Page 68 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s important to get constructive feedback like that. I don’t want to post a bunch of crappy TikToks and ruin what we’ve got going on!”

“Yeah.” Rose nodded. “Okay.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said. Suzie was up and ready by my side.

“And I’ll try to think of ideas too!” Rose said. “It shouldn’t be just you!”

I tried not to flinch. “Please do!” I said, grabbing my sunglasses from my purse and putting them on.

And then Suzie and I drove home, the salt drying tight on my face beneath my sunglasses in the car’s AC.

“I don’t know if this helps,” Suzie said after twenty minutes of silence. “But I think I’m in a position to be fairly objective, and about eighty percent of what Rose was saying was to shift blame off of herself and KC and onto you, and maybe only twenty percent because the TikToks were lackluster.”

“No,” I said reflexively. “I doubt it was that.”

“For real,” she said. “The TikToks were fine. Maybe not explosively new, but they were totally fine.”

“I didn’t think they were so bad,” I said, “that it would be better to have no TikToks than those TikToks.”

“It would have been way better to film the ones you wrote. I mean, they were better than ninety-nine percent of the shit that gets posted on there. They just weren’t, like, a step up. They weren’t mind-blowing.”

I nodded. It hurt, though I could see now that they were repetitions of gags we’d already done, dynamics we’d already explored.

“It’s hard,” Suzie said. “You’ve set the bar pretty damn high.”

“You are so nice to me.” I sighed, because frankly I wasn’t sure I deserved to have someone be this nice to me.

We made it back in time for Jinx and me to take Bodhi to Gymboree together. We clapped Bodhi’s little hands as ladies blew bubbles on us and dropped silk scarves so they floated beautifully down, and Bodhi screeched in delight.

The sadness from the morning didn’t exactly go away; it dried on me and slowly crumbled, leaving me covered in little flakes, like if you eat a glazed donut in a black shirt. That was how it was being a grown-up. We were all moving through the world like that, like those river dolphins that look pink only because they’re so covered in scars.

Chapter Eighteen

Margo and Jinx had gone on a special shopping trip to buy her an outfit to wear to mediation, and they’d finally settled on slouchy boyfriend-style jeans, a white silk shirt, and a violently elegant black blazer that cost five times what Margo had ever spent on a single piece of clothing. “Good God,” Jinx said when he saw her in it the morning of mediation, her hair pulled back in a French twist, her face bare of makeup except for a little mascara.

“It’s okay?” she asked, giving a twirl.

“Chef’s kiss,” Jinx said, Bodhi in his lap, chewing on the nipple of the bottle like a hungry baby goat.

She kissed Bodhi and hugged Jinx goodbye, feeling hulked out on mother love and ready to kick some ass.

This feeling dissipated at the courthouse, where it took forever to find a parking spot, almost making her late, and disappeared entirely the moment she laid eyes on the mediator: an older woman with frizzy black hair, wearing a lumpy maroon sweater, who spoke so slowly and haltingly that Margo assumed it was due to some medical condition. She was wearing ugly earrings, heavily tarnished little silver figures. Margo leaned in. Were those fairies? On little toadstools?

Margo would have given anything to be wearing a pilled cardigan instead of the black blazer. What had she been thinking? She should have dressed for sympathy, not power!

“We are here today to try to come to an agreement,” the mediator, Nadia was her name, said, “about what is in the best interests of your child, Bodhi. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Mark said, nodding. It was weird to be in the same room with him, a claustrophobic little conference room with a scuffed fake-wood table. He had grown his hair out chin-length, brown and wavy. It suited him and also bespoke some kind of emotional unwellness. He’d said hi to her rather shyly when she first came in the room. Since then he’d avoided her gaze. There was a Sparkletts water dispenser in the corner behind him, the kind with the big jug. Margo could see that it was bone-dry.

“Let’s start by having each of you state your goals for this mediation. Mark, would you like to go first?”

Margo was glad that Mark was going first because she still had no idea what this was about for him. Her best guess was that Elizabeth was making him do this, even though establishing paternity would mean paying child support. Why would Elizabeth want Mark to do that?

“My goal,” Mark said, like he was teaching a class, “is to have full legal and physical custody of Bodhi out of concern for Margo’s fitness as a parent.”

Heat rose in Margo’s face. She had suspected as much, but it was still upsetting to hear him say it.

“And why do you doubt her fitness?” the mediator asked. “What behavior of hers is concerning to you?”

---