by Paula Bomer
“Oh my God, Sonia, what the hell?”
“I know, I know. I’m just as surprised to be here as you are to see me.”
“Come in, come in. Holy crap. I thought I’d never see you again what with your fancy life in New York City and all.”
“Sorry I’ve been out of touch. But so have you, Larissa,” Sonia says, already sensing that underlying hostility Larissa was so good at letting loose. Their friendship had been an interesting one, basically one where Larissa mocked Sonia, and Sonia followed her around like a whipped puppy anyway because she admired Larissa so much and they did have fun together. And she was smart, smart in, what had felt at the time, the land of idiots. Bruce and Larry, too, felt like ships of intelligence in a sea of morons. They all had spent so much time together, drinking cheap beer, dreaming big dreams.
“True, true, it takes two to tango,” Larissa says.
Larry bursts past them, six-pack in hand. “Well, let’s celebrate! This is awesome. Sonia here, I’m off work, life is good!” He sits down at a built-in kitchen table with a bench and a couple of chairs that Sonia remembers sitting at years and years ago. She plops down in the chair next to him and looks around. Two small boys, maybe three and five, sit on the far side of the trailer on a dark green plaid couch, watching a Disney movie on an enormous TV, a TV that takes up so much room the children’s feet almost touch it from where they sit on the couch. Sonia wonders if they have to turn their heads from side to side while watching.
“Your sons?”
“Yup. My boys. Eric Junior and Bobby.”
“I have two boys.” Sonia says and tries immediately to get their faces out of her head. “Hey, Larry, can you pass me a beer?” She pulls the tab on the can and it makes that wonderful cracking noise as it exposes its imperfect circle of access and beery foam fizzles over.
“Man, I feel like we should play quarters or something!” Larry says. There had been many nights of epic games of bouncing quarters into glasses. “Hey, Larissa, get your bong out. Holy crap, Sonia, it’s the same bong from high school! How classic is that?”
“That’s pretty classic,” Sonia says, knowing there is no way she could do a bong hit if her life depended on it. A hit off a joint, sure. But she quit bong-hitting in college or shortly thereafter. In fact she can’t remember her last bong hit. “But let’s roll a joint instead. I’m sort of not up for bong hits.” Sonia looks toward the little boys. They’re wearing matching pajamas with cars all over them. They look clean.
Larissa sits across from Sonia, drinking a beer. It seems not to be her first of the evening. “I had my boys with Eric Wilder, you remember him?”
“Sure,” Sonia says. She had a huge crush on him, with his chipped tooth and penchant for carrying a sawed-off baseball bat around in his car.
“We never married. But we were together for five years. He’s dead, you know.”
“What?”
“He got really coked up at a party and they played Russian Roulette and he shot himself in the head.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry Larissa.”
“Thanks. It’s been a few years, so I’m, well, not over it but I’ve learned to accept it.”
The two women stare at each other. At last, Larissa says, “Russian Roulette is a stupid game.”
And Sonia finds herself nodding almost dreamily in agreement, yes, yes it is, while Larry sits there, working on a beautiful joint.
Larissa sighs. “He was sort of a shitty boyfriend. I just had a weakness for him. Are you married?”
“Yeah, I’m married.” Sonia stops and looks away. The kitchen area is tidy and reminds Sonia of a dollhouse. “He’s a good guy. But it can be hard anyway.”
“No shit,” says Larry. “That’s why everyone gets divorced.”
Sonia looks from Larry to Larissa. “Are you guys …”
“Hell no!” Larry says, “I’m gay as can be!”
“We’re just friends. We’re the only ones left from the old crowd. Dan is in Chicago. Eric is dead. You’re in New York,” says Larissa, crushing the beer can into the table with impressive force and accuracy, making it into a little accordion beer can. She stands and gets another. “Do you want one?”
“Not yet, thanks,” says Sonia. “So Larry, you’re ‘out.’ That’s great, right?”
“I’m out here tonight with you guys but it depends where I am, how out I can be,” he says. “I’ve gotten my ass beat more than once. In fact, I’ve gotten my ass beat twice very badly, once by a bunch of Notre Dame jocks and once by a bunch of redneck bikers.”
“That sucks,” Sonia says.
“I learned my lesson. I’m more careful now.” Larry lit the joint. “So are you some famous painter in New York? I think the last time I saw you that was your plan.”
“Yeah,” says Larissa, folding her hands over her fat breasts, “You were going to be famous, an important artist. I think you were living in Boston at the time and you were dressing like a slut and spouting feminist theory and art talk.”
“I was twenty. Don’t even pretend you weren’t an idiot when you were twenty, Larissa.” Sonia stands and gets another beer. “And what’s wrong with being ambitious? What were you doing back then, cocktail waitressing at that strip club? I forgive all of our twenty-year-old selves and I’m OK with having had some ambitions. I mean, I know I was an idiot, but that’s just life.”
“I made tons of money at that job. I bought this trailer with that money.” Larissa hits the joint and passes it to Sonia. Sonia holds it lovingly between her thumb and forefinger. She smells it, the sweet smell of weed. It’s been ages since she’s smelled it. She takes a tiny drag, holds it in as long as she can, blows out a thin stream of smoke.
“That was the most pussy hit I’ve even seen!” Larry says, laughing.
“I don’t really smoke that much anymore. And I am pregnant.”
“I bet weed is good for the baby. I bet it makes them little stoner geniuses, little Bob Marleys.” Larissa says, hitting it again.
Sonia feels a head rush, feels the beer in her smooshed bladder. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Larissa points to a door and Sonia, slightly off kilter, walks over to it. It’s like an airplane bathroom, but with a shower and miniature tub. It has some nice touches. A flowered bath mat, clean towels. She sits and pees and then she notices the wall in front of her. It’s covered with little circles of gum, like in Larry’s car, but here she can see discernible patterns. Smiley faces, stick figures, something that looks like a, a—dog? Now, Sonia’s a little high, but really just a little high and she’s barely had two beers but she questions her judgment nonetheless. She stares. She tries to understand. Some of the gum is in different colors. Finally, she gets up.
“Hey, is that, like, gum design in there?” She asks and everyone starts that slow, stoner laugh that warms Sonia. All the tension of their disparate lives goes away and she’s just back in South Bend, smoking weed with her buddies.
“Yeah,” Larry says as his giggles subside and then he actually pops some gum in his mouth. “Do you want a piece?”
“Sure,” says Sonia, putting a red stick of cinnamon gum in her mouth. “What the fuck is up with gum design?”
“It’s just something I started doing. Right, Larissa?”
“Yeah.” Larissa seems half asleep at this point. But Sonia feels energy, a tingling on her skin. Larry starts rolling another joint. Sonia looks over at the boys. They’re asleep, cuddled adorably against each other, the television still going strong. For some reason it warms Sonia. She’s just perfectly buzzed and she thinks of her sons, safe at home, sleeping in their beds.
“I just had the most amazing idea,” Sonia says. “This gum design, Larry.”
“What about it.” Larry’s eyes are red.
Sonia chews, the warm cinnamon coating her dry mouth and she sips her beer. Larry passes the joint to her and she takes another drag, a bigger one, and holds it in again, as long as she can. As she exhales, the world seems
suddenly clear and right. “I think you could be famous. I mean, I know the art world in New York a little bit and I think that gum design, gum art, could make a huge splash. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like part folk art, part naïve art, part found object art …”
“You’re going to steal my idea,” Larry says. “I can feel it.”
“No way, Larry, I’m just a painter. I might not even be a painter anymore. Maybe the weed is making you paranoid. Really, I could be your agent or get you a manager or a gallery or something.” Sonia stands. Her back was hurting but also she just needs to stand. Larissa appears asleep.
“Really, Sonia, you’d do that for me?”
Larissa snored, her head bobbed up. “Guys, I gotta go to bed. I have to work tomorrow. Are you still going to be here, Sonia?”
“I don’t know.” Sonia says. “But Larry, I think I’ve figured it all out. At first I thought the gum was gross, just disgusting, all over your car. But now, I think I’ve discovered you, and you are the future of art.” He passes the joint to her. Three hits? She feels so perfect. “No, no I’m perfect. This is all perfect. I sort of left my family and I— I really don’t want to be pregnant. I thought I wanted to paint and not have more babies and— I’m really high right now. Anyway, but now that I’ve discovered you, you Larry—I feel OK.”
Sonia sits down. Larry, red-eyed, is rapt. Sonia goes on. “But here’s the deal. I think I missed my chance when I was painting my friends as Hindu gods. I’d use these pictures of Krishna and Shiva and so on and then I’d paint the faces of my friends, you know, in the place of Krishna’s face. And someone told me, you have to paint the faces of famous people, not your friends.” Sonia has never known something to be so true as what she is saying right now. She sits here, in Larissa’s trailer, and she leans on the table and puts her hands on Larry’s face. “And he was right! My friend. And I didn’t listen to him. And now I know. And you need to make your gum design in the shape of famous people. Not dogs or smiley faces. But, like, Madonna! Robert De Niro. Right? Do you get it?”
Larry gently removes Sonia’s hands. “Wow. You’re a genius. That is the perfect idea.”
Larissa stands, wavering. “Sonia! I’m asleep. You guys gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow. Sonia, let’s not be mean to each other.”
“You were always mean to me.”
“That’s because you always thought you were better than me, better than everyone else.”
Sonia is silent. This is true. “Larissa, I think I discovered the future of art on your bathroom wall. And Larry, it’s all Larry.”
“That’s great. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’m staying at the Marriott. That’s how I ran into Larry.”
Larissa is expertly moving them out the door.
“Tomorrow. After work. We’ll see you again.”
Sonia wakes up, confused as she often has been, and it takes a moment to remember where she is. She’s in a bed at the Marriott Hotel, in South Bend, Indiana. She grew up in South Bend. The sheets are really nice. Nicer than the various other hotels she’s been staying in, nicer than the sheets at the Holiday Inn Express in Eastern Ohio. Her room is fabulously dark, even though she looks at the clock and it says 11:30 A.M. She remembers pulling the shades closed last night and they are heavy, wonderful shades. She’s in a cave of sleep, but slowly coming out of it. She had no dreams, but now thoughts of Dick and her boys flit through her head and she represses the urge to call them. She stands to go pee.
Last night, she thinks, peeing. That weed was something else. She’ll have to call Larry if she doesn’t see him at the hotel. She remembers the gum, the ecstatic vision of the future of art. Wow she was high. And from so little—what did she have, two hits? Gum art! How fucking gross. And how did she think he would be able to make more than smiley faces—well, she guesses he could—but famous people? Maybe she should smoke weed more often, though. Maybe it would help her painting. If she ever paints again.
After a room service breakfast of eggs, beef hash and toast, and a hot shower with excellent water pressure, Sonia drives to her old house, the house she and Nicky grew up in, the house her parents had lived in for thirty years. She pulls up right in front and parks. It’s exactly the same. Beige brick on the bottom half, white siding on the top. A slate roof—that might be new. Four windows in the front. Houses like this, generic, sensible, modest—they always remind Sonia of faces.
She really had no complaints about her childhood—what was the point? At a certain point—preferably before thirty—people should move on to take responsibility for their lives. And she had. Nicky had been different. She nursed resentments, remembering details of neglect or hurt that Sonia questioned and still questions if they were even true. That’s what bad therapy will do to you, turn you into a perpetually wounded child. Sonia gets out of the car, walks to the door and knocks.
A woman in her sixties answers the door, gray hair, brown eyes, trim, wearing a blue oxford shirt.
Sonia tells the woman her name. “I grew up here …” she says.
Sonia peeks in over the woman’s head. The entranceway is painted bright yellow and there’s a sign with a teddy bear stuck to it that says, “Welcome To Our Home.” This is something that would have made her mother cringe. In its place had hung one of the many of her mother’s etchings. Her mother, the amateur artist and content to be that, or seemingly so. Sonia had always wanted more than that.
“Oh yes, we bought the house from your parents when they retired to Florida.”
“I happen to be in town and was wondering if I could look around.”
“Of course. Come in,” the woman says, “My name is Alison Bower.”
They shake hands and Sonia says, “Nice to meet you.” The kitchen, off to the left, is entirely different, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s all tasteful, large tile floors with a subdued wooden table. Still, something aches in Sonia, the memory of her mother standing at the counter, singing to herself, bright-green leaf wallpaper glaring all around. The dented linoleum floors, dented from Sonia constantly leaning back on her chair. Those dents, which drove her mother crazy, they come back to Sonia now and she thinks, each one was a moment in life, a moment in exuberant childhood.
“The house we grow up in is always very significant. Your whole childhood took place here,” Alison says, and makes a sweeping motion with her hands.
Sonia is looking around and her heart aches. Everything disappears. Not just trailers. Lives. Kitchens. Her childhood bedroom, where it all started, her life. Alison seems to register this.
“Of course, we renovated when we moved in.”
“Of course,” says Sonia. “I understand.”
“Would you like a cup of tea or something?”
“I’d love a glass of water.” Sonia says.
“Please have a seat. You must be due very soon!”
“Yes.” Sonia sits in the familiar but unfamiliar kitchen. It seems smaller than she remembers. The house seems smaller, but she knows it’s just that most of her memories took place when she was a child and she was small. Like her boys are. Making memories, every day seems like a lifetime, and now those lifetime-long days are being made without her.
“I’m going to go up to my old bedroom if that’s OK.”
“Sure thing. Take your time. I don’t know what room was yours—one is a guest bedroom now and the other an office.”
“It’s all fine. I’m just never here so I thought I’d take advantage and pay a visit.”
“Like I said, take your time.”
Sonia walks up the hardwood stairs that were once carpeted in beige. The handrail is the same wooden, smooth handrail. She holds on to it. It got her in trouble. She constantly slid down handrails, well into her teens when it seemed childish and inappropriate.
She goes into her room and shuts the door. The office. The walls are quite bare with the exception of a framed Matisse print, a still life, flowers. There’s a bulletin board as well, but So
nia, feeling somewhat well-mannered, doesn’t scrutinize it. Otherwise there’s a large, green armchair, a filing cabinet and a beautiful midcentury desk. She sits in a chair in front of the desk and closes her eyes. When she was little, it was all green carpeting and a twin bed and stuffed animals. Then it morphed into her den of hedonism—she had a queen mattress on the floor—for some reason that felt sexy to her—and her bedspread was an Indian print. Nicky’s room was more conservative, blue rugs and a matching blue bedspread with a flower print on a twin bed. Nicky, who lives in Boulder now. She has a son that Sonia met once when Nicky came to New York for a wedding—the boy was an infant then. He must be seven or so now. She hasn’t seen Nicky in so long. They weren’t close. It was the cliché of two children growing up in the same house, but in different families. Very Psychology 101, but very true. Then again, sometimes Sonia thinks people choose to see their families differently, and it’s more that choice than any “different family” shit. Then there was just plain different interests, different personalities. Nicky wanted to go to college out West and climb mountains and ride horses. Sonia wanted to go to the East and live in a big sophisticated city and make art and talk pretentiously about art. But they were sisters. They did grow up together. And there’s something about the sibling relationship that is even more significant than the parental relationship. One’s parents had a full life beforehand. You come into their lives when they are adults. But siblings know each other from birth, witness the constant formation of character through childhood, through a child’s eyes, too.
Sonia gets up and knows where she’s going. She’s not going to call Larry or Larissa. She gets to the stairs and tries to get up on the bannister to slide down it, but her pregnant self won’t allow it. She walks down, carefully, and heads straight out the door to her car and heads to the highway. It isn’t until she’s a half an hour on the highway that she realizes she forgot to thank Alison, even forgot to say goodbye.