An Ordinary Epidemic (18 page)

Hannah sat on the arm of the sofa, watching Oscar watch TV. Waiting for him to change position was almost a meditation. Just about the only way he didn't sit was flat on the seat. Now he was lying with his legs draped up over the back, feet flat on the wall behind, his head hanging backwards over the front of the sofa. Two minutes earlier, he was on his front crouched like a mouse with his knees pulled up to his chin underneath him.

An ad came on for a ‘special' meal with a movie tie-in toy. ‘Hey, Mum. I really want that. I really like that movie.'

‘Sorry Oscar, can't go out the front door today.' The perfect answer.

Now on the screen, a woman poured laundry powder into a washing machine. From the machine, a bubble squeezed, enveloping the woman and floating her into the air. Below her, a sea of animated germs, black and scowling, threatened to
reach the bubble. One by one, the bubble enfolded the members of the family, protecting them from their own home. It was a simplistic ad, yet so appealing. To be in that bubble, with Oscar and Zac and Sean. She yearned for protection that was as easy as a soap powder.

She was jolted from the daydream by the sound of the doorbell. As she walked down the hall she realised no one had come to their door for a week, no one unexpected. She took a step back as she opened it, to keep a metre between her and whoever was outside. It took an instant to recognise Gwen, backlit by the sunlight from the street, peering in.

‘Oh, Hannah. I'm so sorry to interrupt you.' Hannah was still wearing her pyjamas. It was not as if she was going anywhere today.

‘Not a problem, Gwen.'

Gwen stood as if waiting for something, her eyes focused on the grill.

‘I'm not opening the grill, Gwen. Sorry, we're not letting anyone in or out.'

Gwen looked surprised. ‘What a lot of fuss over nothing.' She talked fast, as if continuing a conversation already started. ‘No one's come. Meals on wheels didn't turn up this week and I can't get on to my daughter. She's probably gone away.' That would be thoughtless, to leave town without telling your elderly mother. But thoughtless was better than the other possibilities. ‘I can't get to the shopping centre and Lily's is only a corner store, you wouldn't expect her to have everything. So when you go to the shops I've got a list of things for you to pick up.'

‘I'm not going to the shops but I'm getting some things delivered. If you give me the list, I'll get them to put your things in too.'

Gwen had her purse in her hand. ‘I don't want much, a few tins. I'll give you some money.' Money that had probably been
through Lily's till and the hands of Lily's customers.

‘Later. We don't know how much it will be.'

‘Fifty dollars should more than cover it.' She had the note out, one hand on the grill.

‘I'll get it from you later. I'm not opening the door right now. Not until the epidemic's over. It can wait until then.' Gwen looked affronted. ‘Gwen, do you cook for yourself?'

‘I manage. The meals on wheels man comes and my daughter brings me a casserole on the weekend. Or a salad.'

‘When did the meals on wheels man come last?'

‘I think it was Thursday. Maybe Friday.'

‘And your daughter?'

‘Oh, she's always busy.' Gwen dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand. ‘She has a family of her own and everyone is making such a fuss about this illness.'

‘What have you eaten since Friday?'

‘I'm not incapable of looking after myself. I've been doing it for a long time and I haven't starved.'

Gwen moved closer to the grill as she became engrossed in the conversation. And each increment sent Hannah further into the shadow of the hallway, until Gwen was an outline haloed by the light.

‘I can't let you in Gwen, people are dying.'

‘I hope you don't think I'm one of them. Except from hunger if meals on wheels man doesn't come back.'

In her mind, the shelves of food in the pantry rearranged themselves, smaller somehow, clustered for six now, when they had been designed for four. ‘I'll make sure you have food.' She looked beyond Gwen to the street outside, willing the meals on wheels car or Gwen's daughter to appear and make this not her problem. ‘Gwen, you can't go out, especially not to Lily's. It's dangerous. That's why I can't let you in.'

‘Oh, I don't go far and I'm right as rain.'

‘I'm serious, it takes two days to see symptoms. You could
be sick, or Mr Henderson, and not even know it. That's why you have to stay home and not have contact with anyone. People are dying. That's why I can't let you in.' Gwen looked unimpressed. Hannah continued, a little weakly, ‘Will you be all right at home, on your own?' All she was prepared to offer was food, nothing more. And yet even that made her anxious. Each meal she gave Gwen, gave Daniel, was a meal less protection for her boys. Offering too much and not enough.

‘Of course I will. I've been on my own for fifteen years now, I think I know how to stay put.' She fumbled around in her pocket and pulled out a torn envelope with florid handwriting. ‘Just a few things.' She gave the grill an offended look that travelled down to the gap at the bottom. ‘My knees aren't what they were.'

‘Why don't you leave it in the letterbox and I'll get it out later.' It could stay there for a few hours.

When Zac was little and she'd listened to just about as much Wiggles as she could stand, she made him a CD for the car. She'd spent a night going through their music collection, finding all the silliest songs that were still acceptable to her. He had loved that CD and only grown out of it when he realised that Oscar in his turn had grown to love it. And now she needed something to cheer herself up, make her feel as if there was fun in the world still. As if she was five again and didn't have to worry.

Oscar only knew one dance, the ‘Macarena'—the ‘Hokey Pokey' of his generation, taught to him by the teachers at school who were just old enough to have learnt it when it first came out. Whatever song she put on, he insisted they dance it and she followed his lead. In unison, they swirled hips, clapped hands, flicked thumbs and stamped feet. Ending with
a quarter turn jump in whichever direction Oscar chose.

Oscar kept up a monologue the whole time, punctuated by giggles. ‘And Mrs Gleeson stood on Mr Turner's foot when she jumped and Mr Turner yelled but no one heard him 'cause the music was so loud and...' She could barely hear him over the stamping.

A thumping came from somewhere other than their feet and Hannah paused the music to hear teenage fists pounding on Zac's bedroom wall. ‘TURN THE MUSIC DOWN.'

Oscar and Hannah looked at each other and laughed. ‘Stop being such killjoys,' she yelled back.

‘We're trying to play a game here and every time you elephants jump on the floor everything goes everywhere. We have to yell at each other.'

Hannah winked at Oscar. ‘We won't jump so much.'

‘It's two days! With no one sick.'

‘Two more hours.'

Even without being able to see them, Hannah knew his eyes were flicking up. ‘Two hours I'll be dead. From boredom, not from a cough.'

‘At least you'll stop griping at me when you're dead.' Too well brought up to bust out, she guessed. Tick in her column. ‘Hey, Oz, let's do a dance that doesn't use our feet so much.' She taught him to twist, lifting one heel and holding his weight on the other. She flapped her arms, like the ‘Eagle Rock', waved them around above her head, any silly pose to get him to laugh.

They were caught mid twist when Sean walked in, coffee cup dangling from one hand. ‘Can you turn the music down. It's too loud.'

Hannah smiled at him. ‘Across the yard in the office? No way.'

Sean continued to frown. ‘I came in for a coffee. And you're loud.'

‘You and Zac. The two of you can move into the garage when we let him out and never make a sound.'

‘You're the one who's always going on about not disturbing Gwen.' Sean waved at the party wall. Oscar had already engrossed himself in the pile of Lego in the corner, shutting out the adult noises. ‘Serious things are happening. You might be having a good time but out there,' he shook his hand in the direction of the street, ‘out there people are in trouble. Real people.'

‘Me being miserable won't change that.' She had her hands on her hips, ready to defend herself. Oscar took apart and put back together the same set of bricks but she knew he was listening, trying to pretend that somehow he wasn't part of this. It wasn't fair on Oscar, scaring him like this. ‘Why don't you finish early today?'

‘I finish early every day now. I've still got stuff to do.' He turned to Oscar and said with all the force of his bad temper, ‘This place is a mess. Is that any way to treat your toys? Look at them, all piled up. They'll get broken.' Oscar's eyes started to well.

‘We'll tidy it when we're done, won't we?' She tried to jolly Oscar.

‘The mess was here yesterday. It was here the day before. You shouldn't be picking up after him, Oscar should be doing it.'

‘He did. Yesterday was a different mess. Every day we pick up the mess, then we make a new one.'

Cancer makes you a better person. It must be true, people said it to her all the time. But Hannah had enough people to take care of and Gwen had other people who could look after her. Hannah couldn't take in the whole neighbourhood, she couldn't feed everyone and yet there would always be someone
in need and more that she could have done. Wherever she drew the line, she would fail someone. If she was a better person now, she must have been an inadequate one before.

Maybe it made it easier for people to allow themselves to coast along, convincing themselves they couldn't be held responsible for not taking control. If you lived an unexamined life, if you were in a state of invincible ignorance, that wasn't your fault. It was unavoidable, you hadn't had cancer. Or maybe it was easier for the onlookers to reconcile themselves to what she had gone through if they believed she was compensated with a wisdom denied to them.

She'd lain in bed exhausted from throwing up, her whole body alien, fighting against her. Modesty, privacy were jettisoned. Any sense that her body was her own was abandoned, its sovereignty ceded to doctors and technicians.

The sharp certainty that she was going to die still sometimes ambushed her but it didn't make life sweeter. It was a mosquito buzzing in her ear at night, no more creating happiness than a mosquito creates sleep. She'd suffered and not suffered and knew for certain that she preferred the not suffering. All cancer had left her was a fading anger that she'd wasted a year of her life on a posse of renegade cells.

Her only task had been to make it to the other side, back to the life she already had, the person she had chosen to be. Like the breakup of a bad relationship, living well was the best revenge. Here she was, eight years on, the same person, wishing that she didn't feel responsible for Gwen.