Page 97 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

But I also knew, nursing Bodhi to sleep each night, that my world would never be without love again. Love was not something, I realized, that came to you from outside. I had always thought that love was supposed to come from other people, and somehow, I was failing to catch the crumbs of it, failing to eat them, and I went around belly empty and desperate. I didn’t know the love was supposed to come from within me, and that as long as I loved others, the strength and warmth of that love would fill me, make me strong.

As I finally drifted off to sleep, I pictured myself like Arabella, violent and half naked, only instead of shooting people with glowing cartoon guns, I was loving them so big, so hard and real, that the world began to crack at the power of it. My mother’s face flew into fragments, shot through with golden beams of light; Jinx’s skeleton body was lifted into the sky.

And Bodhi, Bodhi glowed gold, drinking and drinking the love that flowed out of my body, using it to make himself strong and happy, using it to grow, his cells doubling and redoubling, his bones assembling themselves with time-lapse speed like a miracle.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The following Friday morning, Mark came to the apartment to meet Bodhi for the first time. I warned Jinx. “I have to tell you something, and it’s something I’ve been kind of dreading telling you this whole time.”

Jinx’s brow furrowed. “What?”

I knew it was hilarious, but I was still concerned. “Mark is short.”

“Bodhi’s dad?”

“Yeah, he’s, like, Michael J. Fox size.”

“So?”

“I mean, I know you hoped Bodhi would be big and wrestle, and like...”

“Bodhi is going to be gigantic, Margo. I’m telling you, I have never seen a baby with hands that size.”

“I’m just trying to prepare you, you know. So it won’t be weird when he gets here!”

“I promise not to gasp and say, ‘But you’re so short!’”

“Thank you.”

“I might say, ‘I can’t believe you screwed my daughter while she was your student, you shit bag.’”

“That you can say.”

When Mark arrived, we all got along well enough, even though my dad made a risky joke about breaking his fingers for real this time when they shook hands. Mark was wearing wide-legged brown linen pants. Jinx raised an eyebrow but stayed admirably silent, busied himself in the kitchen making tea and snacks while Mark met Bodhi in the living room.

“So this is Bodhi,” I said, bouncing Bodhi on my hip. He was seven months old, had two bottom teeth, and drooled constantly, cascades of spittle down his chin at all times. Despite this he was beautiful in an elfin way, and I was proud. I had him in his cutest romper. It was burnt sienna with white foxes on it, and I’d just given him a bath, so he smelled like honey and oatmeal.

“Oh my gosh! Oh, Margo!” Mark looked at me, and tears were streaming down his face. It was not the reaction I was expecting, and I was honestly a little touched.

“Do you want to hold him?” I asked.

“Will he go to me? Does he have stranger danger yet?”

“No, he’ll go to pretty much anybody still,” I said. “Here, I’ll put him on his blanket and you can play for a bit, and then you can try holding him.”

Mark immediately dropped to the floor like I’d told him to do push-ups. “Margo, he’s so pretty.” I put Bodhi on his blanket, and he immediately got on all fours, which he’d been doing more and more lately. He kind of rocked back and forth and looked at Mark in a challenging way. Mark got on all fours as well and mimicked the back-and-forth motion, and that made Bodhi laugh. Bodhi grabbed for his octopus and sort of rubbed his mouth on it and looked at Mark. “Is that your octopus?” Mark asked. “He must think I’m so weird, crying like this!”

“Oh, he’s seen me cry plenty,” I said. “He probably just thinks adults have wet faces at this point.”

Jinx brought the tea and snacks, and we sat around, watching Mark and Bodhi play together. I thought about what Ward said about the depo, that Mark was a shitty husband but a pretty great dad. I could believe it. There was no faking the kind of delight he was taking in Bodhi, and it won my grudging approval.

Then the doorbell rang.

I was so unexpectedly happy I didn’t even worry about it. I stayed sitting on the couch watching Mark and Bodhi while Jinx went to the door, then I heard Maribel’s voice. I scrambled up off the couch, whispering to Mark, “Shit, it’s CPS.”

“Do you want me to do anything?” he whispered back.

And I said, as though this were a drug deal or something, “Just be cool.” He would tease me about this for literal years. He still says it to me all the time.

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