She rolled over to Sean, choosing to assume he was already awake. ‘Do you want me to go?’ She willed him to say no.
‘She’s used to me, I’ll go.’
Seemingly moments later, without any consciousness of having fallen back to sleep, she was woken by the door and Sean’s voice, whispering loud. ‘Ella’s a bit scared, so I said she could come into our bed.’
‘Really? Oscar’s there with her.’
‘She promised to sleep in Oscar’s room tomorrow, because she’s a big brave girl, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Ella’s voice was small.
Hannah shifted over to make room for her, as she once had for Oscar and, before him, Zac. Ella’s tiny body took up almost no room but her presence drove Hannah to the edge of the bed. The way Ella seemed so at home made Hannah feel like the intruder.
She could tell Sean was still awake by his attempts not to disturb her but attempting not to disturb her did. Her body had had a quantum of sleep. Her mind jumped between analysing the day and conjuring problems that might never happen, problems she couldn’t solve in the middle of the night. However hard she distracted herself, her brain insistently brought her back. She finally fell asleep working out a complicated plan for barricading the front windows and the side passage with recycled tin cans.
Sean waved around a small square of newspaper. ‘I said one, not two, not three, not a whole handful.’
From where Hannah sat at the kitchen table, pretending she wasn’t listening, she could see the kids lined up in front of Sean, a silent audience. Oscar’s eyes roamed anywhere but the kabuki mask of anger on Sean’s face. Zac lounged against the doorframe looking shifty, planning a quick getaway. Ella stood her ground, gazing up wonderstruck at the display of emotional fireworks.
‘This is the third time in two days I’ve had to unblock the toilet. And waste more water. It’s disgusting. One square of paper. If you do what you’re told, I won’t have to unblock it. If you don’t do what you’re told, I’ll make you unblock it.’
Zac nodded his head and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, easing himself through the door.
‘Hang on a tick there.’
Zac paused like a button had been pressed on a remote.
‘We now have at most a week’s worth of newspaper left. Do you want to tell me how you are going to wipe your bum then?’
Oscar shook his head the tiniest amount. Ella stared open mouthed. Zac pretended he was somewhere else.
‘You’re not. That’s how. Because there is no more toilet paper and no more newspaper. When it’s gone, that’s it.’ Silence. ‘Are you listening to me?’
Oscar and Zac murmured an indistinct chorus.
‘And do I have to demonstrate to you, Zac, how to flush again? Half a bucket, just half a bucket poured into the bowl. From a height. Dribble it in and you’re just wasting water. Not you.’ Sean pointed at the two littlies. ‘You ask me or Mum. But only if it needs it, yellow water in the bowl doesn’t kill you. But if we run out of water in the tank, you’re going to be drinking it.’
Zac scowled and muttered something Hannah couldn’t make out.
‘Oh really? Stupid? The next time any of you goes to the loo, I’m coming in to check on you.’
A look of outraged horror covered Zac’s face, Oscar looked down, embarrassed, but Ella was still mesmerised.
‘Go away, just go away. I don’t want to see any of you again today.’
Zac and Oscar scattered. Ella stared at Sean’s back as he marched to the kitchen.
‘Unbelievable. Unbe-bloody-lievable.’ He fell into one of the kitchen chairs. Hannah kept her eyes on her book. She was not going to get involved, she was going to let it wash over her.
‘They can’t follow a simple instruction. What if their lives depended on it?’ Sean fiddled with the cutlery still on the table from breakfast. ‘Which they do. It’s basic hygiene. Remember when we used to get the paper every day? We would have been okay for months. You can’t wipe your bum with an iPad.’
‘Next time I’ll remember to stock up on tabloids.’
She was going to let the kids stew on it for a half an hour—because he had a point about the toilet paper—and then go and let them know that Daddy wasn’t really mad at them. Oscar would be fine, it all rolled off him, but Zac, she couldn’t tell what went on inside Zac’s head and she didn’t have his permission to ask. But there was one thing she could do for him. ‘You are not going to go into the bathroom with them.’
‘Yes.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Watch me.’
‘Zac will burst before he goes to the loo.’
‘What would you have me do? Because something has to be done.’
Even though she knew Sean wasn’t prepared to listen, she was going to try anyway. ‘It’s coffee withdrawal. You think you’re hiding it but I know you have a headache. Take something for it.’
‘I’m not going to waste a painkiller.’
‘Then have a cup of tea.’
‘I don’t like tea. I don’t need tea. I need them,’ his hand took in the front of the house and the silent, absent children, ‘to take some responsibility.’
‘Have a Panadol for my sake and the kids’. Or stay away from everyone until you’re bearable.’ Sean’s face was set but she continued. ‘Unless, of course, you want a headache.’
‘What I want is to walk to the cafe at the corner, even though they don’t know the difference between a cafe latte and a cappuccino and I want to sit on the footpath, watch people going by, have a chocolate chip cookie with my coffee and not share it with Oscar.’
She had sneaked a look at her phone in the privacy of the bedroom this morning, just to find out. Caffeine withdrawal lasted three days. As she watched, waited for the search to return, she thought she saw the level on the battery icon drop. Right now, the electrons in those batteries were the most precious things in the house. Although she was the one who had made a big deal about only using the phone for life and death, it was a crisis of sorts, and there was no one she could ask in a non-electronic way. Natalie would know if she ever answered her phone. Hannah tried again this morning, even though she knew it was futile. She wanted to be able to tell Ella that Mummy was still busy but she’d be home. More electrons gone.
The words on the page, the ones she wasn’t really reading, started to move around. She tried to focus on an individual letter. It shook like a miniature earthquake. She felt the shake propagating from the table through her elbow. Sean uncrossed and recrossed his knees, jiggling the other one. The table took on a deeper tremor.
‘Could you stop doing that?’
He stood up, stretched. Hannah looked at him expectantly, hoping he would go somewhere else. He sat down again. She put her finger on the word she was reading and waited for the spasm to pass.
He stood decisively. ‘I’m going to get some coffee.’
‘We’re out of coffee.’ Which was obvious, they had searched the cupboards, the pantry, the fridge, the freezer and the boxes in the garage. Together.
‘I’ll get some from Lily’s.’
Inexorably she took her part in this irrational conversation. ‘Lily’s is shut, and if they weren’t, she’d be out of coffee by now.’
Sean looked at her as if she had failed to grasp the magnitude of what had been going on. As if she wasn’t aware of exactly how many packets of rice and pasta were in the pantry and exactly how many meals they had left. As if she didn’t know how germs were spread. ‘She won’t be there. There won’t be anyone there.’
‘So how will you get coffee?’
‘I’ll break the lock.’ He was matter-of-fact.
‘You can’t loot Lily’s!’ She didn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. ‘You can’t loot Lily’s.’
‘It’s not looting, it’s borrowing. If I leave money, then I’m buying the stuff, just without Lily. For the lock too. Why do you think we have the cash?’ He had worked it through in his mind.
It seemed incomprehensible that she was mustering reasons for not looting the corner store. ‘We have to shop there. If you loot Lily’s I have to walk an extra three blocks for milk. Forever. I’m not walking three blocks uphill for milk for the rest of my life because you can’t wait one more day for your headache to go away.’ She had his attention, he might succumb to rational argument. ‘And how will you lock it up after? If you break her lock, other people will take stuff and they might not leave money.’
He took the objection on board, mulled it over.
‘Anyway, there’s probably nothing left, she’s been cleaned out by now.’ The minute the words were out of her mouth, Sean’s face told her she’d misstepped.
‘Then it won’t hurt for me to look.’
‘No.’ She flung herself dramatically over the hall doorway. He ran the other direction, there was no chance she could beat him to the back door. He had hold of the handle, she slipped her hand underneath just in time to push it up before it unlatched.
‘I’m going. You might as well let me out.’ He squeezed her hand hard, the metal dug into her palm but she held fast. She grabbed hold of his little finger and pulled back on it. He let go suddenly and sprinted to the hallway door, flinging it open. ‘Ha!’
‘You’d risk dying for some coffee?’
He strode through the living room. The three kids looked up for a moment then went back to the city they were constructing out of blocks.
‘I’m not going to die.’
‘This is the most absurd reason to run the risk of infection.’
‘I won’t touch anyone, I won’t let anyone breathe on me. I’ll take gloves and a mask. And I still won’t go near anyone.’
He had almost reached the front door.
‘You go out, you’re not coming back. Someone has to think of the kids.’ She grabbed his sleeve with one hand and with the other prised the keys out of his grip.
But the door was already unlocked and he swung it open with his free hand. ‘I’ll bring you back toilet paper.’ He kissed her, like he was going to work.
‘Bring back chocolate.’ She called to his receding back.
She ran through the house in her mind, cataloguing every surface that could possibly hold a clock. Her phone was off and she couldn’t come at the thought of turning it on just to know the time. What else? What else? The microwave, the computers, the VCR, the alarm clocks all needed power. Her mother’s watch. She scrabbled through the bowl of jewellery on her bedside table for it. It was stopped, run down years ago and never wound. She turned the crown, nothing happened. Not a single mechanical clock in the whole house. The front door shut out the normal measures of time. Days, weeks, hours, minutes were meaningless. Only numbers of meals meant anything.
One clock, there was one clock. An old-fashioned alarm clock that Sean bought for Oscar, the kind of caricature that Oscar only recognised from the icon on their phones. She snatched it from his windowsill. It was a chimera, a fraud. Battery powered, not mechanical at all, but it was ticking. Five to, although she had no way of knowing how long he had been gone already.
Too long. Too long. That was the only yardstick she had. She leant against the inside of the front door. The clock in her hand rested against the wood, transmitting a tiny vibration across the door with every second.
And each second that ticked by was another too many. She needed Sean, she needed him beside her, for all their sakes. Without him... there was no without him, it was a future she couldn’t conceive. If she just opened the door, looked outside, up the road, by now she must be able to see him coming back. And where was the risk in that? She turned her back to the door, leant against it and slid down to the floor. Sean’s keys lay in a metallic pile on the floorboards where she had dropped them, the silver teeth glinting in a ray of sunlight from the front door glass. She picked them up and flung them back down the hall. The few steps from the door to the keys would give her time, even if only a little, to find sanity if she couldn’t resist the urge to escape out the front. A chance to remember her duty was to Zac and Oscar.
‘Is everything all right, Mum?’ Zac appeared in the doorway at the other end of the hall.
‘Sure. Fine. Nothing to worry about.’ Although she could barely get the words out.
He shrugged and closed the door as he went back to Oscar and Ella. Hannah stared at the clock. Five past. He would be knocking any moment. The second hand bounced as it moved forward, a jaunty flourish. Each bounce marked off risk. To him, to the kids, to all their preparations. Each one brought to mind some catastrophe that she wasn’t out there to prevent. Through the door she felt the throaty vibrations of a car roaring up the street, too fast. It meant nothing to her but bad news, potentially the return of the three men from last week. In the street, Sean would be an easy target for them, or someone even less scrupulous. She took a deep breath, there was no earthly benefit to them in mugging Sean. The cash in his pockets was worth nothing, he didn’t have keys on him. She fantasised briefly that they lived in a world where a gang of thugs would enquire as to the value of their victim before attacking. Perhaps they would if they balanced the spoils against the chance of infection.
Ten past. She lost herself in the curlicues on the dark hands of the clock, a cartoon imitation of another age. He had been gone nearly fifteen minutes and Lily’s could be no more than five minutes’ walk. There should be nothing to distract him, no friendly neighbours to bump into. She could feel the thoughts crowding at the edge of her mind, the many things that could go wrong. Sick people in the streets, turned out of their homes by frightened relatives. Bodies dumped on the kerb. Around the corner, beyond sight of the porch there could be a scene imagined in any number of end of the world movies. Without crossing their threshold, she had no way of knowing if the quiet emptiness ended at the intersection. Maybe the minute he turned the corner, a mask and gloves were not enough. Maybe there were roaming bands of the dispossessed. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe she should go out, just as far as the corner, another pair of eyes to keep him safe. Or maybe she was just spooking herself.
Whatever was out there, there was one thing she had to hold firm to—he was not coming back in. He might be lucky, she might be letting her imagination run away with her, but lucky wasn’t what got you through. Easy didn’t keep danger at bay. A mistake in judgement wasn’t an excuse, it was the kind of failure that they couldn’t afford. Every disaster in human history started with a bad judgement call and calling them that didn’t ward off the consequences.
She turned the clock over, flicked the battery door with the end of her finger. If she pulled the battery out, the ticking would stop. It would no longer tell her he had been gone for twenty minutes. Then how long would she wait, when waiting was all she could do? An hour, two hours? Then, would she decide to stop waiting for a knock at the door? When was the moment to leave the safety of the threshold and move back to the house? When was the time to tell Zac and Oscar where he had gone? Where did she draw the deadline to admit to herself that something had gone unthinkably wrong?
She let her head fall back against the cool wood of the door. The floor was hard underneath her, it urged her to get up, do something but she couldn’t leave this spot. If she stayed at the door, the moment was frozen between him leaving and returning. He should know by now there was no luck in it. Luck was the excuse people gave when they didn’t plan ahead. Just because you don’t know how the die will roll, doesn’t stop you knowing that it will be cast. On a different throw, Manba might have passed the city by, randomly, as it had around the world but cancer had taught her that there was nothing to be gained by pretending the worst wouldn’t happen. Only optimists were taken by surprise.
Twenty-five minutes. She breathed with the second hand, a meditation of panic.
The door shook her as someone knocked. She took two deep breaths and answered as calmly as she could, ‘Who is it?’
‘Some random person knocking on your front door when you were expecting your h
usband.’ His voice sounded small. ‘I don’t have any chocolate. Or coffee. Or toilet paper.’
She told herself to hold firm.
When his voice came back, it was stronger but more hesitant. ‘I didn’t go in, there was nothing left. I’m safe.’
‘You’re just saying that.’
‘Why would I say that? If I had coffee and chocolate and toilet paper, I’d tell you.’
She scrambled down the hall on her hands and knees to where the keys lay lifeless under a new dent in the plaster. They were like hope in her hands, the temptation of a gamble.
‘Hurry up. I can hear another car. Just let me in and you can shut me out again when it’s gone.’
She unlocked the door but not the grill, looked him up and down, looked behind him. There was no sign of food. She would have let the food in. ‘You’re not wearing the mask and gloves.’
‘There wasn’t anything left to touch and there wasn’t anyone to see. I don’t think they’re even collecting the garbage anymore. All the rubbish bins were still out. I’m virus free. And that’s all there was, garbage. Someone did a job on Lily’s a while ago.’
She was still standing back from the grill. ‘It doesn’t take that long to walk to Lily’s.’
‘I needed to breathe so I went around the block.’ He shrugged and held his hands out, a sheepish confession. ‘All I got was air, uncontaminated, unshared air.’
‘What the hell. What the absolute hell. You went for a walk?’
‘I talked myself into a state, okay? There was a car and I ran the other way. And then there was this pile of garbage on the footpath. It had a smell so strong I could almost see it. Food scraps and tin cans and I thought I saw some old clothes and a pair of shoes. I swear that was all it was, some old clothes and shoes but I freaked myself out. And then one of the shoes moved. I think it was a rat, I’m not sure that’s much better. I just had to clear my head. Please just open the grill.’
‘You want me to open the grill, to open the grill and let in a big fat idiot.’ All the worry, all the steeling herself for the worst, all this he had chosen to put her through. ‘I told you not to, I asked you not to. But you didn’t think, you didn’t think about anybody or anything.’ Her righteous rage for Lily’s, for letting Ella in their house, for all the times he had put her plans at risk carried her away. ‘And what was I supposed to say to Oscar and Zac if you didn’t come back? That their dad’s a moron? That he didn’t have the common decent sense to keep himself alive?
An Ordinary Epidemic Page 25