In those days he was thick with prejudices, self-importance, anger and grief. He had thought the place would smell of sauerkraut, boiled potatoes, garlicky kielbasa, and ammonia. He’d expected peasant heft in the Polish wife, a grimly tidy cottage and television on all day.
Instead she made space within, white space, zen vehemence. The pirogi were pillows filled with ivory grains of cheese, savory bites of wine darkened cabbage, fluffy dill potato puree, one of each. A broad ribbon of thinned sour cream sprinkled with fresh dill banded the three crepes. He looked at the fraying ribbon of her shirt.
“Is it crying?” she asked and looked down at her own chest, fingering the space where the freckled Indies lay. “I have a weeping mole,” she said, peering down into her own shirt front. “Sometimes it weeps without me, mourning all the lost things in this world.”
She rubbed the space with her finger leaving a red mark behind.
“You have lost a great deal,” he said.