Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  “Where are you coming from today?”

  “We’ve come from Canberra.”

  He nodded at her.

  “We’re heading home. We met my son and his friend there—they had a school camp.” Shut up, shut up, before he asks you when.

  He looked them over with less interest than she expected. “Are your boys sick?” He motioned to the masks.

  “No. No, not at all. No one’s sick. It’s just a precaution in the car. We’ve been trying to keep the kids apart because, you know, little kids are germ factories. But he’s fine too. It’s just…” She trailed off. “You know kids.” But at his age, he probably didn’t.

  He leaned his head in a bit more and talked to Zac. “Hey, mate, say something to me.”

  “Like what?” Zac was muffled by the mask.

  The cop seemed satisfied and turned back to her. “So are you from Sydney?”

  Don’t volunteer anything. “Yes.” She willed him not to ask when they left. Her brain went blank. Just when she needed a believable lie, nothing came.

  “We’re advising people to stay out of the whole Greater Sydney area. Were you staying with friends?”

  “No.”

  “You might get back into your hotel. We can give you something to say you never left the zone.”

  “Our home’s in Sydney. If there’s any way, we’d like to go back home.”

  “Your funeral.” The policeman looked sobered by the inappropriateness of his comment. “Once you go in, you won’t be coming back out until it’s all over.” He looked at Sean, shrugged, and handed him a sheaf of Health Department pamphlets. “Keep your little ones safe.”

  “We will.” Hannah gave a genuine smile, the first emotion she’d allowed onto her face since they’d reached the roadblock.

  The boys in the back were quieter now, even Oscar was staring out the window. A wave of tiredness crashed over her as the adrenaline drained away. They had the boys, they’d made it through the roadblock. Everything was done. Getting home was a formality.

  “Hey.”

  Hannah jumped. “What did I do?”

  Sean smiled at her. “Maybe I should drive the rest of the way.”

  “It’s not far.”

  “We did it.” He gestured his head to the backseat. “We’ve got a full house.”

  They were ten minutes from home.

  “You’d better pull in so we can fill up again.” Sean waved his hand in the general direction of the petrol station.

  “We’re not stopping again.”

  “Be serious—we’ve got less than a quarter of a tank.”

  “We’ll make it home. Too many risks today, no more.”

  “And next time we need to take the car out? When it’s worse?”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.”

  Sean looked thunderous but said nothing.

  As soon as they pulled into the driveway, the boys bundled out of the car and bounced around the small paved front yard.

  “Zac, Daniel.” Hannah was still summoning the energy to haul herself out of her seat. “You’re going to have to stay in your room for the next two days.”

  Zac’s eyes were a mixture of outrage and dismay. “What if we need to go to the toilet?”

  She sighed. “Then you can go to the bathroom, of course. But that’s all, and definitely no playing with Oscar.”

  Zac pulled a face at Daniel, although the effect was hidden by his mask. “As if.”

  Sean held the door as the two boys ran through, Oscar chasing them. He bent behind the low wall of the veranda. “Home delivery.”

  She hadn’t noticed that the note was gone. He took two bags, and she took the last one and the cold pack. “I need a coffee. And you can have real milk.” She smiled at him.

  “I bet you wish you’d agreed to buy the espresso machine. Fully automatic, beans in the top, touch one button, a perfect café cappuccino out the bottom.”

  She lingered on the step. The last light of the day was golden on the rooftops. In his front yard, Mr. Henderson rested against his fence, chatting to Gwen. He lazily raised a hand to her without breaking his conversation, and Gwen looked around and gave her a smile and a wave. Gwen should know better. She should know to stay indoors. And Hannah could only imagine where else Gwen went. Just as well they hadn’t left Oscar with her—she’d have had him gallivanting all over the suburb. Hannah ducked inside before Gwen could come over and talk to her.

  She found Oscar lying outside Zac’s room, his ear pressed to the crack at the bottom of the door. More than an espresso machine, Hannah wished she could know for certain that she was disease-free. She wanted more than anything to open Zac’s door and give him a hug. It was such a small risk, such an infinitesimal possibility. But if she and Sean were sick, she needed Zac safe. An image flared into her mind, one she hadn’t had for a while. But instead of Sean’s shoulders supporting her family, now it was Zac’s slender frame.

  Her back ached. She turned carefully onto her other side and it eased slightly. She stretched her left leg over her right, trying to push her toe forward as far as she could without hitting Sean’s back. The pain disappeared and she let herself sink slowly back to sleep. But as she sank, the pain reasserted itself. She rolled on her back and stretched out her hips. Again the pain receded. Not really pain, more insistent discomfort.

  She listened to Sean’s rhythmic breathing, trying to distract herself. But after a minute or so, she found she was actively listening to him. She couldn’t stop herself from listening. It was as annoying as snoring. How was it possible that she ever slept next to the endless purring of his breath? There it was again, a dull ache in the small of her back. A need to move a muscle, which she couldn’t satisfy. Tonight, last night. She couldn’t remember if she’d had it the night before.

  It was Monday’s long drive. More than eight hours sitting cramped in the car. And the anxiety. That would cause this kind of pain. Surely Monday must have been the first night.

  Symptoms had to start somewhere. The cancer that kills you begins as one wayward cell. As far as she knew, there was no way to tell the normal grind of life from warning signs. She could ignore it and regret it, or she could lie here obsessing about a backache.

  After all, she hadn’t had a clue when she first saw her mammogram, a night photograph of the earth, bright white patches connected by well-illuminated corridors. The doctor worked his way around the image on the light box, until he got to one densely lit area. “That’s the one. We’re going to have to take that out.” But the other clusters looked exactly the same to her, cities, more or less populous, but with no way to tell which were the nice neighborhoods. Unless they were all bad and he was just pointing to the worst of them. Her eye caught on another patch that was, as far as she could see, the twin to the problem. “And all the others? Will we have to deal with them later?” He looked quizzically at her. “Like this one?” She pointed to the twin. He shook his head kindly. “No, no, no. That’s normal tissue.”

  She turned again, twisting herself into a yoga pose, the only position in which nothing hurt. There it was, the sleep, if she could only grab hold. Something jolted her. Concentrate on the sleep. And again. Something out of place, a noise. She let go of the sleep. She opened her eyes to listen better. It came again, a car door opening. Someone coming in late or going out very early. On a weeknight. In the middle of the night. She heard voices.

  It was someone else’s problem, out in the street, nothing to do with her. Sleep was more important, if only she could get her mind away from the car. They would close the car door and drive away and that would be it.

  The sound of the car door didn’t come, her mind sharpened, trying to make out the smallest changes. She slid gently out of bed, tripped over her shoes lying on the floor, and banged into the wardrobe door. Sean snuffled, rolled over, and went back to breathing loudly.

  She put her hand between the curtains and made a gap to look out. Four doors up on the other side, she could see a si
lver sedan with its doors and boot open. The porch light of the house was on, and the front door ajar.

  She recognized the man who lived there, a nodding acquaintance, leaning into the car. When he stood up, the weak light spilling from the house fell on his daughter in the backseat. From the boot he pulled out what appeared to be a blanket and tucked it around her. The girl’s mother was coming down the stairs with a large cardboard box, heavy by the pull of her arms. As the woman reached the open boot, the nearest streetlight caught its contents, and Hannah saw a carton of cereal sticking out the top. The woman put the box in and tried to close the lid. She pushed down on the box and tried again. She shoved on the boot lid as it sprang back, then started unpacking. Out came a suitcase, a small kettle barbecue, and another couple of boxes.

  There was a sharp noise from the house, like the door closing. Hannah saw the man push his shoulder against the front door and, satisfied, make his way down the stairs. He pulled the driver’s-side door closed as he slid behind the wheel, and as they drove off, the woman’s face was lit in profile by the streetlamp.

  Hannah wondered where they were going. Anywhere, she supposed, if they had a tent. Sean had found a website the day after their trip to Canberra, of people sharing circuitous routes out of the city that hadn’t yet been closed, but it seemed likely from the follow-up tales of failure that the police had found the site too. Maybe the family was just going to another suburb, farther south, farther away from the hot spots.

  Her back ached. There was no point going back to bed.

  Light fell dimly through the panes in the front door, giving her a sketchy outline in gray to navigate by. She guided herself past Oscar’s room and into the living room by the tips of her fingers on the hallway wall. The curtains let through a small glimmer, but outside Zac’s room, the hallway was windowless and engulfed in inky darkness. She paused to listen for noise. Her stern voice through the door had had little effect on Zac and Daniel, since they knew she wouldn’t come in to follow through on her threats. Now they were quiet, finally asleep. She tripped and jumped as her foot hit something just outside Zac’s door.

  The bundle on the floor made little murmuring sounds. She felt her way to the light switch outside the bathroom, shuffling her feet against further surprises. Oscar lay across Zac’s doorway, in a nest constructed from his duvet and pillow. His face was pale and empty and left her feeling disquieted and sad. He snuggled further down into his makeshift bed and looked so comfortable, she decided to leave him be.

  In the kitchen, her laptop was where she had left it that afternoon. It had been nine hours since she checked the Internet. Seven of those before she went to bed. And it had been hard, steeling herself not to look. Nine hours of news that she didn’t know. There might be an explanation of why her neighbors were doing a flit in the night. Or some of it might even be good—there had to be progress sometime.

  The blue light of the screen barely lit the walls. She scanned down the newspaper’s website, and registered that it was after midnight. Today was now yesterday. She found the number. Eighty-one. That had to be a typo—they meant eighteen. There were only thirteen dead on Monday. Only. Thirteen people dead in one day. But eighty-one. It had to be wrong. She snapped the laptop shut. Until the morning. The paper would notice their mistake and fix it by morning.

  In the bathroom, she looked at her wan and fearful face. Through all the years of worrying and scanning her body, of being on high alert, this much she knew about cancer pain—you couldn’t make it go away by bending or stretching. She told the panic merchant in the mirror firmly, “This isn’t what cancer feels like.”

  In her experience, cancer didn’t feel like anything at all. It was a blob on a mammogram, a wrinkle in the skin, but she still didn’t know the difference between hysteria and prudence.

  She took two painkillers and made her way back to bed, stepping over Oscar. She gently swiveled him so that he lay along the hall, not across it.

  Oscar was stretched out on the sofa, in thrall to cartoons, when she got up. His duvet and pillow were still in a pile outside Zac’s door. As Hannah passed, Zac called out, “Can we get some breakfast in here?”

  “In a minute.”

  “Mum, Oscar’s been up for hours and he won’t get us anything. We’re starving.” His voice was muted by the door.

  Her head was muzzy from lack of sleep, but at least the pain was gone. “In a minute.”

  “Can we at least come out?”

  “This afternoon. Two days is this afternoon.” Zac said something that she couldn’t hear and wasn’t supposed to.

  Of the bag of bread, only enough full slices remained for the boys’ breakfast, leaving her the crusts. In place of gloves, she used the bag to hold the bread as she dropped it in the toaster, a fork to lift the slices out and hold it in place as she smeared a trace of jam across each piece. A teaspoon of chocolate powder floated in a glass of long-life milk for each of the boys, the powder encapsulated in bubbles of air that divided as she stirred harder, remaining bone-dry inside the translucent skins.

  The tin of coffee felt light. She shook it, as if somehow that would make it heavier. Her calculations were off. Unlike the bread, she couldn’t blame it on Daniel. That had better be added to the next order. She filled the base of the ancient stovetop espresso maker with water, screwed the two halves together. The hiss and spit of an explosion of steam and shrapnel waiting to happen was exactly why she had retired it to the back of the cupboard years ago. Now that there wasn’t a barista around the corner, they both craved a proper cappuccino, and since they had time available for coffee-making, it had been recalled from exile.

  She knocked softly on Zac’s door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it and slid the tray in. As she closed the door, she heard Zac’s whine. “Mum, toast? I hate toast—it’s like cardboard.”

  Daniel’s voice was softer, not designed for her to hear. “More for me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The painful brightness of the yard darkened the unlit office more, so that she could barely make out Sean hunched over the keyboard. “Knock, knock.” He looked up at her, but his mind remained in the virtual world. “Coffee.”

  He put a hand out for the mug and took a sip. “Improving.”

  “How’s work?”

  He snapped into focus. “Do you know there’s not a single case in Melbourne? The whole office down there is working normally. They’re going out to lunch today.”

  “Are many people still going in to the Sydney office?”

  “It’s been closed.” He looked away and shrugged, as if it was unimportant. “One of the guys from another department lives in that block of flats. So they closed the office, as a precaution. After he was quarantined, like that’s going to help.” He rubbed a spot of dirt from his screen.

  “What flats?”

  “You haven’t looked at the paper yet? Ten people dead yesterday all in one block of flats. He was in yesterday. I was supposed to be in a meeting with him.”

  “Is he all right? Is he sick?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really know him. An email went around earlier saying he was doing okay but…the whole block’s quarantined. There are soldiers standing outside the building. It’s all over the news. And it’s not like the ten knew each other—they just live in the same block. They say it could be getting through the sewerage system. Aerosolized when you turn on the tap too hard or flush the toilet.”

  “How the hell could that even be possible? It spread through the toilet?”

  “Who knows? Maybe it’s an old building with dodgy plumbing. Maybe they’re secretly partying together. No one knows.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But I’m safe and everyone who went in yesterday is going to spend today and tomorrow waiting for symptoms.” He looked around the room, as if for a solution. “Eighty-one dead yesterday and someone I work with lives in the same block as ten of them. The guys in Melbourne keep telling us to forget about work. But what am I going to do?
” He put his arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze. “I’m okay and you’re okay and Zac and Oscar and Daniel are all okay. But I have to keep doing something, pretending that it matters, otherwise it’s not okay anymore.” He looked into his mug. “Is there more? You’ll be rivaling the café in a few days. It’s good.”

  It was good because they had the old espresso pot. Because the air was fresh and voices of people were in the distance. Because Zac was in his bedroom and Oscar was watching cartoons. So the coffee tasted good.

  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 had been 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 was jolted from the daydream by the sound of the doorbell. As she walked down the hall she realized 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 meter between her and whoever was outside. It took an instant to recognize Gwen, backlit by the sunlight from the street, peering in.

  “Oh, Hannah. I’m so sorry to interrupt you.” Hannah was still wearing her pajamas. It was not as if she was going anywhere today.