Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [187]
“That’s right. So don’t throw any fits. We’ll make it work, right Joe?”
Joe patted him on the shoulder solicitously. “Good Da.”
But this was only one of many such occurrences. Charlie began to dread the trip down to the daycare center to pick Joe up; what would he have perpetrated this time? Fitting a Play-Doh hat to a sleeping girl; climbing the fence and setting off the security alarm; plugging the sink with Play-Doh and climbing in the little “bath” that resulted…he was very creative with Play-Doh, as a sympathetic young black woman named Desiree noted, trying to reduce the tension in one of these postmortem sessions.
But reducing the tension was getting harder to do. The woman in charge asked Charlie to take Joe in to their staff doctor for an evaluation, and that led to an evaluation by a child psychiatrist, which led to a sequence of unilluminating tests; which led, finally, to a suggestion that they consider trying one of the very successful ameliorating drug therapy regimens, among them the paradoxical-sounding but clinically proven Ritalin.
“No,” Charlie said, politely but firmly. “He’s not even three years old. A lot of people are like this at his age. I was probably like this then. It isn’t appropriate.”
“Okay,” the doctors and daycare people said, their faces carefully expressionless.
Charlie was afraid to hear what Anna thought about it. Being a scientist, she might be in favor of it.
But it turned out that, being a scientist, she was deeply suspicious that the treatment had been studied rigorously enough. The fact that they didn’t know the mechanism by which these stimulants calmed certain kids made her coldly contemptuous, in her usual style. Indeed, Charlie had seldom seen her so disdainful of other scientific work. No drug therapies, she said. My Lord. Not when they don’t even have a suspected mechanism. The flash-freeze of her disrespect—it made Charlie grin. How he loved his scientist.
“Look,” Charlie said to the daycare director one time, “ I like the way he is.”
“Maybe you should be the one taking care of him, then,” she said. Which he thought was pretty bold, but she met his eye; she had her center to consider. And she had seen what she had seen.
“Maybe I should.”
On the Metro ride home, Charlie watched Joe as the boy stared out the window. “Joe, do you like daycare?”
“Sure, Da.”
“Do you like it as much as going to the park?”
“Let’s go to the park!”
“When we get home.”
THE THREE KAYAKERS WERE OUT at Great Falls again, testing the Fish Ladder. Charlie and Drepung were getting better at it; they could rush up three or four drops before they tired and turned and rode the drops back down. Frank was getting almost all the way to the top.
When they were done, and just riding the current downstream to their put-in, they discussed all that was happening, first the new stuff Phil Chase had introduced, and then the latest in the ongoing negotiations between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. Drepung was excited about the possibilities opening up.
As they closed on shore, Frank said, “So, Drepung, do you, you know—believe in all the reincarnation stuff?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think you are the reincarnation of that last Panchen Lama, and all the ones before?”
Even as Frank was saying it, Charlie was seeing a bit of physical resemblance between the youth and photos he had seen of the previous Panchen Lama, despite how obese the previous one had gotten (although Drepung worked hard to hold down his weight). It was a look in the eye—somewhat like the look on Drepung’s face when Frank had given them climbing lessons. A wary, worried look—even a repressed fear—and sharp concentration. Of course it made sense. The Chinese government considered itself to be the master of the Panchen Lama.
“So are you part of these negotiations with the Chinese?” Charlie said.
“Yes.”
“But could you get, you know, remanded to them?”
“No, that won’t happen. The people and the Dalai Lama are behind me.”
“Shouldn’t you be announcing who you are, as a safeguard?”