The day the Kats move out, Suzie plops down on the couch beside Margo. She's seen Mark on campus. He looked rough, real rough. They made him department chair — everyone hates being chair. Suzie gets to give him the stink eye at faculty meetings. The Kats' rooms stand empty in the background.
Suzie asks to hold him. Margo rolls Bodhi onto her chest and stands up to stretch her wrecked lower back. Suzie coos: Oh my God, it's like having a cat sleep on you. A person-cat! Margo hasn't pooped in two days. She negotiates five minutes.
Ten days before rent is due, Margo swallows her pride and emails Mark asking to borrow $3,000. She knows everything that happened between them was as fake as it gets. But the rent coming due is very real, and so is the baby in her arms.
Instead of Mark, his mother calls. She wants to meet. She tells Margo when and where. Even as it is happening, Margo cannot believe it — that he took his problem and handed it over to Mommy.
The building looks like a medical centre. Inside: a law office. ELIZABETH — Mark's mother, rich, older, a pink skirt suit matched perfectly to her lipstick — sits across from Margo with her lawyer Larry, who has a long horsey face. Elizabeth is clearly appalled that Margo has brought the baby.
Fifteen thousand now. A fifty-thousand-dollar trust for Bodhi — worth around three hundred thousand when he turns eighteen. No further contact with Mark or his family. A nondisclosure agreement. Don't attend Fullerton College. Throughout, Elizabeth refers to Bodhi only as the child.
She signs everything without reading it, too embarrassed to do so in front of them. She drives straight to the bank — her balance has never been above $500. The teller says: Is that all? She floats back to the purple Civic, goes to the Arby's drive-through, and eats two Classic Beef 'n Cheddar sandwiches alone in the car while Bodhi sleeps. As the fat hits her bloodstream, she realizes she is extremely happy.
Applebee's. Margo, Shyanne, and Kenny in a booth. Margo leans over the full-color menu like it is a rich-people Christmas catalog. The riblets glitter darkly. The fried shrimp sparkle. Nursing has brought her appetite to new radiant heights. Do you think we should get an appetizer?
Kenny holds forth about personal responsibility — victims, lattes, get-out-of-jail-free cards. Margo listens without quite disagreeing. Her mother sits beside Kenny: neck longer than usual, face angled slightly downward, holding her head the way she holds it when she knows she is being looked at. As though beauty were a kind of bridle she had to bite down on.
Kenny crouches before her on the brown carpet of the Applebee's, ring box open — a pink diamond, cushion cut, catching the light. Shyanne is already crying, hands fanned in front of her face, fingers spread wide. The boring to your beautiful, the strong to your delicate. Shyanne cries: Yes. Bodhi sleeps through the whole thing in his carrier.