Page 91 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

She drafted the announcement to her fans that night.

She explained she was going back to her home planet and that she’d miss them all terribly, and that she’d sculpted exact replicas of each of their penises out of tinfoil and planned to eat one a day until they were all gone. She let her cursor rest over the “post” button. She wouldn’t do it tonight. There were too many unknowns. She needed to come up with a plan. She thought about Ward saying the State of California would rather a kid be able to eat and have a mom who sells nudes than not eat. She would need to devise some other way of making money and figure out childcare, now that Jinx would be moving out.

She pulled an old three-ring binder from her shelf, the one she’d used for Mark’s class, and clicked it open, dumped everything out. She would do this the way she had done everything else.

The more she read, the more the plan cohered in her mind. If she quit the OnlyFans, Mark wouldn’t have any grounds on which to take Bodhi; they wouldn’t have to go to court. She could use the thirty grand in her account to launch herself on another career. She could hire Suzie as a nanny. She was an hour deep into research on how to become a real estate agent when her phone buzzed with a message from JB. Thinking of you, it said. She set it down without answering. That was exactly the problem. She couldn’t afford to be thinking of him. Dr. Sharp’s in-home observation was three days away, and Margo had to be ready.

It was at first extremely weird having Dr. Sharp in her apartment, like seeing your second-grade teacher at the grocery store, and then suddenly not weird at all.

“What’s all this?” Dr. Sharp asked, gesturing to Jinx’s moving boxes. Margo knew she’d promised Ward that she’d lie to Dr. Sharp about Jinx’s addiction, but if she was quitting the OnlyFans and he was moving out, she didn’t see any point in that, and there was something wonderfully freeing about being up front. She explained the CPS visit, and Dr. Sharp confirmed that it had not been triggered by the 730.

“I figured,” Margo said, then explained Jinx’s relapse and treatment, that CPS required he get off methadone. “And we want him to succeed, we want evidence-based, effective medicine, and that means staying on the methadone, so he has to move out.” Margo shrugged.

“I see,” Dr. Sharp said. She didn’t seem sympathetic, but she didn’t say it in a judgy way either. They had settled at the dining table. Bodhi was in his highchair, and Margo was feeding him pureed yams.

“I’ve decided to quit OnlyFans,” Margo said. “I haven’t told Mark yet. But I don’t see a way forward. I can’t put Bodhi at risk like this.”

“So you feel that the work is harming him?” Dr. Sharp asked.

Margo snorted. “No! But I’m not willing to have CPS come in here and mess everything up whenever they want to.” She shivered, imagining Maribel holding out her arms for Bodhi, the wistful way she’d said, “He’s cute.”

“I see. So then what are you thinking workwise?” Dr. Sharp asked. This was much closer than Margo had ever sat to Dr. Sharp, and she could see the downy hairs on her plump cheeks; they made Dr. Sharp seem more human. She was, after all, just another woman. Probably a mother herself.

“I have a fair bit in savings,” Margo said. “I was thinking of getting my real estate credential.” She liked how solid and grown-up that sounded. When she’d told Jinx, he’d been exasperated with her. “You will hate it,” he spat, “all those phonies! Margo, no, this is not for you.” At least Dr. Sharp didn’t react like that, she merely nodded and wrote something down in her notes.

Margo wiped some yam off Bodhi’s face. He was squealing and gibbering, so happy. He loved yams. She’d started doing Baby Signs with him, and he touched his fingers together in the sign for “more.”

“You want more?!” she cried, laughing. “I don’t have any more!”

Bodhi signed frantically, More, more!

“Okay, all right, you want some banana?” she asked.

Margo peeled the banana and mashed it in a little blue bowl with a fork while Bodhi shrieked like a chimpanzee with delight and impatience. She’d been feeding him the yams with a little spoon. Most of the time she let him feed himself with his fingers. She didn’t know if this was bad or good, but it was her secret belief that it couldn’t hurt him, and it might even help his fine motor skills.

“This might get messy,” she said to Dr. Sharp. “He loves to feed himself, and I think it’s good for him, to have to use his hands.” She gave him the bowl, and they both watched Bodhi, who looked comically excited, as he steered his hand down into the banana and then slammed it up into his mouth. It really was amazing how consciously he had to manipulate his hands, like he was working an arcade claw machine, every movement jerky and a little askew.

“Really makes you more impressed with deer,” Margo said.

“How’s that?” Dr. Sharp asked. She had taken off her blazer at some point.

“Oh, what with the walking from birth and all. Or like snakes that don’t need any parenting at all, they hatch and say peace out and go try to be a snake. They’re programmed to know what to do. I wonder what it’s like, acting completely on instinct like that.”

“That’s an interesting question,” Dr. Sharp said. She didn’t write anything down this time. She wasn’t saying it was interesting that Margo had said that, like she was evaluating her. She just seemed genuinely interested in what being a baby snake might be like. They were two women imagining being baby snakes.

Once Bodhi was good and coated in goo, Margo stripped him down and put him in the bath, dumping his toys around him. Dr. Sharp sat on the closed toilet while Margo knelt by the tub. Margo had worried she’d be awkward with Bodhi in front of Dr. Sharp the way she’d been with Maribel, all her words vanishing, everything coming out wrong. But she found that it didn’t matter if Dr. Sharp was watching them; she was giving Bodhi a bath like she always did because Bodhi expected her to, and Bodhi was more important to her than Dr. Sharp in an almost physical way.

Dr. Sharp stayed while Margo got him out of the tub and changed him into a fresh diaper and jammies. “So in general, at this point I would nurse him to sleep,” she said, mainly to warn Dr. Sharp she was about to whip out a boob.

“That’s fine, Margo,” Dr. Sharp said. “I think I’ve seen enough. You’ve been so generous with your time. I’ll get out of your hair and let you get Bodhi settled.”

“Oh,” Margo said, “okay.” She trailed Dr. Sharp out to the foyer.

“Thanks so much,” Dr. Sharp said. “I know it’s a lot, to be observed in your house with your child. That’s a lot of trust. Thank you for letting me be part of your evening.”

“Oh,” Margo said, “of course!” She almost said, “Anytime!”

And then Dr. Sharp was gone. It felt almost too easy. Margo worried she might have done something wrong, though she couldn’t think what it might have been.

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