Page 18 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

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.

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