The Lullaby Of Polish Girls Part 3

"Dzieciaku, what do you care? You can go back to your pillow and dream a little dream. I got better things to do."

And with that Justyna reaches for her miniskirt, grabs her sandals, cracks their bedroom door open, and vanishes.

In the living room, Justyna's mother, Teresa, and her father, Bogdan, are lying on the orange pullout wersalka, watching TV. She sees her mother's legs entwined with her father's. They're always touching each other, always smooching, pulling each other in for a quick embrace. Justyna thinks it's mildly gross, but doesn't really care. When she clicks the bedroom door shut behind her, her mother glances up and, for a minute, they lock eyes. Teresa obviously knows what Justyna is up to, but she won't come storming into the hallway now. Later there will be a f.u.c.k-filled tirade about curfews, but Justyna's mother never follows up on her threats.

The July night is unusually crisp. She should have grabbed a sweater but the walk to the Relaks is a short one. It's only nine-thirty and, already, most of Szydowek is dark. The streetlights are shutting off, one after another, like dominoes.

Across Klonowa Street, the benches lining the walkway to the Relaks are occupied by older men from the neighborhood. The Relaks Cafe has become a clandestine meeting place for local drunks and for young men who aspire to be the next generation of local drunks. But they don't get their liquor from the overpriced establishment; they merely use the area as a gathering ground, bringing their own bottles of bathtub-brewed moons.h.i.+ne and sour, cheap wines.

Back in the sixties and seventies, the bar was busy all summer long. Families and tourists flooded the place on weekends, lounging on blankets, renting kayaks, and taking strolls uphill to the Relaks for cold beer and French fries that were served in cone-shaped napkins with tiny plastic forks. But that was back when the reservoir water was clean and you could actually swim in it. Now, people claim that the zalew is full of sewage and corpses from a cemetery on the other side of the bay that flooded a few years ago.

As she makes her way closer to the bar, she can see Norbert "Lolek" Siwa and Mariusz Kowalski sitting on some benches, their cigarette tips glowing like fireflies. As she walks by them, Lolek calls out to her, "Hey, Zator, I didn't know this was s.l.u.t turf!" Justyna casually gives him the finger. "It's not, Lolek. I heard it's pig country, so I thought I'd venture and see for myself. Guess it's true, chrum chrum."

Kowalski cracks up and Justyna is pleased. Lolek is a neighborhood wisea.s.s, who has a violent temper if you cross him on a bad night. He's a recent high-school dropout but he looks way older than seventeen. Lolek walks like a rooster, his fiery red hair is always slicked back into an outdated bouffant, and he never shaves his spa.r.s.e orangey mustache. He is always borrowing money for beer and p.o.r.no magazines, but he never pays it back. Last summer he brought a Russian prost.i.tute to Kowalski's eighteenth birthday party and had her w.a.n.k off the entire group, at a discount price. Lolek is a legend. And Kowalski, his sidekick, is the object of many girls' affections, even though he is as short as he is good-looking. In the land of guys in their twenties who are already losing their teeth, Kowalski, with his wide smile and pressed jeans, is a catch.

Justyna strides right up to them and grabs a wine bottle from under their bench. Without missing a beat, she takes an impressive swig, hands the bottle to Kowalski, and says, "Cheap s.h.i.+t," before sauntering past them. She can still hear them howling as she rounds the corner.

Sebastian Tefilski is waiting for her, just where he said he'd be. He is sitting on top of the hill that leads down to the water, listening to headphones. She sits down beside him and leans in.

"Depeche Mode? Is this the tape you gave me last year?" Justyna asks. Sebastian takes off his headphones and continues staring out in front of him.

"So?"

"So there's new stuff out now. It's called keeping up with the times, Tefilski. You should try it." Justyna smiles lazily but Sebastian is impatient, thrusting his hand out.

"Jezus Maria, what's your problem? You should be glad I'm here. I could be at home sleeping right now, you know. Instead I'm playing postman."

"Just give it to me."

Justyna huffs and digs into her skirt pocket. She produces a piece of white paper, folded into a small, neat square. Sebastian grabs it, the excited smile on his face almost embarra.s.sing. Did she ever make him that happy, Justyna wonders. But just like that Sebastian's smile fades. He stands up slowly and starts tearing the note into fragments, which drop to the ground like confetti. Justyna stands up next to him.

"Not good?"

Sebastian's silence fills the air, and for a moment Justyna actually feels bad. But, no-Anna had it coming, they both did. When Justyna told Anna about her and Tefilski, to both brag and warn, it was as if Anna didn't hear the subtext, as if Justyna's leftovers were fine by her. The Amerykanka just did not give a s.h.i.+t about other people's history, that much was clear. She was pathetically transparent, almost inhaling Sebastian when the two of them hugged goodbye. Justyna caught their whispered somethings, the looks they shared. Justyna wasn't dumb.

Sebastian Tefilski and Justyna Zator went back, way back to First Holy Communion. They were eight and a.s.signed to walk down the church aisle side by side, one of thirteen pairs. They made their way down toward the altar just like in practice, doing a slow, methodical two-step, trying not to laugh. At one point, when she had just about had it with her itchy stockings, Justyna furtively scratched her crack and Sebastian caught her and smiled and she stuck her tongue out at him, before sticking her tongue out for the sanctified wafer. And from that day forward, Sebastian and Justyna were forever in and out of love.

Anka Baran was not just usurping an old boyfriend; she was after the first boy that ever truly loved Justyna, so what did a few forged sentences matter? Still, she wouldn't mind becoming friends with the foreigner, if only to satisfy her curiosity. So she's already planning future shopping trips with Anna to the Puchatek mall, and sleepovers. They will be friends-because aside from the occasional romp with nutty Kamila Marchewska, Justyna doesn't really hang out with girls. Anna Baran would fill the gap nicely.

Sebastian recites from memory, his voice robotic, dazed. " 'Dear Sebastian, I have a boyfriend in America. It's pretty serious. I guess I felt bad for you and didn't know how to tell you but please, don't bother waiting for me. Have a good summer. Your friend, Anna Baran.' "

Justyna smirks. " 'I felt bad for you'? Ewww. Who does she think she is? Right?" She tugs on his arm. "Right?"

Sebastian looks into Justyna's face, and the shame he's feeling is too deep to hide.

"You know what, Tefilski? f.u.c.k her. And don't even think about writing to her, unless you want to come off like a sniveling beggar." She moves closer. "You're better than her anyway. She wouldn't know what to do with you even if she wanted you." Their noses are almost touching now and Sebastian doesn't say anything but he doesn't move away.

"Remember last summer when we broke up? Remember why?" Justyna's fingers find his zipper, and then quickly find their way inside his jeans. His p.e.n.i.s feels like dough, pliant and soft. But as she starts kneading with both hands, it doesn't stay soft for long. "We broke up because I wasn't ready, right?"

Sebastian exhales.

"Well, guess what, Tefilski? I'm ready now."

And with that, Justyna gingerly drops to her knees.

Anna.

Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

In the dark, sleeping next to her, Ben looks unfamiliar, like last season's dress that no longer goes with anything. Anna stares at his receding hairline, lifts the duvet and peeks down at his belly. He's always had that little pouch, evidence of a hipster diet-low on veggies, high on hops. She used to knead it affectionately. She used to joke about it and right now she wants nothing more than to want him again; it would just be so much less complicated.

Anna reaches under her pillow and finds her gla.s.ses. She carefully places a finger on Ben's mouth and traces its contours. Yes, his mouth is very nice, with soft lips that never chap, even in the dead of winter. But Anna can't remember the last time they kissed, the last time they really kissed, like those high-school kids who s...o...b..red on subways, not caring who was watching. Ben used to walk down the street s.h.i.+elding b.o.n.e.rs as Anna nuzzled his neck. They just couldn't stop touching each other, in private or in public. Now they kiss only when someone's watching, as if it's to prove something to their friends.

When Ben let himself in the day before, just past eleven A.M., Anna had been curled up in a little ball on the sofa with an ashtray by her feet, its rank contents spilled out on the floor. While making coffee he found her lost gla.s.ses in an empty mug in the sink. When he gently eased them onto the bridge of her nose, her eyes popped open.

"h.e.l.lo there." He leaned down to kiss her on the lips but she turned her head away from him. He didn't bother with her cheek. "Frick came by and left a note. He seems pretty p.i.s.sed you didn't answer the door. 'You can fix your own d.a.m.n fridge,' he wrote. Nice. What, were you in a coma or something?"

Anna didn't answer, but instead started bawling. Ben put his arms around her, and when she settled down, she told him about Justyna. She wanted him to make it all better, but he just sighed and said, "That's f.u.c.ked up." He suggested they go out to eat, said it would help Anna get her mind off things. But at dinner that night, Ben silently chewed his rice while Anna wept into her beef pad Thai.

"I can't sleep. I had a crazy dream," Anna whispers in the dark now, tugging on Ben's earlobe to wake him up. "I was rowing a bathtub through the streets of my babcia's neighborhood and there were horses floating next to me. The whole town was flooded and I was looking for you and then I found you in some apartment, making out with Charlize Theron, but you were like, 'It's okay, Anna, she's very beautiful, you understand, right?' It was horrible." Ben's eyes open.

He turns to face her and under the covers his legs entwine hers. She hasn't shaved in over a week, and she immediately s.h.i.+fts away.

"Babe, you gotta do something about that tooth."

"Oh my G.o.d! I'm telling you about my traumatic nightmare, and all you do is whine about my breath? Thanks a lot, you p.r.i.c.k!" Anna bolts upright and swings her legs over the bed.

"Annie, come on, you want me to apologize for something I did to you in a dream? That's crazy. And don't call me a p.r.i.c.k again unless you want me to start acting like one."

"What is that? A threat?"

Ben tries to put his arms around her. "It's too early for this. You're distraught. Just tell me what to do, Annie."

"You can shut the f.u.c.k up and leave me alone."

"Do not talk to me like that." Ben's voice rises. "I don't deserve it. I'm sorry for your friend, for what happened to her husband, but when was the last time you saw her? When was the last time you even spoke?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I think you're reaching into territory that you don't own. It means that you're displacing your grief. Besides, the last time you were in Poland, you didn't even see her, right?"

"That has nothing to do with anything. Does empathy have a f.u.c.king expiration date? I invited her to my premiere but she didn't come. I was there for only five f.u.c.king days, Ben! It was a business trip. Business!"

"I don't buy it, Annie. Poland was never business for you."

"What the h.e.l.l are you saying? I'm not allowed to be upset because we aren't pen pals anymore?"

"Stop talking to me like that! I'm not the enemy. What happened to your friend is horrible, but get a G.o.dd.a.m.n grip!"

" 'What happened to my friend'? Tell me, Ben-what 'happened' to her?"

"I'm going back to sleep. I have a job to go to. Remember what that's like, Annie, to actually have to rise and s.h.i.+ne?" He's pleading now, he wants to call time-out, but Anna is persistent. She wants to hurt.

"Say it. Name the thing." Anna's fist pounds the side of the bed.

"Her husband died."

Anna makes the sound of a game-show buzzer. "Wrong! Sorry, Bob, the correct answer is: her husband was killed. He did not die. Big difference, right?"

Anna leans across the bed, bringing her face close to his. "Murder and death are two very different things, my love. Or have you already forgotten?"

She pulls back swiftly, so that his fingers barely graze the surface of her cheek, and runs out of the room.

Anna's version of mourning includes slamming doors and throwing objects across the room. Her grief is the kind that makes noise. She knows that Ben used to love that about her; those mercurial moods, her pa.s.sionate bellows. He used to tell their friends, in the beginning, that Anna Baran roused him like no one else had ever done. Now, Anna and Ben are just an argument waiting to happen. Two months ago, on Ben's birthday, they'd come back from a bar and had drunken s.e.x. Ben hadn't meant to come inside her and a few weeks later, when Anna's period never turned up and, instead, two pink lines on a stick did, there was no discussion of the next step. In a moment Anna knew; not now, and not with Ben.

The afternoon Anna spent at Planned Parenthood was burned into her memory. She sat in a waiting room, in a green paper gown, with five other women. She'd felt sheepish about her engagement ring. One of the girls had a belly that was probably swollen into its fifth month and Anna fixated on it. "What?" the girl asked and stared Anna down, before going back to her People magazine. Anna flushed, embarra.s.sed by her own hypocrisy; she'd wanted to leap out of the chair and run. But Anna had stayed put until the nurse called her name and managed a small goodbye smile to the women.

Ever since that day Anna's been withering. Ben would come home from work to find her on the couch, staring at the ceiling. "You look like your dad," he told her one day.

"f.u.c.k you," she whispered, without turning her head.

When Ben leaves for work after their fight, Anna is on the couch, eating Cheetos.

"This is all getting out of hand" is the only thing he says, right before he closes the door. Anna spends the entire day in the same spot on the couch, thinking about Justyna, and about breaking free.

The next morning, Anna gets out of bed without waking Ben. In the kitchen, she boils water in a saucepan and scoops a tablespoon of Jacobs Kronung into a mug. She sips the milky instant coffee-the same kind she drank in Poland with her babcia-which she buys for four bucks at a deli in Greenpoint. No Starbucks in the world could ever replace it.

Anna climbs out onto the fire escape, mug in hand. It's cold but sunny. She stares across the rooftops and remembers a day, weeks after their engagement, when she had been waiting for the B43 bus after she returned from an audition in the city. It was drizzling and her hair was damp. Anna stood at the bus stop and fished out a pack of smokes from her purse, and that's when she noticed him: a young man in a leather jacket, with thick, wavy hair like Michelangelo's David. He looked like he was from Montenegro or Serbia, or some other war-torn Balkan state. He looked the way she sometimes imagined Sebastian Tefilski would look all grown up. He was staring at her, openly, his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans. She looked away and smiled; it was textbook flirtation. The rain misted over her face, the bus was nowhere in sight.

"Would you accompany me for the coffee?"

Anna had been right. His accent was thick. She paused and lifted her left hand, wiggling her adorned ring finger. The man hung his head in mock despair, and placed his hands over his heart. "Please, anyway?" She laughed as the bus rolled up.

"Sorry," she mouthed over her shoulder, and as she boarded the B43, for a moment, she actually was.

Anna thought about that man for days. She fantasized about running off with him, and she kept her distance from Ben, confused by her feelings. The idea that Ben wasn't enough, that he would never understand, had been planted.

When she crawls back into the kitchen from the fire escape, Anna's cheeks are raw and she feels like someone realigned her vertebrae or something. The shower is running and she decides to actually make breakfast. The idea comes to her out of the blue, and, aside from piles of take-out menus in the cupboard and a few utensils, Anna is unprepared. She finally unearths a frying pan, after rummaging through a moving box marked KITCHMISC.

Minutes later, three eggs sizzle on a paper plate. It's not much, but it's something. Ben emerges from the bathroom, swathed in a towel, trailing steam. "For me?" he asks, pointing to the table. She nods and manages a smile. The whole thing-her effort and his approval-feels lacking, as if they both know a bit of protein can't apologize for everything. Ben eats right then and there, water dripping down his arm as he digs in. Anna wishes the sight could arouse her, or at best rea.s.sure her, but she feels nothing except for a small lump of revulsion when, after the last bite, Ben burps loudly. He leans in to kiss her in thanks, and she lets him.

After Ben leaves for work, Anna goes to her desk, and pulls out an old address book. The numbers look like hieroglyphics and her fingers shake as she dials them.

"Sucham."

Poles answer the phone in a myriad of ways: a basic halo, a polite dziedobry, or an impartial sucham, which translates literally to "I'm listening." When Justyna says it now, it almost sounds like a dare.

"Justyna. It's Anna Baran ... from New York."

"Hi, girl. How are you?"

The neutrality in her old friend's voice takes Anna by complete surprise. "I'm so sorry. My mom told me yesterday."

"Yeah ..."

"I wish I could be there."

"No, you don't." Anna can hear the smile in Justyna's voice; she knows Justyna is trying to keep the conversation light but somehow it does the opposite.

"How's Damian? Last time I saw you, he was a baby, right? When was that? 1998?"

"Yeah."

"And then I got that movie and I-"

"-became a star?" Justyna's voice doesn't belie any accusation, but Anna doesn't know how to respond.

"I'm sorry," she echoes, at a loss.

"Well, you know, s.h.i.+t happens, right? Damian's fine. He's fine."

"He's six?"

"Seven."

"Is he a good-does he like school?"

"Hates it. He'd rather, you know, while away the hours whittling."

"Whittling?" Somehow the conversation has gotten off course.

"Yeah, it was a thing he did with." Justyna makes a sentence out of what should be a fragment. "He's a big baby, though. Still wets the bed, but what are you gonna do? He's a handful, wiesz?" Anna nods her head, but, no, no, she doesn't know.

"Justyna. Really, I'm so sorry. If you and Elwira need anything, I can wire you some money and-"

"No, no," Justyna quickly interrupts, "we're okay. But thanks. So. How are you? You married?"

"Justyna, there's a Western Union near-"

"Listen, Anka, I gotta go. Tell your mom and dad cze. And maybe one day you'll come to Kielce again, right? I'll tell Elwira you said hi. Trzymaj si."