Paula Bomer - Nine Months

“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, welcoming 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.

“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.