An Ordinary Epidemic

by Amanda Hickie

  Sean moved swiftly but calmly to grab the water blaster that sat next to the back door. Oscar’s head turned at the click of the key in the lock. Sean took aim and let fly a long stream of water that caught the cat side on. It jumped at the first drop, but Sean kept the stream going, following it along the fence and over to Gwen’s yard. A full cup of water at least.

  Zac and Daniel observed silently. Oscar looked at Sean with thunder in his face.

  ‘I have to, mate. He has to find somewhere else to live.’

  ‘I know.’ Oscar stared at the blaster. It was his. His blaster had driven away Mr Moon and he had done nothing to stop his dad. He looked from Sean to her. They were his parents, and she could see he wanted to believe them when they said it was the right thing to do, but he was struggling. She grieved for the lesson he had just learnt—how to be hard-hearted.

  Zac put his arm around Oscar and looked to Hannah with distaste. ‘Mr Moon will come back when this is over. He came to show us he’s all right, didn’t he?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Sean was back at his post, over the pikelet pan, as if nothing had happened. Hannah took it as his attempt to stay out of the boys’ way for a few moments at least. She felt guilty that he’d had to do it, that he was the object of their disapproval. The two of them had made the decision together.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder, both their backs to the boys, and whispered. ‘They understand. They know it has to be done. You won’t be the bad guy for long.’

  He lifted the frying pan to the sink and wiped it quickly with a damp cloth. ‘We should have lunch some time. I’m going to do some work and then we should have lunch.’ He went through the door without looking back.

  Daniel grabbed the blaster. ‘Hey, Oscar, let’s get Zac.’ They backed him into the corner near the door. Zac cowered with his hands over his face, a wide smile behind. He could grab the blaster from Oscar if he wanted.

  ‘Get him, Oz, get him.’

  Oscar pumped the trigger, laughing. Zac took the jet of water as he made a run around Oscar for the bucket beside the sink.

  ‘Hey, hey, what on earth do you think you’re doing, wasting water. Don’t you have any sense? What are we going to drink if you squirt each other?’

  Zac stood his ground directly in front of her. ‘Dad does.’

  ‘That’s different, you know that. We’re not talking about that now.’ Squirting a cat was straightforward. It was something that needed to be done and so you did it. This was the hard bit, the explanations, the accepting responsibility for it and Sean had bailed on doing that.

  ‘Outside.’ Hannah unlocked the door again. It had been kept locked since they shut Mr Moon out. The cat couldn’t open the door but Oscar could. And no matter how many times she explained why, he still couldn’t always resist the impulse. The key was one more obstacle to keep him in check. Hannah looked around the yard to make sure Mr Moon was gone, and murmured to Zac as he passed her, ‘Come straight in if you see Mr Moon. Don’t let Oscar touch him.’ The boys ran into the empty space where the cat had been.

  One pane of glass, two layers of fabric, that’s what separated her from the miasma of the street, the fresh, free air swarming with germs.

  ‘I thought you were working.’ Sean stood in the bedroom doorway.

  ‘I’m taking a breath.’

  Sean pushed back the curtain—a pane of glass and now only one thin layer of fabric. The scrim gave a misty sheen to the view despite the full daylight. Something down the street caught his attention. Hannah strained to listen and thought she heard the sound of a distant diesel engine. Whether it had been there for a while, she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Can you see anything?’

  Sean lifted the scrim. Nothing but the brittle pane of glass between them and the world. The sound of the engine stopped. Light from the street, bright and glary, bounced off the bonnet of their car, the bitumen. To the right, the view was blocked by the wall to Gwen’s. Across the road she could only just see the corner of the house where the family lived. To the left, nothing. She strained to make out anything in the cross street by Mr Henderson’s house.

  Sean’s arm leant against the top of the window, Hannah rested her arm on the sill, their breath kissed the glass. The road radiated the last of the autumn afternoon heat back at them, the thin warmth reached, feebly, through the pane.

  Sean’s arm dropped. Hannah swivelled round to follow his look. Climbing their stairs was a balloon figure in gloves, mask, boilersuit and paper booties. The figure clutched a clipboard to their chest and waved some sort of I.D. in the other hand. From the way the figure walked, Hannah guessed it was a woman. She came close up to the window and pressed the I.D. against it. Her gloves left trails in the dust on the glass.

  ‘From the government. Could you come to the door so we can talk?’ She spoke loudly and distinctly, as if to an old person, the sound fighting to penetrate the mask and the window.

  ‘We can talk here.’ Sean shouted, his hands cupped to the glass.

  ‘It would be easier on my voice at the door, sir. I’m no danger to you, we’ve all been screened.’

  ‘Here is fine.’ There was a stiffness about Sean, an anticipation.

  The woman’s shoulders sagged, she took a deep breath and leant right into the window. ‘I am going door to door to let people know their options. We are aware that the water has been off in this area for more than a day now.

  ‘So it’s just us then.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Everybody else has water but us.’

  ‘Viral contamination was detected in routine testing of client supply. The supply was shut down as a precaution until the situation could be assessed. Areas are being reconnected as they are verified as safe. In the meantime...’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  The woman looked at her clipboard to gather her thoughts or her strength, or just more information.

  Sean pushed on. ‘So all the water in the rest of the city is safe, except ours. Why is that? How long’s it going to take?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ the woman’s eyes drifted to the empty road, ‘we are still testing in a number of areas and everything that can be done is being done.’

  ‘But it’s not coming back on for us, is it? Or you wouldn’t be here. What’s so special about us?’

  ‘I just know what they told me and I can tell you that.’ Even in her balloon outfit, the woman looked out of scale. Either she was tiny or the outside world was too large. ‘There has been some contamination. Most areas have been cleared.’ She fiddled with her clipboard, as if uncertain whether to continue. ‘It’s just what I heard people say but they think maybe bats got into the local system somehow and contaminated the supply but they’re not sure where.’

  ‘So what do they need to do to fix it? When will that happen? And why can’t we just boil it?’

  ‘No one wants to take a risk with people’s lives, sir. They would have to be sure they’ve located the source.’

  ‘Why aren’t they filtering it or something?’

  The woman looked past them into the room, avoiding their eyes. ‘I think, I’m not an expert, they just gave me a sheet of paper to read, but I heard someone say, I’m not sure I’m right about this, that there was some equipment they could get from overseas and, you understand, no planes are flying here, although the Air Force, I mean, of course, since it’s an emergency and you know, but the places that they have to get them from, they’re having their own problems, with the,’ her paper mask inflated and deflated as she spoke, ‘outbreak.’

  ‘When?’ Sean bellowed so hard it hurt Hannah’s ear. ‘Just tell me when.’

  ‘We’re doing everything we can. They’ve turned the school into a shelter,’ she’d found a way back onto her script and slipped into a well-worn groove, ‘and we will be providing water, food, everything necessary. So we’re urging you, if you have any doubts about your ability to stay in your home, to come to the shelter. We ask that you
don’t bring any belongings other than a change of clothes and sleeping bags or blankets. New arrivals should expect to be separated for two days. ’

  ‘Why aren’t you bringing water around?’

  ‘There’s water at the shelter, sir.’

  ‘If you brought water round, people wouldn’t have to leave their houses.’

  ‘We’re doing what we can, sir, it’s not easy. If you decide to stay, we are organising water trucks, but I have no information on how long that will be. You are strongly urged to make your way to the shelter. Can everyone here walk that far?’

  ‘We’re staying.’ Hannah didn’t give Sean a chance to answer.

  ‘I’ve got some information.’ She pulled some sheets off her clipboard.

  ‘Leave it near the door.’

  The woman pinned the paper down with the doormat but hesitated. She trudged back to the window.

  ‘There’s someone next door, an old lady or something. She wouldn’t answer at all. You try to help, because that’s the right thing. I’m knocking on people’s doors to help and she screamed without even opening the door. Someone like that, someone who can’t look after herself, needs to be in the shelter. I left some info, but if you talk to her, try to make her see she’d be better off there.’

  ‘She’s got us.’ Sean said firmly.

  The woman made her cumbersome way down the steps, along the footpath and then up to Natalie and Stuart’s door. They watched her knock. She waited, knocked again. Sean let the scrim fall, frosting the view. He walked towards the front door.

  ‘You don’t know who she’s touched. Leave the pamphlet there. We can read it tomorrow.’

  He stared at her with a strange look of sadness. ‘The cat can’t understand.’ She tried to make sense of the words coming out of his mouth. ‘Things just happen in a cat’s life. They don’t have a reason. Someone gives you food, they don’t give you food. They rub your tummy or they kick you. A cat can’t have a concept of compassion or betrayal. It has habits. Someone gives it food, it keeps coming back. When the food stops it’s not emotional for the cat, it’s about finding another source of food. Do you think he’s getting food?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then cats are not very bright, because they don’t understand betrayal or loyalty. It’s about having to do the least worst thing, even when that thing sucks. Do you think it’s worse to do a bad thing, or to do nothing and risk a terrible thing?’

  ‘We did the best thing.’

  ‘I did it. The least worst. And now the boys know their dad doesn’t care if Mr Moon dies. They don’t know that I only care that they live.’

  ‘I think they understand.’

  ‘I don’t want them to. This shouldn’t be part of their lives. I know worse things happen every day but not to my kids, the ones I’m supposed to look after.’ He wiped his face with the back of his hand. ‘I hope Daniel doesn’t understand. Because his mum is like the cat. If they’d rung and said she was dying, we wouldn’t have let him go to see her and he would have hated us. And I don’t know what’s in his head. He’s just here, being polite and well-behaved...’ Sean fell silent before the words burst out again, ‘If I thought I was dying, if I thought I wouldn’t see Zac and Oscar again...’ He couldn’t follow the idea through. ‘We’ve been acting like it’s a long sleepover. He’s a smart kid, he knows what’s going on.’

  ‘Maybe he talks to Zac.’

  ‘Every decision I’ve made so far, I’ve messed it up. I don’t seem to be able to grasp the real stuff. What’s wrong with me that it takes this long to work out what that kid’s going through?’

  She took his hand and stroked the back. It was still damp from wiping his face.

  Pulling the tins to the front didn’t hide that the shelves were half empty. Two tins of tomato soup for lunch now left only two more. One more lunch, one more reasonably unsatisfying lunch. Every meal eaten now was one that wasn’t there later. Every meal she managed to conjure out of leftovers was another half a day they could stay inside. She forced herself not to count how many tins, how many packets of pasta, just closed the pantry doors.

  Not every meal was leftovers, despite what Zac thought. Odds and sods from the fridge and the cupboard—a couple of flabby carrots, a stick of wobbly celery, some dried beans she used for holding down baking paper, half an onion—lay on the bench. Together they looked like soup. Some barley, which she had no recollection of buying, would do instead of bread.

  This was what her grandmother used to talk about, saving jars and making soup. If only she had a chicken carcass or a ham bone. Hidden at the back of the fridge she discovered a couple of dried sausages that Sean had brought back from a farmers’ market and for six months they had been waiting to be made into something sophisticated. Now they completed a farmers’ market depression soup. The sausages probably cost more than her grandmother spent on a whole meal. She smiled.

  At the kitchen table, Oscar coloured-in. Lots of the colouring, not so much of the in. This was the last of the activity books Sean had bought on the first day. Left for last because it was the most uninteresting, rote, uncreative. He did it only as an excuse to sit near her, and to watch for Mr Moon. The instant she laid out the ingredients, he hopped down. Something, anything else, was more interesting than the book. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Sure.’ She looked out at the deserted garden. ‘You could pick me some herbs. Anything you like the look of in the herb pots. Remember to break the leaves off, not pull them up.’ She handed him a bowl and moved the chopping board to the kitchen table so she could keep an eye on him.

  He came back with the bowl full, mostly of parsley. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Um,’ if she let him chop veggies they would be eating lunch at dinner time, ‘you could get some water for the soup from the rainwater tank.’ She searched out a clean soft drink bottle. ‘Fill it up, and remember to put the lid on.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He walked across the garden, swinging his head from side to side, scanning for feline danger. It reassured her that he jumped when a bird lighted on the fence. She could trust him to be cautious, it was safe to look down at the sausage she was cutting up for a few moments.

  She heard what could have been a wail of surprise from Oscar and on its heels the slam of the office door. She dropped the knife and bolted to the back door. Oscar lay splayed face forward on the grass, his t-shirt soaked with water, the bottle flattened underneath him. The glass transmitted clearly Sean’s harsh tone.

  ‘You weren’t looking where you were going, were you?’

  ‘Yes I was.’

  ‘I was watching you. And why wasn’t the lid on tight?’ Sean stood over Oscar.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘What were you even doing? That’s a day’s water for someone and it’s gone.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ his face streaked red with tears of resentment.

  ‘This isn’t a game, we can’t get more at the store. You want chocolate, you want another drink? There isn’t any more when it’s gone. Do you understand?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t my fault.’ Oscar’s voice rose higher in proportion to the injustice of the situation.

  Hannah ran to put herself between Oscar and Sean. ‘What do you think? He’ll learn by being yelled at? I told him to do it. Yell at me.’

  Sean turned away, and trudged back to the office. She helped Oscar up from the grass.

  ‘My (sob) pyjamas (sob) are wet.’ He choked on his indignation.

  She knelt down to pull him to her but he held himself stiff.

  ‘I’m wet.’

  Sean’s voice took her by surprise. Crouched next to them, he took Oscar’s hand and looked him in the eye, modulated his voice to make it soft and calm. ‘I’m sorry, Oz, that was unfair of me. I didn’t know Mum told you to get the water.’ Sean didn’t make eye contact with her. ‘It wasn’t fair of me to get mad at you.’

  ‘Okay.’ Oscar’s sobs abated and his body softened.

/>   Hannah shepherded Oscar inside and hung his wet pyjamas over the back of the kitchen chairs to dry. They weren’t really dirty. Not bits of mud on them dirty. Not worth-wastingmore-water-on dirty.

  The next task was to make up a container for Gwen. Daniel and Zac were taking turns to take her food. They changed which door they left it beside each time, knocking and running away like pranksters. Oscar wanted to take his turn as well but not after yesterday’s incident. Against her better judgement, they had let him take it to the front but he thought he saw the door opening and dropped the meal. When Sean dashed around there was no sign of the dropped container. She spent the afternoon listening for noises from Gwen’s side of the hallway wall without hearing her. But then they never did.

  There were only a couple of take-away containers left. She wrote a quick note. Gwen, could you please leave the water bottles and food tubs outside so we can reuse them. She couldn’t bring herself to put love, and cheers was too jaunty under the circumstances. So she didn’t put anything, it was obvious who it came from.

  When Oscar came running into the living room, she jumped, barely catching her laptop as it slid off her knee. He was gone again before she registered what he said. She entered the kitchen prepared for bad news but all she saw was Zac and Daniel standing by the back door, ominously silent. Whatever the problem was, it was in the garden. Please, she thought, don’t let it be Mr Moon dead or, worse, injured or sick.

  But in the middle of the yard stood Ella, like a statue busker at the Quay, in pink from head to toe. Riotous, discordant shades of pink. One chubby foot was shod in a strappy, sparkly sandal, the other in a pale pink runner. Her legs were firmly planted on the ground, covered in long stripy fuchsia and mauve socks that nearly met her hot pink shorts. Over the shorts, a net fairy skirt stuck out like a shelf, covered in more sparkles. Her purple t-shirt sported a mass of flowers in pastel shades on the front and Hannah could just make out, peaking over her shoulders, fairy wings to match the skirt. A plastic tiara was pushed in among her tangled curls, set at a rakish angle. And around her face, elastic knotted through her hair, a white surgical mask covered her mouth, nose and chin. In the absence of the rest of her features, her eyes peeping out over the top appeared impassive.