own heartbeat, Elizabeth was still talking. Every time Larry tried to interrupt, Elizabeth held up her hand and seemed to press the words right back inside him.

“And in exchange, you would guarantee that you will not attend Fullerton College in the future, make no contact with Mark

or his family. And you would need to sign this nondisclosure agreement, which is why Larry is here.”

Larry nodded. He sure was there!

“So, can I ask, is Mark listed on the child’s birth certificate?” Larry asked.

“Uh, no. I left it blank. But if I did all those things, then what?” Margo asked, hugging Bodhi in her lap. He was lying on

her, looking out, like she was a giant human recliner.

“You would receive the fifteen thousand immediately to cover the start-up costs, if you will, and when the child turns eighteen

it would receive the trust I already mentioned.”

Elizabeth kept calling Bodhi “the child” even though Margo had told her his name.

“I just...” Margo said. “Is there any way you could tell me about the trust part again?”

She could tell from Elizabeth’s fake concerned eyebrows that Elizabeth thought she was stupid, but it seemed important to

find out what was going on here.

“Okay...” Elizabeth said slowly. “We would take fifty thousand dollars and put it in a trust, think of it like a bank account.

And we would invest that money in something called mutual funds. And that money would grow, so that when he turns eighteen,

it should be worth around three hundred thousand.”

“Okay,” Margo said, stunned by the sum. “I mean, that seems fair. I give up going to college but he’ll get to go.”

“You could still go to college,” Larry said.

“Just not here,” Elizabeth said. Her lipstick was the exact shade of pink as her skirt suit, and Margo imagined an entire closet of clothes, all a vibrant raspberry sorbet, like a rich-lady version of Batman, though she knew it was too good to be true. Elizabeth looked like the sort of woman who also wore beige.

How was it possible to hate the person who was saving you?

“Sure,” Margo said.

“So, you agree?” Elizabeth asked, almost incredulous. Had she expected Margo to argue? That was the only inkling Margo had

that she might be getting taken advantage of in some way. She hadn’t put it together that this was not a lot of money for

these people, that she could have asked for twice as much and Elizabeth wouldn’t have balked. Margo had Mark’s whole life

in her power. She could end his career, destroy his marriage, ruin his reputation. The Me Too movement was everywhere, all

around them, in the news every single day. A year ago, Mark would never have been fired for sleeping with a student. Now everything

was changing. The past bulged and contorted beneath a new lens. It was beginning to seem as if even the once whorish Monica

Lewinsky had only been a poor intern taken advantage of by the president of the United States. Men were being pilloried, men

were being canceled, men were going to lose everything!

But it was beyond Margo then, that long-ago Margo, to imagine that $50,000 wasn’t a lot of money to someone.

Mainly, she thought Elizabeth, Larry, and Mark had arranged all of this on the assumption that Margo was some low-class, immature

girl who might get mad and call Mark’s dean on a lark or show up at his house for drama’s sake. Margo could have told them

she would never do this. But now her survival depended on them believing she could.

So she signed everywhere they told her, too embarrassed to actually read it right then in front of them. When she got back

to her car, she stuffed the contracts in the glove box. She didn’t want to look at them. They seemed almost dirty. The check

she drove immediately to the bank to deposit. She’d never had a bank balance higher than $500 before. It seemed like so much

money. She worried the teller might challenge her, accuse her of forging or stealing it somehow. Margo signed the back and

handed it over, and the teller said, “Is that all?”

I can still see her, that Margo, floating back to her purple Honda Civic, so numb inside, almost shell-shocked. She wasn’t sure what she should do next. Bodhi had miraculously fallen asleep, so she went to the Arby’s drive-through, ordered two Classic Beef ’n Cheddar sandwiches, and ate them both in the car while he slept. As the fat hit her bloodstream, she realized she was extremely happy. She had $15,000. Yes, she felt gross and degraded, but she had done it. She’d saved them.

I like getting to be the me now watching the past me. It’s almost a way of loving myself. Stroking the cheek of that girl

with my understanding. Smoothing her hair in my mind’s eye.

Margo was dreading the dinner with Kenny. Shyanne had arranged it after she finally told him that her daughter had a baby.

“Fine,” Margo had said. “Where are we going?”

“Applebee’s,” Shyanne said, “so dress nice but not too nice.”

Margo received the message. Shyanne was a big believer in dressing for the job and usually spent more time agonizing over

the outfit she’d wear than what she would say in any situation. She’d coached Margo her whole life on the science and art

of communicative clothing. Shyanne wanted Margo to dress in such a way that Kenny would know she’d tried and considered this

a special occasion, without making him feel embarrassed that he hadn’t taken her somewhere nicer.

“Worn to death?” she asked. Shyanne had a belief that wearing one item that showed visible signs of wear inspired sympathy

in people because you were clearly doing your best with what you had.

“Maybe that little black cardigan with the pilling,” Shyanne said.

“Or I could do old tank top, nicer sweater?”

“He’s not that detail oriented.”

“Okay, can do. What time?”

It was only once they were seated in the Applebee’s that Margo realized with delight that they would be eating. Margo had always been mildly gluttonous, mostly because she could afford to be. She honestly wasn’t sure what she’d have to do to put on weight, but certainly the occasional chili dog or Cheez-It orgy wasn’t going to do it. Nursing had brought her appetite to new radiant heights. She looked at the full-color photos of the Applebee’s menu like it was a rich-people Christmas catalog. The riblets glittered darkly, and the fried shrimp seemed to sparkle with promised crunch. Margo’s mouth flooded with saliva. “Do you think we should get an appetizer?”

“I don’t know,” Shyanne said.

“Margo, I want you to know,” Kenny said, “that this meal is my treat, and you can order whatever you like, no expense spared.”

He smiled at her warmly. Maybe because of the sheer number of dinners Mark had bought her, she had a sudden flash of wondering

what Mark and Kenny would make of each other and almost laughed out loud. She pictured something instantaneous, a chemical

reaction, both men completely dissolved into foam within seconds.

“We don’t need an appetizer,” Shyanne said.

“Maybe you don’t need one, you’re about to order a margarita the size of your head, but I need one,” Margo said.

“Margo!” Shyanne said sharply. “You know I don’t drink!”

Margo froze. “Oh,” she said, “I guess I forgot?”

Kenny laughed. “That’s quite all right,” he said.

She didn’t know what he meant. Was it all right that obviously Shyanne did drink and was pretending not to drink to please

him, or all right for Margo to have forgotten a basic fact about her own mother?

“What looks good to you, Margo?” he asked.

“Nachos or wings,” she said.

“Attagirl,” he said. “Can’t go wrong.”

“I’m leaning nachos,” Margo went on, still looking hungrily at the menu. “I can be kind of picky about wings.”

“How do you like your wings?” Kenny seemed delighted, as though it were novel for a girl to like chicken wings.

“I like bone in and no breading. Except for Hooters wings, I make an exception for those.”

“Margo!” Shyanne said.

“Oh, come on,” Margo said, “you love the Hooters wings, and you know it.”

“I will allow,” Kenny said with a twinkle in his eye, “I have had the Hooters wings a time or two, and they are delightful.”

“I’ve never been there,” Shyanne said. Margo just stared. Her mother had worked there for six years. She was beginning to

think the problem with Kenny wasn’t Kenny, but whatever phony personality Shyanne seemed determined to project.

When the waitress came, Kenny ordered iced teas for him and Shyanne, as well as an order of chicken wings and beef nachos.

Margo clapped her hands in glee. “Oh, I’m so excited!” she said.

It was comforting to be inside an Applebee’s. The faux brick walls, the thickly resined tabletops so glossy and smooth they

almost glowed. The service was atrocious; Margo didn’t know how the girl who was their server slept at night. When she brought

out the nachos, she stuck her thumb right in the beans. Margo saw her lick it clean as she walked away.

“So tell me again, Kenny,” Margo said, “you work for the church?”

“I’m the youth ministry director,” he said with a big smile, “of Forest Park Community Church. And I love it!”

“Oh, neat!” Margo said, though Kenny was so old and radically uncool that it was hard to imagine what kind of youth he could

successfully minister to.

“They have some really great programs, Margo,” Shyanne said. “Lots of plays and stuff.”

“I do love musicals,” Kenny said.

“They even put on Rent, ” Shyanne said.

“We’re a pretty liberal bunch,” Kenny offered. “Which is why it was so silly of Shyanne to worry I would somehow judge you

for having a child out of wedlock.”

Margo swallowed. There was always something a little creepy about the word wedlock .

“Well,” she said, “I will say, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I don’t think keeping Bodhi was one of them.”

“Amen to that,” Kenny said, and raised his iced tea. “So many people want to get out of the consequences of their own actions

nowadays. Don’t you agree?”

The waitress came back and took their orders.

“Most people,” Kenny began when the waitress left, “and feel free to disagree, I’d like to get your opinion on this, Margo, but most people think they’re the victims. They want to order their special latte with no foam or extra whip or caramel what-have-you, and if they don’t get it, suddenly they’re outraged. A lot of girls in your situation would have cried rape! Would have said, ‘But he’s my professor! He should have done this, he shouldn’t have done that.’”

Margo wasn’t sure what Starbucks had to do with anything. “I mean, I do think Mark shouldn’t sleep with his students.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Kenny said. “We are all fallen creatures. The real test is what we do when those chickens come home to roost.

Do you try to use a get-out-of-jail-free card, or do you man up and accept the consequences of your actions? You have agency.

You have the power to make your life heaven or make your life hell. It’s about the choices that you make.”

“Right,” Margo said. It seemed terribly likely that this was going to continue in a direction that would make her uncomfortable,

yet his line of reasoning was not anything she disagreed with exactly.

“I told you we’d get along,” Kenny said to Shyanne, who laughed and looked down at the table.

Her mother was so beautiful. Margo had always thought that, but as she got older, she could see her mother more as the world

saw her. When they were alone together, Shyanne was prone to making silly faces, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue.

Because her eyes were so wide-set, there was something truly reptilian about it, and it made Margo laugh every time. But when

she was aware of being looked at, Shyanne held her head differently. Her neck was longer, and she angled her face slightly

down as though beauty were a kind of bridle she had to bite down on.

“Which is why,” Kenny began with a rush, “I wanted to ask you to this dinner tonight.”

Margo was aware from his tone that something momentous was going to happen.

Kenny reached across the table and took Shyanne’s hand. “I want to ask for your blessing, Margo. I would like to ask for your

mother’s hand in marriage.”

“Oh,” Margo said. “Oh, congratulations!”

Shyanne made a kind of throttled cry that would make sense only in the context of sex or sports or maybe gambling. It was

the guttural, emotional noise of winning.

“So, do we have your blessing?” Kenny asked.

“Yes, of course,” Margo said, even though the idea of every Thanksgiving and Christmas being ruined by Kenny’s constant, exuberant

presence made her sick to her stomach. She looked at her mother, next to her in the booth, who was crying and shaking with

happiness. I never want to do this, Margo thought. I never want to marry anybody ever.

And then Kenny stood, looking so determined and embarrassed that it touched Margo. She could see suddenly and swiftly every

single time Kenny had been beaten up on the bus or chickened out of talking to a girl. It was as if his middle school self

were momentarily superimposed on his middle-aged one. Kenny crouched on the brown carpet of the Applebee’s and pulled out

a ring box. He flipped it open.

“Shyanne,” he said, “you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met.”

Margo was aware that the restaurant had paused, that people were watching, and also that Kenny was blocking the aisle. She

was tensed for the moment when a server with a big tray would need to get by.

“Yes,” Shyanne cried, fanning her face with her fingers spread wide. “I say yes!”

“Let me finish,” he said.

Margo was looking at the ring, a pink diamond in a cushion cut. Maybe he really did know Shyanne.

“Shyanne, I would be honored if you would let me be the boring to your beautiful, the strong to your delicate, the serious

to your silly. Shyanne, will you be my wife?”

“Yes,” Shyanne said, though she was crying so hard only Kenny and Margo could hear her. Kenny slid the ring on her finger.

She hugged him and clung to him kneeling there before her, his head smashed awkwardly into her breasts, and the whole restaurant

burst into applause.

Well, Margo thought, looking around at all the people clapping. At least they would probably get a free dessert.