BACK IN THE HOTEL, Sonia contemplates calling home, if she’s allowed to call it that, and hanging up, but thinks better of it. Katrina, dear Katrina. The thing is, nothing about Katrina could ever really surprise her. She was capable of anything, going in any direction. And Stan, oh boy. He was so hugely talented and now look. Exhausted, even as her mind races, she turns on the television and before she knows it, she’s falling asleep so she gets up, rips off her clothes and begins passing out, inhaling the clean bleach smell of hotel sheets and right before she loses consciousness, her last thought is an ache for the warm, dirty flesh smell of her bed.
14
“Katrina? This is Sonia. I know we haven’t talked in years …” Sonia did it. She called her and it was wonderful to hear her voice. Just wonderful.
And it’s settled. Sonia would visit. Sonia didn’t say anything about leaving her family. From their quick conversation she knows that Katrina has a little boy, Rufus. Her husband, Joe, had been in one of the local Boston bands, surely Sonia remembers him? Actually, Sonia doesn’t, but will when she sees him. She’s good with faces, bad with names. And Sonia doesn’t remember too many details from their groupie days. She remembers a wash of emotion and noise and color. But the fine lines, for the most part, were gone to her. Not that she doesn’t want to try to remember. Maybe seeing Katrina would bring back the specifics. Maybe what Sonia needs is to truly remember her life.
KATRINA’S HOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL on the outside. Gray clapboard. Like a house on the Cape. Sprawling, with white shutters. The grass is mowed. The gravel driveway tasteful and not too bumpy.
And then here comes Katrina, coming out to greet her as she pulls in the drive. She has Rufus on her hip and he seems to be nearly the size of her. She looks beautiful, her hair longer and shaggier than ever, with a thick block of heavy bangs covering her forehead. She is thin and hippy, her face so youthful that Sonia immediately feels old as shit. Sonia feels that her taste for booze and cigarettes, although greatly curtailed during this pregnancy and her other pregnancies, has aged her, and for some reason, Katrina, walking toward her with this scowling, enormous boy wrapped around her, is dewy-skinned. They hug awkwardly, Rufus and Sonia’s belly both interfering with the hug and then they walk inside.
The inside of Katrina’s house is not so nice. It smells strongly of stale pot. The couch is filthy and saggy. There isn’t much in the way of furniture and the place is cold on this mild November day. Indeed, it’s colder inside than outside. A brown shag rug, perhaps meant to be ironic, just looks sad. Joe stands in the kitchen, rolling a joint and drinking coffee. Now she remembers Joe. He played in a band called Dogweed. It was a great, loud, fast, countrified band, a three piece. They rocked. They were all short men with long hair who played their instruments with love and abandon. There had been some buzz about them at the time, labels sniffing around. Now here stands Joe himself, his hair sheared off, and he looks defeated. Sad. Maybe even scared. All that pot has made deep lines in his face. He wasn’t sexy anymore, not like Katrina.
THE WOMEN SETTLED INTO the living room, on opposite sides of the couch.
“Rufus, say hi to Katrina’s friend, Sonia,” says Katrina. Rufus scowls at Sonia and lifts up his mother’s shirt, revealing a beautiful, pear shaped breast, and starts nursing. With his other hand, he fondles his mother’s other breast. He growls quietly while he does this and looks menacingly straight at Sonia, as if she were some beast come to take away his mother.
“He’s shy,” says Katrina.
“Does he call you Katrina instead of Mommy? Because you said say hi to Katrina’s friend, you know, instead of Mommy’s,” says Sonia.
“Oh, yes. Joe and I believe in children calling their parents by their first names. We’re all people, individuals, you know? The objectification that “mommy” and “daddy,” those words, produce, we feel is very damaging.”
“Huh.” A silence falls. Fuck, thought Sonia. Katrina was always weird, it was something that was so great about her. Weird fun. Eccentric. Outside the norm.
Katrina beams at Sonia. “You are so pregnant! My goodness. And you have kids? Where are they?”
“At home, in Brooklyn, with their father.” Again, a thick silence. “I’m freaking out. I’m on a mission. A vacation. Something.”
“I could never leave my Rufus.” Katrina’s face shows horror, but barely, it’s a cute kind of horror, because her face is so damn dewy. God, what does she do to look that way?
“You know, Katrina, you look great. Your complexion, your skin …”
“I don’t smoke, I eat no meat, I don’t drink, I eat a vegetarian diet with tons of live foods. And I do colonics.”
“You mean enemas?”
“Yes. There are so many toxins in the air and water and food around us. We all have fifteen pounds of poisonous metals in us that are killing us. Literally.” Katrina strokes Rufus’ head. He no longer glares at Sonia, to Sonia’s great relief. Instead, his face is completely engulfed in the pillow of his mother’s breast. “How old are your kids?”
“Four and two. Two boys. I don’t really want to talk about it. I do miss them. I feel guilty about leaving them. But I freaked out. You see, this pregnancy was an accident.”
“My fear of accidental pregnancy is so great that I just stopped having sex. I am not ready for another baby at all. Rufus still needs me so much. The thought of it! I feel for you, I do.”
“When did you stop having sex with Joe?” Sonia whispers, even though Katrina wasn’t whispering.
“About three years ago.” Katrina says. “And don’t worry about Joe hearing us. It’s all in the open. We talk openly about everything.”
“God, no sex must be hard on your marriage.”
“Not really. He gets it somewhere else now and I don’t mind. It’s a relief, actually. Having kids changes everything. You know that.”
“What about going on the pill?”
“No way! And poison my body?”
“Well, I don’t know Katrina! Not having sex? You loved sex. You taught me how to love sex! I had never, and still have never, met anyone like you before. Someone who so unabashedly loved sex. You loved your body and men’s bodies and music and drugs and wine …”
“That was a long time ago, Sonia.” Katrina looks at her with serenity. Her mouth is set in a hard way, and for once, Sonia notices her age. “That all has to go at some point. One can’t live like that forever. We were young! I’m not young anymore. Neither are you.”
“But we’re not dead yet, are we?”
“A part of us dies when our children are born, no? Our sexual self is never the same again. Our selfishness, our energy is zapped up. A lot of us dies with the birth of a child. As it should be. Trying to cling on to youth, or life as it was before children — sex, socializing — all of that seems so sad. Or hopeless. And so, instead I put all my hope in Rufus. He deserves it. He’s going to have the childhood I never had.”
“And what exactly is that, the childhood you never had?”
“I was the third child and my mother was so overwhelmed. And how can anyone pay attention to three children? And then my mother became so miserable and she started sleeping with the neighbor’s son, a high-school boy. Then my parents got divorced.”
Sonia knew all of this back in college. Hearing it again refreshes her memory of that time. Backstage, a delicious joint being passed around. A cooler full of Rolling Rock beer. Another friend, Lola, sitting on the lap of the lead singer of Zug Zug, a band of five beautiful, sweaty young men. Zug Zug meant fuck in caveman, according to them.