Part 11 (2/2)
Moments later, it's as if nothing's happened at all. Paulina is quietly doing her best to sweep away the debris. The tree is already by the door and Anna can't recall how it got there. Anna grabs her coat and walks out of the back of the apartment, to the alley where her father sorts the recycling. After Anna graduated from college, her parents left Brooklyn and moved to the Upper West Side, when her dad lucked out and got a job as a superintendent in a fancy high-rise. ”We're like the Polish Jeffersons!” Anna had joked, but her parents didn't get it. She lights a cigarette now and as she smokes, she remembers the time Radosaw told Paulina he was taking Anna to Costco, and instead they rented a car and drove to Atlantic City, where they played nickel slots. On the ride back home, her father shared stories about his wayward youth. They had been happy. She flicks the cigarette into the dark and walks back inside.
”There's gla.s.s in the cus.h.i.+ons, but I can't vacuum now. Or should I?” Paulina is sitting on the couch, dustpan in her lap.
”You should go to sleep, Mamo. It will be okay.”
Anna sits down next to her mother and thinks about reaching for her hand.
”Mamo, I have a one-way ticket in my purse. I'm going to Polska today, booked business on the eleven P.M. flight. Come with me.” Paulina looks down.
”I can't, corko. I just can't.”
Anna nods her head. ”Tell me, then. Tell me what made you love him. Tell me something that will make me understand why you're still here.”
Paulina's eyes close. ”He used to mold me little figurines out of bread and water, when he was in jail. Little stars and a bear. I still have them. He was unbelievably handsome and everyone called him Ponderosa because he wanted to be a cowboy.” Her mother is crying softly and now Anna takes her hand and holds it.
When Anna wakes up, it is light outside and she is parched. She walks to the kitchen and is startled to find her father sitting at the table, playing with a match. He lets the flame burn down to his fingertips, till there is only a hiss, a small puff of white smoke. When Anna was little, her father brought kasztany back from his trips to Europe-s.h.i.+ny, smooth chestnuts, oversized and beautiful-and he'd make little animals from them, using matches for legs, horns, and hooves. Anna lined them up on her windowsill, and stared at them in the mornings, imagining their lives, till they began to rot and her mother threw them out.
Radosaw takes another match and lights a cigarette. He tilts his head back and exhales a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling. ”I never wanted this.”
”Yeah,” Anna replies, not wanting to cry.
Suddenly, Anna remembers taking Radosaw to see Braveheart the year it came out. Her father was riveted, laughing happily when the barnyard Scots mooned the ruthless Brits, and wept like a child when Mel Gibson died in the end, and then every day afterward Radosaw walked through the house bellowing out, ”Freeeeeeedom!” It was in his blood, and yet now, he sits hunched over like a child.
Her father looks down at his knuckles. ”I never wanted your mother, or marriage, or you. I wanted to be a fighter, like my father, like his father before him. I was a fighter. But she made me stop. I called the wedding off three times. But she wouldn't let me go.”
”I don't believe that. You're either lying or you don't remember. No one can 'make you' when it comes to that.”
Her father slams the tabletop. ”G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I'm telling you-she made me.” His eyes brim with redness, and he squeezes them shut.
”Just leave me alone. Zostaw mnie.” His voice is shockingly pleading and so Anna complies.
At eight o'clock, Anna finishes packing, puts on her coat, and sets her duffel bag by the door. Paulina watches her every move.
”Tell Babcia I miss her. Tell her I'm going to come visit this summer, this time for real. And give her some money, Anna, please.”
”I don't get how you've never been back to Poland, in all these years, Mamo. Money's not an issue. Just come with me,” Anna pleads one last time. But her mother shakes her head.
”I'm afraid if I go back, Ania, that I'll never want to leave.”
Anna smiles. This, she understands. She walks over and hands her mother a wad of cash. ”This is for you, Mommy. Get a nice haircut. Not at Supercuts, okay?” Paulina takes the money and stares at it.
Before leaving, Anna cracks open the door to her father's room. Radosaw lies on the bed, propped up on his elbows, tapping ashes into a saucer which rests next to his Polish newspaper, its inky pages spread like a blanket before him.
”I'm going, Ponderosa.”
Her father's face registers surprise at his old nickname and he raises his eyebrows. ”Where you going?”
”Home.”
Outside, it's dark and quiet. Anna hails a cab and quickly gets in.
”JFK, please.”
There is barely any traffic as they head east toward the Queensboro Bridge. In her pocket, her cell phone vibrates. In a few hours, she will be unreachable and she can't wait. But she hasn't spoken to Ben since running off, and she figures that everybody deserves a goodbye.
”Anna?” Ben's voice is familiar and foreign at once. She remembers the first time they made love and how hungry she was for it, and how, when he pa.s.sed out exhausted next to her afterward, Anna stared up at the ceiling, somehow still wanting more.
”Merry Christmas, Ben. Wesoych wit.”
”Anna. Oh, f.u.c.king Christ. You picked up! You finally picked up, and I'm leaving. I'm in a cab and I'm flying to Omaha. Oh, Anna.”
”I'm leaving too. On my way to JFK. You?”
”LaGuardia.”
Under the bridge, the East River s.h.i.+nes black, tiny frozen lakes s.h.i.+mmering on its glossy surface. Ben is silent and for a minute Anna thinks that the call was dropped.
”Anna.” Ben sighs. He's groping for an answer, or holding on for dear life, but isn't that the same thing, really? ”Are you going to Poland?”
”Yes.”
”Anna. Why? We have to deal with this, with us. You wrote a f.u.c.king note. After years with me, you left a note. I'm surprised you didn't leave a twenty by the bedside while you were at it.”
”I have to go home.”
”It's not your home, Anna. Your home is right here.”
”Well, what if I told you I'm going to see a boy? Would that make you feel better?”
Ben doesn't answer; he just hangs up.
Anna closes her eyes and presses her fingertips over her eyelids. When she was a little girl, back in Poland, she would shut her eyes at nap time, and do the same thing, till the blinding billows of white she'd see would turn to colors, like a kaleidoscope. ”You'll damage your corneas,” Babcia used to say.
The inside of JFK is quiet. Footsteps echo, shadows fall; it's like a movie set. Anna walks up to the business-cla.s.s counter at LOT, and the Polish airline attendant hands Anna her ticket and doesn't say anything.
An hour later, sweating and ready to drop, she boards a plane that is already occupied with pa.s.sengers traveling from Chicago. The cabin interior smells Polish, like krakowska ham, cheap floral eau de toilette, and sweat. She finds her place in the third row, and plonks into it gratefully. It's at times like these she thanks G.o.d that the world all but overlooks the existence of her country. You mention Poland to an American and they think three things: kiebasa, the Pope, and Auschwitz, probably in that order. No one really gives a s.h.i.+t about her homeland. So why would anyone bother messing with a planeload of Polacks? Anna convinces herself that no Al Qaeda crazy would give a f.u.c.k about hijacking LOT Flight 76, direct to Warsaw, and she takes a deep breath, clutching her father's medallion around her neck.
When the captain announces that they are ready for takeoff, and the engines rumble toward their full throttle, Anna grips her hands together. Her thighs jiggle. Her neck goes rigid. The man sitting next to her cracks a wide smile.
”Scared?” he asks in Polish.
Anna nods her head.
”Don't be, laleczko. If it happens, you won't even know.” The man is smug, openly judging her head to toe.
”Thanks,” she replies in English. Thanks, in a perfect American accent, because sometimes that puts these types of a.s.sholes in their place.
<script>