Life Sentences (36 page)

Daisy woke up, shivering and
cold. Jack had hogged all the blankets again. He was snoring beside her,
and she lay awake in bed, watching his rib cage rise and fall, rise and
fall. She wondered what he was dreaming about. Chasing bad guys, probably.
Jack still chased bad guys in his sleep. She slipped out of bed and went to
check on the baby.

It was warm inside Noah's room,
cold outside. She touched the butterfly mobile above his crib, and it
spun around effortlessly. The baby stirred. He stretched his little
arms and opened his sleepy eyes, and she picked him up. "What a big
boy," she whispered, cradling him in her arms. Outside, it was snowing.
The first snowfall of the year.

"Promise me you'll do your own
laundry when you grow up."

Noah yawned. He knew his mother's
face and reached for it. He knew the smell of her skin. He was interested
' the sound of her voice, and whenever she made cooing sounds, he cooed
back.

"Promise me you'll do your own
laundry," Daisy whispered. "Don't make your girlfriends or
your poor wife d it, okay? Promise me you'll marry an intelligent, independent
woman, Noah… and that you'll be considerate of other people's feelings.
And that you'll vote. It's very important that you vote in each presidential
election. And the Senate races. And that you'll always be happy. Promise
me."

Noah wrapped his strong little fingers
around her thumb. He could eat solid food from a spoon. He "talked"
to his toys. He could sit up without falling over. She wasn't afraid of
his genes. She didn't believe that life was predictable. She had read
the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Two adopted twins, reared separately
until the age of thirty-nine, had discovered that they had many things in
common-they liked the same brand of cigarette, drove the same kind of
car, had both married women named Linda and remarried women named
Betty, had both named their sons James and their dogs Toy. But the "Jim
twins" were the exception rather than the rule. The world was much
more wondrous, much more complex, than the study indicated. There were
no genes that could make you a good person, for instance. There was no
gene that could determine how empathetic you would be toward others.
Daisy didn't believe in fate, she believed in love. And there was no
specific gene for love.

She carried Noah into their bedroom
and rolled the window shades up. She stood in front of the bedroom windows
for a moment, watching the snow swirl down from the sky. The luminous orb
of the moon had a soft white ring around it. This ring was formed of many
ice crystals very high up in the clouds, and tonight the whole world was in
a trance. Each snowflake started as a tiny ice crystal. As the updraft
pumped more water vapor into the clouds, thousands of ice crystals began
to clump together, forming snowflakes that grew heavier and heavier,
until they began to fall. There were an infinite number of ways in
which the molecules could arrange themselves in three-dimensional hexagonal
patterns-
stellars
, needles, columns, diamond
dust. Every snowflake had six sides, but no two were alike.

Daisy crawled into bed and made a
nest for Noah between herself and Jack. Just for tonight. Just for the
first snowfall. She shivered as she pulled the blankets up around them.
"
Shh
, Daddy's sleeping."

There was a change in Jack's breathing.
He opened his eyes. "Look who's up."

"We're watching it
snow," she whispered.

"You're in love with me,
aren't you?" he said.

"I catch myself liking
you."

He smiled. "We have a lot in
common."

"Are you asking me out,
Jack?"

"No. I'm asking you to marry
me."

She smiled. "Again?"

"Why not? I'm a big fan of marriage."

They watched the snow, cold and
white, as it eddied down from the sky. A gust of wind lifted a swarm of flakes
and held it aloft for just a second, before blowing a sweeping glaze of
white powder across the window. Daisy inhaled the perfume of their bodies
and pulled her family close while frozen threads of ice formed on the
glass.