Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [113]
Charlie killed the vacuum cleaner, rushed over to turn off Charles Rosen, then slid across the hardwood floor to snatch the boy up in his arms.
“Oh Joe! Joe! What’s wrong, buddy? What’s wrong?”
Joe stuck out his lower lip. “Loud.”
“Oh God Joe I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But, you know—we’re vacuuming! It’s always loud when we vacuum the house.”
“Too loud,” Joe said, and whimpered pathetically.
Charlie hugged him, held him. “Sorry guy,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. This is the way we’ve always done it before.”
And also, it seemed to him, in the past, if Joe had wanted something like the sound turned down, he would have let Charlie know by beating on his kneecap or launching a dinosaur at his head. Charlie was used to a very frank and open exchange of views with Joe, so that they would bicker with each other, sure, tussle, whack, yell—but cry? To have Joe Quibler whimpering in his arms pathetically, content to snuggle up against his chest . . . it was not right. And though it felt good to be able to comfort him, to rock him side to side in his arms, as he had many years before when trying to get Nick to fall asleep—humming gently the main theme of the Grosse Fugue until the Arditti Quartet finished with it upstairs, then continuing to hum it, until it became something like a lullaby for infant robots—it was still extremely disturbing. It just wasn’t like Joe.
He sat down and for a long time hugged the child, communing. Then Joe looked up at the big front window, and his eyes grew round.
“Snow,” he said.
“Yes, that’s right, that’s snow! Very good Joe! I didn’t know you knew how to say that. It must be last winter since you saw snow, and you were just a baby then.”
Joe conducted the snow with outstretched arms, looking rapt, or maybe just stunned. “Snow go down.”
“It sure does. Wow, that’s pretty heavy for a first storm. It looks like it’s going to bury the house. I thought this was supposed to be global warming we were having.”
“Berry house?”
“No not really, I was joking there. It might come up to the windows though, see? I don’t think it will get any higher than that.”
“No?”
“Oh, well, no reason really. It just never does. At least so far. And cold dry winters are supposed to be the thing now. The great paradox. I guess it’s been kind of dry this fall. But now it’s snowing. When it snows it snows.” Charlie was used to babbling meaninglessly at Joe; they were privileged conversations, as between lawyer and client. It was actually a little bit disconcerting to have Joe be starting to understand what he was saying.
Joe kept conducting the snow, his hands making evocative little flutters downward.
Impulsively Charlie gave him another hug. The boy was hot as usual. Not by much, but Charlie could feel it. Anna was keeping a chart on him now, and she had established that he was hotter by day, just under a hundred, and a bit cooler at night, right over 98.6; average 98.9, she concluded after going through one of her statistical fits. It was a way of not thinking, Charlie thought. Quantification as coping. Charlie just felt the heat with his fingertips, as now. Joe shrugged him aside. He was more sensitive these days. Was that true? Well, there was this sudden aversion to Beethoven squared. But one of the weird things about living with a toddler was how fast they changed, and how hard it then became to remember what they had been like before the change, overwhelmed as that memory was by the present state, now so vivid to the eye. Probably Joe was different, because of course, he had to be different. He was growing up. He was adding several million brain cells an hour, and several hundred experiences.
And occasionally he burst out with a newly angry version of his old vehemence;