Nine Months

by Paula Bomer

  “You’re up! Here’s some tea for you.” Katrina shines her glowy face at Sonia and hands her a warm mug.

  “Do you have any coffee?” Sonia feels like a dried-up, large beast, a hippo, next to Katrina.

  “Coffee causes miscarriage and low birth-weight babies. Have this tea. It has no caffeine in it.”

  No caffeine? Sonia already has a headache. “I’ll pass. But thank you. I’ll get something on my way.”

  “I hope you’re going back to your family,” Katrina says, sipping her tea so delicately. Sonia stares at Katrina for a moment. She’s never been more mesmerized by another woman. Never. And even if Katrina has changed, in so many ways she hasn’t. She’s just Katrina, later. As it should be, thinking of Stan, how he doesn’t get that he’s not going to get some break or understand that heroin is pathetic instead of cool. Change is good, even if sometimes it’s alarming and over the top.

  They hug goodbye in front of the car, awkwardly, Rufus on Katrina’s hip between them. Joe is nowhere to be found.

  “Katrina, thank you so much for having me. It was great to see you—you are so,” Sonia feels vulnerable but open, “you are so beautiful.”

  “You’re sweet, Sonia. Now go home and take care of your boys and yourself.”

  “Will do.”

  But she doesn’t go home and take care of her boys. She heads west. The roads get wider and quieter and she gets deep into Pennsylvania. She stops for diner food when she can, which she prefers to the chains. Her comfort level isn’t great so she stops regularly at the cleanest-looking motels she can find. She eschews the ones advertising day rates and manages to find decent chains—for the most part. And suddenly a week has gone by and the only conversations she’s had are with waiters and hotel clerks and the one she has in her head with herself and the endless television shows she watches. And, not so surprisingly, she finds she’s in South Bend, Indiana, her hometown.

  She hasn’t counted but figures she has almost six thousand left, so she splurges on a room at the Marriott Hotel downtown, a big glass building built by a famous architect. She remembers what a big deal it was when it was built, how it brought pride to her parents, how their modest lives in South Bend were somewhat elevated by the structure. At that point, Sonia already had her eyes on the big cities of the Northeast and it embarrassed her, how her parents took pride in the Marriott. And yet now, as she checks in, and as it seems to be even nicer—hell, all of South Bend seems nicer—she understands their pride. And that pride in where one lives is important and Sonia’s face flushes with the shame of the arrogance of her youth.

  From her room at the Marriot, she calls home. She’s called home a few times on the road, but only hung up. This time, she doesn’t.

  “Sonia?”

  “How are they?”

  “How do you think they are?”

  “My guess is they’re fine,” she says weakly.

  “They’re not dead, if that’s what you mean.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t hang up, Sonia. I promise I’m not gonna try to trace the call, find out where you are. I’m not trying to come and get you. I just want to talk to you.”

  “I want to hear more about the boys.”

  “They’re OK. They’re used to you not being here now. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?” Sonia suddenly gets a charley horse in her calf. She rubs it.

  “Well, Mike is back in diapers full time.”

  “Big fucking deal. He’s barely three.”

  “Listen. You asked why I say sort of, I’m telling you. But if you’re not gonna listen, then why ask? He’s regressed. And Tom’s developed a stutter. Just so you know.”

  “Who says he wouldn’t have stuttered anyway?” she asks—or screams, actually. She realizes with a shock that she just screamed the question at her husband, and that he is now screaming right back, telling her, “Well, he wasn’t stuttering when you fucking left!”

  She hears, Daddy?, in the background and Dick says to her, “hold on,” and goes and puts the boys in front of the television—she can hear it being turned on, loud. She can visualize her boys, sitting on the couch, happy to have the TV on. Then he’s back. “They’re all right, they’re going to be alright, but they’d be better off if you were here.”

  “I’m coming back.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “How are you? How’s the baby?” She hears his voice break. God.

  “I’m fine. The baby’s fine.” Sonia puts her hand on her stomach as she says this and starts to rub at it. The baby shifts gently under her shirt, and she pulls it up and looks at her bare stomach. It’s taut, big, but not huge. This one’s different. Sonia isn’t like a house, like she was with the boys. She’s more like a shed. A sturdy, small outbuilding.

  “I’ll be back. I’ll call, too.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m not gonna tell you that.” Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Now she’s starting to cry. “Can I talk to the boys? Please.”

  “I don’t know. It might make things worse.”

  “Please. I just want to hear their voices.”

  “Then come home.” His voice is thick, but the sadness is gone.

  “Please.”

  “No. Not now. I can’t handle it now. I need to keep it together for them. I can’t watch them talk to you. Come home, Sonia. Come home for Christmas, at least.”

  “Fuck Christmas. I hate Christmas. Fucking Toys “R” Us-day is what it should be called. It’s meaningless and you know it …”

  “Yeah, but they don’t. Think about someone else besides yourself for a change.”

  “That’s exactly what I did, Dick, for five fucking years, and that’s exactly what I’ll have to do again, in a couple of months, and that’s exactly why I’m not there now.”

  Silence. “I’ll call soon.” Her eyes burn. “I’ll call soon. I’ll come home soon.” And she’s about to hang up.

  “Wait, Sonia, I have to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  Dicks sighs heavily into the phone. “Social Services was here.”

  “What? What the fuck …”

  “I didn’t call them. One of your friends did. I think it was Clara. I mean, I guess I know it was her.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  “Listen. Everything is OK. And I’m on your side. I’m very mad at you and can’t make promises to you about anything, but I do want you back here with our sons. But you have to know the community is not on your side.”

  “ ’I haven’t been gone that long … this is ridiculous.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone where you were going, I had no idea where you were … if you were safe …”

  “I’m hanging up. I can’t talk about this.”

  “It’s your fault, Sonia.”

  She hangs up, furious, maybe a little scared, but no, Sonia focuses on furious and then decides to walk it off. All that time in the car, sitting, driving. As she exits the hotel she’s stunned with what she sees. It’s actually quite nice, downtown South Bend. She walks at a fast pace, letting the new buildings and clean St. Joseph River blow her mind. The place was an absolute dump when she left and still was when her parents moved to Florida, to their retirement community. They’d be even prouder, she thinks. Change. Even if it’s the only thing you can count on, Sonia thinks, it still can stun. And the lack of it—she thinks of Stan—can stun, too. She walks and walks. New stores, some Notre Dame buildings that were not there. When she lived there, Notre Dame was confined to the campus and had no presence downtown.

  And she was a full-on townie. Feathered hair, tight stonewashed jeans, strong Midwestern drawl, hanging out outside the Taco Bell smoking weed. Friends graduating from high school and moving into trailer parks or beat-up rentals in sketchy neighborhoods. South Bend, beyond Notre Dame, still had the stink of an abandoned industrial town, having lost Studebaker and other auto industry first to Detroit, then to Japan, she guesses. After all tha
t time in the car, the walking is a great relief, but she turns back to go to the hotel, to get food. She delights herself in the thought of once again, someone bringing her food. She thinks, every pregnant woman should live in hotels, getting fed by others.

  She sits at the bar, but decides against beer—she’s not in Boston, she can see someone calling the police on her. This is a Red State. She doesn’t really know what goes on in a place like this, she realizes, when it comes to pregnant women. It wasn’t anything she thought about when she was a kid. She orders a buffalo chicken sandwich with blue cheese and a side of sweet potato fries and a Coke. She eats quickly, thinking about strangling Clara, thinking about putting her hands around her friend’s neck and strangling her, even though Clara, the überjock, would kick her ass. But no, Sonia thinks, my rage and craziness would swell gigantically, sort of like when people lift cars to save their husband or kids and yeah, superhuman with rage, she’d wrestle Clara to the ground and strangle her until the last bit of life had been squeezed away.

  “Sonia?” She turns and sees a waiter in uniform and after a moment, she recognizes her ex-boyfriend’s brother, Larry. How funny, thinks Sonia, Boston and now South Bend, both places she’d hope to see people from her past and not only does it happen, but she doesn’t even have to try. For a moment a feeling of discomfort climbs up her back—the smallness of those worlds is one of the reasons she left them both in the first place.

  “Larry Rogers, good to see you.”

  She puts out her hand. They shake.

  “What are you doing in South Bend? Gosh, I wish Bruce were here, he’d love to see you.” He’s looking at her stomach. Pregnancy. The elephant in the room. It must not be ignored. How can it be? When pregnant, all other aspects of being recede. She could have a huge purple growth sticking out of the middle of her forehead but her pregnancy would still take precedence.

  Sonia pats her stomach, “Yeah, I’m with child. I’d love to see Bruce, too. But he’s not here.” Bruce, her very first. Nice guy. Acid washed jeans matching hers, middle part, that slow Midwestern drawl, his gorgeous, young muscular body. Sonia wonders if he’s bald and fat now. Might ask to see a recent picture.

  “No, no. He moved to Chicago years ago.” Larry smiles, puts his tray on his hip. Sonia realizes now that he was probably in the closet when they were teenagers. And that now, hopefully, he isn’t.

  “That’s too bad. I mean, that I can’t see him. Nothing wrong with moving to Chicago. You don’t happen to have a recent picture of him?”

  “Not on me. But you could come by my place depending on how long you’re in town. I have some pictures of him and his family. You live in New York, right? This isn’t your first baby, is it?”

  Sonia had heard that Bruce was married with kids, and news about her must have leaked back, as well. “Yes, I live in Brooklyn actually and I have two sons.”

  “Wow, that’s crazy. New York City. I can’t even imagine.”

  “Imagine hordes of people and garbage on the street and bumping shoulders and getting yelled at for no reason and lots and lots of cement. There are good restaurants,” Sonia says, her mind back on food for a moment. “It’s amazing what a person can get used to. I’ve lived there a long time. It was exciting at first. Now the novelty has worn off.”

  “I imagine it’s very glamorous.”

  “That’s just television, Larry,” although Sonia is thinking it would be much more fun to be gay in New York than South Bend.

  “But what are you doing here?” he asks again.

  Sonia sighed. “I’m just visiting. I was driving out west and thought I’d stop here.”

  She knows she’s sounding vague. Larry looks at her with a sort of perplexed frown, his very short hair neatly gelled back, and he switches the tray to his other side.

  “I’d better get back to work. But I get off at ten. You should come out with me. I’m going over to Larissa’s. She’s still living in the mobile park, the nice one, near Mishawaka.”

  Sonia knew the mobile park. It was a nice one. She remembered when Larissa moved into it and how proud, rightly so, she was to have her own place when everyone, at 18, was still living, either with their parents, or like Sonia, largely off of their parents at college. It was nice for a trailer park, as Sonia remembered it, with mowed grass, trees, potted flowers. She’s exhausted. But how can she say no? She hasn’t been here for ages. And she can sleep all day tomorrow if she wants to. She can do whatever she wants. “Sure, come get me in room 412. I’d love to see Larissa.”

  A FEW HOURS LATER they’re driving in Larry’s very dirty, beat-up Honda. The ashtray is overflowing and there are magazines, empty cigarette packs and crumpled beer cans on the floor and what looks like wads of gum stuck all over the place. Sonia’s not the neatest person and it often heartens her that someone’s even grosser than herself. Especially since at the Marriott, he looked so dapper. And yet, she has to ask, “What are those?” She points to the hardened, raised things all over the car, “They look like chewed gum.”

  “They are,” Larry says, waving a cigarette in the air and Sonia notices everything about Larry is different than at the Marriott. She notices pit stains in his white shirt, which he has untucked and unbuttoned, and a little hard beer belly is breaking through the top of his now unbelted pants. “Do you want a piece of gum? I keep tons in the glove compartment,” he says, waving his cigarette in the direction of the glove compartment.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Hey, can you pass me a beer? There’s a cooler on the backseat there. Will you grab me one?”

  “Sure,” Sonia says, unbuckling herself nervously as Larry drives fast. Reaching around to the cooler and getting the lid open proves enormously difficult and when she achieves the goal, a wet can of Coors in her hand, she feels as if she just did enough prenatal yoga to last the rest of her pregnancy.

  “Oh man, thanks.”

  He chugs it, the cigarette now smoldering in the mound of dead ones. “Fucking work, man. It’s so good to be off.”

  “I waited on tables, I know how hard it is.”

  “Would you like a beer?”

  “Maybe later.” Sonia thinks she may be wrong about conservative Midwestern ideology. Although, this was her old friend and she always hung out with the rebellious types. The stoners, the heavy metal freaks, the troubled ones. In fact, now that she’s sitting next to him, she remembers that Larry spent a few months in a mental institution when he was fifteen and she remembers thinking that he should have been in rehab instead. But his parents had been mean people.

  “I guess you’re not supposed to drink when you’re pregnant. But Larissa says that’s bullshit. When she was pregnant she did whatever she wanted to do. Her boys came out fine.”

  “I definitely think people can get overly paranoid, but fetal alcohol syndrome and heroin-addicted babies do happen.” Sonia can’t believe she almost sounds like she’s taking the hard line. Then again, she’s talking to a clueless, childless man. “Then again my first pregnancy was an accident so I was drinking quite a lot at the time and I quit as soon as I found out but I did all this research, made calls to clinics and talked to people. I was a really nervous pregnant woman.”

  “Oh yeah?” Larry chugged his beer. “I bet the third time you’re less nervous.”

  “Yeah, I’m less nervous although this one is an accident too and even though I’m less nervous I’m more … crazy or something,” Sonia says. “But anyway, one woman I talked to said—because I was weirdly worried about birth defects—she said, even if you do heroin the whole time, your baby will be born addicted to heroin, but most likely perfectly formed and fine otherwise. I thought that was the weirdest thing. And it comforted me. Not that I was planning on doing heroin.”

  “You don’t get a lot of heroin around here,” says Larry. “Meth, yes. I try to steer clear of meth heads. They get ugly really quickly.”

  They pull into the trailer park that has a paved entrance and a painted, lit-up sign, wel
coming them to Sunshine Estate Trailer Park. As they wind around to Larissa’s place, Sonia notices that Sunshine Estate Trailer Park had lost some of its luster. Either that or Sonia, after all this time away and now years of being ensconced in a striving upper-middle-class New York life, sees things differently. That maybe, she’s sort of a snob. She shakes this feeling off. As much as she always wanted success, wanted more than what South Bend could offer her at the time, she’d always eschewed snobbery. It was possible, she knew it. It was a choice. And when Larissa first moved in to Sunshine Estate Trailer Park, it was brand new. And now it isn’t. And things like trailer parks tended not to age well. It’s not like you could treat your trailer exactly like a brownstone in Brooklyn and lovingly restore it. One could make repairs, for sure, but trailers were not built to last. In fact, they seem built to be joyfully temporary. And then people spend their entire lives in them anyway.

  But Larissa’s place isn’t all exposed Tyvek and rusty car parts, like a few they pass on the way. The siding is intact, and there are a scattering of plastic kids’ toys in the yard—not too different from Sonia’s apartment.

  “You would not believe who I have with me,” Larry says, as Larissa opens the door.

  And there they are, childhood best friends, wide-eyed and hugging, sort of a sideways hug due to Sonia’s belly. Larissa’s hair is still dyed and feathered with a curling iron, her eyeliner black and thick. She wears a skin tight pink T-shirt that says, “I’m A Bitch,” and reveals bulging bra lines. She has put on at least fifty pounds.