The End Has Come

WANDERING STAR Leife Shallcross

I realize I’ve been sitting in my car, in my driveway, staring into space for at least ten minutes. It’s a perfect day. The sun is shining. The garden is flourishing. There’s the possum box in the tree by the gate, with the possum asleep inside it. I can just see her ears from where I’m sitting. Her baby will be curled up at the back.

I hear jubilant shouts from the back garden, and Jessie stumbles into view, laughing. She’s soaked to the skin. She turns and hurls a water bomb at her little brother.

I look down at the bags of shopping on the seat beside me. I spent the last bit of money in my account on cans of baked beans and packets of pasta. There weren’t any matches. Gavin has been stocking up on petrol. At the checkout, I caught myself assuming I’ll have the opportunity to shop again when I get paid next week. Then it dawned on me: This is it.

I can’t send them. I can’t let them go. When I think about it, I can’t breathe. These little people I’ve raised and loved. I’ve patted them to sleep until my hand is numb. I’ve worried about how long to breastfeed them, spent hours pushing organic vegetables through a sieve. I’ve read to them or sung them songs every night of their lives. I’ve attended their soccer games and harangued them to do their music practice and their homework. I’ve found lost library books and made emergency dashes to school with forgotten lunch bags.

I have spent the last eleven years looking after every aspect of their lives. And they trust me to do just that. To keep doing that.

How can I send them away? Who else is ever going to do even half of what I’ve done for them?

I lug the bags inside. Gavin is sitting on the couch watching the TV, but not in a relaxed way. He looks alert, as though he’s about to hear something critical. Some news anchor is interviewing a scientist again. My fingers itch to turn it off. There’s not going to be anything new.

Ever since the news broke a week ago, there’s been endless rehashing of what will happen. Fireballs and blast waves. Megatsunamis. Global quakes. Rains of fire and clouds of ash hiding the sun for years. This guy is usually the one with the fun facts. Now he just looks gray. His is the face of the bearer of unbearable knowledge. He’s got kids.

Gavin turns to watch me come in the door. His face is serious.

“They’ve announced ground zero,” he says. “It’s going to come down forty K north of Bathurst.”

So close.

“The Government is telling us not to panic,” says the TV interviewer earnestly.

“Panic is futile,” says the scientist. “It won’t stop the impact.”

The next news item is about the Government’s negotiations with key allies to take the children. They announced that last night.

That’s how bad it will be. Until I heard about that, I had fantasies of survival. A comforting triptych of flight, resurgence, and ultimate triumph playing out in my head.

I make tea for me and coffee for Gavin, wondering how long fresh milk will continue to be part of our lives. I take the drinks over to join him on our much-beloved leather couch, worn to scuffed softness from its years of service to uncareful children. I’ll endure the horror of the news for one more chance to sit quietly next to my husband drinking hot tea while the kids yell happily in the background. I lean into the solid warmth of his shoulder, his thigh against mine, and stare at the talking heads on the screen.

How can the outlook be that grim?

“Is it really going to be any better anywhere else?” I ask. Gav shrugs. The TV flashes up hotlines for parents who want to arrange billeting for their kids in the U.K., Canada or the U.S. Just the kids, though. The world is only prepared to take the children. They won’t let the rest of us off this doomed continent.

Gav shakes his head.

“Once it hits, the whole world is going to turn to hell,” he says.

What are my two kids, not even teenagers, going to do on their own? Who knows if they’ll even be together?

All I can think about is the footage they play of those tiny, forlorn human beings from the 1940s, rendered in black and white, leaving the ships clutching their cardboard suitcases and staring about with big, frightened eyes. The stories they tell of brothers and sisters who never saw each other again, children who were never reunited with their parents. I remember watching the official Government apology, so many years later, to the abandoned, the abused and the forgotten. The children who languished in cold institutions, or were delivered into the hands of the unscrupulous. Why should it be different this time? There are so many reasons to think it will be worse.

Nate runs past the window carrying a giant, pump-action water gun. His seven-year-old grin is gap-toothed, and his hair stands up in wet spikes.

I can’t send them.

I don’t even have anyone overseas. No relatives outside Australia. No one to take them in and love them even a fraction as much as I do. No one who will fight to feed them once the skies have darkened and the fields and orchards are burning.

“Jess said her teacher wasn’t there today,” I tell Gav while I make dinner. “Nate’s teacher was, but he said another year three teacher didn’t turn up and half the kids weren’t there anyway.”

“Yeah, they said they’ll close all the schools by the end of next week,” says Gav. “I want to leave before then, though.”

“Should we send them to school tomorrow?” I ask. I don’t know whether to try and act normal for them, or just keep them home with me and . . . and what? Hug them all day?

“Yeah, send them,” says Gav. “It’ll give us a chance to pack. Sort through some stuff.”

For a moment I want to protest. He’s so fucking practical. You’d almost think he wasn’t fazed by this whole End of the World thing. When they announced it, he just went straight into operational mode, focusing on getting us ready to go. But I know he’s right about tomorrow. And it might be the last chance for them to hang out with their friends.

“Tina is sending her kids overseas,” I say.

I don’t know why I’ve mentioned it. I can’t stand to think about it.

“I saw her at school today. She got them both tattooed.”

“What?” He gives me an incredulous look.

“Their names and birthdays,” I explain, “with the other one’s name and Tina’s and her husband’s names underneath.”

“Jesus,” says Gav.

I thought she was crazy at first, but now I wish I’d done it too. When I drove past, the tattoo parlor was closed.

Gav puts his arm around me, and I realize I’m staring into space again, my eyes full.

“We’re not sending them anywhere, baby,” Gav assures me. “They’re staying with us.”

But what can we do to keep our kids safe anywhere? What if we don’t send them with the rest and something happens to us?

God, I want them to know how completely they are loved, how much I wanted a different life for them.

Once the kids are in bed, Gav starts getting out the camping gear and piling it in the hall. If I ignore what’s on television, I can almost imagine we’re just planning a weekend down the coast. But we’re not. In a few weeks, there won’t be a coast anymore.

The reality is, no place on Earth will be unaffected. There are places — New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, any Pacific island you care to name — that will be obliterated almost as surely as the east coast of Australia. Everywhere else is going to burn and starve.

So very few got away. Eleanor went to her sister in London before they closed the borders. She left straight away, took almost nothing. Their beautiful house stands empty. Renovated just last year, filled with antiques and electronics . . . all useless now. I suppose it will all just burn, unless it’s looted first. I doubt I’ll ever see her again. My daughter will never play with Isabelle again — the best friend she’s known since preschool. They’ll never again sit in the tree house together, with bare feet and icy poles, singing along to pop music playing on Jessie’s iPod.

There was supposed to be a P&C meeting at the school tonight, to plan the Sustainability Fete next month. I remember it when I go to put out the recycling and the rubbish. I have no idea if anyone will come to collect the bins tomorrow. I stand out on the street in the dark, wondering what it was all for. All those efforts to save the environment. The Great Barrier Reef, the Murray-Darling River Basin. What a joke.

I harangue the kids into getting ready for school the next morning. We ride down on our bikes. There’s only half as many kids in the main quadrangle as usual — playing handball, climbing on the monkey bars. I catch snatches of conversation from other parents. Most people seem to be waiting for the authorities to tell them what to do. I remember the newscast from last night. “Don’t panic” is manifestly inadequate. There are so many questions and so little information. How far west do we have to go? Will there be evacuation centers? Will there be any point?

When I get back home, Gav has the TV on again. And, once again, instead of anything actually useful, the news is filled with a bunch of rhetoric on the Great Australian Spirit. Pulling Together In A Crisis. Helping Out Our Mates. The fact is, we’re going to need international aid. Us. Australia. It’s laughable.

I go into Jessie’s room to get some clothes together. She’s put her blue Girl Guides uniform on the bed. Shit, I think, it’s Wednesday. She has Girl Guides on Wednesday. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is the first time she’s ever remembered to put it out on her own.

Jesus, Jess. Now?

Later in the morning, the news gives us stories of protests in China and India over the prospect of an influx of Australian refugees. We burned those bridges long ago, it seems. Our more traditional allies are a little more sympathetic. But it’s clear they have their own set of problems to deal with, and are as baffled as we are about what to do.

What will we be to a world where resources are grown scarce and whole countries are no longer habitable? Where an entire continent of twenty-three million (give or take the few million who will perish in the impact) are suddenly displaced and looking for new homes? Not to mention all those from any of the other countries that will be destroyed by the repercussions. Japan’s population is close to one hundred and thirty million, for God’s sake.

How can we expect compassion and generosity when everyone else will be scraping for survival?

The phone rings as Gav and I are finishing lunch. We’re drinking one of the few bottles of wine we have stashed in the cupboard. No point keeping it now.

It’s Mum.

“Hi sweetie,” she says, all super-charged sunshine like she gets when she wants to rope me into something.

Mum, I mouth at Gav and roll my eyes.

“I thought we’d better talk about what we’re going to do.”

For a moment, I don’t understand.

“What are we going to do when?” I ask.

“Where we’re going to go, when we’ll leave,” she says. The undertone of anxiety in her voice suddenly registers.

“Oh.” I glance at Gav. He’s looking at me with a frown on his face. “Well, Gav and I are thinking about leaving tomorrow. Beat the weekend rush. Maybe make it as far as Adelaide by Friday.”

Silence.

“You’re going on your own?”

Shit.

“No, Mum,” I lie.

It’s too late. There’s a breathy gasp.

“You were going to go . . .” Her voice cracks. “Did you even think of helping me get your Dad out of here? What about your brother?”

“Calm down, Mum,” I tell her. “Of course I was going to call.” Lie. “I’ve just been so flat out.” Truth. “Can you give me a few minutes? I’m in the middle of something.” Lie. “I’ll call you back. Calm down. I love you.”

Truth.

I hang up. For a moment, the guilt is intolerable, and then it is obliterated by an unexpected burst of fury. How could she think that I could think about anything other than how to keep my children safe and alive? Look after yourself! I want to cry at her.

My resentment burns up as quickly as it engulfed me. I stare at the phone in my hand.

How could I forget about my own mother? How could I be angry at her wanting to come with us? Be with her grandkids?

This terrifies me more than anything. Is that where I’m headed? Where we’re all headed? Are we going to lose the ability to look out for anyone but ourselves? What does my response to my own mother say about what we can expect from our friends? From our compatriots on the other side of the country? From the rest of the world?

Gav reaches across the kitchen counter for my hand.

“Go over. Sort them out,” he says. There’s a tremor in his voice I haven’t heard before. “Family’s got to stick together.”

He meets my gaze steadily, even though his eyes are swimming. His folks are in Brisbane, twelve hundred kilometers north. He may never see them again.