An Ordinary Epidemic (42 page)

‘I'll understand later, I'll forgive you later, but I can't now. You didn't have the right to choose for us.'

She considered pulling up the blanket, to hide the brand of the disease and because that's what you did, but from what she learnt watching cop shows, she assumed his hands would be stiff and she wasn't prepared to risk contamination by prying the blanket out. So she left him.

She locked the front door behind her and checked up and down the road before leaving the porch. Sticking as close to the walls as she could, she trampled some of Stuart's garden before the fence forced her onto the footpath. There was no one to care about the garden now. The plants would regrow, with or without people to look after them. She broke into a jog
up their steps and banged on their door with her elbow.

Sean let her in. ‘I was going to do it.'

‘You were busy.'

He glared at her. ‘It could wait, you didn't have to do it.'

‘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. In the kitchen, Oscar was counting and she could see Zac shepherding Ella in the direction of the living room. She followed them, reluctant to deny herself this slice of their life. Zac whispered to Ella not to giggle when Oscar came in, to hide right at the back in the shadow. His face lit up as he watched her squirm her way under the sofa. He was allowing himself to be part of the little kids' world. Once she was well hidden, and Oscar's voice loudly announced fifty-three, fifty-four..., he secreted himself behind the curtains, an obvious place. Oscar would find his brother and feel pleased with himself, Ella would be found last. Hannah smiled to herself—he had learnt to look through their eyes.

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 doona in front of her, she had one of the leaflets brought around by the soldiers, retrieved by Sean after it had flapped around the porch for a couple of days. For most of
the organisations 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 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 neighbour.'

‘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 had a rash. That's Manba.'

‘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 have to 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 then 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 until the symbol on the front door has been marked with a green tick. 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.

The living room was empty and shadowed. She could hear Zac in the kitchen loudly counting ‘Eighty-four, eighty-five, ...'. Sean was sitting on the couch closest to the window, engrossed in his reading, his book held high and tilted to gain the most light. A fit of giggles came from beneath the couch. Ella had hidden herself again in the spot Zac had shown her. Hannah sat down on the couch, her legs giving Ella a little more cover, but the giggling gave her away. Hannah could feel Ella pushing her short stubby fingers back and forth on the back of her leg in an imitation of tickling. Hannah laughed, at Ella's attempt, not because of it. The laugh hurt her chest. Sean kept reading his book.

From their porch, they had a good view over the fence into Stuart and Natalie's front yard and verandah. Beyond, Hannah could detect a whiff rotting garbage from the deserted street. 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 she 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 only fell into a deep sleep after Sean came back to bed in the early morning light.

‘Go back inside.' Sean was talking to Zac, Zac who she hadn't heard, standing in the unlit twilight 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 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 or Ella's curiosity would get the better of them. Finally, the two figures came out of Stuart's front door with a body bag on a stretcher, in a slow uncoordinated shuffle. She watched them back and fill, like an over-wide truck, to get the stretcher on the porch, setting it down gently the last few centimetres so as not to jolt the bag. Stuart, she told herself, not the bag, Stuart.

They manoeuvred the stretcher behind the porch wall, which 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 stuck 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 licence. They both examined it and then leant down to the bag. She heard the sound of unzipping. They looked at the licence, then down at the body in the bag. They rezipped, slipped the licence in one side of the luggage tag and sealed it with tape.

One took a can of spray paint. On the left and right quadrants of the red circle that Sean had painted on the front door three days before, he marked large figure 1's, and up the top he scrawled something much smaller. She squinted to make it out—it could have been today's date. 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 lifted the bag much higher than she expected. Stuart didn't have the van to himself. They splashed bleach over the stretcher and slid it in at the bottom. As the driver put his foot into the front seat of the car, his eyes swivelled 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 the bags away.

They all sat down to lunch—rice, sultanas 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 begrudgingly, 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.'

‘We're not allowed to go out the front.'

‘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.'