Margo doesn’t ask about his father, about where I’m planning to live with him, or even when he’s due. Over the years, she’s gotten used to the idea that I’ll only tell her what I want her to know. But I wish she’d ask, because it’s hard to just say things sometimes. I wish I could talk to her about Robert and ask if she thinks I did the right thing, but I don’t know how to start. I only tell her about Ethan, that I stayed at his house for a while and we dressed like Fred and Ginger, and he made a painting that looked like lines and curves but it was really me.
“I’m glad you have solid friends in the world,” she says, because she doesn’t know about how I always end up leaving them all.
We see Mrs. Spencer walking slow past the diner like it’s normal for her to take a late-night stroll through town. She stares at us through the window, but when Margo waves, she looks away like she didn’t see us at all. I wonder how much she talks to Matty. If she knows I saw him about nine months ago and she’s worried Max is somehow his. I wonder who saw me and called her, if the whole town already knows I’m here and pregnant. Probably it took ten minutes for everyone to find out.
“That woman,” Margo says, “thinks she’s pretty high and mighty these days. Her big star of a son bought her a Cadillac, which she believes gives her perpetual right of way.” She rolls her eyes. “Like Cathy Spencer needed an excuse to be a bigger bitch.”
It’s funny to think of Mrs. Spencer as a bitch. I always just thought of her as a grown-up.
“I saw him,” I tell Margo, “Matty. This spring. I think they did his teeth.”
“Like they aren’t real?”
“Exactly. They don’t look like they used to.”
“Amazing.” Margo shakes her head. “What will they think of next? They nip things that don’t need tucking. Give fake teeth to someone with perfectly decent ones. That boy had fine teeth to begin with. He never had any problems chewing.”
I yawn. I can’t help myself.
“Well,” Margo says. “What’s say we close up here and turn in for the night. You must be exhausted.”
I think of the motorhome, the way it used to smell like mildew and rust. I think about driving down the dirt road to get there. I worry I’ll end up puking on the side of the road again. “I don’t think I can do it, Margo. Go to the motorhome. I don’t think—”
“Don’t be silly. I have my couch all pulled out and made up for me to sleep on so you can have my bed.”
“You do?”
“Of course,” she says. “Your father can’t very well yell at me for overstepping my bounds now, can he?” She claps her hand over her mouth. Her face goes pale. “I’m sorry. I just—I always felt bad taking you back to that motorhome. I didn’t mean to…”
I’m ready to cry, to know that Margo might have actually wanted me. To know that she really would have taken me home with her if she could. But I think if I cry she will and if she cries I’ll cry harder and between us, we might have too many tears to ever stop. So instead, I say, “I can sleep on the couch. Really, it’s okay,” because I can’t let any of it sink in. I could drown, so easily, I could drown.
“April,” she says, grabbing my arm and shaking it, “use that delicate condition to your advantage. Take the bed.”
* * *
Margo’s apartment looks pretty much the same as it always has, except she has a cat now. “I’m one of those ladies,” she tells me when a dark blur darts across the living room as we kick our shoes off. “That’s Stuart.” She points to the chair he’s taken refuge under. Yellow eyes stare back at us.
Later, when we’re gabbing in her kitchen over a piece of chocolate cake I just know will give me indigestion, Stuart emerges and rubs his skinny little body against my leg. I can feel his ribs ripple along my calf. He’s inky black except for a white muzzle and three out of four white feet. He has too many toes on each paw and a cauliflower ear. He’s not pretty.
“I didn’t take you for a cat person.”
“I’m not,” she says, reaching down and swishing her fingers together. He runs to her and rubs his face into the side of her hand. “I’m getting lonely in my old age, I guess.” She smiles this sad, tired smile.
And something about all of it just makes me fall apart—Margo being so lonely that she has to get an ugly little cat, and my father dying, and the fact that all I can picture is some bones on a hospital bed in the shape of him, hooked up to machines like the ones that flashed and beeped while Matty was in a coma on All My Days. Something about the whole thing makes me so sad that I can’t even stand it. “What kind of a person am I that I wasn’t even here?” I say. “I should have driven faster.”