Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  The clock said five to three. Her mind presented her with all the hiding places in all the heist movies she’d ever seen. In the freezer, inside a fish fingers box. The cistern. Images, connections over which she had no control, came to her. The toilet flushing, all the money squeezing through the pipes, floating out to sea. Her mind grasped in passing at the idea that there was no water but was distracted by the thought of the sea only just down the hill. She tried to relax her body, let it sink into the bed.

  She thought it was nearly four.

  Hannah woke up to a gloom that felt like seven, but the clock told her it was ten. A thin, steady hiss of rain fell, its low gray clouds scattering and attenuating the sunlight.

  In the living room, the boys were in their pajamas, surrounded by Oscar’s toys, books, playing cards, interspersed with plates and bowls. The remains of breakfast.

  All the glass in the kitchen windows and door let in the chill in place of morning light. She brought a cup of tea and some toast into the living room. With both hallway doors closed and the little fan heater going, the living room was pleasantly toasty.

  Yesterday, Zac had announced his intention of reading ahead in case classes were going on in Canberra without him. Judging by his place in his textbook, he was making progress.

  Daniel had clearly shanghaied Oscar’s coloring pencils and a sketchbook. The fat triangular pencils and cheap pulp paper were no match for his artistic abilities. He was sprawled out on the floor, lying on his stomach. The pages were divided into irregular panels like a comic, the contents roughly sketched in lead. He methodically worked his way across and down the page, bringing each frame to colorful life. From time to time he stopped to look over what he’d done with a critical eye, sometimes going back and adding to a previous frame.

  All the schoolwork they had brought home for Oscar had been finished days ago. He lay on the sofa with Zac, curled up in a ball around his video game. His only movement was the rapid tapping of his thumbs and the occasional jerk of his whole body as he moved with the screen. Zac said, without looking up, “Turn the sound off, Oz. I can’t concentrate.”

  She picked up the book she was halfway through. There was never going to be a better opportunity to work her way through all the books she’d bought and never finished. Although she yearned to be like Oscar and cast off the shoulds, for the time being she persevered. If she couldn’t concentrate, the flaw was in herself. She was going to get right to the end.

  Oscar fidgeted and she lost her place. He hadn’t done anything she could legitimately tell him off for. She tossed the book on the lounge. Her brain was fogged with tiredness. This morning all she could handle was a simple plot that went from beginning to end and characters she didn’t have to think about. The room was too small, the house was too small.

  She leaned forward, trying not to be obvious, in an attempt to make out more detail in Daniel’s drawings, but his arm was crooked around the top as if shielding it. Zac looked over at her a couple of times, disapprovingly.

  “What are you drawing, Daniel?”

  “Just, you know.”

  It could be a window into how he felt. She should try to show an interest. “Can I have a look?”

  Daniel looked pained. “It’s not really ready.” He colored self-consciously. His art was the only space that was his in the whole house.

  She picked up her book again. If she made it all the way through to the end, she’d reward herself with a kids’ novel. Zac had a shelf full, starting with everything she’d ever read him, moving on to the ones she didn’t know, the ones he’d read himself. Those would be the books she’d read next. Oscar fidgeted again—she lost her spot again and shot him a cross look. He didn’t notice.

  Zac said, “When’s lunch?”

  “I don’t know, are you planning on making it?”

  “I made my own breakfast, didn’t I?”

  “Well, you get a gold star then.” For that, she received a sour look. “We’re all home all the time. You can take some responsibility and pull some weight. I don’t need to do everything for you.”

  “Yeah, like that happens.”

  Pencils scratched, buttons clicked, pages turned. The quiet was irritating, distracting her with the absence of noise. She got to the end of a paragraph and realized she had no idea what it said. The words slid across her eyes. She yawned.

  Sean swept into the room, laptop in hand, all noise and bustle. “It’s freezing in the office. I can’t feel the ends of my fingers.” He looked around the room, satisfied with the independent industriousness of the boys. “Shove over, I need to finish this thing. I can’t even think, my brain is so cold.”

  Sean’s cheerfulness grated on her nerves. “I don’t know why you bother. What difference does it make if you don’t get it done?”

  “The guys in Melbourne are waiting for it.” Sean barely looked up from his screen.

  “The guys in Melbourne are safe and get to go to the office. The guys in Melbourne can do it themselves.”

  Sean stopped typing and considered the idea. “While I can still do something useful, that’s what I’m going to do. I can’t see why I wouldn’t.”

  “As if moving electrons around makes any real difference at all.”

  “I’m not sure this is the time or place for that conversation.” Sean nodded his head in the direction of Zac and Daniel. “Anyway, I’ll just say the words ‘mortgage’ and ‘bills.’”

  Zac’s head twitched, almost as if he was trying not to look at them. Daniel studiously continued his art, with a kind of alert obliviousness.

  “It’s not even that cold.”

  “And yet you have the heater on. It was okay when I started, but I think I sat still so long the blood stopped pumping to my extremities. The way the damp gets into that room…Still, rain means more water in the tank.” Sean rubbed his hands together in an exaggerated motion. “So much better.” His cheerfulness was noisy. “You look wrecked. Maybe you should go back to bed.”

  “I don’t feel like it.” She wasn’t going to give in to her body’s needs. Instead she forced herself to reread the last paragraph. Each word made sense but she couldn’t join them to make anything meaningful. She closed her eyes and rested her head back on the couch.

  “Sean, could I ring my mum sometime this morning?”

  “I’d like to talk to your dad first, so wait until I’m finished. Then, for sure.” Daniel looked at him quietly, waiting for more. “She’s getting better. Your dad said yesterday, remember?”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Sean ran his hand over Hannah’s hair. “Why don’t you lie down?”

  “I don’t want to lie down.” But she did. She wanted to sleep, but in here. Here in this safe, warm, quiet room, with her boys around her.

  She curled up in the corner of the sofa with her head on the armrest looking for the sweet spot, the exact place that would let her drift off. She fidgeted and turned, the noisiest person in the room. The syncopated clacking of Sean’s keyboard added to the rhythmic quiet. She stretched herself out, nudging Sean’s laptop out of the way with her head to rest on the edge of his leg. He perched the laptop sideways on his knees, arching his arms over her to reach to it. She drifted off.

  She woke on the sofa. A crust of drool had dried in the corner of her mouth. Her neck complained as she tried to return it to a normal angle. The room was lit up, with the kind of vibrancy no electric light could produce. The sun streamed in the window through the pulled-back curtains. A warmer, clear noon sun.

  She eased her head onto the armrest and poked around in her mind for the bad mood of the morning. It had gone, leaving nothing in its place.

  She felt vacant as she followed the sounds to the kitchen, thinking about last night. They shouldn’t risk that again. The cash they had was enough for emergencies, and she had to believe that the banks would keep going.

  “It moves!” Sean laughed at her as she came through the kitchen door. “Just in time for a pikelet.” He cl
umsily turned the golden pancakes, smearing uncooked batter across the frying pan.

  “Is this lunch?”

  “Lunch? I’m sure it’s not lunch. This would be a terrible lunch.” The boys giggled, even Zac. Sean gave her a smile that melded with a supplicating light in his eyes. “We’ll get to lunch eventually. Lunch is only a time of day. We are not slaves to the clock.”

  Oscar was heaping jam on his pikelet with a spoon. The jar was half empty. Drips meandered down the side and pooled on the table. It had been nearly full yesterday.

  The blob of jam glided across the pikelet as Oscar stuffed it in his mouth. Before she could get a protest out, he had wiped his jammy fingers on his pajama pants.

  “Eww, gross.” Zac rolled his eyes.

  “What?” Oscar’s mouth hung open, still stuffed with red-streaked pikelet.

  “Double gross. I can see the food in your mouth.”

  “Next batch.” The boys rushed for the plate. “Ah-ah-ah. Your mum hasn’t had any yet.” They held respectfully back while Sean took one and put it on a small plate. As soon as he was done they descended on the remaining two pikelets to argue about who had had how many. In the happy noise, her apprehension leaked away.

  “Hey, Mum.” Zac didn’t have a pikelet in his hand—he must have deferred to the guest and his younger brother. “Dad thinks you can whip condensed milk like cream but he wouldn’t do it without asking you first.”

  Oscar paused, a jam-laden pikelet halfway to his mouth, not wanting to waste another bite if there was going to be cream.

  Sean looked around at the eager eyes, slightly guilty. “Well, I think my grandmother might have done it once, but I don’t know how. Sorry.”

  “We could try.” Hannah mentally tallied the cans in the pantry, weighed the happiness apportioned against the worry of running out, all while Oscar’s pikelet hovered. “Next time.”

  “Aaw.” The pikelet disappeared into his mouth.

  Sean dropped another set on the plate and poured more batter into the pan. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks.”

  “S’okay.” He looked at the small bubbles forming on the top. “It’s a terrible lunch. Lucky no one can see. I’d have my parenting license revoked.”

  “We can have lunch later.”

  “Hey”—Sean raised his eyebrows theatrically—“Daniel’s mum rang us. Isn’t that great?”

  “That’s great. How is she?”

  They all looked at Daniel, who chewed uncomfortably, trying to finish the pikelet in his mouth so he could speak. “Good.” He swallowed. “She’s out of bed. It’s good. Dad says I can come home soon.”

  “Well, that’s great. I think that’s great.” Hannah smiled at Daniel and snuck a glance at Sean for confirmation.

  Sean pushed the pikelet around the pan, scraping with the metal spatula. “Yeah, well. You know, of course. As soon as it’s safe. But you’re fine here. We should ring your dad and tell him you’re fine here.”

  “Did your mum see a doctor today, Daniel?”

  “Dunno.”

  If she hadn’t seen a doctor, Hannah couldn’t convince herself Susan wasn’t infectious. But a doctor visited other patients, brought new germs along. So, knowing about the doctor couldn’t tell her how safe it was, but the information would be comforting if useless.

  Oscar absentmindedly munched his food, staring out the window. Something about his look, a suppressed, distressed comprehension, made Hannah follow his gaze to the lawn. There, with one paw up on the patio, was Mr. Moon. Oscar twitched slightly. The small pucker between his eyebrows that he had when he slept dented his forehead as he looked down at his plate with great concentration. He got up from the table and put one hand up on the windowsill. On the other side of the glass, the cat silently meowed. Mr. Moon looked less kempt than he’d been a week ago, but not particularly thinner. She felt bad for the cat. She felt bad for the birds and mice he’d probably eaten.

  Sean moved swiftly but calmly to grab the water blaster that sat next to the back door. Oscar’s head turned at the click of the key in the lock. Sean took aim and let fly a long stream of water that caught the cat side-on. It jumped at the first drop, but Sean kept the stream going, following it along the fence and over to Gwen’s yard. A full cup of water at least.

  Zac and Daniel observed silently. Oscar looked at Sean with thunder in his face.

  “I have to, mate. He has to find somewhere else to live.”

  “I know.” Oscar stared at the blaster. It was his. His blaster had driven away Mr. Moon and he had done nothing to stop his dad. He looked from Sean to her. They were his parents, and she could see he wanted to believe them when they said it was the right thing to do, but he was struggling. She grieved for the lesson he had just learned—how to be hard-hearted.

  Zac put his arm around Oscar and looked at Sean with distaste. “Mr. Moon will come back when this is over. He came to show us he’s all right, didn’t he?”

  “I guess so.”

  Sean was back at his post, over the pikelet pan, as if nothing had happened. Hannah took it as his attempt to stay out of the boys’ way for a few moments at least. She felt guilty that he’d had to do it, that he was the object of their disapproval. The two of them had made the decision together.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder, both their backs to the boys, and whispered, “They understand. They know it has to be done. You won’t be the bad guy for long.”

  He lifted the frying pan to the sink and wiped it quickly with a damp cloth. “I should get some work done.” He went through the door without looking back.

  Daniel grabbed the blaster. “Hey, Oscar, let’s get Zac.” They backed him into the corner near the door. Zac cowered with his hands over his face, a wide smile behind. He could grab the blaster from Oscar if he wanted.

  “Get him, Oz, get him.”

  “Hey, hey, what on earth do you think you’re doing, wasting water, and in the house?” Hannah confiscated the water blaster. “Don’t you have any sense? What are we going to drink if you squirt each other?”

  Zac stood his ground directly in front of her. “Dad did.”

  “That’s different, you know that. We’re not talking about that now.” Squirting a cat was straightforward. It was something that needed to be done and so you did it. This was the hard bit, the explanations, the accepting responsibility for it, and Sean had bailed on doing that.

  “Outside.” Hannah unlocked the door again. It had been kept locked since they shut Mr. Moon out to save Oscar from the impulse to let him in. Hannah looked around the yard to make sure Mr. Moon was gone, and murmured to Zac as he passed her, “Come straight in if you see Mr. Moon. Don’t let Oscar touch him.” The boys ran into the empty space where the cat had been.

  One pane of glass, two layers of fabric, that’s what separated her from the miasma of the street, the fresh, free air swarming with germs.

  “I thought you were working.”

  Sean stood in the bedroom doorway. “I’m taking a breath.”

  He pushed back the curtain—a pane of glass and now only one thin layer of fabric. The scrim gave a misty sheen to the view despite the full daylight. Something down the street caught his attention. Hannah strained to listen and thought she heard the sound of a distant diesel engine. Whether it had been there for a while, she couldn’t be sure.

  “Can you see anything?”

  Sean lifted the scrim. Nothing but the brittle pane of glass between them and the world. The sound of the engine stopped. Light from the street bounced off the bonnet of their car, the asphalt. To the right, the view was blocked by the wall to Gwen’s. Diagonally up the road she could only just see the corner of the house where the family with the silver sedan lived. To the left, nothing. She strained to make out anything in the cross street by Mr. Henderson’s house.

  Sean’s arm dropped. Hannah swiveled around to follow his look. Climbing their stairs was a balloon figure in gloves, mask, hazmat suit, and paper booties. The figure
clutched a clipboard to its chest and waved some sort of ID in the other hand. From the way the figure walked, Hannah guessed it was a woman. She came close up to the window and pressed the ID against it. Her gloves left trails in the dust on the glass.

  “From Sydney Water. Could you come to the door so we can talk?” She spoke loudly and distinctly, as if to an old person, the sound fighting to penetrate the mask and the window.

  “We can talk here,” Sean shouted, his hands cupped to the glass.

  “It would be easier on my voice at the door, sir. I’m no danger to you. We’ve all been screened.”

  “Here is fine.” There was a stiffness about Sean, an anticipation.

  The woman’s shoulders sagged. She took a deep breath and leaned right into the window. “I am going door-to-door to let people know their options. We are aware that the water has been off in this area for more than a day now.”

  “Three days. And just us, then, is it?”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Everybody in Sydney has water, just not our neighborhood.”

  “Viral contamination was detected in routine testing of client supply. The supply was shut down as a precaution until the situation could be assessed. In the meantime…”

  “What does that mean?”

  The woman looked at her clipboard to gather her thoughts or her strength, or just more information.

  Sean pushed on. “So all the water in the rest of the city is safe, except ours. Why is that? How long’s it going to take?”

  “Well, sir”—the woman’s eyes drifted to the empty road—“we are still testing in a number of areas and everything that can be done is being done.”

  “But it’s not coming back on for us, is it? Or you wouldn’t be here. What’s so special about us?”

  “I just know what they told me, and they didn’t tell me that.” Even in her balloon outfit, the woman looked out of scale. Either she was tiny or the outside world was too large. “There has been some contamination. Most areas have been cleared.” She fiddled with her clipboard, as if uncertain whether to continue. “It’s just what I heard people say, but they think maybe bats got into the local system somehow and contaminated the supply, but they’re not sure where.”