“Zac feels bad. He thinks he failed.”
“These things matter. Let him think about what he did.”
“Because he’s the one who’s old enough to make responsible decisions?”
“The virus doesn’t care how old he is.” Sean stomped away. She peeled off her gloves and tossed them onto the pile beside the door. With the back of her hand, she pushed the dispenser on the bottle of disinfectant on the hall table, rubbing it over both hands and up her forearms. The smell was pungently alcoholic and aggressively clean.
Sean had laid out the spoils on the patio table and hung Ella’s clothes on the line to air. With gloves on, she hoped.
She sequestered herself in her bedroom away from playing children and their eavesdropping ears. Two solid bars out of five on Zac’s battery symbol, too few electrons to waste. On the bed in front of her, she had one of the leaflets brought around by the patrols. For most of the organizations it listed, their roles were obvious from their names, but none mentioned death or bodies. The most likely was “Hygiene and collection,” so she rang that.
She counted twenty rings, each one was more stored electrons leaking away. At the end of twenty, she started the count again from one. If she hung up, she’d only have to ring later and waste more battery. She got to thirteen for the third time when the phone was answered.
“Hold the line please.” Music, more electrons. She paced the strip between the window and the bed. “HealthandHygienehotlinehowcanIhelpyou?”
“I’m ringing about someone who’s died.”
“Do you need a body collected?” No more surprised than if Hannah was complaining her garbage hadn’t been picked up.
“Yes.”
“Is it a relative?”
“It’s my neighbor.”
“Is the body in the house with you?” From the brisk efficiency, she read this script all day, every day.
“No, he’s next door.”
“Are there more deceased on the premises?”
“No.”
“When did the person die?”
“I don’t know. He was there with his daughter about a week ago.”
“Have you any reason to believe the deceased did not have Manba?”
“Last time I talked to him, he seemed healthy enough. We went in today”—she wondered whether the script had a question about whether you were looting at the time—“and he was dead. He has a rash.”
“Have you personally viewed the body?”
“Yes, it was…”
“Was there any smell, discharge, pest presence?”
“A bit of a smell.”
“How many people are in the house with the body?”
“He’s alone. His daughter is here with us.”
“Are you aware of a next of kin and have you attempted to contact them?”
“His wife is a doctor. She’s at the local hospital but I can’t reach her.”
“The current waiting time for non-contaminating bodies is three days.”
“You can’t leave him there three days.”
“We attend to bodies in occupied premises first. The current waiting time is three days. Please leave the door unlocked. If our operators are unable to gain access to the house, they will be unable to complete the collection. For quarantine reasons, please do not approach the operators. If you have access to the Internet you can enter the details on the form there. If not, please remain on the line until the beep and record the address for collection, the name of the deceased, and any contact details you have for the next of kin. If possible, mark the front door in permanent paint with a large cross, surrounded by a circle in such a way that the cross cuts the circle diagonally into four parts. Houses so marked are contaminated and should not be entered. Two days after collection, the premises will be certified safe to enter. Do not attempt to enter the house. Is there anything more I can help you with?”
She could ask about Sean touching Ella, whether he should have disinfected himself, but that ship had sailed. “No, that’s it.”
“Thank you for taking the time.” Hannah thought she meant that, at least. Beep.
Details left, she turned off the phone, placed it on the bed, and waited for the grief. All she could find was a tiny voice of relief that it wasn’t her kids who had to grow up without a dad. A week ago, Stuart had been a person, a person who had lifted his daughter, that tiny piece of a human, over the fence. Now, next door, there was a body to be collected—the Stuart-ness was gone.
She thought of the person, not the body. Had he longed to keep Ella with him? She had shut out Sean, but she couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to push away Oscar or Zac. How many days had he lain there, knowing Ella was only a few arm lengths away, knowing he would be alone for his very short forever? Did he wrestle with his need for his daughter and the need for her to survive him? Did he know where Natalie was? As he died, did he have the comfort of believing she would be back to collect Ella? Hannah couldn’t put herself in his place. She could only put herself in her own, and she was alive and her children were alive.
From their porch, they had a good view over the fence into Stuart and Natalie’s front yard and veranda. Beyond, Hannah could detect a whiff of rotting garbage. Midmorning on a normal day, there would have been at least the occasional car or pedestrian. They watched the front of Stuart’s house side by side, holding each other tight. Pulled up on the pavement was a small white florist van with the rear doors open. Two figures stood, almost lounging, on the porch, encased in white disposable coveralls, masks, latex gloves, paper booties, paper shower caps. One consulted a clipboard, then let himself in.
Sean had set an alarm for five a.m. so he could unlock Stuart’s front door before the kids were awake. It was still Stuart’s front door. Hannah had worried the van might come in the night and wanted to unlock it the evening before, but it seemed wrong to leave Stuart vulnerable. She slept with one ear open for the sound of an engine approaching and fell into a deep sleep only after Sean came back to bed in the early-morning light.
“Go back inside.” Sean was talking to Zac, who had appeared with no warning just inside the front door.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Nothing, go back inside. You have a job. It’s up to you to know where Oscar and Ella are all the time.”
“It’s not nothing. You wouldn’t be standing out there for nothing.”
Sean spoke tentatively, as if parsing what he was saying. “We’ll tell you when the little kids are not around. We need you to keep them in the house. Will you do that for me?”
Zac nodded gravely. He’d looked into Stuart’s yard while holding the drill for her, he’d seen the extra food. He, surely, had a good idea of what had happened. They couldn’t protect him and rely on him at the same time, and he wanted to be relied on.
She felt exposed, framed by the proscenium arch of the porch for an audience that hadn’t showed up. And she couldn’t help turning around to look down the hall, worried that Oscar’s or Ella’s curiosity would get the better of them. Finally, the two figures came out of Stuart’s front door in a slow, uncoordinated shuffle with a body bag on a fold-up canvas stretcher. She watched them back and fill, like an overlong truck, to get the stretcher on the porch, setting it down gently the last few centimeters so as not to jolt the bag. Stuart, she told herself. Not the bag. Stuart.
The porch wall gave it privacy from the street but left it in their full view. She was a voyeur but also a witness. One of the figures consulted a clipboard, peeled off a sticker, and knelt down to stick it to a luggage tag attached to the bag’s zipper pull.
The other came out of the house carrying something the size of a credit card or a driver’s license. They both examined it and then leaned down to the bag. She heard the sound of unzipping. They looked at the license, then down at the body in the bag. They rezipped, slipped the license in one side of the luggage tag, and sealed it with tape.
One took a can of spray paint and scrawled letters or digits in the
segments of the red cross and circle that Sean had painted on the front door two days before. Hannah squinted to make them out. In the top quarter was what looked like today’s date. Directly underneath, he had marked the number 1. In the left quadrant were some initials that meant nothing to her.
The other retrieved a large plastic bottle and some cloths from the van. He splashed the liquid from the bottle over the bag and, gently but thoroughly, wiped it down. The sharp smell of bleach wafted over. They lifted the stretcher and moved it to the van, putting it down behind the open doors. She heard “One, two, three” as they grasped the bag’s handles and lifted it much higher than she expected. Stuart didn’t have the van to himself. They splashed bleach over the stretcher, folded it up, and slid it in at the bottom. As the driver put his foot into the front seat of the car, his eyes swiveled around to them. She had begun to think of herself as invisible. Between the bottom of the cap and the top of the mask, all she could see were dark circles. He raised his chin in acknowledgment and drove away.
They all sat down to lunch—rice, dried apricots, and milk powder mixed with water and boiled to make rice pudding. The only concession to the spoils of the other day, a dob of Stuart’s jam on top. Even that Hannah added grudgingly. A few packets of pasta didn’t change the equation much. Sean stared out the kitchen window. Zac frowned at his plate.
“Mum, I heard you go out the door.” Oscar waited for an explanation.
“Only for a minute.”
“But you hadn’t made Gwen’s lunch.”
“Oh, you know—we were just checking.”
“Checking what?”
“Yeah, Mum, checking what?”
She frowned back at Zac. “To see, you know, if anyone was out there.”
The table fell quiet. She didn’t realize her mistake until Ella whispered, “I don’t like hiding.”
“No, sweetie, you don’t have to worry. There were no bad people.” Only good people doing a horrible thing. She cursed herself for reawakening one fearful possibility while trying to hide another. She sent the kids off to play and hoped Ella would forget while she stacked the dishes in the sink, ready to wash up.
“Do you need a hand?” Sean had his hands in his pockets and didn’t meet her eye.
“No, you can do the next lot.” She didn’t feel like talking.
“I might go and read for a bit.”
They had painted a big jug with blackboard paint and left it in the sun, filled with water. It warmed up a little, which helped to cut the grease. She was sparing with washing-up liquid and water, and it wasn’t spent until she could see oily scum on top. It got the plates clean, at least clean enough, she assumed, since no one was getting sick.
She wanted, suddenly, to be with Oscar and Zac. And Ella, she thought. Ella too. She could hear Oscar’s voice and, more distantly, Zac replying.
“Cards.”
“No.”
“Let’s build a train track.”
“No.”
Oscar was standing on the threshold of Zac’s room, his toes lined up along the invisible border between Zac’s domain and the rest of the house. He leaned ever so slightly forward. Behind him, Ella stood at random, blocking the middle of the hall, twisting one toe on the ground, facing the wall.
“Come and play with us.”
“Maybe.”
“What about a board game?”
“What board game?”
“Whatever you want to play.”
“I don’t want to play a board game.”
Oscar’s voice became high and whiny. “I want you to play with me.” He caught sight of Hannah. “Mum, make him play with me.”
“I can’t make him play if he doesn’t want to.”
“He said he would play with me, but then he keeps saying no. He says I have to think of what to play, but anything I say he just keeps saying no.”
“None of those things are fun,” said Zac, from his bed. He didn’t even look up from his book.
“Well, not as fun as tormenting your brother.” She could see he had no intention of moving. “Come on, let’s go out.”
Zac sat up and looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Out? Where out?”
“The backyard.”
“That’s not out.” He fell back on his bed.
It wasn’t much of an “out.” Three steps and you were “outside,” three back and you were “home.” No one was fooled. “You need vitamin D,” she told them, “or you’ll get rickets. I think it’s rickets you get from not having vitamin D.”
“What’s rickets?” Zac asked with genuine curiosity.
“Something people used to get so long ago that I’ve never seen it.” If they had the net, she could check. “Anyway, you need vitamin D, and for that you need sunlight. I know that for sure.” She put her hand on Ella’s shoulder. The little girl was surprisingly stiff.
Once dragged out in the yard, the kids fell organically into a game of tag. Or a version of it. Their playing styles were determined by their size. Zac could reach out and tag the other two from any spot on the lawn. To avoid him, Oscar darted and weaved and Ella skirted the edges of the garden, standing still and closing her eyes whenever Zac moved in her direction, as if this would keep him from seeing her. When Ella was It, she chased Oscar round and round Zac, who stood like a pole, twice their size, in the center of the lawn. But Oscar preferred to pit himself against his brother. Zac taunted him by moving his feet only when Oscar came directly at him, twisting and contorting his body to keep millimeters away from Oscar’s hand. Ella squealed. Zac laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Hannah sat on the garden bed. The sun was warm on her skin but the air was cold. When they laughed, she laughed. It was a moment of sunshine. If her phone had more charge, she could capture it in a photo. But this emotion would evaporate and sometime in the future she wouldn’t be here with these three bundles of spontaneity. The loss was contained in the moment. It felt right that it was ephemeral.
Oscar made a break from the endless spiral around Zac and jumped up on the garden bed behind Hannah. Ella lunged left around her, and Oscar veered right. Ella’s face darted in front of Hannah’s, laughing. Hannah wanted to reach her arms around her and comfort her in a hug that Ella didn’t know she needed.
“Pause, pause.” Oscar knew he was trapped.
“No pause.” Ella’s face began to set into a frown. “You can’t change the rules.”
“Oscar.” Hannah reached around behind to catch ahold of his arm. “Oscar, I’m not a piece of furniture. Back on the grass.” He was trampling on the moment. “I asked you nicely.”
“But then I’ll be It and it’s not fair.” He was full of the injustice of being, in every way, in the middle.
“Now. I mean it.” She raised her voice, trying to pull him out from behind her by his arm. “I’m not going to say it again.” Oscar leaned all his weight back. Ella stood in front of her, still, impassive but watchful. How could she not know that her world had disappeared? Hannah’s voice was getting louder and shriller. “If you can’t play nicely…”
“What’s going on?” Sean appeared, unruffled and reasonable, in the office doorway.
Hannah was sobbing, tears running down her face. Ella stood and stared, uncomprehending. Hannah wanted to shake her and make her understand what her world was like now, that it would never be the same. And here was Sean, all rationality and calm. Shouldn’t she have some special “mother” knowledge that told her what to do?
She still had ahold of Oscar’s arm. He let himself be pulled onto her lap. She wound her arms tight around him and cried into the fabric of his T-shirt.
“Mum, Mum.” He squirmed, a bewildered expression on his face. “You’re getting me wet.” He wriggled out of her arms and stood in front of her, searching her tear-streaked face for the meaning.
Sean swung Ella up into his arms. “Come on, kids. Let’s play a board game. Leave your mum alone.” As if she were Ella’s mum, as if Ella were one of them n
ow.
Finish your food, Ella. We don’t want to waste it.” Not eating. Hannah worried that every change in behavior could be a sign of a stomach bug, depression, or something else she couldn’t, at the moment, research on the net. And if she thought about it, she’d had to ask Ella twice to get her to finish her food yesterday. It was becoming harder to remember what normal behavior was, or if indeed there was ever such a thing.
Zac ate every meal hidden behind a book, a mirror to Sean and his book at the other end of the table. That certainly had not been normal behavior. Within a couple of days of the power going out Zac had finished all the books in his room. Through sheer boredom, he had started on the bookshelf in the office. If nothing else, she might end up with a well-read son.
Ella was humming, turning the spoon over and looking at herself first in the bowl and then the back. “Can we turn the phone on?”
“Finish your breakfast, then we’ll check the phone.”
Ella took another mouthful and dutifully swallowed. “But what if my mum is ringing now?”
Hannah dreaded these conversations. She didn’t know the right thing to say. Instead stupid things came out—lies, prevarications, nothing honest, nothing that helped Ella. “But she might ring later.” It was the only thing that came into her head.
“Oh no,” Ella wailed, “we can’t turn it on now if Mummy rings later.”
Hannah looked to Sean for help, but if he heard, he chose not to notice. “If she rings, she’ll leave a message, then we can ring her back.” If she rings, if she rings. Hannah knew herself to be a coward, a clueless coward. Was there a website on how to tell your neighbor’s child that she’s probably never going to see her parents again? Normal people, competent people, didn’t need to be told what to say.
From the contemptuous angle of his eyebrow, Hannah knew Zac was listening behind his book. He knew the truth, or enough of it to despise her for failing to make everything right. Oscar jumped down from the table and trotted across the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” They were the first words Sean had spoken all morning.
Before This Is Over Page 28