The door opened. Grzegorz pushed a paper bag, warm with rolls, onto my lap.
– It didn’t have any cheese, so I got it with blueberries. Is that okay?“Maybe,” I said.
And that was it. The entire way home, through the roundabout, past Kaufland, to our apartment building on Malinka Street, I stared out the window. Grzegorz hummed. The phone sat between us on the console, not making a single sound.
Thirty-six years. That’s how long we were married this spring. The wedding in May, in a church in Zaodrze, the reception at his parents’ fire station near Prószków. Grzegorz was an electrician and still is, though for the past three years he’s been working part-time jobs—as he puts it, “so I don’t rot in front of the TV.” I’ve been working at a plant nursery outside the city for twenty years. My hands are always chapped from the soil, and there’s always a seed or a piece of string in my pocket.
