An Ordinary Epidemic (19 page)

A little before dinner, just shy of two days since they arrived home. She changed out of her pyjamas so as not to embarrass Zac in front of Daniel, although it made her a little sad to have so nearly made it through a whole day without getting dressed.
Oscar was still in his, so maybe that counted. With her finger to her lips, she got Oscar and Sean to follow her to Zac's door and knocked quietly.

‘What? Go away.'

She turned the knob and opened the door. ‘You think I'm not going to come in there and make you regret that?' She smiled at him and he looked bewildered back at her.

‘It's not time.'

‘It's past time if you count from Canberra.'

She had expected a champagne cork pop but they just picked themselves up from where they were lying on the floor and sauntered out. Oscar bounded around them like a puppy. ‘Do you want to play outside? We could play soccer. I could be on Daniel's team. I'm good at goalie.'

Daniel looked to Zac for a response.

‘Go on.' Hannah said. ‘Dinner will be in an hour, why don't you play soccer while there's still light.'

Sean had been hanging back. ‘Tell you what, Oscar and me against you two.' He looked down at Oscar. ‘We'll slaughter them. Your mum could play for our team too.'

Zac snorted. ‘If you want to make it harder for yourselves.' Hannah gave him a look. ‘I'm joking. It's a joke.' But he muttered to Daniel, ‘We're set.'

Zac and Daniel played to win. Sean played to let Oscar have fun. Hannah played to not look like a wet blanket. Oscar just played. The older boys knew that five people on a couple of square metres of grass had to wing it but Oscar stopped play for every infringement.

‘Hey Oscar.' Sean bent forward with his hands on his knees down to Oscar's height, Hannah suspected he was camouflaging his puffed out breaths. ‘Let's imagine that this isn't soccer.'

Oscar gave him a questioning smile. ‘Maybe this is a different game, one called lawnball.'

‘There isn't a game called lawnball.'

‘There is now.'

Zac was grinning widely, he was in on it, he'd had this kind of thing pulled on him when he was little.

‘Lawnball is very simple. You kick the ball, you don't touch the other people and you don't go off the grass.'

‘Who throws in when it goes off?'

‘You do.'

‘What about when we go off?'

‘Still you. That's the rule, the youngest player gets to throw in.'

‘What about when...'

‘Anything,' Sean took them all by surprise by belting the ball in front of him with his foot, ‘goes.' The ball slammed into the fence. ‘Goal. One nil.'

‘Hey!' Zac turned from amusement to outrage in a second.

‘My rules.'

‘Hey, new rule, you don't have to be nice to your dad.' Zac and Daniel pushed across the lawn dancing around Sean.

Oscar neatly stepped out to the ball and punted it to Sean who kicked it across the grass and onto the fence. ‘Two nil.'

Hannah took a break to sit on the garden bed. She relished observing the boys' fun more than she had the playing. She noticed Ella's head poking over the top of the opposite fence, big toddler eyes silently watching the game. Ella must have been standing on the top bar to be visible. She wondered if Natalie or Stuart knew where she was.

Hannah rejoined the game, determined to be part of what the boys enjoyed, as much as an unathletic middle-aged woman could. At first, Daniel steered away from her, too polite to crash into someone else's mum, but after a few minutes the need to not be beaten by Zac's little brother and mum took precedence.

As his foot connected with the ball, aimed square on for a slam goal against Gwen's fence, Daniel jumped in triumph. His joy morphed, in seconds, to embarrassed shame as the ball curved too high, missed its mark and sailed clear over to Gwen's backyard.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.'

Four sets of eyes scanned Gwen's garden. Oscar tried to scramble up the cross beams of the fence to join in. Sean contemplated the mission. ‘The coast is clear. The rule is, if you sent it, you get it.' Sean locked his hands together to make a step and boosted Daniel to the other side. Zac and Oscar looked on impassively.

Hannah stood near Ella's still mute bobblehead. As Sean hauled Daniel back up the smooth side of the fence, she could see a slice of sunset caught in the passage between their houses. Orange clouds with a purple underbelly.

‘Hey guys, look at this.'

They gathered to watch the display in silence and she discretely held Oscar to her, away from the fence and Ella. The colours changed, now red, now purple. It was spectacular, gaudy and baroque. The colour drained away, leaving the overly ornate clouds a steely lavender.

Oscar said, ‘The clouds didn't look like that yesterday. Yesterday they were pink and yellow. They're different every day.'

In their little cube of space, nothing big happened. All the big things happened out there, at a remove. Here it was the small changes, the variations on a theme. By herself, these ephemeral moments made her pause, made her feel in awe of existence. With these people who were her world, she felt a rightness and gratitude.

Now gloom hid the ball, leaving only its glowing white patches for them to track. Oscar ducked and weaved, an invisible motion in the failing light, threatening to trip them. Sean tried to kick at the ball, missed completely and just
pulled himself up when he realised he was about to connect with Oscar. He twisted, tried to recover and, with something approaching grace, landed square on his back. Oscar was in awe. ‘Cool, Dad. Do it again.' Zac was laughing hard and even Daniel was politely smirking.

‘Hey, we could turn on the lights.' Zac moved towards the house.

‘Ow.' Sean laughed and gasped from the grass. ‘I think it's dinnertime.'

‘Yep.' Hannah picked up the ball. ‘Past dinnertime.' She looked at the fence, Ella had gone without her noticing.

‘Hey.' Zac called from the patio door. ‘The light's broken.'

‘Here.' Sean flicked the switch a couple of times. He tried the switch just inside the kitchen, up and down. Nothing.

‘The fridge's not working.' Zac leant on its white door and stared into its dark void.

Hannah lurched forward. ‘Then keep the door closed, you'll let out the cold.'

‘You can't let out cold. It's not a thing. You can let out cold air but you're not letting out cold.' Zac said with all the force of two years of high school science.

‘Shut the door!'

Oscar came running back from the hallway. ‘And the TV's not working.'

‘Never mind,' she said with forced gusto, ‘it's an adventure. We don't need electricity.'

She rummaged on the bottom shelf of the pantry with Oscar hovering behind her like a foreshortened ghost, looking for her emergency candles. ‘Here you go, you can take those to Daddy.'

Zac stood in the passage from the kitchen, arms crossed cockily, Daniel slightly behind. ‘How are we going to cook dinner, on candles?'

‘We can use the barbecue. It'll be like camping.' Zac gave
her the world-weary teenage look of someone burdened with lame parents. ‘Or we could break up the furniture and burn it in the backyard. I'm starting with your bed.' She got a bit of a smirk.

It was a toss-up whether to eat everything out of the fridge first or the freezer, but it was late and anything in the freezer was going to take too much time to defrost without the microwave. The trick was to picture the contents of the fridge like a memory puzzle, open the door and pull out everything she needed in one fluid move. She was never very good at puzzles. With the door open, it took her a few seconds to orient herself to what she needed, but the cold creeping along her hand forced her to take what was in easy reach as quickly as possible. A carrot, a couple of sticks of celery, the end of a cabbage, some spring onions, the tail of an old chunk of ham. She slammed the door and looked at the spoils. In her mind she tried to reconstruct where she had seen the things she needed, then opened door again to scoop up leftover roast chicken and a couple of eggs to fill it out.

The door opening from the hallway took her by surprise, unaccompanied by the usual light that announced Sean's entrance. ‘They're playing cards by torch light in the living room. Oscar begged for candles but I can see that ending in disaster.' Sean leant back against the kitchen bench, watching her work. ‘Did you know children can function without electricity? I don't think they knew. At least without the TV we can be sure they won't see the news. We can hope we've seen the worst, that tomorrow the numbers will go down.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘No.' He fished a wine bottle out of the recycling, jammed a candle in the neck and handed it to her. ‘I think for you something more romantic than a torch.'

It cast a warm light around her hands and the chopping board as she diced the vegetables. When she looked out the
back window, she could see Sean, standing over the barbecue, cooking rice. His face glowed orange, the rest of him invisible in the darkness. Their warm pools of light connected, working together but separated.

He came back once he had the rice started. ‘So what are we cooking?'

‘Impromptu Fried Rice Leftovers.'

‘Yum.' He nuzzled up to her neck.

She mixed soy sauce and fish sauce into the beaten eggs, put each of the ingredients in a bowl and all the bowls on a tray, a patchwork of food, to take them out to the patio table. Sean carried the candle for her like a butler. Its small light disappeared into the voluminous darkness. Each bowl looked meagre but fried up together they made a huge mound. The leftovers would in turn be more leftovers, someone's breakfast.

Hannah portioned out the fried rice onto six plates, putting aside one for Gwen, and scraped the rest into a bowl. She called the boys. Oscar skipped into the room, Zac pushed in after him but Daniel followed sedately and seated himself at the far end of the table. He picked up his knife and fork, then awkwardly put them down when he noticed no one else was yet ready.

‘Can I help?' His hands were in clenched his lap.

There had to be something she could give him to do, to make him feel less like a guest. ‘You could carry some things over for me. What about the salad?' The salad was leftovers as well, the last of the fresh, leafy greens. If the power came back, she should look on the internet to see if you could eat any of the weeds in the garden. Anything to be able to stay out of the world a bit longer. Not that two square metres of weedy lawn would keep even a caterpillar going for more than a day or two.

Daniel watched his hands while he ate, as if keeping himself in check. She wished he wasn't quite so well-behaved. But
this was his first meal out of his room. Candles on the table. For all he knew, they always ate this way. ‘Would you like some salad, Daniel?'

‘Thanks.' He handled the salad servers awkwardly, scooping a mound of salad between the two spoons. She could see a look of anxiety on his face as he held it suspended over his plate. He tried to put it back into the bowl but a few leaves fell on the table. His hands held the servers so tightly he had trouble releasing them. ‘I think I took more than my share,' he mumbled.

‘Dig in Daniel, if you wait for everyone to be ready, you're never going to eat.' Daniel inhaled his food, she had only looked away for a moment and it was gone. ‘Help yourself to some more.' This time she didn't need to urge him.

‘Thanks, Hannah, it's really good.' The second plate vanished nearly as fast.

Zac scraped everything remaining in the bowl onto his plate then stopped to watch Oscar pushing his food around, eating it half a spoonful at a time. ‘Are you going to finish that?'

‘Mum, Zac's telling me what to do.'

‘I asked you a question, I didn't tell you anything. If you're not going to eat it, I might as well have it.' Not that long ago Zac would have died rather than eat someone else's food.

‘Oscar's food is Oscar's and he's going to eat it. You had two helpings, you can't still be hungry.'

‘Well, not hungry...'

‘Zac, you've had your fair share.' Hannah injected a warning tone into her voice.

‘Dad! He's going to waste it. What good will that do?'

‘What about Daniel, have you considered if he wants more?' Sean was uncommonly stern.

‘He had seconds. And he doesn't want Oscar's leftovers. That's gross.'

‘Well, your mum hasn't had seconds, what about her? I'm
surprised at you, Zac, you're usually more considerate than this.'

‘I'm fine,' Hannah jumped in. If it came to feeding herself or Zac and Oscar, she'd go without. And Daniel, of course, she should be ready to give up her food for Daniel, too.

So much for the leftovers. Her recalculations had assumed six people ate one and a half times as much as four. But she'd never realised how much of their food was consumed by Zac. Gwen added very little, but another teenage boy... All her plans for making biscuits and cakes to keep their spirits up were naive if she couldn't keep enough bread and meat on the table.