Page 95 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

I squinted at him. “Because less than a year ago you were having me sign an NDA promising to drop out of Fullerton College and never tell anyone Bodhi was yours.”

“Feelings change. Don’t I have the right to my own emotional journey?”

I sighed. It was so tiresome wading through his self-righteous posturing. He wasn’t even very good at it. “Help me understand how it went down, how this change occurred.” I needed to know why he had done what he’d done so I could better predict what he was likely to do next.

“Well, I mean, when your dad called, Sarah was right there! How was I supposed to explain what was going on without telling her everything? Margo, I don’t know what he was on, if it was alcohol or drugs, but he was slurring and not making sense, and he kept calling over and over. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you told Sarah,” I prompted. This was a chain of causality I had not anticipated. It made total sense. Justifying himself to Sarah had made Mark twist his reality up like a pretzel.

“I told Sarah.” Mark nodded. “And then in addition to being literally afraid for my life, she was furious with me. I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating, I took a medical leave from work.”

Barf.

“And Sarah, she was so upset. Naturally. About the affair, the betrayal, and she kept saying, ‘You have a child?!’ And in my head, I was like, Well, yes, but not really, Margo has a child, and it has some of my DNA. I mean, I didn’t say that out loud, though I realized that’s what I’d been thinking and there was something really wrong with that.”

Was there, though? I sure wished he’d gone on thinking that way. “So it was Sarah who wanted to sue for full custody?” I asked. That was the part that didn’t make sense. She might want to shame Mark, but I doubted she wanted to change his other kid’s diapers.

“She felt I needed to take responsibility,” Mark said.

“And she was already divorcing you,” I said, putting it together, “so it doesn’t affect her.”

“Well, the divorce isn’t final,” Mark said, clearly offended.

“Oh,” I said. Did he think, somehow, that by taking responsibility for Bodhi he’d convince her he was a good guy, and she wouldn’t leave him?

“Sarah never specifically said I should try to get full custody,” Mark said. “I was seeing Larry about the restraining order for your dad and explaining the situation, and we both felt, like, hey, there’s a kid over there! What’s gonna happen to that kid? You know?”

“Christ,” I said. I was suddenly so very tired. Larry wasn’t even a custody lawyer, which in a way explained a lot. I noticed an Uncrustables wrapper on the floor. There was no changing Mark. Or Jinx, or Shyanne, or how the world worked. They were like chess pieces: they moved how they moved. If you wanted to win, you couldn’t dwell on how you wished they’d move or how it’d be fairer if they moved a different way. You had to adapt. The thing I needed to know was whether Mark truly cared about the OnlyFans. He could continue to pursue full custody and take me to court, no matter what the 730 said. He might not win, but he could bankrupt me trying.

“I need to know how strongly you feel about the OnlyFans.”

“Well,” Mark said, “I mean, according to Dr. Sharp it isn’t problematic at all!”

“I’m asking whether you will continue to pursue full custody as long as I’m still doing it.”

“I thought you were getting into real estate,” Mark said, a bit snide.

“I’m trying to decide exactly what I’m going to do, which is why I’m asking. To me, it seems absurd that a man I slept with over a year ago gets to decide how I make a living, but that’s the position I find myself in.”

“I have to confess something,” Mark said suddenly, with an I’ve been a bad boy excitement. “I bought your Rigoberto video. And I have to say, from an artistic standpoint, I was really quite impressed.”

So weird, so gross. “Thanks,” I said, praying he wouldn’t say more.

“It just— It wasn’t what I had been picturing,” he said.

As much of a nitwit as Mark was, I knew what he meant. I hadn’t been expecting Arabella’s account to be what it was. I hadn’t expected to think pro wrestling was a form of art. I hadn’t expected infidelity to be about cuddling or drug addiction to be about eating Milky Ways.

“Will you do me a favor, Mark? I get you being worried about Bodhi, or about decisions I’m making professionally, but can you try reaching out to me directly? Because I think the things we make up in our heads, the assumptions we make, wind up being much worse than what’s really going on. Like, just call me! You never needed to file papers in the first place, come talk to me.”

He nodded, then his brow furrowed. “Could I— Do you think I could meet him? Bodhi?”

“Of course,” I said. “Whenever. But I need to know, if I keep doing OnlyFans, are you going to continue pursuing full custody?”

“No,” Mark said. “I don’t really think full custody... I mean, you’re his mother. You’re all he’s ever known.”

I was embarrassed that my eyes almost filled with tears. I hadn’t expected Mark to say something so decent.

“I don’t know,” Mark went on. “In mediation, you just seemed so much more in command than I’d been expecting, it really changed things.”

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