Part 11 (1/2)
”That's a beaut. I'll give it to you for $135.”
”$120?”
”No way. This is one of the best trees on the lot.”
”So why hasn't it sold? Tomorrow's Christmas, sir, and it's still standing here....” Anna smiles coquettishly. Just then her father appears, dragging behind him a scrawny, sickly looking specimen. It's a Charlie Brown tree.
”Whatchu doin'? Let's go. I got it.”
”Dad, that's, like, a bush. I think we should get this one. It's beautiful. That one won't even hold half of Mom's ornaments.”
”A hundred forty dollar? Whatchu, crazy f.u.c.ka? Ees the high robbery. I go to forest and get one the more beautiful for zero dollar.” The lumberjack shakes his head and walks off.
”You've been saying that every Christmas since I was eight. We're gonna drive upstate and chop down our own tree? Really? Just let me get this one! It's my money.”
”I your father and I say that's eet. Nie pieprz gupot.” Radosaw hoists his tree onto one shoulder and starts walking. By the time she catches up to him on Columbus Avenue, he's close to the apartment building, smoking a More Red, and he looks p.i.s.sed.
He speaks quickly and in Polish. ”Never embarra.s.s me like that again. You moved back under my roof, and if you don't like my rules, get back on the f.u.c.king L train.” Anna wordlessly holds the lobby door open for him.
Two weeks ago, when she arrived at her parents' apartment in Manhattan with her duffel and announced that she and Ben were over, her mother raised her eyebrows but petted her shoulder rea.s.suringly. ”He didn't have money anyway,” she said. Her father hadn't acted surprised, and had told her that living in sin had its consequences; a kick to the curb, he said, was what she deserved.
When they open the door, Paulina is on the living room floor, arranging delicate gla.s.s-blown ornaments, the Polish-made bombki she's collected over the years. She's ama.s.sed Santa Clauses from every continent, tiny gla.s.s mushrooms, gla.s.s birds with feathery plumes, wooden doves, and miniature cottages. Paulina takes pride in these baubles, and she gets excited when she can finally put them on display. Neighbors from the apartment building come by every year and proclaim that the Barans' tree is straight out of a Gracious Home catalogue, while Paulina, the super's wife, poses next to her creation and flushes with pride.
”I tried.” Anna unwraps her scarf and slowly takes off her coat.
”What do you mean?” Paulina asks, panic already rising in her voice.
Radosaw heaves the tree into the living room and goes about securing it in the stand. When it is upright he rips the binding off with his bare hands and gives the trunk a good shake. Paulina and Anna a.s.sess its many shortcomings. The spruce is pallid green, it is short, ungainly, unruly, and altogether tragic.
”Is this a joke?” Paulina asks Anna. ”Did you leave the real one in the hallway?”
Radosaw picks up a glittery gla.s.s bulb the size of a grapefruit, bright red and painted with pearly white doves, and he throws it to the floor. It instantly shatters into tiny pieces. Before Paulina has time to react he grabs another ornament, a Danish Santa Claus in a white robe.
”Should I keep going? Maybe if I keep going there'll be just enough left for the f.u.c.king tree. Pagans!”
Paulina starts crying and runs to get a broom.
”You're such a miser, Dad.”
Radosaw shrugs and walks into the bedroom.
Later that afternoon, after the tree has been decorated to the best of their abilities, Anna and her mother sit on the couch, drinking tea and staring at the TV. The Polish satellite channel is playing an episode of Paulina's favorite soap, Zotopolscy. Anna couldn't care less about the dismally acted comings and goings of some fictional Polish upper-middle-cla.s.s family, but her mother is enthralled, commenting on the action as it unfurls. Anna waits for a commercial to speak.
”Mamusia, what's going on?”
”Well, Katarzyna just found out she's pregnant but she's in love with Father Piotr, who's actually having an affair with Pani Hania from the bakery. I wonder if she's going to keep the ba-”
”With you, Mom. What's going on with you and Dad?” Living with them again, Anna has noticed the growing strain between them, evident in the fact that her father has taken over Anna's old bedroom, and is sleeping there nightly.
Paulina stares into her teacup for a moment before answering.
”Have you ever had your fortune read?”
Anna shakes her head.
”I did, when I was twenty, tea leaves in the bottom of the saucer. My Ciocia Alusia was the real deal. She warned us that my dad was going to die young, due to emphysema. Anyway, you know what it said? My fortune? 'Things will break apart and it will always be your job to put them back together.' ”
Anna glances at her mother's hands. Paulina's fingers wrap around the porcelain Bayreuth cup. They are weathered beyond forty-eight.
”What if the broken thing is you, Mamo? Isn't it your job then, to put yourself back together? You need to divorce him.”
”He'd kill me.”
”And then he'd get over it.”
”No, corko, he'd hunt me down in the middle of the night and stick a knife in me. He's told me so.”
”He's full of s.h.i.+t. And you're afraid of dying? You're already dying!”
”Oh, cut it out, Anna! Life's not that simple.”
”It is! It is that simple. I packed a bag, I wrote a note, and I shut the door behind me. Stop being a tchorz, Mother-you are wasting your life.”
”A coward?” Paulina's face contorts and her eyes blink rapidly, fending off tears. ”What happened after you left that note for Ben? You ran here so you wouldn't have to look him in the face. You sneak off to get clothes when you know he's at work. So who's the coward?”
Anna doesn't answer because there is no answer. She has been evading Ben; it's been hard work to avoid phone calls, to hide out in her parents' living room. It's hard work but it comes naturally to Anna.
At six o'clock, Radosaw emerges from his cave, wearing jeans and a wrinkled white s.h.i.+rt. The table is ready. An extra place is set for a wandering vagabond-it's a Polish tradition. If anyone knocked on the door tonight, they would be taken in, just like Joseph and Mary who begged for shelter on Christmas Eve and found it in a manger.
Before Anna and her parents eat, the opatek is shared. Anna breaks off a piece of the square wafer, imprinted with a nativity scene, that she bought for two bucks at a Polish deli, and wishes her mother peace and money, as she's done for years now. Her father chews noisily, then engulfs Anna in a hug.
”I just want you to be happy, Tato.” Anna's voice quivers.
”Oh yeh, yeh, yeh,” he answers, goofy and glib, and shrugs his shoulders. ”Sorry for me. You should have the career and the guy who love you, eef you wanna, my dough-ter.” Her father was capable of poetry once. Anna has read the letters he wrote to Paulina from prison. I dream of your naked body, of your hips, which slope shyly toward me, like two pearly seash.e.l.ls. There must have been a love story, once.
Sharing the opatek was always Anna's favorite part of Christmas Eve. The words and intentions were fleeting, but it didn't matter; Poles worldwide were soldiering on, and for five minutes the atmosphere was full of repentance and hope. Out of the corner of her eye, Anna watches her parents silently exchange a truce, her father's arm slung casually around Paulina's neck, her mouth pursed in a straight line. Then they eat, and after the dishes have been put away, they exchange gifts and small, gratified smiles. It's a nice hour and then it's over.
At around three A.M. there is a huge, shattering crash. Anna's eyes adjust to the dark and there it is, the cause of the ear-splitting ruckus. The tree has fallen, weighed down with too many ornaments. Her parents run in from their separate rooms and one of them flicks on the light. The tree lies across the coffee table inches from where Anna is sleeping on the sofa; gla.s.s debris is everywhere, like rainbow-colored shrapnel. Paulina starts sobbing and swatting at Radosaw's face. He expertly grabs her wrists and shoves her away from him.
”That's what you get, szmato. Be glad G.o.d struck down the f.u.c.king tree and not you. But so help me, if you touch me again, I'll do it for him. Get a broom, Anka,” he orders, scratching his belly. Anna huddles on the couch, careful not to move, sure she is covered in tiny gla.s.s fragments invisible to the naked eye. She turns her face toward her father. ”You get a broom. Or better yet, get back on your meds.”
”What meds?”
”Um, it's called Prozac and it's what makes you human.”
”Mind your business, and clean up this mess, idiotko.”
”You think I'm gonna run to my room and cry because you called me a name, Dad, like I did when I was twelve? I'm not scared of you anymore, Tato. In a few years, you'll have nothing left but visions of your bygone glory, dancing like sugarplums in your warped head. And you'll still be hosing down the sidewalk for the Americans.” Anna's voice cracks before she continues. ”You were my hero, my bohater, and I wors.h.i.+pped at your altar. I really f.u.c.king did.”
Her father's fists are clenched at his sides. His hands are purple. Go ahead, Anna begs silently, give me something to cry about. But he walks back into his room and slams the door behind him.