An Ordinary Epidemic (37 page)

They flipped it down on Oscar's floor. Oscar and Ella watched entranced from the edge of Oscar's bed.

‘Okay, you two,' Sean rubbed his hands together, ‘there's some water in the bucket in the bathroom. Give yourself a rub over where you're grotty.'

Hannah followed to jostle them along, wetting flannels and scrubbing when they lost impetus. Oscar grumbled about how
cold the water was, how dark the room was. Ella followed the instructions impassively. As she herded them past Zac's room, she noticed light leaking under the door.

Although it was still early, the twilight was deep enough that Oscar's room was dark and she could barely see Oscar and Ella snuggled down into their beds.

She fell into the sofa next to Sean. ‘What happened to monkey boy?'

‘He wanted to be alone.'

Hannah yawned and squinted at Sean. ‘Would you mind if we passed up the opportunity to sit here in the dark and went to sleep instead?'

Hannah started to make her way up the hall. Behind her, she could hear Sean at Zac's door. ‘Don't stay up too late.'

‘'Kay.'

‘When the battery in your torch runs out, I'm not giving you a new one.'

‘'Kay.'

The bed received her into its soft protection. Sean climbed into the empty space next to her. The street was quiet, all was right again. His outstretched arm closed around her. She shut her eyes, felt herself fall into sleep and wake as she fell. His side was warm and she snuggled her back against him, cradling his hand in hers. His arm reflexively pulled her in. She lay for a few minutes before again falling and jolting awake. She fell and woke, fell and woke, fell and slept.

And woke, a sound she couldn't place forcing itself through her dreaming mind. Oscar at the door, half asleep and grumpy.

‘Why aren't you asleep?'

‘Ella woke me up,' he sounded peeved, ‘she's crying.'

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.