Happy Family (7 page)

Sol pulls into the HoJo's lot at exactly the appointed time and parks at the end that's farthest away from the restaurant, as instructed. He turns off the engine and looks around: nobody in the lot except a teenager in a leather jacket who gets out of a rusted station wagon parked a few spots away from him. Sol will have to wait. He rubs the back of his thumb against his cuticles, feels antsy, has the impulse to flee. This is for Cici, he reminds himself as he switches on the new radio, twizzling the buttons—but it's just more about the missile crisis, so he quickly switches it off. That is the last thing he wants to think about right now. In the rearview, the boy is staring at the Caddy. He's about fifty feet away; close enough so Sol could read the expression on his face if it weren't totally blank.

The boy juts his chin out in a way that reminds Sol of the Irish kids he grew up with, the types his father labeled “goyish hoodlum delinquents.” Sol checks his watch. Where is Pembroke? The kid has lasers for eyes and it's making Sol uncomfortable. What's he thinking, that he's going to rob a man in a new Caddy? Sol would lock the car doors but that would only make him feel more claustrophobic.

A heavyset woman emerges from the restaurant carrying some bags of food. The boy says something to her and now they're both looking over at Sol, who is about to sweat through his shirt when a Dodge Dart pulls in and parks next to the station wagon. Pembroke gets out, flaps his hands in front of the kid and the woman, then trots over to Sol. “Dr. Matzner. Terribly sorry I'm late. You weren't supposed to meet like this.” Sol gets out of the Caddy and sees that the woman has put her bags in her car and is starting to walk toward them.

“We haven't met,” Sol says coldly. Pembroke takes Sol's arm but Sol shakes it off. “You didn't say there were going to be other people here. Who the hell are they?”

“It's the foster family. They've been looking after the baby, and, uh, insisted they be here…” The woman is now only a few feet away and she abruptly thrusts out her hand.

“Margaret Beal, this is my son Billy, and you are…?”

“The adoptive father, Mrs. Beal, I can take it from here,” Pembroke says. Margaret Beal's eyes don't leave Sol's. She bulldozes ahead.

“I told Mr. Pembroke here that my son and I needed to meet the people who were going to take the baby.” In response to Sol's quizzical look, she adds, “We didn't want to name her, it's usually better that way. Do you and your wife have a name picked out? Is your wife here with you? I expected to meet her too.”

“I didn't realize this was an interview,” Sol says.

“We're very fond of the baby, especially my son Billy here. He's the reason we took her in the first place. We wanted to meet you, face-to-face. You see where she's been; we see where she's going. Your wife?”

“Is at home,” Sol says.

“Excuse us,” Pembroke says, pulling Mrs. Beal away. They talk quietly on the far side of the station wagon while the son stands across from them looking into the window of the backseat. Pembroke told Sol the adoption would be anonymous and now there's Mrs. Beal to contend with. She's pushy, but well-meaning; the baby could have done far worse. Now Pembroke's raising his voice, spouting legalese. If Sol doesn't want this all to go south, he's got to get involved.

While the son wolfs down two clam rolls, Sol goes into doctor mode with Mrs. Beal. He diagnoses and then allays her fears with natural authority; soon she's asking him for advice about her sister Mab's gout and Pembroke's ready to close the deal. Mrs. Beal talks quietly about nipple flows and burp cloths while the boy gets a white wicker bassinet out of the car. Sol can see the baby's face peeking out of her blankets; she's filled out since her picture was taken and she has apple cheeks. Pembroke is pulling off the blanket to show Sol that the baby's got all her fingers and toes and confirms that Sol has reviewed all the medical records. He notes that she was vaccinated. It's like he's buying a horse.

Suddenly Pembroke is handing Sol the basket. It is heavier than Sol expected and more cumbersome. He doesn't know how to hold it. Just as he begins to readjust, Pembroke motions that it is time for the cash.

Sol doesn't want to hand Pembroke the envelope in full view of Mrs. Beal. It feels too mercenary, tawdry. He motions for Pembroke to open the passenger door. Once they're both in the car, they discreetly exchange the envelope for the signed adoption papers. “You took care of everything with the state?” Sol presses. “My wife and I have the baby free and clear?”

“Of course,” Pembroke says. “All the paperwork from the foster program is there, signed and in order.” Sol prays Pembroke doesn't have the bad taste to open the envelope and count the bills. Pembroke runs his hand over the dashboard. “Nice,” he says. “Congratulations to you and Mrs. Matzner.” Sol wonders if he's referring to the baby or the Cadillac. Pembroke doesn't really seem like a baby person.

When Pembroke's gone, Sol takes a deep breath. The air is redolent of new car and something else he'd smelled when he'd picked up the baby in her basket. Not soap or powder, he'd recognize those; this was organic and sweet. For the first time since he started this venture, he feels a moment of peace.

He placed the baby in her basket in the backseat but then decides to move her up front where he can keep an eye on her. He gingerly moves the bassinet to the passenger seat, taking pains not to wake her. Her skin's so white it's practically transparent and he can see her eyes moving beneath her closed lids. Her hair is black, and there's a lot of it, he thinks, not really knowing how much hair an almost three-month-old should have. She's also bigger than he expected. Just as he's settling himself back into the driver's seat, there's a sharp rap on the window—Mrs. Beal is standing on the other side of the glass. Her face has lost its composure; traces of sadness pull at the corners of her mouth. Sol searches for the button to lower the window.

“Sorry to bother you, but my son wanted to make sure I told you one more thing. Billy wants to let you know she likes baseball. The Yankees, of course. During the season, let her listen to a game, she'll light right up like she's rooting for them. Billy there is the star pitcher for the Trenton Tigers, look out because soon you'll see him in the majors.” Sol nods politely and she waves and returns to her car. Sol fixes his own seat belt and now it's just him, his new sleeping baby, his new car, and a world still on the brink of collapse. “All right, then,” he says to no one in particular.

C
ici's face is wet with tears. Sol can't tell if they're tears of joy or pain. He'd left the baby, who was still sleeping, in the car and gone upstairs to get Cici. She refused to come downstairs, even after he said he had a really,
really
big surprise—one she was sure to like.

Even before he opened the front door to return to the car he heard it: a wail that began to crescendo and showed no signs of abating. The baby hollered when Sol took her out of her basket, she screamed and kicked off her blankets—it was all Sol could do to carry her up the stairs and into the bedroom. The baby gulped and sputtered and Sol bounced her a little but was having no luck calming her down. Cici must have heard the crying because she was standing at the window, locked in place, facing away from Sol. Waiting for Cici to turn around felt to Sol like an eternity. When she did, her gaze was lowered and he could see tears wet her face. She took a few steps toward him and when she met his eyes it was as if she was seeing him, again, for the first time. Her expression so tender, so grateful, as she reached out toward the baby in his arms.
“Per favore,”
she said.

Sol had assumed they'd talk a bit. He'd explain his decision, leaving out certain specifics, but in his mind, talking occurred. But now, there was no talking. Cici took the baby in her arms and began cooing and murmuring softly. “I'll just be downstairs, waiting,” Sol mumbled after watching the circle close around his wife and their infant. “I'll leave the two of you alone, give you time to get to know each other.”

Get to know each other? Sol feels like a galoot. He thinks it's going well, though, because every time he goes upstairs to check on them, they're clucking and cooing, and now the baby's quiet. He makes Cici a sandwich and brings it up along with the bag of bottles and formula and diapers Mrs. Beal had given him. “I thought you might both be hungry,” he says. He lays down the care package, filled with things he isn't quite sure what to do with. The baby's in bed next to Cici, curled like a lima bean. Sol puts the sandwich down on the table next to Cici's side of the bed. She looks like a child herself. “Shhhhhhhhh,” she says, pressing her finger to her lips and closing her eyes.

Sol spends the night on the sofa and the next day Cici and the baby sleep until noon. Sol tunes in to the Voice of America, which is broadcasting President Kennedy's response to Khrushchev. “I think that you and I, with our heavy responsibilities for the maintenance of peace, were aware that developments were approaching a point where events could have become unmanageable.” Kennedy sounds so calm, so restrained. Listening to his voice makes the fact that the world has just been teetering on the edge of nuclear war seem unbelievable. The Soviets are going to stop building bases in Cuba and will dismantle their offensive weapons; they had blinked. High noon appears to be over everywhere in the world, including in his own home. Sol is greatly relieved. Why, then, does he still feel a sense of disquiet, like he's forgotten to do something but can't remember what?

Cici and the baby stay in their bedroom for three days and nights, until both are exhausted from the struggle to feed and be fed, until Cici's milk is flowing fully and the baby is sucking from her breast. Cici refused to use a bottle or formula, determined to nurse this child as she would have her own. Love starts to form underneath the crust of Cici's grief, and she is hungry to protect and keep close the new object of her affection. “I am your mama, and you are
mia bambina,
” she says to the baby. “I am mama,” Cici whispers until she can no longer picture the gray face of her son. “You are my baby. Mama will not lose you,
tesoro mio.
”

Sol feels like a stranger in his own home. The closed bedroom door is a barrier between him and what is distinctly female. Sol is excluded from whatever is going on behind that door, and after days of it, he feels a mounting anger. Then again, shouldn't he just be happy that she's taken with the child, that they're forming a bond? Isn't this exactly what he wanted? But Cici is young and inexperienced, and what she needs is the advice of a more mature woman, like one of her sisters. Certainly not uneducated Cookie. He doesn't trust that Cookie, not anymore.

Sol has noticed that Cookie has a spring in her step since the baby arrived. Maybe because she has a free pass into their bedroom and he doesn't. Sol watches her disappear into the room and reappear with dirty diapers and dishes. Cookie makes trips to and from the baby's room, fetching clothing and ointment and rattles and returning with applesauce, corn pudding, mashed potatoes, yams. Sol has teeth he'd like to use and the rotation is getting tiresome. It's obvious that Sol isn't needed at home, so he calls the hospital and says he's coming back to work. He had another radiologist cover for him for a couple of days, but now it is time for life to return to normal.

By the seventh day of Cici's sequestration with the baby, Sol's back is tied in knots from sleeping on the living-room sofa. Rather than knocking softly on the door and speaking to his wife through a baffling of wood, this morning he barges in, unannounced. Cici is sitting up, a pillow under her arm and the baby nestled at her breast. Her hair is clean and pinned up and she wears no makeup. Sol can't remember ever seeing her look more beautiful. Without taking her eyes off the baby, she motions for Sol to come around beside her. All the words he planned to say—that she needed to snap out of this ethnic nonsense and feed the child some proper formula, that he would be coming back to their bed tonight—are silenced. A breeze from the open window releases the faint scent of powder and something buttery, almost like caramel. “Come,
amore mio,
” she says. He sits next to her on the bed as she turns the baby toward him. The child has the strangest eyes. They are two distinctly different colors; one blue and the other hazel, heading into green. The baby is alert, locking right onto him. Is he supposed to hold her? He hesitates and Cici puts the baby over her shoulder and pats her back for a burp. She's cooing in some version of Italian baby talk, making round circles on the baby's back. “Shhhhh,
cara mia, tesoro mio,
chérie, cara
.” Cici looks so peaceful now; except for the scars on her stomach there's no outward sign anything bad has happened. Sol feels uncomfortable perched on the edge of the bed; should he slide his legs up, spoon into the family? He picks one leg up and slides an arm around Cici's shoulders. Is he supposed to watch her and the baby making eyes at each other in wonderment? He tries. The baby has spit bubbles on her mouth and Cici blows on her face, laughing her delicious laugh. But this new position is no more comfortable for Sol than the other, and he waits for Cici to notice and readjust. But she is too busy sniffing the top of the baby's head. Is Sol supposed to sniff it too? Is he supposed to feel something immediately toward this child that bears no resemblance to him, that is not his flesh and blood? Clearly Cici does. Cici squeezes his hand and tells him to breathe, right there; she kisses the baby's downy head. Sol realizes the baby is the source of the caramel smell, the scent he couldn't describe mingling with new car. Sol has a dawning dread that he may have made a mistake, one that can't be undone. They are now three. He feels the unevenness of the number, the potential for gaps, for triangles.

“Don't you want to know her name?” Cici says. She sounds fragile and terribly lovely. It makes Sol want to inhale her voice and sail away. When she finally looks up at him, her gaze fills him up. It feels like forever since she's done that. “It is Cherie,” Cici whispers. “
Ma chérie amour.
Is
perfetto,
no?”

She's named the baby their term of endearment? The name she calls him when they make love? “Perfect,” he says weakly as he walks out and quietly closes the door.

And what of the baby in all of this, the newly minted Cheri (without an
e
because Sol wanted there to be at least a letter of difference between his pet name and hers)? She inhaled the soft woolly smell of blankets, the powdery, sticky scent of white cream, and vanilla from the long hair that she grabbed as it tickled over her face. And there was the smell of something else that was put into her mouth, wet and soft, not like the salty-tasting fingers that touched her lips. This thing that was pressed into her mouth, that made her cough and choke and was dry at first and then became liquid that tasted sweet and slightly bitter. Sometimes it tasted different, it made her sneeze; she'd smell it on the cloth that would wipe her face or on the front of her when she spit it up. The source of the smell, the liquid, had big soft lips and big soft hands that sometimes pressed her hard into the smell, wanting her to drink more when she was full. The source of the smell clutched her and made noises that she'd heard before but that sounded different, like they needed her to respond. Like they were waiting. The smell would sometimes be so close she felt she couldn't breathe and then she'd cry and get pulled closer and closer so she stopped crying to get away. The smell opened its lips and closed them over and over again making “Mmaaa,” and then “Maaaa.” “I am your mama,” so that one day she would know the smell was Mama, so the smell had a name.

Cheri sleeps with Mama and dreams of things she'll soon forget. A woman in a blue dress dances barefoot on the moon. “I'll fly you to bliss,” she says, twirling to a chorus of voices spoken in words she doesn't yet know; “Terry's on the mound at the bottom of the ninth and the pressure is on”; “If I'd wanted another kid I'd go knock up Mab.” “Cheri,
amore mio,
I am here. I will never leave you,” she hears as she opens her eyes, as the smell reaches to embrace her, to take her in, grasping tight, too tight. “Never, ever.”