Page 7 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

It did not feel like an emergency. “Do you believe things happen for a reason?” Margo asked. “Like, do you believe everything is fated, or do you believe in free will?”

“Margo, this is not a philosophical question. This is a financial decision.”

“It just feels fucked up to make an important decision based on something as stupid and made up as money.”

“I assure you, money is very real,” Becca said.

Margo was sitting in her bedroom, looking at the pile of laundry spilling out of her closet like her clothes were trying to crawl away.

“I just think,” Becca said, “maybe being a single mom might not be as glamorous as you think.”

Now Margo was pissed. “Becca, I’m the one who was raised by a single mom, and it’s not fucking glamorous. I’m not saying I would keep the baby because it would be fun or easy. I’m saying I think keeping the baby might be, like, what a good person would do.”

“So having an abortion makes you a bad person?”

“Well, no,” Margo said. Although on some level, wasn’t that kind of what everyone implied? You weren’t supposed to get an abortion just because it was more convenient. You were supposed to be all cut up about it.

“So tell me how keeping the baby would make you a good person again?”

“I don’t know! I’m not saying it would!” Margo raked her scalp with her nails.

“You literally said you were thinking about keeping the baby because you thought it’s what a good person would do.”

“Then maybe I didn’t mean that.”

“And since when do you care about being a good person? I mean, you were fucking somebody’s husband.”

“I know,” Margo said. But she didn’t. She’d always known Mark was a terrible person, but she had not quite registered that she was terrible too until this very moment. “Just... what am I even doing with my life? Going to junior college? Pretending I’m gonna transfer? Do you even understand how impossible it is to get into a UC anymore? And even if I did, I would major in what? English? You can’t get a job with an English degree, and I can’t even think of anything else I could study! So, then, what do I do, like, waitress? Get a job at Bloomingdale’s like my mom? None of it makes any sense. At least this would be something.”

“There’s lots of cool things you could do, Margo. You could get into viticulture and go into wine or something.”

Margo instantly thought of the wine rep her restaurant dealt with who was so corny and pretentious and had a huge tattoo of grapes on her chest, like right on her décolletage, massive ugly purple cartoon grapes. And Margo knew that if they were talking about what Becca should do with her life, viticulture wouldn’t even be on the table.

“I’m saying it’s a big deal!” Margo said. “Like, don’t you think I should at least think about it? Why are you trying to make it not a big deal?”

“I’m sorry,” Becca said, “I don’t know why I’m being such a bitch. It is a big deal, it’s a super big deal.”

This was not satisfying, and Margo didn’t know exactly why. “How’s school?” she asked. And they talked about that for a little while. When they hung up, Margo cried for twenty minutes and then went to work.

Meanwhile time was still happening, and somehow it was Tuesday, and she was going to her first doctor’s appointment. She’d originally called Planned Parenthood. They wouldn’t do an ultrasound to confirm pregnancy until you were eight weeks along, though. Pregnancy math was cruel. The moment you found out you were pregnant, you were already at four weeks. Waiting four more weeks to see if she was pregnant or not seemed absurd, so she called around until she found an ob-gyn who was willing to see her at six weeks.

It was exactly like every other time she’d been to the doctor. She wasn’t sure why that was surprising. Maybe she thought they’d be nicer to her. The doctor was a chubby, middle-aged white guy with a shaved bald head.

“So, you don’t know the date of your last period?”

“No, I didn’t keep... records?”

“Okey dokey, don’t worry, we’ll get all this squared away.” He seemed like the kind of man who was a great husband but whose wife would cheat on him anyway. “I’m gonna leave the room. The nurse will bring you a gown. Change into that, no underwear.”

Margo nodded.

“This is a transvaginal doppler,” he said. “Ever had one of those before?”

“Nope.”

“Well, when the fetus is this size, you can’t see well enough through the belly, so you have to take a peek internally.”

Margo looked over at the futuristic dildo attached to the sonogram machine. She got the idea. She had not pictured it being like this at all.

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