Off*

“Ugh! Why does it take so long to eat?” Maggie’s son Jack complained from the couch, where he sat cradling his health class project, an 8-pound robot baby named River. Over the years, the doll had been tended to by countless Thurston Middle School eighth graders, but Maggie thought none had been more resentful of the experience than her son.

“It’s only been 10 minutes,” she chided over River’s electronic sucking sounds. “You used to take 30 minutes—on both sides!”

Jack’s cheeks turned red. “I don’t want to hear about that. I just want Monday to come so I can return this thing.”

Across the room, images flooded the TV of the residents of Milan cheering on their balconies to honor their nation’s medical workers.

Maggie blinked back tears and checked her phone. Surely the district would close school next week. But her phone sat devoid of new emails and texts. She felt the beginning of a headache pulse behind her eyes and a scratchiness form in the back of her throat. It’s just allergies, she told herself.

The baby cooed, signaling that it was done feeding, while KCAL cut to footage of a priest blessing rows of wood coffins in an empty nave.

Maggie’s phone pinged, and her heart skipped a beat at the email’s subject: “IMPORTANT UPDATE: School Closure.”

She skimmed the message, her stomach flipping when she reached the sentence typed in bold font. “We are closing schools,” she read aloud, “and will cancel any student-related activities from Monday, March 16 through Friday, April 3.”

“No school? For two weeks?” Jack’s eyes lit up.

“Three, really,” she corrected. “You have to add spring break.”

Jack’s face clouded over with disappointment. “But I have the field trip to Sony Studios!”

“Sorry, sweetie, but it’s for everyone’s safety.” She thought of the empty shelves she’d faced that morning at Ralphs. How long would their toilet paper last?

“At least I’ll get to watch March Madness,” Jack said. Maggie didn’t remind him of the cancelled NBA season. He would be crushed if—or more likely when—the NCAA followed suit.

River began fussing. “What now?” Jack groaned, patting the baby’s back and waiting for the burp to come.

Three weeks. What if it was longer? The idea of homeschooling her son brought on a wave of nausea. How would she run her department remotely while relearning Algebra?

And then a new thought pricked at her brain. “Jack, what if River doesn’t turn off on Saturday night?” Three weeks of electronic wailing and burping would put her over the edge.

“Don’t worry, Mom. He has an emergency off button.”

River’s cries awoke Maggie at 2 a.m. Jack lay face-down on the mattress, his feet protruding from the comforter. She lifted the baby from his laundry basket bed and propped him up on her shoulder until he stopped crying, just as she had held Jack on countless restless nights.

Her son stirred, but remained in the deep, impenetrable sleep enjoyed only by teens. She touched his hand, wondering when it had gotten bigger than hers. It felt so hot compared to River’s cold, plastic skin. Maggie bit her lip. It wasn’t a fever, was it? Jack had always been a hot sleeper, hadn’t he?

As she returned River to his basket, a raspy cough came from the bed. Maggie froze. This was how it started, wasn’t it? A fever and dry cough. No, it couldn’t be.

Heart pounding, she felt Jack’s forehead. Sweaty, but not overly hot. She wished that, like Baby River, she had an emergency off button, a way to stop time and return to before, when their biggest problem was an inconvenient health class project or forgetting to record that night’s basketball game. Her gut told her those days were over, for now.

Shivering, she trudged through the dark to find the thermometer. No, there was no turning off the unraveling of the world around them.

* Published in Stu News Laguna as part of "The Corona Chronicles" on May 19, 2020.