"Amanda, Darling, come sit down and have a cup of tea with me. You're tiring me out, buzzing around the kitchen that way."
Amanda pulled up short and looked over at her mother, who was smiling gently from her chair in the family room. Her own face softened as she smiled back at Dotty. At 94, her mother's hair had moved from gold to silver over the past few decades, but her eyes were still as sparkling as ever and her mischievous smile still warmed everyone she bestowed it on.
"I'm sorry, Mother," she said, coming to lower herself onto the sofa opposite Dotty's chair. "I'm just restless today, I don't know why."
"I know why," said Dotty, comfortably. "We've all been cooped up for too long, getting under each other's feet, it's no wonder at all that you're feeling trapped." She sipped her tea and gazed at Amanda. "Maybe I shouldn't have let Lee bring me back here – I'm sure he didn't expect it to last this long."
"Mother, no!" Amanda leaned forward and grasped her mother's hand in her own. "I would be so much more unhappy if you weren't here and I had to worry about you! Having you here has been one of the few things that's been good about this whole mess!" Her face lit up with a grin. "And I can't even imagine what Lee would have been like if he'd had to worry about you from a distance. He's enough like a trapped tiger as it is!"
"He is such a lovely man," Dotty agreed. "I'm so glad you two found each other. And truth be told, I'm so glad I'm here too. The thought of being all alone over at Shady Oaks, trying to figure out how to do these zooming videos or talking on Facelift– it would have been so lonely!"
"Not zooming, Mother, just Zoom, and you know perfectly well, it's Facetime, not Facelift," Amanda teased her. "And I'm so happy I get to see your face every day and not just over a computer screen like the grandkids."
"I feel just the same, Darling, pandemic or no pandemic!"
It had been the end of January when Amanda noticed Lee was spending more time with the television turned to the 24-hour news channel and the little furrow between his eyes had become more pronounced. She'd recognized the expression on his face – not so much his old Scarecrow face, but the serious demeanor he'd adopted during his ten years helming the Agency. She'd understood finally when she saw the drone footage from China, showing them racing to build a hospital in a matter of days, and then a few days later, locking down entire cities.
"It's bad, isn't it?" she'd asked him.
Lee nodded. "This is every NSA and CDC briefing we ever had, coming to life right in front of our eyes. If everyone does the right thing, it might be manageable, but if China isn't managing to keep this swept under the rug, it's a lot more serious than anyone is saying yet."
She turned to him, her normally sunny expression dimmed. "Are we ready for this?"
Lee nodded again. "I think so. I still think we should stock a little extra on our shopping trips. Be ready to hunker down. It probably won't come to a lockdown like they're having, but if we do need to isolate, if one of us catches it… well, better safe than sorry, right?"
Seeing the sense in that, Amanda had added more to the pantry, and had made quick calls to all the kids to do the same. She'd expected some scoffing from them, but they had all knew Lee well enough to know he was unlikely to be overreacting and besides as Phillip all too accurately put it "He probably has spooky guys still telling him stuff that nobody else knows."
She'd made sure to stock Dotty's pantry over at the senior living condos as well, just in case there came a time when she or Lee wouldn't be able to visit and had made her mother promise to take extra care with her health. And yet, at the end of February, she'd arrived home one day to find her mother sitting in the living room, rolling her eyes goodhumoredly, and the sound of Lee moving around upstairs.
"Mother, are you alright?" she asked worriedly. "I'm thrilled to see you, but why are you here?"
"Well, you'd better ask my favorite son-in-law about that," replied Dotty. "One minute I'm sitting in my apartment, minding my own business and the next thing I know, Hurricane Stetson has sailed in and kidnapped me!"
"Kidnapped you?" Amanda echoed.
"Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating," Dotty twinkled at her. "But he's always so persuasive – how could I resist such a handsome man begging me to come home with him?" Her expression turned a little serious. "You should get the details from him; he's a man on a mission right now."
Amanda walked upstairs and stood in the doorway of the guest room, watching Lee expertly making up the bed with fresh sheets.
"So?" she asked.
Lee looked up, his expression grim. "Mack called."
"Oh." Amanda moved to sit down heavily on the small chair beside the bed. "How bad is it?"
Mack Samuels had taken over for Lee as head of Agency Operations when Lee had moved up to the directorship in 2004. Still an active agent, he was obviously getting briefed far more frequently than the recently retired Lee, and if he'd called, it was certain to be serious.
"Bad enough. Italy's getting worse and there's been an outbreak in Washington state," said Lee. "In a seniors center – one case turned into a dozen almost overnight. When it starts going exponential here the way it has in Milan…" his voice trailed off.
Amanda nodded. He'd said 'when' not 'if', and she'd sat through enough of those same briefings to know what he hadn't said out loud. If this new virus was already in Washington, it was likely already in most major cities and just hadn't been recognized yet.
"So you decided to kidnap Mother?" she said lightly.
"I want to know she's being looked after," he said. He stopped in the middle of stuffing the pillow into its case. "You think I'm overreacting, don't you?"
Amanda shook her head. "No – I would have been over there in a heartbeat if I'd heard that too. And honestly, I'm just glad you went – she might have argued with me, but you can twist her around your little finger."
"That goes both ways," Lee smiled tiredly at her. "She said she'd only come if we stopped at the liquor store to get her a bottle of Galliano on the way home."
"Sweetheart! She's not supposed to have alcohol with her medication!" said Amanda.
Lee shrugged. "That's what I said and then she said – and I quote – 'I'm almost a century old – a little arrhythmia now and then reminds me I'm still here'. Who am I to argue with that?"
Amanda shook her head, laughing. "There are rule breakers and there are rule followers," she quipped. "I guess I always knew which one Mother was."
He placed the pillow at the head of the bed and walked around to sit on the foot of it, reaching to take her hands. "If I could, I'd take the whole damn family out into the middle of nowhere and hunker down there, but this isn't that sort of threat. The kids are smart and they'll look after their families, but Dotty? Well, she'll just have to put up with me."
"I'll be glad to have her here," Amanda agreed. "I know she has a lot of friends at Shady Oaks but you're right – I want her where I can keep an eye on her, even if it's just for a few weeks."
The weeks, however, had turned to months. Not long after they'd brought Dotty home, Phillip had called to say his company had sent everyone home to work remotely, and Jamie did the same a day later, along with the news that his daughters had been told not to return to their student residences after Spring Break. Matt and Charlotte were both in California and had been locked down for longer than any of them, but thanks to modern technology, they were more in touch than they'd ever been, buzzing in nightly to check on their parents.
Lee, who had long ago been forced to join the technological revolution, had embraced all its best qualities, spending his days keeping in touch with everyone, still the man who thought he was personally responsible for everyone's safety. Amanda indulged him in that belief, knowing that while he was ostensibly checking in to make sure everyone was well and taking precautions, it hid his deep longing to see the kids and grandkids. He'd waited so long for a family and even on the best of days, could hardly bear not to hear from them. It was a godsend for the kids as it turned out he had an almost bottomless pit of patience when it came to playing games with the little ones, and helping the older ones with homework. Phillip who, like Lee, had waited until his thirties to meet the love of his life and start a family, joked that they were going to move back to DC simply for the babysitting when it was all over – the children were spellbound by the way Grumps read stories aloud, that deep sonorous voice still as attractive as ever.
But now as the leaves began to turn and autumn beckoned, Amanda couldn't shake the sense of anxiety building. Too many years at the Agency, she supposed, waiting for the shoe to drop too many times, and this was worse because there was nothing she could do about it. She sighed and flopped back against the sofa cushions.
"I'm just so frustrated, Mother!"
"Frustrated by what, Darling? Anything I can help with?"
Amanda waved her hand aimlessly. "Just frustrated generally. When we started this, all they could tell us to do was wash our hands and stay away from people and some days it feels like that's still all we can do!"
Dotty nodded. "True, but it's worked so far, hasn't it? None of us have caught it, even though we know people who have."
Amanda nodded, but didn't say anything. She knew Dotty was thinking of a few of her friends who hadn't been as lucky.
"We'll get through it, Darling," Dotty comforted her. "It's not like we haven't faced worse."
"Have we though?" Amanda grimaced. "As much as I hated some days at work, at least we usually had an enemy we understood. This is just so…"
"Frustrating," Dotty smiled at her. "I know." She studied her daughter for a moment, then went on. "You know, this reminds me a bit of when you were a little girl."
"Really? In what way?"
"When you were just a teensy thing, no more than two probably, that was when polio began to make a comeback. It was a terrifying time to be a parent, let me tell you. No one really knew what caused it, but it came every summer, just like clockwork. They closed public pools, people kept their children away from each other, and all anyone talked about was getting a vaccine for it."
"Gosh, I hadn't thought about that," said Amanda. "That does sound a lot like this."
"Well, of course, we weren't all locked down as we are with this," Dotty pointed out. "But every time I had to take you out anywhere, I know I was always a little afraid – watching who you were playing with, worrying about every little fever and heavens – every time you tripped or did something clumsy, well, my heart just about stopped, worrying that it was some kind of symptom instead of just being a normal toddler! And I know I just said we weren't locked down, but when a family did get it, the health department would come around and slap that sign on the door and quarantine them and the whole neighborhood would just hold their breath, waiting to see what would happen or if they'd infected anyone else!"
"That must have been terrifying."
"Oh, it was, Darling, it was!" exclaimed Dotty. "I mean, the March of Dimes had been going for years by then, and we all knew that Roosevelt had had it and survived, but still, all those news reels of children in iron lungs – I can't begin to tell you how frightening it was for a new mother like me! And deep down, your father was no better; he put up a brave front, but I could see the way he checked you over every day when he got home, watching for any little thing. Everyone was just on edge all the time – just like now, except that we didn't have all these gadgets telling us more than we want to know every second of the day!"
"But they did come up with a vaccine," Amanda pointed out.
"They did – and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief – until there was that bad batch and it turned out they'd given so many children one with a live virus in it! You can't imagine, Amanda!" She paused. "Well, yes, I guess you can now."
"I had no idea, Mother – you've never talked about that before."
"Well, I never had to before," Dotty replied. "You never faced anything like this with your children when they were little. By the time Phillip and Jamie came along, all sorts of things we'd worried about were long gone with vaccines – they never had measles or mumps, or smallpox or any of the things we used to be quarantined for. Such a blessing."
"It really was," agreed Amanda. "I guess I never really had to think much about how easy we had it with the boys."
"Well, there's always something for a parent to worry about, so it's good that those were off your list," Dotty smiled. "But you know, it's a funny thing, I remember having a talk with my mother back then, and she told me that she's been terrified of every runny nose Lillian and I had as children because they'd gone through the Spanish Flu and she was always worried about that coming back. She lost a sister to that, you know."
"I didn't know that!" exclaimed Amanda. "How awful!"
"I'm sure I can't imagine what my grandparents went through at the time," Dotty nodded in agreement. "They'd had a son in France for two years, finally home safe, and then to lose a child at home – it doesn't bear thinking about."
"I guess parenthood is never easy, no matter what," said Amanda with a wry smile.
"Every parent since the dawn of time has said the same thing, but in the end, it's no job for a pessimist," laughed Dotty.
Amanda broke into a huge smile, and she stood up and moved to perch on the arm of her mother's chair, leaning down to wrap her in a hug. "Thank you, Mother. I needed to be reminded of that."
"That's the thing to remember, Amanda. Every one of our generations has had to face something like this, and in the end, has come through stronger and better and I think that's a real silver lining, don't you?"
"I do, Mother, I really do," said Amanda, squeezing her again.
"And we never once ran out of toilet paper!" Dotty added, beaming impishly. "That was definitely a success too!"
"Oh Mother, I do love you," said Amanda, laughing. "You know, I think the best thing to come out of this has been having you move back home again. I know I had Lee and the kids and work to distract me, but I really did miss you when you and Curt got married."
"I missed you too," Dotty admitted. "But those years with Curt were so special – just like what you and Lee have."
"We really are very lucky, aren't we?" said Amanda. "Even in the middle of all this?"
"We are," agreed Dotty. "And I think we should celebrate!"
"Mother, I am not making you a cocktail at 10 o'clock in the morning!" teased Amanda. "You're not supposed to be having them at all!"
"That's why I always ask Lee to make them," Dotty confided. "He's a rascal like me and looks the other way. Anyway, I wasn't going to suggest cocktails, I was going to say it's been too long since we've chatted with all my wonderful great-grandchildren."
"You talked to them yesterday," Amanda pointed out.
"Exactly," Dotty replied with a grin. "Far too long. And besides, what would you rather do? You've already scrubbed that kitchen counter a dozen times today and as much as I love your poppyseed cake, I can't face another one when we just finished one at breakfast!"
"You win," said Amanda as she got up and went to fetch the iPad. Dotty moved to the sofa and patted the cushion beside her for Amanda to sit. "Who do you want to call first?"
"Surprise me," said Dotty. "You know I adore them all equally."
A few seconds later, the electronic chirping of a Facetime call sounded out, followed by the screen filling with the beaming face of a gap-toothed six year old and a delighted shriek of welcome.
"Grandma! Grammy!"
Amanda's free hand found Dotty's and squeezed it. They really were the luckiest people in the world.
Dear beloved readers,
When I decided back in the spring to try and do an alphabet of stories for lockdown, I always knew this one would be Q is for Quarantine, but I didn't know a few things. First, I didn't know that this story would be published right before American Thanksgiving, and so it is completely serendipity that this one turned out to be about family and being thankful for what we have. That was always a message Amanda held dear and we should follow her lead because what we have is pretty great; I am beyond thankful for all of you both for keeping the fandom alive and for making it so much fun for me to write for you.
Which leads me to the second thing I didn't know... that this would be my 100th story, something I would never have believed possible if you had told me that five years ago when I wrote my first story. You guys have been my constant cheerleaders (and sometimes nags!) and I appreciate everyone of you, every review, ever comment, every like. Thank you all so much, and here's to 100 more!
All my love, Janet