Free Happy Family by Tracy Barone

It’s like that with your wife.”
    “What does she want to feel?” Sol asks, sensing that, whatever the answer, he will have no cure.
    “Like she’s a mother.”
    Cookie’s words hang in the air. Sol looks down at his hands, not knowing what to say. “Thank you, Cookie,” Sol says after a minute. “But you can’t be planning on doing this forever. It’ll have to stop eventually.”
    “Yes, sir. But there be plenty of room between now and forever.”
    “Taper off, however it’s best for her to do it, but do it now.”
    “Oh no. I can’t do that.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I can’t be taking that away from her. It’d be taking away the one thing that gives her hope, and if you do that, you’re in for a heap more trouble than you already got. Don’t mean to be rude, Mr. M., but given what y’all been through, that saying a lot.” Sol puts on his coat and grabs his keys, picks up the pump and shoves it in his pocket. He’s almost out the door when he turns around. He never thought he’d take advice from Cookie, but maybe she has a point. He walks back and lays the pump down on the table.
      
    At St. Vincent’s, the television set on Sol’s floor is always on. All day, news reports detail the showdown between the superpowers; no matter how Kennedy framed it, a quarantine against Cuba was an act of war and Khrushchev’s anger shows no sign of abating. The staff is transfixed by the reconnaissance photographs of Soviet missile sites in Cuba. Sol, not usually prone to fear, tries to rationalize it as just a high-stakes game of chicken. But this was for all the marbles and Castro was unstable enough that who knew who would blink first. The world certainly felt like it was on the brink of collapse; could a nuclear bomb already be aimed at New York? Sol thinks of his life with Cici, what it is now compared to what he imagined it would be. What could he possibly do to give their lives a glimmer of the promise and meaning he’d felt the day he married her?
    Later that afternoon, Sol tentatively knocks on the door of Dr. Tremont’s office. He finds Tremont is sitting behind his desk, a messy mahogany affair that’s covered with framed photographs of his golden retrievers.
    “I appreciated our discussion last night,” Sol begins stiffly. “I won’t take up much of your time, but I’d like to ask you about something that could help my wife.” He blunders on, despite his embarrassment. “The device we spoke about—it occurred to me that as illogical as it is, she’s been using it to give her hope. She needs something real, something she can hold on to.”
    Sol looks at Tremont, silently asking him to understand the words he cannot bring himself to say out loud.
    After a long moment, Tremont nods. “You’re talking about adoption. Of course, if you’re prepared to do this so soon after your loss, there are many good agencies.”
    “Given her circumstance,” Sol says, “I believe soon is essential.”
      
    “No waiting. No questions. No checks.” Walter Pembroke, Esquire’s accent, is vaguely Canadian. He sits at his desk across from Sol. “If you’re not interested, there are three other couples I represent who are.” Sol looks at a picture of a baby. Indiscernible sex, unfocused, bluish eyes. He’d get better odds in Atlantic City. “I’m interested,” he says.
    Don Tremont tried to talk Sol into taking his time and working with an adoption agency. He warned that it was dicey to proceed without Cici’s involvement, that given how unstable she was, she could potentially reject a new child. But Sol’s desperation prevailed and Tremont confided that he knew a lawyer who could “cut through the red tape” and who was very discreet.
    So what if the logic of a rushed adoption is dubious; so what if Mr. Pembroke’s “Esquire” was most likely bought through a mail-order course? Sol has to do whatever is necessary to make his wife whole and happy. As shocked as he is to find himself in