Paula Bomer - Nine Months

“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 that 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.”