Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [37]
For Charlie, this meant working full-time, as he had agreed back in November. Everyone else was up to speed and beyond, and he felt an obligation to match them. Up before sunrise, therefore, groggy in the cold dark of the depths of winter, when (Frank said) hominids living this far north had used to go into a dream state very close to hibernation. Get Joe up, or at least transferred sleeping into his stroller. Quick walk with Anna down to the Metro station in Bethesda—companionable, as if they were still in bed together, or sharing a dream; Charlie could almost fall back asleep on such a walk. Then descend with her into the Earth, dimly lit and yet still lighter than the predawn world above. Slump in a bright vinyl seat and snooze against Anna to Metro Center, where she changed trains and they went up in elevators to the sidewalk, to have a last brisk walk together, Joe often awake and babbling, down G Street to the White House. There pass through security, more quickly each time, and down to the daycare center, where Joe bounced impatiently in his stroller until he could clamber over the side and plow off into the fun. He was always one of the first kids there and one of the last to leave, and that was saying a lot. But he did not remark on this, and did not seem to mind. He was still nice to the other kids. Indeed the various teachers all told Charlie how well he got along with the other kids.
Charlie found these reports depressing. He could see with his own eyes the beginning and end of Joe’s days in daycare, but there weren’t as many kids there at those times. And he remembered Gymboree, indeed had been traumatized by certain incidents at Gymboree.
Now, as everyone pointed out, Joe was calm to the point of detachment. Serene. In his own space. In the daycare he looked somewhat like he would have during a quiet moment on the floor of their living room at home; perhaps a bit more wary. It worried Charlie more than he could say. Anna would not understand the nature of his concern, and aside from her…he might have mentioned it to Roy during one of their phone calls, back in the old days. But Roy had no time and was obsessed, and there was no one else with whom to share the feeling that Joe had changed and was not himself. That wasn’t something you could say.
Sometimes he brought it up with Anna obliquely, as a question, and she agreed that Joe was different than he had been before his fever, but she seemed to regard it as within the normal range of childhood changes, and mostly a function of learning to talk. Growing up. Her theory was that as Joe learned to talk he got less and less frustrated, that his earlier tempestuousness had been frustration at not being able to communicate what he was thinking.
But this theory presupposed that the earlier Joe had been inarticulate, and in possession of thoughts he had wanted to communicate to the world but couldn’t; and that did not match Charlie’s experience. In his opinion, Joe had always communicated exactly whatever he was feeling or thinking. Even before he had had language, his thoughts had still been perfectly explicit, though not linguistic. They had been precise feelings, and Joe had expressed them precisely, and with well-nigh operatic virtuosity.
In any case, now it was different. To Charlie, radically different. Anna didn’t see that, and it would upset her if Charlie could persuade her to see it, so he did not try. He wasn’t even sure what it was he would be trying to convey. He didn’t really believe that the real Joe had gone away as a result of the Khembalis’ ceremony for him. When Charlie had made the request, his rather vague notion had been that what such a ceremony would dispel would