An Ordinary Epidemic

by Amanda Hickie

  Daniel whispered to Zac who batted him away with a scowl. Daniel looked around at Hannah and Sean, confused and worried. He tried whispering to Zac again.

  Zac snarled. ‘Nothing, just nothing, okay?’

  Oscar looked up from his fork. ‘Everyone is grumpy today. Zac’s grumpy and Gwen was really grumpy, I heard her yelling.’

  ‘Gwen’s a bit scared and sometimes scared people get angry.’ Sean spoke soothingly and Oscar seemed satisfied.

  She had tried to do everything right, do right by everyone. She’d re-laid her plans when Daniel joined them and again when Gwen needed help. Bloody Gwen. They should have stayed out of it, rung some government service, left it to the proper channels. There must be some plan to look after people like Gwen.

  Sean put his hand on hers and stroked it softly a couple of times before returning to his food. They were disappointed in her but there was nothing else she could have done.

  Gwen was an adult. Even her children were adults. She made a decision and got to live with the consequences. Zac and Oscar, even Daniel, relied on Hannah to make their decisions for them. Hannah owed it to them not to risk their lives for someone who wouldn’t help herself. She planned so they had food, so they didn’t have to go into the germy world. Without her, Gwen wouldn’t have food at all.

  From time to time, Oscar raised his eyes to give her a sideways look before flicking a cherry tomato at Daniel, two fingers propped on the table like a mini soccer player. Daniel kicked it back at him and Oscar blocked it from rolling off the edge, dribbling it between his fingers.

  ‘Oscar, eat the tomato, it’s not a toy.’

  ‘I can’t, it’s slimy.’

  Sean jumped in. ‘It’s not slimy, those are fresh vegetables. Old fresh vegetables, but they’re perfectly good, see?’ He put a forkful in his mouth.

  Oscar pushed the salad around his plate. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You have to eat, Mouse. You don’t want to waste away, do you?’

  ‘I want something else.’

  Daniel picked up the tomato and pushed it in his mouth. ‘See, I ate my salad, it’s good.’ He looked to Hannah for approval. ‘We’re lucky, your mum and dad are really looking after us. Not every kid has someone to look after them.’ There was something like fear in the look of gratitude he gave her.

  She imagined Gwen cleaning up the blood on her knee. Washing it with Dettol and water, the blood still oozing from the skin, fumbling with a Band-Aid. And then, with dried blood on her shin, with gravel rash on her hands, sitting down to drink her solitary cup of tea. If she had any water. Gwen was by herself and no one was coming for her. Hannah, her last hope, had shut her out. The front door, Gwen’s knee, were as much her fault as Gwen’s, she’d left the front grill unlocked. It could have been anyone out there, it just happened to be Gwen.

  Hannah rubbed her face, trying to pretend she wasn’t wiping away a tear of self-pity. Zac stared at his empty plate in a shroud of angry confusion, Oscar and Daniel were saving a new cherry tomato from leaving the playing field. Only Sean looked at her.

  As the boys left the table, Hannah mumbled quickly to Zac, ‘I’m sorry you saw that, it wasn’t appropriate.’

  Oscar looked over with round eyes, ‘What’s not appropriate? Did Zac do something wrong?’

  Sean put his arm around Zac’s shoulders. Hannah noticed they were nearly the same height. ‘Zac didn’t do anything wrong. Why don’t you guys go and watch TV, I want to talk to Zac for a minute.’

  ‘He did do something wrong.’

  Hannah had to push the words out of her throat. ‘Zac didn’t do anything wrong. I did. Zac helped me, but he’s not the one who did the wrong thing.’ The shame was a dense tingling in her chest that made her want to desert her own body, be someone else. She didn’t want this heavy wrongness in her limbs. She wanted to despise whoever had done this.

  She called Daniel back just as he was leaving the room with Oscar, ‘Daniel, your mum’s going to be fine, you know that? You’re here to be safe but she’s getting better.’

  ‘I know.’ He held himself stiffly and his reply was unconvincing. She thought how much it sucked to have to be grateful to the people who were keeping you away from your mother when you thought you would never see her again. She thought about what she could do to make him feel less like a guest, to be a little less well-behaved. She wished there was some part of the house that was his, that he wasn’t always in someone else’s room.

  She stood as close to the back door as she could, to put distance between herself and this conversation that had to be had, that she wanted to be no part of. Zac mirrored her by the hallway door, slightly stooped like a sprinter ready to make his escape. Only Sean held his ground, in the middle of the kitchen.

  ‘You’re pretty pissed off at Mum.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you are. And that’s okay.’

  Zac shrugged, avoiding eye contact.

  ‘What would you have done?’ Sean glanced at Hannah as he asked the question. ‘Would you have let Gwen in?’

  Zac opened his mouth but said nothing. His eyes were shiny with incipient tears.

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I don’t know. No.’ Zac almost looked at her but stopped himself and looked squarely, defiantly, at Sean. ‘But she could have done it differently. She didn’t have to yell at her. Gwen fell over, she’s an old lady.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry.’ Hannah felt a deep mortification, deeper for Zac’s witnessing.

  Zac spoke as if she wasn’t in the room. ‘You wouldn’t have done that. It’s not right.’

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done. I wasn’t the one at the door.’

  There was a tightness about Zac’s face, his cheeks were hollowing out as his child chubbiness was being reordered into a lean young man. His lips were pressed firmly together, to stop him betraying himself, but that only made the slight quiver on his chin more pronounced.

  Hannah took a step closer to him but he still didn’t look at her. ‘That’s not all that’s bothering you. Do you think you should have done something?’

  ‘Zac, it’s not up to you to deal with this stuff.’ Sean spoke man to man. ‘Try to understand it’s hard for us too. Don’t stay mad with your mum too long. She did her best.’ He gave her a glance again, as if looking for confirmation.

  Zac kept his eyes on his feet but his reply hid teenage contempt. ‘’Kay.’

  Hannah spoke hesitantly. ‘This is bad stuff, it’s all right for all of us not to know what to do.’

  ‘’Kay.’ Zac’s hand twitched towards his face but he held it down.

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’ Sean’s voice was firm.

  ‘’Kay.’ But Zac didn’t look convinced.

  ‘Now we have to work out some way of getting food and water to Gwen.’ Hannah sighed. It was too much like being a grown-up.

  ‘We can put it in a takeaway container and leave it for her. Take it around sometime this afternoon. She can’t wait for us all the time.’

  Hannah dug in the cupboard for a container and decanted the salad into it. From the pantry, she got a small plastic water bottle.

  ‘So, how do we deliver this?’ Hannah stared out at the fence again. ‘To her back door I guess.’ The more she involved herself with the practicalities, the more she could distance herself from the decisions that led to them.

  Sean stood with his toes on the horizontals of the fence, craning round to get a good look through the small back window. An old lean-to laundry blocked most of the view. ‘I can’t see any movement. I can’t see anything. Maybe I should take it to the front door.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s safe. She’ll expect it. We always take the food to the front door. And the blinds are drawn all day. You can’t see in.’ She stared at the blank back of the house. ‘Maybe we should try to talk to her when she’s calmed down, take it around then.’ Hannah offered this, an acknowledgment of guilt.

  ‘You’re not going to her
place. That really defeats the lock-in.’ Sean contemplated the yard, the fence and the door.

  Zac looked from one to the other. ‘We can’t let her go hungry.’

  Sean put one hand on the fence. ‘Well, here I go.’ He pushed up with his arms and tried to swing his legs over. The fence wobbled back and forth. Once he got one leg up on top, the fence settled into a more graceful sway. Hannah could see the palings digging into his gut as he shifted his weight. He gave a large heave and slid both his legs and most of his heft, to the other side. The fence gave a lurch. He dropped over, leaping up just a little too enthusiastically, then stumbled again.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘My knees are fine. They are absolutely fine because I’m not old.’

  ‘Quick.’ Hannah held out the salad and water to him.

  He hobbled at a jog, his frame lumbering from side to side. At the back door, he bent to put the food down, creaked back up and knocked. Back to the fence was a sprint and a scrabble up the smooth side. Hannah pulled at his torso but only managed to grab his shirt, half pulling it over his head. She laced her arms under his armpits and gave a tug. It got him to the top of the fence and he half tumbled down the other side.

  Gwen’s back door opened. Zac ran one way to the house, Hannah and Sean the other to the office. They slammed the door, huddling in its shadow. Hannah was shaking silently, tears running down her face.

  Sean put his arm around her, drew her into his shoulder. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’

  Her breathing came in deep gasps, not quite like sobs. She was having trouble drawing air, she was laughing so hard. ‘You,’ she gasped again, ‘are so,’ another almost sob, ‘un-co.’

  They stayed behind the door, arms wrapped around each other until they were quite sure Gwen had gone inside. Hannah could feel the vibration of her voice against his chest. ‘I screwed that up. And I don’t know how to fix it.’ The tears of laughter on her face became sombre.

  He kissed her damp cheek. ‘What could you have done?’

  ‘Something different.’

  ‘What something?’

  ‘Not push an old lady over. I screwed up.’ She rubbed her wet face on his shirt.

  The moonlight turned the lemon tree and the garage into ghosts. The boys were in bed. There was no sound from the TV in the living room. No car noises from the street. No banging of pots or voices from the neighbouring houses. The intermittent improvisation of a wind chime and tin roofs creaking in the breeze stood in for the silent occupants of the neighbouring houses.

  She pulled the heater closer to the table. The kitchen lights were off. Only the bars of the radiator glowed against her legs and warmed the room with a faint orange light. In the strange quiet of the night, Hannah could hear every step Sean took from their bedroom. He emerged from the dark into the gloom holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

  He held up the bottle, like a hard won trophy. ‘We might as well drink the least valuable liquid we have and save the water.’

  They drank slowly in comfortable silence, savouring the astringent, full flavour. Hannah lost herself in the deep red of the wine in the low light.

  ‘I could do this every night.’

  ‘You could do this ten more nights. Or, given we have nothing to do tomorrow and no one to answer to, five more nights.’

  Hannah rested her feet on his knees. ‘Just as well we can’t wash the kids in wine. What a beautifully useless drink this is.’

  ‘Speaking of which.’ Sean smoothed out the sheet of paper on the table. ‘Somewhere on here it says how much water we use.’ Sean held it sideways to the radiator and squinted.

  All Hannah could see by the glow was that it was one of their bills. ‘You could turn the light on.’

  ‘And ruin the ambience? Not a chance.’ He ran his finger over the columns. ‘I think it says a hundred and sixty-three, or sixty-eight, I can’t tell. Does that seem right for a day?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Let me see, average daily usage. That’s the one. So that’s how much we use in a day.’

  ‘For four of us, but there are five of us. Or six.’

  ‘Right, so, that’s about... I don’t know.’ Sean looked befuddled.

  ‘You’ve only had a glass.’

  ‘Ah, my love, the wine, the moonlight and you are all intoxicating.’

  She pushed his leg with her foot. ‘You think that will get you somewhere.’

  ‘I think I will impress you with my towering intellect. I believe, if my calculations are correct, that means we use about forty litres of water per person per day. But we just won’t wash the kids. Or their clothes. If we all stay dirty we’ll all stink the same.’

  ‘We still need water to cook. So, thirty litres each?’

  ‘No, much less. No water for the garden or the dishwasher. We can reuse cooking water.’ Sean looked over the bill again. ‘But we have to factor in the toilet.’

  ‘Any idea how many litres the bucket holds? I used the whole thing but maybe we can get away with less.’

  ‘We’d be screwed if we still had the old toilet. I think the new one is supposed to use six litres a time and the bucket holds around ten. I told Zac just to use a half, it worked for me.’

  ‘He must have loved that.’ Hannah considered how lucky she’d been to talk her way out of that particular parenting moment.

  ‘He loved it even more when Oscar danced around him chanting “if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down”.’ He grinned at her. ‘So, I think if you look sideways and squint, we could get away with fifteen per person.’

  ‘More like twenty-five.’

  ‘Twenty, and that’s my final offer.’ Sean raised a bidding finger.

  ‘We plan for twenty-five and work our hardest to make it twenty.’

  ‘Sold, to the tipsy lady in the woolly socks.’ Sean stared, defocused, into the garden with a contented smile. ‘I feel peckish, what do we have in the way of goodies?’

  ‘I will allow you to get a tin of smoked oysters from the pantry. The kids don’t like them anyway.’ Hannah lifted her feet to let him get out and held them suspended until he came back with a plate loaded with crackers and the oysters.

  She slipped a cracker into her mouth and licked the oil off her fingers. ‘I never thought a natural disaster would be like this. I didn’t think there would be parts I’d want to remember.’ Sean refilled their glasses.

  ‘So how much water do we have in the tank?’

  ‘More than if we’d bought the tank you wanted.’

  ‘It’s three quarters full.’

  ‘So it would have been three quarters of a thousand litres, now it’s three quarters of two thousand.’

  ‘You were right, I was wrong.’ She smiled. ‘Which makes how much?’

  ‘A week and a half, if it doesn’t rain, but it’s going to rain.’ He considered the glass, twirling it by the stem. ‘The water wouldn’t do us any good without the pantry. That’s all you.’

  ‘Ah, but I didn’t think to buy a case of wine.’

  ‘One of us has to be about the fun.’

  ‘Do you think Zac’s ever going to forgive me for this afternoon?’

  Sean frowned.

  ‘I’m not even sure he should.’ It was a confession and she hoped for absolution.

  ‘We’ll survive this because of you.’ Sean squeezed her hand. ‘After all that we’ve been through, together, we’re practically indestructible. Zac will just have to learn that you can’t solve the unsolvable but you can endure it. He’ll forgive his mother for not being super human.’

  ‘I’d die for Oscar or Zac, if I had to, but I wouldn’t die for Gwen. I hope I would for Daniel, but I don’t know. Does that make me a bad person?’

  Sean shrugged. ‘What about me?’ He flashed her a smile. ‘Would you die for me?’

  ‘I assumed you’d die for me, boyo. That’s the way I saw this relationship.’ She slipped her feet back onto
his lap.

  He smiled. She sipped her wine. They listened to the silence.

  Sean shifted in his chair. ‘There’s a funeral tomorrow for one of the guys from work.’

  ‘How well did you know him?’

  ‘Not well. I know what he looked like.’

  ‘You can’t go.’

  ‘Is that how we measure our compassion, by how well we know someone?’

  Hannah considered the moonlight. ‘What if some of us have smaller souls? What if I was just born with less?’

  ‘I imagine your soul is full-figured.’

  ‘Maybe no matter how hard I try, even if I expend all my energy, the most I’ll ever be is a not completely crappy human being.’

  ‘Or maybe we never had to make decisions like this before. Maybe all over the city these kind of decisions are being made.’

  ‘By people who are better, more compassionate.’

  Sean rested his hand on the foot that lay in his lap, staring at it as if it held an answer. ‘How do you measure compassion? Is it an unthinking reflex, even if that achieves nothing? Or is it careful and considered and planned? You can only do what you can do.’

  ‘What happens when we run low on water? How do we decide who gets what?’

  Her leg was warm where Sean’s hand rested on it. The branches of the lemon tree swayed, dappling the light falling on the kitchen table. She stretched out her toes, he pushed back against them.

  He looked at her with gentle concern. ‘The water will go back on, it’s a city, you need water. Lots of people don’t have a tank, they’ll have to bring the water back. Or we could leave the water to the kids and drink wine. But we do it together.’

  She looked at the clock on the car dash. It was ten past twelve, later than she thought. She could see Sean drumming on the shelf of the ATM, waiting for it to spit out the cash. He had been calm so long as he was doing something but now he couldn’t speed up the money counting and his head darted left and right.

  She looked at her phone. Still ten past twelve. The boys were home alone. Every second spent here was another second they were not protected.