An Ordinary Epidemic (9 page)

‘Money is not as important as being alive.'

‘Let's save that thought until we need it, because the bank thinks differently.' He rubbed his fingers gently along her cheek. ‘When the time comes, I'll stay home. But we're not there yet.'

He kissed her lightly, and she pulled him into a close hug. ‘The school looked so normal, I don't know what to think.'

He squeezed her tightly. ‘Have fun with him today. Try not to worry.' She let him go and he unlocked his arms from
around her. ‘I'll see you tonight. I promise not to kiss anyone.'

She had a plan, for everyone to be under the one roof. For the door to be closed, with all the problems outside. But Sean was at work, Zac in another city, and the front door was flapping open and closed, wafting in the outside world.

Oscar still lay on his back, stretched out across the floor. His head was near the television with his neck extended to see the upside down image. He appeared to be in the same zombie-like trance, although the program had changed.

‘Hey, I picked up your schoolbooks.'

‘Okay.'

‘Tell you what, why don't we do some painting?'

‘Okay.'

Out on the patio she set up the paints and brushes and tacked up some sheets of used printer paper on the glass door in lieu of an easel, just like last year, before he started school. She even dug out his painting smock, an old shirt of Sean's, worn like a dress.

The third time she called him, he came from the TV, sluggishly, but refused her help getting into the smock, a self-sufficiency clearly learnt at school. Even rolled up as far as they could go, the sleeves were too long and he flapped his hands around in the wide openings, engulfed in billows of fabric.

‘What should I paint?'

‘I don't know. What craft were you doing at school?'

‘People that we know. We made a chart of all the people we know, and how they go with us. You know, lines that say who they are.'

‘Well, why don't you paint someone you know who isn't here. Maybe you could paint where they are as well.'

Oscar gave intense concentration to the featureless stick figure he was creating. She guessed it was a boy only because it wasn't wearing a dress. He made two brown dots for the eyes and, with the brush, he scribbled the same brown all around
the top of the head. Brown eyes and brown hair could be Sean or Zac, or lots of people.

After a burst of effort, Oscar stopped, as if turned off by a switch.

‘What is it, sweetie?'

‘I don't know how to paint a Canberra.'

‘It's a city, it's got buildings and trees. You can imagine it.' Oscar looked dubious about the propriety of ‘making up' Canberra. He painted a tree without much enthusiasm, then moved to the next sheet.

In the top left corner, Oscar constructed a stick figure from the head down. The lines splayed as he gripped the brush, leaving the legs disproportionately large. Next to it he added another figure, and another, all long-legged.

‘Your people are all squashed together. Maybe you should spread them out.'

‘They're in the room.' He set about painting a wonky black box around them. She wondered if his art was any better at school. If he was failing his first year. If she had somehow failed him by not policing his preschool drawing enough in preparation. He drew another much narrower box next to the first and started adding stick figures, their hands and legs sticking out from its confines. ‘That's Mr Turner's class. Dylan's in that class. They're in the room next to our room.'

‘Is that school?' Oscar gave her a scornful look and went back to his work. ‘You could paint you and Dylan playing.'

Oscar gave her the look again. ‘But I'm here.'

‘You could pretend you were there.'

‘I'm not there. I'm here.' He diligently, if inaccurately, filled in the corridor and more rooms. This was like a gift of a few more moments of toddlerhood. Just him and her, and nothing that had to be done. When she thought back to last year, already she couldn't remember how they filled the time. Naps helped, but she was certain he wouldn't be going back to naps.
All those hours in a day. She started making a mental list of things they could do together and, more importantly, things he could do by himself. At least at the end of the week Zac would be home. If she could prevail on him to do stuff with Oscar, they could be company for each other.

She was deep in her thoughts, and didn't quite hear when Oscar said, ‘Am I going to die?'

‘Hmm, what's that Mouse?' She replayed the sentence. ‘No. Why would you die?'

‘That's what happens. You have to stay home if you get sick. And then you die.'

‘Who said that? You're not sick.' He stopped painting to listen. ‘You're staying home so you don't get sick.'

‘So will the people at school die?'

‘Has someone been scaring you about getting sick?'

‘At assembly they told us to wash our hands and not to eat anybody's lunch 'cause you'll get sick. Jack said Rose ate Anna's apple at lunch and she was going to die, but she didn't.'

Hannah pulled Oscar and his paint-splotched smock into her arms. ‘I hope no one we know is going to die. The government is going to do everything they can to keep us safe.'

‘Will the government come to our house? You and Daddy can keep me safe, then the government doesn't have to do it.'

‘When we have to, we'll all stay at home, just Zac and you and me and Dad, we'll be fine, okay? You don't have to worry. But for now, we're going to have a holiday, just you and me.'

‘Okay.' And suddenly the need to finish his painting completely replaced any thoughts of death.

He filled in half the rooms with map-like accuracy then abandoned the painting as enthusiastically as he had undertaken it, leaving an empty right hand side where the rest of the school should be. It was only just twelve but she figured they could stretch out lunch for at least half an hour. And then he could start on his schoolwork. That would give her a chance to
make progress on the manual. Enough, hopefully, to appease Kate.

She rummaged around in the fridge for food she could use up. Half a cucumber, some cabanossi. When she added the crackers to the slices on the plate, she noticed that everything was round, so she searched out foods that would continue the theme and added some dried apples and a cheese stick cut into tiny wheels. The apples were particularly pleasing, their circles within circles would tickle Oscar's fancy.

‘Time for lunch.' He appeared in the door as soon as she called.

‘Can we have a picnic?'

‘Sure, why not.'

Oscar lay on the blanket in the sun, nibbling at a dried apple ring he'd pushed on his finger. His eyes closed for a moment, she could hope that nap times were back, but they popped open again. How easy it would be to curl up in the sun as well but she had promised Kate a first pass by the end of the week, a draft she hadn't done any work on yet.

Hannah let him rest while she retrieved his schoolbooks, a couple of puzzle books and a jigsaw from his bedroom. Behind the door in the office, she set up his little table and chair. There wasn't much room but it wouldn't be forever.

He stirred from the blanket, followed her into the office and sank his head onto his table as he stared into the garden, undisturbed by the clack of her keyboard. After a few minutes, he raised his head and started looking through the activity books.

‘Hey, let's do the schoolwork first and then you can have some fun. How much of each book do you do a week?'

‘A page.'

‘Just one page?'

‘The page when you open the book and there are two sides. One page like that.'

‘Which one do you want to do? Do you want to start with your favourite or leave that one 'til last?'

‘I like doing this one.' He pulled out a maths book and methodically set to filling in every question. For five minutes she read in silence, until the sound of a page turning broke her concentration. Oscar was working on the next page.

‘Are you having trouble with some of the questions?'

‘No.'

‘Finish the first page, Mouse, before you start the next one.'

‘I have.'

‘Already?'
What did they do at school all day?
‘Don't do the next page, save it for later.' Oscar pulled out one of the other schoolbooks and opened it. ‘Leave that one for tomorrow. You don't want to do them all at once.' Five books, five days. ‘Why don't you do the book with the mazes? Those are good.'

That kept him quiet for a couple of minutes but when she looked over to check on him, he popped out of his chair.

‘Look at this.' A thick scribbled line, crossing and crossing back through the boundaries of the maze.

‘Great, good job.'

He sat back down at his desk. Just enough time for her to re-read the last sentence.

‘How do I do this one?'

‘Ahhh,' she pulled her eyes from the screen, ‘the same, but the end's at the bottom not in the middle.'

She heard him giggle. Silence. Another giggle.

‘What?'

‘This one makes a picture, it's a cow inside a horse. Look.'

If she dropped in a ‘hmm' or ‘is that so' sporadically, she found she could read and keep him happy at the same time. Until she realised that he'd just said the same thing twice.

‘What sweetie?'

‘Well, can I?'

‘Can you what?'

‘Play outside now.'

‘Sure you can.'

The plastic clamshell that served as a sandpit sat in one corner of the grass, pushed against the garden bed. She gladly took a break from working to open it for him and then left him, reluctantly. If she could only get another hour of work done, she'd take a break.

But first she rang Sean and was sent to voicemail. ‘Hi, it's me. If you have time, could you stop at a bookstore or a newsagent and get as many activity books as you can find. I'm going to need them.'

Only half past one and already she was fighting the urge to crawl under her desk and sneak a nap, what with the trip to the school, the argument with Sean and keeping Oscar occupied. But her exhaustion was overlaid with the nagging feeling that maybe somewhere something was wrong.

She needed new words to make her calm, to know that right now everything was okay. But right now didn't last long. Minutes, nanoseconds. In fact, maybe right now someone was typing the terrible news, just about to click the ‘post' button. It was an unsatisfiable addiction.

First Canberra's weather. Fine and sunny. Minimum of three, maximum of sixteen. A nice day, but a bit chilly tonight. Zac would be at Parliament House now. Maybe walking around the grassy hill.

The front page of
The Herald
snapped in place. ‘Eleven More Suspected Cases.' She scanned the article. More than what? More than last night? If she'd checked this morning, she would know.

The story was full of vague assertions and paragraphs lifted from previous articles. The only real detail was at the bottom
of the page, a table of hospitals and cases. Newcastle still only had two deaths—the doctor and the very first woman who'd been at that conference—but they now had nine confirmed cases. On the North Shore, all seven cases were unconfirmed. And at the hospital just down the road, the hospital she had been at on Monday, her hospital—four unconfirmed cases.

She looked around for Oscar. As if she would see a haze of contagion drift towards him from the hospital.

He was standing with his toes on the middle rail of the fence, his chin not quite reaching the top. His head was tilted back so he could see over. Blanched tips and red knuckles betrayed the strain in his fingers as he held up his weight. On the other side, Gwen was patiently listening to what appeared to be a long and convoluted story. Through the glass, Hannah could barely hear the sound of their voices. Gwen smiled at Oscar, gently patted his small hand, then picked it off the fence and held it in hers.

The very old and the very young, that was who the internet said were most at risk. Oscar climbed down from the fence and ran back to her in the office.

‘Gwen asked why I wasn't at school. She said I don't look sick.'

‘What did you tell her?'

‘I said I'm not sick. I said I'm home so I don't get sick.'

‘Sweetie, it's probably best if you don't touch anyone over the fence. Not Gwen or Ella or Natalie, not until you go back to school. You can talk to them, that's fine, we don't want to be rude. Just don't go near the fence.'