Forty Signs of Rain. Kim Stanley Robinson

      So now Charlie sat there in Gymboree, hanging with the moms and the nannies. A nice situation in theory, but in practice a diplomatic challenge of the highest order. No one wanted to be misunderstood. No one would regard it as a coincidence if he happened to end up talking to one of the more attractive women there, or to anyone in particular on a regular basis. That was fine with Charlie, but with Joe doing his thing, he could not completely control the situation. There was Joe now, doing it again – going after a black-haired little girl who had the perfect features of a model. Charlie was obliged to go over and make sure Joe didn’t mug her, as he was wont to do with girls he liked, and yes, the little girl had an attractive mom, or in this case a nanny – a young blonde au pair from Germany whom Charlie had spoken to before. Charlie could feel the eyes of the other women on him; not a single adult in that room believed in his innocence.

      ‘Hi Asta.’

      ‘Hello Charlie.’

      He even began to doubt it himself. Asta was one of those lively European women of twenty or so who gave the impression of being a decade ahead of their American contemporaries in terms of adult experiences – not easy, given the way American teens were these days. Charlie felt a little surge of protest: it’s not me who goes after the babes, he wanted to shout, it’s my son! My son the hyperactive girl-chasing mugger! But of course he couldn’t do that, and now even Asta regarded him warily, perhaps because the first time they had chatted over their kids he had made some remark complimenting her on her child’s nice hair. He felt himself begin to blush again, remembering the look of amused surprise she had given him as she corrected him.

      Singalong saved him from the moment. It was designed to calm the kids down a bit before the session ended and they had to be lassoed back into their car seats for the ride home. Joe took Ally’s announcement as his cue to dive into the depths of the tube structure, where it was impossible to follow him or to coax him out. He would only emerge when Ally started ‘Ring Around the Rosie’, which he enjoyed. Round in circles they all went, Charlie avoiding anyone’s eye but Joe’s. Ally, who was from New Jersey, belted out the lead, and so all the kids and moms joined her loudly in the final chorus:

      ‘Eshes, eshes, we all, fall, DOWN!’

      And down they all fell.

      Then it was off to the park.

      Their park was a small one, located just west of Wisconsin Avenue a few blocks south of their home. A narrow grassy area held a square sandpit, which contained play structures for young kids. Tennis courts lined the south edge of the park. Out against Wisconsin stood a fire station, and to the west a field extended out to one of the many little creeks that still cut through the grid of streets.

      Midday, the sandpit and the benches flanking it were almost always occupied by a few infants and toddlers, moms and nannies. Many more nannies than moms here, most of them West Indian, to judge by their appearance and voices. They sat on the benches together, resting in the steamy heat, talking. The kids wandered on their own, absorbed or bored.

      Joe kept Charlie on his toes. Nick had been content to sit in one spot for long periods of time, and when playing he had been pathologically cautious; on a low wooden bouncy bridge his little fists had gone white on the chain railing. Joe however had quickly located the spot on the bridge that would launch him the highest – not the middle, but about halfway down to it. He would stand right there and jump up and down in time to the wooden oscillation until he was catching big air, his unhappy expression utterly different from Nick’s, in that it was caused by his dissatisfaction that he could not get higher. This was part of his general habit of using his body as an experimental object, including walking in front of kids on swings, etc. Countless times Charlie had been forced to jerk him out of dangerous situations, and they had become less frequent only because Joe didn’t like how loud Charlie yelled afterwards. ‘Give me a break!’ Charlie would shout. ‘What do you think, you’re made of steel?’

      Now Joe was flying up and down on the bouncy bridge’s sweet spot. The sad little girl whose nanny talked on the phone for hours at a time wandered in slow circles around the merry-go-round. Charlie avoided meeting her eager eye, staring instead at the nanny and thinking it might be a good idea to stuff a note into the girl’s clothes. ‘Your daughter wanders the Earth bored and lonely at age two – SHAME!’

      Whereas he was virtuous. That would have been the point of such a note, and so he never wrote it. He was virtuous, but bored. No that wasn’t really true. That was a disagreeable stereotype. He therefore tried to focus and play with his second-born. It was truly unfair how much less parental attention the second child got. With the first, although admittedly there was the huge Shock of Lost Adult Freedom to recover from, there was also the deep absorption of watching one’s own offspring – a living human being whose genes were a fifty-fifty mix of one’s own and one’s partner’s. It was frankly hard to believe that any such process could actually work, but there the kid was, out walking the world in the temporary guise of a kind of pet, a wordless little animal of surpassing fascination.

      Whereas with the second one it was as they all said: just try to make sure they don’t eat out of the cat’s dish. Not always successful in Joe’s case. But not to worry. They would survive. They might even prosper. Meanwhile there was the newspaper to read.

      But now here they were at the park, Joe and Dad, so might as well make the best of it. And it was true that Joe was more fun to play with than Nick had been at that age. He would chase Charlie for hours, ask to be chased, wrestle, fight, go down the slide and up the steps again like a perpetuum mobile. All this in the middle of a DC May day, the air going for a triple-triple, the sun smashing down through the wet air and diffusing until its light exploded out of a huge patch of the zenith. Sweaty gasping play, yes, but never a moment spent coaxing. Never a dull moment.

      After another such runaround they sprawled on the grass to eat lunch. Both of them liked this part. Fruit juices, various baby foods carefully spooned out and inserted into Joe’s baby-bird mouth, apple sauce likewise, a Cheerio or two that he could choke down by himself. He was still mostly a breast-milk guy.

      When they were done Joe struggled up to play again.

      ‘Oh God Joe, can’t we rest a bit.’

      ‘No!’

      Ballasted by his meal, however, he staggered as if drunk. Naptime, as sudden as a blow to the head, would soon fell him.

      Charlie’s phone beeped. He slipped in an earplug and let the cord dangle under his face, clicked it on. ‘Hello.’

      ‘Hi Charlie, where are you?’

      ‘Hey Roy. I’m at the park like always. What’s up?’

      ‘Well, I’ve read your latest draft, and I was wondering if you could discuss some things in it now, because we need to get it over to Senator Winston’s office so they can see what’s coming.’

      ‘Is that a good idea?’

      ‘Phil thinks we have to do it.’

      ‘Okay, what do you want to discuss?’

      There was a pause while Roy found a place in the draft. ‘Here we go. Quote, the Congress, being deeply concerned that the lack of speed in America’s conversion from a hydrocarbon to a carbohydrate fuel economy is rapidly leading to chaotic climate changes with a profoundly negative impact on the US economy, unquote, we’ve been told that Ellington is only concerned, not deeply concerned. Should we change that?’

      ‘No, we’re deeply concerned. He is too, he just doesn’t know it.’

      ‘Okay, then down in the third paragraph in the operative clauses, quote, the United States will peg hydrocarbon fuel reductions in a two-to-one ratio to such reductions by China and India, and will provide matching funds for all tidal and wind power plants built in those countries and in all countries that fall under a five in the UN’s prospering countries index, these plants to be operated by a joint powers agency that will include the United States as a permanent member; four, these provisions will combine with the climate-neutral power production –’

      ‘Wait,