The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk Read Free Book Online Page B

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 glasses. 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 slobbered on subways, not caring who was watching. Ben used to walk down the street shielding boners 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 glasses in an empty mug in the sink. When he gently eased them onto the bridge of her nose, her eyes popped open.
    “Hello 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 pissed you didn’t answer the door. ‘You can fix your own damn 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 fucked 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 shifts away.
    “Babe, you gotta do something about that tooth.”
    “Oh my God! I’m telling you about my traumatic nightmare, and all you do is whine about my breath? Thanks a lot, you prick!” 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 prick 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 fuck 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