Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  She gulped a breath. There would be a time to give in to how she felt, but not on the phone, not to Zac.

  “Hey, Mum, I have to go, okay? I’m holding up the soccer game.”

  “Ring me as soon as you know anything. Ring me.”

  “Course.”

  “Bye, Zac. I love you.”

  “Yeah.” And he was gone again.

  She took a few rapid steps towards the garden, the office, and Sean, then stopped. The school would look after it. She’d met Mr. Abrahamson. He was a sensible man. But if they got in the car now they could be there and back before midnight.

  Mr. Abrahamson was looking after it.

  She picked up the notepad lying on the counter. The top sheet had the beginnings of a shopping list from this morning. It needed to be finished. She stared at it blankly. Nothing came to her beyond that she needed to make a list and Zac was stuck in Canberra.

  She strode across the lawn, past Oscar still playing solo soccer, and into the office. Sean looked up. “Hiya.”

  “We’re going to Canberra.”

  Sean looked nonplussed but not surprised. “You planning on waving to Zac when we pass him at Campbelltown?”

  “There’s a problem with the bus and they’re looking for another and somewhere to stay.”

  “So, they might come back tonight?”

  “It didn’t sound promising. If we set off now—”

  “Nothing has changed since Monday. There are still no cases in Canberra. He’s still having fun with his mates. So he spends an extra night. It’ll be good for him. It’ll teach him to cope with adversity, give him a bit of resilience.”

  “Because nothing has ever gone wrong in Zac’s life.”

  “This is not the same.”

  Only one thing had changed—the time she had to wait. Zac didn’t need his mother turning up like a crazy woman. For now he was safe, away from the cases. He would be back tonight and if he wasn’t back tonight, then he would be back tomorrow.

  Notepad in hand, she stood in front of the pantry. Oscar, like a small shadow, was standing just behind her. He stared seriously at the shelves. She knew what was there—after all, she’d only topped it up on Tuesday. She ran her hands along a row of cans. Meals. Meals that allowed them not to go out. She straightened a can of tomatoes that was sitting halfway between its row and the tinned beans. She pushed each row so the last can hit the back of the cupboard.

  “Now they’re all squiggly at the front. You should put them back.”

  “This way I can see the holes I need to fill up.”

  “Well, you should count them and then put them back. They don’t look neat.”

  “What do you want for snacks?”

  “Muesli bars, chocolate biscuits, ummm, chocolate.”

  “We can get those.”

  She shooed him into his room and sat down to order from the online supermarket. The process was pleasingly simple, a series of questions and all she had to do was answer. Suburb? She filled it in. Delivery time? She didn’t care since they weren’t going anywhere. But the weekend was already booked out, and there were only two times free on Monday. One first thing in the morning and one later with a slightly cheaper delivery fee. It made sense to get the cheaper one, since they were home all day. Her finger hesitated over the mouse button. But what if they canceled deliveries between the morning and the afternoon? What if she saved two dollars but lost the groceries? She clicked on the morning slot.

  The website opened up in front of her. Choice, possibilities. She worked methodically through her list, pulling down each menu and burrowing through, getting a little shiver of satisfaction as each item on her notepad transferred to her online cart. Now that she’d collected the things she had to have—rice, muesli, oats—she relaxed a little. Some things could be controlled. Now for things they didn’t need—microwave popcorn, chocolate, sugary breakfast cereal.

  She clicked through to the checkout. A pop-up blocked the page, with important letters blazed in red.

  The World Health Organization advises that the Manba virus lasts less than two hours outside the human body. We have taken every precaution to reduce potential exposure of our products. All our service personnel wear gloves while handling your order. Please continue to store cold items in the fridge immediately, as delay risks spoilage.

  Words on a screen were no guarantee of protection. She’d go to the WHO website and check for herself. And if it was true, the delivery time slot was before the day warmed up, so the milk should survive. But if she had to, she could use gloves to bring it in and forbid anyone to touch the carton. The rest could sit on the porch until it was safe.

  She typed in her credit card number, clicked submit, and leaned back on her chair to enjoy the warm satisfaction of having kept them safe for a few more days.

  Pans everywhere. Every bowl cluttering the countertop. When Sean made dinner, she stayed out of the kitchen, driven in only to suggest that Oscar could do with some food soon. An open packet of almonds sat squashed between the onion skins and the plastic supermarket tray the chicken came in. “You’re putting almonds in that?”

  “I was peckish.”

  “Then finish making dinner. And don’t graze on the contents of the pantry while the rest of us go hungry.”

  “It’s only a handful of almonds.”

  She tried to suppress a sigh of exasperation. “You eat it and it’s gone.”

  “Dinner’s ready now. You could go and grab Oscar.”

  While they ate, Oscar analyzed in great detail the television programs he’d watched. Hannah listened closely, hoping the newsbreak wouldn’t come up. Maybe he’d forgotten it.

  Sean cooked a good meal, but when she looked at her plate, she saw food taken out of the pantry. The chicken and the cream would go off if they weren’t eaten, so they had to be used. Begrudgingly she admitted that the noodles had to be there to bulk it out, and the couple of mushrooms left in a basket were not enough to make anything on their own. Herbs from the garden pots. That was fine, herbs grew. She picked through the food on her plate, sorting the ingredients. He’d added a tin of tomatoes, a small handful of capers, and some leftover olives. With every olive she tasted, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of pasta puttanesca. Tomatoes, capers, and olives, a meal all by itself, a meal of things that could be kept in the pantry and didn’t spoil.

  Oscar went for his shower, Sean put the meal that would have been Zac’s into a plastic tub, and Hannah scraped the waste into the bin. All of Oscar’s olives and capers. Sean finished stacking the dishwasher and she ran a sink to wash up the things that hadn’t fit. Still thinking about olives, tomatoes, and capers.

  Sean picked up the tea towel and started to dry. “You seem a bit quiet.” She went on with washing up. He studied a glass carefully before placing it on the counter. “Is there something?”

  She said nothing.

  “Is it Zac?”

  “You really don’t get it.”

  Sean threw the tea towel over his shoulder and leaned back. “This is because I wouldn’t go to Canberra.”

  Hannah dropped the saucepan back into the sink, splashing the dry glass. “You didn’t listen to what I said, so I must be angry?”

  “About the almonds? You’re pissed off at me because I ate a handful of almonds? That’s what I heard you say. I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means what I said. You wasted food.”

  “I know it’s been a long day. Oscar can be draining and you wanted Zac home. The week didn’t work out exactly the way you planned it, and I think you’re taking it out on me because I ate a handful of almonds. A handful, enough to keep a mouse going for half a day.”

  “You didn’t have to use the olives and the capers.”

  “I thought it tasted all right. I liked the capers. I thought you liked capers.”

  “It’s not about like—it’s that they’re gone, like the almonds. Once they’re eaten, you can’t get them back.”

  “T
here’s still half a packet. We’ll buy some more. We’re not buying takeaway, we can afford to have a spare packet of almonds. Just add some to the delivery.”

  “The order is done and they weren’t on my list.”

  “So, next order. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Zac’s bus driver won’t come back to Sydney. How long do you think before it’s the truck drivers?”

  “At which point the government will be forced to do something. They’re not going to let the food supply fail.”

  “You have an awful lot of faith. But I’d rather be in a position to look after ourselves.” She shook her wet hands into the sink, more vigorously than necessary. “I didn’t buy a load of random stuff. I worked it out. You use a tin of tomatoes and we don’t have it for dinner another day. We didn’t need tomatoes and capers and olives as well as the chicken. Next time don’t put in anything you don’t need.”

  Sean looked at her, the tea towel suspended in midair above the saucepan. “I’ll ask permission before using seasoning.”

  “We have to plan. I mean, we have to plan. The pantry is there to keep us safe. But that counts for nothing if you don’t think.”

  “How was I supposed to know? You didn’t say.”

  “Before this week it was just a pantry. I shouldn’t have to tell you our situation. Can’t you see for yourself what’s happening?”

  “What I can see is a lot of things that might happen but haven’t yet. We can’t plan for everything that might happen.”

  “I do.”

  “And then you never get to live. Then you’re always planning for disaster, planning for the next lump. Can we at least move past the last one?”

  She pulled the plug out of the sink with force, splashing water on herself and onto the floor. It could stay there for all she cared, a puddle of water to stand in for the words she couldn’t find. Let him clean it up.

  Her anger carried her loudly out of the room, but with the slam of the door behind her, it vanished. All she was left with was the sound of the shower running and Oscar’s light tuneless voice singing to himself through the bathroom door. She breathed out the tension as she leaned back against the wall. The pantry door was ajar, and through the crack she could see the incomplete wall of supplies. Those gaps should be filled right now. So many things could go wrong between now and Monday.

  And where was Zac? He was supposed to be here. The front door couldn’t be shut for good until she had Zac and a full pantry. She would happily fast-forward through this part of her life. Couldn’t it just be agreed that she had done everything right and they could skip the next bit?

  Oscar poked his head around the bathroom door. He was shiny and his hair dripped.

  “You’re making the floor all wet—what are you doing?”

  “I want you to dry me.”

  “You’re a big boy. Big boys are perfectly capable of drying themselves.”

  He closed the door behind himself and through it she could hear a cheerful monologue that drew her in. When she opened the bathroom door, the towel was loosely wrapped around him but the water had dripped into a puddle just off the bath mat.

  “Here you go.” She gave him a good rub. He wriggled as if she were tickling him.

  It wasn’t her turn for a story, but right now the thing she wanted most was not to go back to Sean. Surprisingly, Oscar didn’t notice, or at least didn’t object, to the change in routine. The act of reading the story, a Dr. Seuss she almost knew by heart, was meditative. Each nonsense word relieved her of some of her adulthood.

  The light was off, Oscar was quiet. Stranded here in the hallway, still she craved a few more moments before confronting Sean and her own bad behavior. She rested her head against the front door, feeling the cool of the evening conducted through the wood. No sound found its way in. She felt a pressing need to see what was on the other side. With the door open, the breeze blew through the security grille and onto her face. The street was quiet and empty, the only movement a man walking his dog down the dotted lines in the middle of the road, mask over his face. Her eyes followed him to the corner, tracing his invisible path when he disappeared.

  She missed the daytime, the beautiful crush of humanity, the human contact by osmosis. The passing schoolgirls, ringing mobile phones, the leaked music from iPod headphones, and the steady stream of people, now absent, who walked down her street on an ordinary day.

  The quiet was gradually replaced by a rumble. In the gloom, she could just make out a street sweeper at the far end of the road. It passed her door, spraying the gutter, and she smelled hospital.

  As she followed the sound of the television back into the house, all she wanted was to delete this bad mood between them. But when Sean looked away from the screen, his forehead was lined. In his eyes she saw a disturbed sadness, and it was her fault. She had infected him with this.

  The image of a reporter on the scene was superseded by a beaten and bloodied face.

  “What happened?”

  “He coughed. He didn’t cover his mouth and he coughed in front of some guy’s girlfriend and they beat him.” Two men in handcuffs, glowering at the camera.

  She sat down close to Sean. “Where?”

  “In town, some shop in town.”

  She was crying, but not for the beaten face on the TV, or for the two boys whose parents had died. She was crying for things that might never take place. She was crying because every day, everywhere, small tragedies happened and she didn’t know how to care about every single one, and so they aggregated and magnified and became incomprehensible.

  Sean put his arm around her and pulled her in, swathing her in his shirt. She felt heady, gasping and rebreathing the warm recycled air caught in the folds. She could do nothing but hold on until the sobs subsided. Her head ached and she wiped her face with her sleeve.

  The phone was lying on the sofa beside him, and he turned it over and over slowly, as if looking for some answer hidden on it. “The teacher rang. They’re staying the night. They opened one of the local schools and the kids are camping in the hall. Apparently a pizza place around the corner donated dinner for them.” He sounded unsure of the truth of it. “They sound like they’re having fun.” He looked at her, debating whether to go on. “The Department of Education has told them to stay put until the situation here is clearer. Mr. Whatever thinks they’re going to be there all weekend. I talked to Zac, he’s fine with it.” He pressed ahead a little more firmly. “I think it’s the right decision. I think it’s good for him. I don’t think we should go and get him.” He looked set, like he was ready to dig in.

  The choice had been made and she couldn’t find the energy to do anything but go along with it. There was a comfort in being handed a decision she didn’t like instead of fighting against events she couldn’t affect.

  “Hey, I know this sucks.” Sean pulled a strand of damp hair from her face and smoothed it back. “But maybe it’s the best thing. If it will help, you can yell at me or break some plates. I think there are some old ones in a box in the garage.”

  She buried her face in his neck, warm and familiar. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.” She breathed in his smell. “Where are they?”

  “In a school.”

  “Which school?”

  There was a moment’s pause as if Sean were trying to assess the significance of his answer, but he had only one to give. “I don’t know.”

  The phone rang. He answered, then handed it to her.

  “Hi. It’s Susan, Daniel’s mum. Has Zac called you?”

  “Sean talked to him, but I think the teacher called.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I don’t think there is anything we can do tonight.”

  “We should be doing something.”

  How wrong and weird it was to be the one urging caution now, so opposite to her real feelings. “There’s nothing to do. We have to wait.”

  Sean’s voice woke her. She stared stupidly up at him with no idea what he’d
just said. “Huh?”

  “We’re going.”

  “Are we?”

  “Get up.”

  “Where?”

  “Canberra. Now. Get up.”

  She stumbled into the kitchen. Sean looked at her sharply. “You’re not dressed.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Canberra. I told you. To get Zac.”

  “Did he ring?”

  There was a pile of random food on the counter. Water bottles, apples, some bread. Sean was throwing it all into a backpack.

  “Why are we going to Canberra?”

  “They’re going to close the roads.”

  “I thought you said he was safer there.”

  “They will close the roads. And when the disease gets to Canberra he will be alone.”

  “They told everyone they were going to close the roads before they did it? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It will happen. Today. If we don’t get going, he’ll be stuck there.”

  Hannah knocked on Gwen’s door. First she rang the bell, but when she couldn’t hear the chime from inside, she knocked, not too loudly, on the door. She didn’t want to be knocking on Gwen’s door. She thought they should all go. Sean had seriously suggested leaving Oscar in front of the TV with a bag of chips and a bottle of soft drink. “And what happens when we get killed on the highway because you’re in a panic to get there?” Sean’s answer was “Then he won’t be dead.”

  They should have gone on Friday. Hannah knocked on the door harder, but willed Gwen not to answer. Gwen’s deafness worked in Hannah’s favor, that and she was probably still asleep.

  She walked back to the kitchen. “We’re taking Oscar with us.”

  “For fuck’s sake, leave him with Gwen. Or the two of you stay, that works. That makes sense.” He was throwing his hands around.

  “She’s not answering and he’s not staying here by himself. And you going alone is not an option.” She had plans to get them through, and every one required that Sean still be around.

  Hannah swilled the remains of Sean’s coffee. It was bitter and sweet but better than a headache. She took a piece of bread from the bag on the counter, smeared it with peanut butter, and bit into it. Chewing, she pulled out another one.