Free Love Stories in This Town by Amanda Eyre Ward

“Don't take this wrong,” he said, “but I've heard about your troubles.” I blinked. “My sister adopted,” he continued, “a little baby from Romania. A boy, Jack.” Brendan looked at me pointedly.
    “Word travels fast,” I said.
    “Well,” he said, “it is a small office. Anyway, I told her about you, and she'd be happy to meet you for lunch, if you're interested.” He wrote a phone number on an envelope and pushed it across his desk. He stood. “Well, then,” he said, smoothing his Dockers.
    I took the number. “I thought you were going to fire me,” I said.
    Brendan laughed, but not in a very reassuring manner.
    “Look at him,” said Brendan's sister. We were sitting in Sombrero's and there was a baby on the table, between our empanadas. It was a beautiful baby, with brown wisps of hair and fat cheeks.
    “You'd never even know he was Romanian,” said Brendan's sister, a very thin woman with lipstick the color of cherry tomatoes. Jack, in his baby seat, slept peacefully, despite the jangling Mexican music. “I don't see the need to tell anyone he's Romanian,” said Brendan's sister.
    “What?” I said.
    “He looks just like an American boy. He looks like he could be mine. Well, he is mine, isn't he!” she said. Brendan's sister gave me a videotape with a label that read Weensy Miracles in pink script. “You can pick a baby from the video,” said Brendan's sister.
    “It's so easy,” I said.
    “That's what I'm saying,” she said. She told me not to be upset by the babies in the tape who swayed back and forth. “If nobody rocks a baby, they rock themselves,” she explained.
    That night, my husband and I opened a bottle of wine. We slipped underneath our cotton comforter, resting bowls of pasta on our laps, and when the light in the bedroom was silver, we put the tape in the VCR. Between us, there was a warm space for a baby.
    On the television, a man with gray hair and a long mustache walked around a dim room packed with children. From giant, slatted cribs, he picked up infants. For the camera, he held the babies aloft, turning them around, so that people like me could see they were unblemished. He did not stop for the larger children, and just as Brendan's sister had warned, they lined up in rows, their fingers wrapped around the crib slats, rocking themselves back and forth. The tape went on, the man picking up baby after baby.
    I watched the faces of the children who were not chosen by the man. When he came near them, some reached up, but did not look surprised when they were passed over. They stared with a dull hatred at the camera, as if they could see into my bedroom: blue coverlet, leafy trees outside large windows, warm bowls of linguine, a bottle of wine on a hardwood floor.
    When I looked at my husband, he was completely still, watching the video intently. I turned back to the screen, and I wondered if the dinosaurs had felt anything as the asteroid headed toward them, if they had known it was coming.

The Way the Sky Changed
    I had heard about the rib, of course, but did not expect it to be at the Smiths' Christmas party. Yet there it was, on the mantel, sandwiched between a bowl of cinnamon-scented potpourri and a holly sprig. Merry Christmas! Here's our daughter's rib.
    There were pictures of her all over the house. Maybe they had always been there, I don't know. But the one of me and Helen, before our senior prom—it was too much. I stood in the kitchen and drank Scotch fast. My husband would have told me to take it easy, pardner, but he was gone too, and not even a rib to show for himself. My mother came into the kitchen and took in the scene: me, a ham sandwich, an empty glass.
    “How are you?” she said.
    “The ham is delicious,” I noted.
    “From Harrington's in Greenwich,” she said.
    “Really?”
    “Same as last year,” said my mother. I nodded. “Same as the year before that,” she said.
    “Is that right?” I said.
    “Yes,” said my mother.
    In the