Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [89]
He pushed into a Metro elevator, descended with Joe into the depths. They got on a car, came to the Bethesda stop. Charlie zombied them out. Bad, bad, bad. Sartrean nausea, induced by a sudden glimpse of reality; horrible that it should be so. That the true nature of reality should be so awful. The blanched air in the elevator was unbreathable. Gravity was too heavy.
Out of the elevator, onto Wisconsin. Bethesda was too dismal. A spew of office and apartment blocks, obviously organized (if that was the word) for the convenience of the cars roaring by. A ridiculous, inhuman autopia. It might as well have been Orange County.
He dragged down the sidewalk home. Walked in the front door. The screen door slapped behind him with its characteristic whack.
From the kitchen: “Hi hon!”
“Hi Dad!”
It was Anna and Nick’s day to come home together after school.
“Momma Momma Momma!”
“Hi Joe!”
Refuge. “Hi guys,” Charlie said. “We need a rowboat. We’ll keep it in the garage.”
“Cool!”
Anna heard his tone of voice and came out of the kitchen with a whisk in hand, gave him a hug and a peck on the cheek.
“Hmm,” he said, a kind of purr.
“What’s wrong babe.”
“Oh, everything.”
“Poor hon.”
He began to feel better. He released Joe from the stroller and they followed Anna into the kitchen. As Anna picked up Joe and held him on her hip while she continued to cook, Charlie began to shape the story of the day in his mind, to be able to tell her about it with all its drama intact.
After he had told the story, and fulminated for a bit, and opened and drunk a beer, Anna said, “What you need is some way to bypass the political process.”
“Whoa babe. I’m not sure I want to know what you mean there.”
“I don’t know anyway.”
“Revolution, right?”
“No way.”
“A completely nonviolent and successful positive revolution?”
“Good idea.”
Nick appeared in the doorway. “Hey Dad, want to play some baseball?”
“Sure. Good idea.”
Nick seldom proposed this, it was usually Charlie’s idea, and so when Nick did it he was trying to make Charlie feel better, which just by itself worked pretty well. So they left the coolness of the house and played in the steamy backyard, under the blind eyes of the banked apartment windows. Nick stood against the brick back of the house while Charlie pitched wiffle balls at him, and he smacked them with a long plastic bat. Charlie tried to catch them if he could. They had about a dozen balls, and when they were scattered over the downsloping lawn, they re-collected them on Charlie’s mound and did it over again, or let Charlie take a turn at bat. The wiffle balls were great; they shot off the bat with a very satisfying plastic whirr, and yet it was painless to get hit by one, as Charlie often learned. Back and forth in the livid dusk, sweating and laughing, trying to get a wiffle ball to go straight.
Charlie took off his shirt and sweated into the sweaty air. “Okay here comes the pitch. Sandy Koufax winds up, rainbow curve! Hey why didn’t you swing?”
“That was a ball, Dad. It bounced before it got to me.”
“Okay here I’ll try again. Oh Jesus. Never mind.”
“Why do you say Jesus, Dad?”
“It’s a long story. Okay here’s another one. Hey, why didn’t you swing?”
“It was a ball!”
“Not by much. Walks won’t get you off de island mon.”
“The strike zone is taped here to the house, Dad. Just throw one that would hit inside it and I’ll swing.”
“That was a bad idea. Okay, here you go. Ooh, very nice. Okay, here you go. Hey come on swing at those!”
“That one was behind me.”
“Switch-hitting is a valuable skill.”
“Just throw strikes!”
“I’m trying. Okay here it comes, boom! Very nice! Home run, wow. Uh-oh, it got stuck in the tree, see that?”
“We’ve got enough anyway.”
“True, but look, I can get a foot onto this branch…here, give me the bat for a second. Might as well get it while we remember where it is.”
Charlie climbed a short distance up the tree, steadied himself, brushed leaves aside, reached in and embraced the trunk for balance, knocked the wiffle