Jo walked home through the shopping centre to the beat of The Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Boom Boom Pow’. The lyrics were complete nonsense, but still she loved the song. She thought about all those people enjoying their Saturday off and resented having to do homework. But it was just a few more months. ‘Once you have the certificate, you’ll be ready to go on with your real lives,’ Jo’s school principal had declared at one of her regular pep talks with the senior students. Jo thought this was an odd thing to say to students, considering some would fail and some would not do as well as they hoped. What would it mean if she failed — would she become stuck like some rabbit in headlights, fixed to the spot, never able to move, or would she be doomed to repeat VCE again and again, Groundhog Day–style, until she got it right?
As she approached her front gate, Jo slowed and looked up at the West Gate. The high-wind warning lights were flashing and the traffic was slowed to a crawl. She took her earphones out, and immediately the music was replaced with the rumble of the traffic, the sputter of exhaust pipes, and the squeal of brakes. Across the road the oil tanks cast a sombre shadow. She sighed and headed inside.
Mandy was at work, so Jo spread her books on the kitchen table. Then she opened her laptop and stared at the screen. She was contemplating whether to work on her History assignment — on the goals and consequences of Lenin’s New Economic Policy — or her English essay on the nature of reality. The essay was due first, but she’d been avoiding it. The question, ‘Is every reality open to interpretation?’ was to be answered with reference to Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, a strange and difficult novel she hadn’t finished reading, and with reference to current events. Keeping up with the daily news was imperative. Her mother had signed up for a subscription to The Age, even though Mandy’s preference was for the Herald Sun and they couldn’t afford two newspapers. Most days Jo didn’t open the paper, and it remained in the tight cylinder the delivery guy threw from his car into their front yard every morning. Over the months, these dusty corpses accumulated in the corner of the laundry. Still procrastinating, she sent Ash a text message: Do you want to come over early? Work on the essay? Jo found it easier to get homework done if they worked together.
‘The next-door neighbors are having a family reunion. There’s like hundreds of them. And loud Greek music. It’s a nightmare, can’t get anything done,’ Ash said when she arrived. Her hair was up in an untidy bun and she was wearing her gym pants and a tight pink t-shirt.
‘Oh God, no, sounds painful. Did you bring your clothes for tonight?’
‘I need to go to the library before it closes, to get a couple of books for my Legal Studies essay. I’ll go home and get my clothes on the way back. And I haven’t decided what I’m going to wear yet.’
‘Have you started the essay?’ Jo asked as Ash emptied the contents of her backpack onto the table: books, notebooks, her laptop.
‘Just rough notes. You?’
‘Just starting. Haven’t finished reading the novel yet. I mean, a novel about a stalker? Anyway, I watched the film.’
‘Jo …’ Ash frowned, pointed her finger at Jo, and mimicked Mrs Hunt’s British accent. ‘The movie isn’t the book, and you can get into all sorts of problems in the exam.’
Jo scowled. According to Mrs Hunt, their English teacher, the degradation of the English language could be traced to Hollywood, and it was criminal the way movies dominated the culture, and now even the government had decreed that students study films as part of the curriculum: films don’t, can’t, replace literature.
‘A few more months. Read the novel,’ Ash said.
‘I will.’
Ash’s phone rang.
‘Hey, glad you called,’ she said. Her smile, the dimples, signs of her obvious pleasure. ‘No, this is a good time. Just at Jo’s, working on the English essay … No, all good …
‘Kevin says hi, I’ll go outside,’ Ash said and mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ as she headed towards the back door. She sat on the edge of the deck, pulling her knees to her chin and leaning her back against a post. As she settled in, she lowered her voice and only an odd word or a laugh made it as far as the kitchen.
On top of the stack of Ash’s books there was a red Moleskine notebook: Ash’s journal. Over the years, Ash’s journals had changed in shape and size — with lines and without lines, with arty covers, with plain covers. Kevin had introduced her to the Moleskines. ‘Kevin says that real writers use Moleskine notebooks, like Hemingway and Oscar Wilde,’ Ash told Jo. They were standing in a stationery store and Ash was spinning the Moleskine stand.
‘Really? Any women writers? I thought writers were poor — these are so expensive. At Bill’s Bargains they have notebooks for two dollars.’
‘Not this good, Jo. It’s my journal, I write in it every day.’ Ash caressed the cover and gave Jo a pleading smile. ‘Can I borrow ten dollars?’
Jo picked up the notebook and ran her fingers over the cover. When they were younger, Jo often asked: ‘What do you write about?’ And Ash read out humorous pieces about her parents or their teachers. She read Jo her lists: stupid things I said this week that I can’t take back, things I’ll do when this fucking year is over, by the time I’m 40 I’ll … She documented their lives: the notes they passed in class, the boys they had the hots for, and the Sunday afternoons Mandy coaxed them into watching daggy old films like Singing in the Rain. Once she said, ‘I’ve got a Jo list’ and read out a sample: Jo lets me tell her all my bad jokes and she laughs. Jo’s there when I need her. Jo makes the best meatballs and spaghetti (and I should know because my nonna is Italian). Jo doesn’t care that she doesn’t get As. Jo can keep a secret. Jo loved that list. Ash loved her unconditionally.
But that was the past. Now she couldn’t ask. In those days she didn’t suspect Ash of having other lists: All the things I hate about Jo: fat, needy, boring …
In the three months since they returned to school for their final semester, this was only the second time Ash had visited on a weekend, and she was on the phone with Kevin. They’d only been out three times: for Jo’s birthday, to go to a new Latin American bar Laura’s father had a share in, and to Pink’s ‘Funhouse Tour’ concert, which they’d bought tickets for months in advance. Ash said she was busy studying, that if she didn’t do well enough she wouldn’t get into law, and then what would she do? But most Friday and Saturday nights she went out with Kevin. At school on Mondays, Ash avoided talking about her weekends.
Were they still friends? Still best friends? They only seemed to talk about school and homework. Their conversations were superficial, as if they were just classmates who happened to be caught behind each other in the canteen queue.
‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ Grandpa Tom said when Jo or Mandy asked too many questions. She’d only been four years old when he got sick. He lost so much weight all his bones were visible; when she hugged him he was all sharp edges. It took him longer to get out of bed, and no matter what her mother cooked, he couldn’t finish a full meal. Finally, Mandy insisted on taking him to the doctor. The diagnosis was cancer. He’d ignored several skin moles on his back for years, so by the time they did the tests, the cancer was at stage four and terminal. Tom said it pissed him off, them knowing. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie, why can’t women do that?’ But they were right, weren’t they, to want to know?
Jo’s friendship with Ash was a sore she picked and scratched. A journal was personal, full of private thoughts. You had to be invited in; reading another person’s journal was like breaking into their house while they were away, like rifling through their drawers, like peeking in through their windows while they were having dinner with their family. During all those years, Ash’s journals often within reach, she’d never considered reading them. It was invasive. It was voyeuristic. It was a kind of theft, and once done there’d be no going back.
Jo ran her hand across the smooth red cover. Ash was settling in for a long conversation
with Kevin. She was talking and laughing, twisting strands of her long hair around her finger. As Jo slipped the band off and the notebook opened, sunlight and shade danced across the back deck, making patterns over Ash. Stealing glances at Ash, she flipped the pages of the journal.
May 11. Ash wrote in a print-like script, the lines surprisingly straight and even, like runs on a ladder. It wasn’t her usual scribble, the one she used for taking notes in class, for leaving notes in Jo’s locker, for leaving messages for her mother on the kitchen table. There was a lengthy description of Kevin’s face: wide, open, cute; of his voice: sexy and deep; of the way he held her hand, fingers intertwined; of their long discussions; of how she could be herself with him. I can be myself with Kevin. Who was Ash when she was with Jo?
Jo flipped the page over. May 12. A rant about Ash’s mother took up several pages — her voice and her rules and the way she told Ash off for spending money on clothes but went out shopping most weekends and bought clothes for herself, and how she forced Ash to do housework even though Ash was overwhelmed with study, and how she monopolised Kevin when he came over … My mother flirts with Kevin, it’s disgusting.
There were several paragraphs about Ash’s grandmother and how pale and sick she was looking, and how it made Ash sad to think she might die. Here the pen was heavier on the page, as if Ash had pressed down with all her weight, with rage. Jo flipped back towards May and April. Places I want to live. The ultimate playlist. Jo recognised all the songs on this list as Ash’s favourites. No surprises. The secret playlist. There were no surprises on that list either. Everyone had songs that they were embarrassed to admit they liked; Ash’s included a couple of ABBA and Milli Vanilli classics and even Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’, which they had played in their early teens during sleepovers at Ash’s place to annoy Ash’s mother. A condensed biography of human-rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson. The words to Eminem’s ‘Crack a Bottle’. A song so far away from Ash’s life, from anything she’d experienced, that Ash’s attraction to it seemed voyeuristic, like those people who gather around accidents or are drawn to reading about disasters.
At the sound of footsteps on the deck, Jo shut the notebook and put it back on top of the stack of other books.
For the rest of that afternoon, Jo and Ash worked on their essays. What is the nature of reality? They discussed Jed’s obsession with Joe, whether Clarissa believed him, whether the ‘hero’ John Logan, who died trying to rescue the boy, could be admired as a hero if he were betraying his wife by having an affair. All the time Jo was thinking, what about you, Ash? What about us? Are we still best friends?
There’d been no mention of Jo in the journal, not once. Not once in all the entries she read. Jo didn’t keep a journal, but if she did, Ash would’ve been there, on every page. When she planned moving out of home, it was with Ash. When she imagined travelling, going to Europe, to Paris and London, to Barcelona, it was with Ash. When she thought about what university to go to, she thought about where Ash would go. In Jo’s dreams of a big wedding and a white dress, in which she was floating down the aisle towards the love of her life — a man she hadn’t met and couldn’t evoke — Ash was there. Ash was the maid of honour, in a long lilac dress, flowers threaded through her hair. Was it possible to go from being central to Ash’s world to so much on the periphery that she was invisible? Were they in the process of breaking up?
The first person Jo broke up with was Max, her boyfriend in Year 9. At the beginning of their four-month relationship he was cute and funny, but by the end she hated everything about him, and the sight of him waving at her across the school ground sent her into a frenzy, causing her to escape into the girls’ toilets. One afternoon, in her desperation to hide from him, she tripped over a discarded cricket bat and broke her arm. When she told Mandy that she didn’t like him anymore, her mother insisted she break up with him. Mandy dialled the phone number for her and sat next to Jo on the bed as Jo said, I’m breaking up with you. I don’t want to be your girlfriend. They never spoke again. The second person was Craig, who she met at the café one lunchtime. They dated for a few months, and had sex three times. She was determined to lose her virginity. She was the last of her group — Laura, Mani, and Ash had all done it. It was almost as disappointing as she’d expected it to be. But not as bad. When she saw Craig around Yarraville, they waved and smiled but didn’t stop to talk.
If she and Ash stopped being friends, would they become strangers? Distant acquaintances? Would they give a nod as they passed in the street? Or would Ash be so repulsed that she’d want to run away and hide?
Should I write about that? Imagine that, Ash: Mrs Hunt reading my essay in class, my essay about you and me. Throughout the afternoon, she deliberated about how to bring it up. But what could she say: ‘Why haven’t you written about me in your journal?’ Even in her head she sounded like a wimpy ten-year-old. Like the fat and lonely child she was before she met Ash.
Chapter 5
Paolina shifted her chair to catch the soft afternoon sun as it came in through the sliding glass doors. In the garden, Antonello was staking the tomato plants. He was wearing old khaki shorts and a singlet, and she could see his strong calf muscles, his strong arms. Her body was broken and weak; all her muscles were limp, and her skin so flabby that it reminded her of being a child forced to wear her older cousin’s too-big hand-me-down dresses. Even on good days, walking the fifty steps to the front gate to check the letterbox was a struggle that required too much fortitude; gardening was reduced to short bursts, confined to the raised bed that Antonello had installed so that she could sit on a small wooden stool to tend the plants.
Her granddaughters had helped her plant herbs, basil and parsley, and bulbs — tulips, irises, and jonquils. The bulbs were a gift. ‘Secret plants,’ her youngest granddaughter called them. ‘We can plant them and not tell Nonno. They’ll be a surprise.’ Antonello’s reputation as the sort of gardener who didn’t have time for flowers was the butt of many family jokes. The girls called the garden ‘Nonno’s farm’.
Antonello pounded the wooden stakes with a hammer until they sank into the ground, and he tested each one by rocking it back and forth. The first time she’d seen him garden, he was planting two red rose bushes in the small bed under the bungalow windows. The roses were her choice. ‘We’ll lie in bed with coffee, look out the window, and see the roses,’ she told him. It was before the bridge collapse, in those romantic first months of their marriage. A Sunday, she guessed; the memory carried with it a sense of the day stretching into tranquility. A grey morning, the sky cloaked in dark and ponderous clouds. Drifting from the open kitchen window of her parents’ house was the wistful tones of a Calabrian folk singer, her mother’s favourite, the song a lament to a lost lover and a lost country. She remembered making a joke about her parents’ poor musical tastes as she inched towards him, as she ran her fingers along his arm. Antonello dropped the spade, wrapped his arms around her waist, and talked about the rain, urging her back into the bungalow. Even though they were married and living in their first home, the prefabricated bungalow in her parents’ backyard, they felt like teenagers playing house. That day they giggled as they pulled the blinds down and hung Zia Lina’s sign, Non Disturbare, on the door.
The sign, cross-stitched in bright reds and blues, the text surrounded by a garland of daisies, had been a kitchen tea gift. ‘You’re young. If you want to be alone, put this on the door. That way your mother’ — Lina elbowed her sister — ‘eh, sorella? She won’t come in with her plate of cotolette or biscotti when you want to be alone.’ Both Paolina and her mother blushed, but across the room, which was overflowing with female cousins and aunts, with future sisters-in-law, a future mother-in-law, girlfriends, there were giggles and laughter.
‘We can’t use that,’ Antonello said when he first saw the sign. ‘It’s like we are putting a notice on the door, letting your parents know we are having sex now.’ But they did hang the sign on
the door, because in those early days they were impatient, their longing for each other was urgent. Paolina’s body, even in its battered current state, remembered, and the memory, along with the sight of Antonello in the garden, resulted in an unexpected feverish desire. She wouldn’t act on it — her body didn’t have the strength — but its presence was delicious and sweet.
Recently, while sorting and clearing, Paolina had discovered the cross-stitched sign among the handmade linen she had inherited from her mother, which she’d never used but couldn’t bear to discard. Her zia’s work was fine, the letters constructed from a series of perfect, tiny stitches. She was surprised, though, when she turned the piece over, to find that on the back of the sign there was another embroidered message, in English: Don’t forget to laugh, marriage is funny. Paolina would’ve sworn the second message hadn’t been there when Zia Lina first gave her the gift. That it hadn’t been there all those times she hung the sign on the bungalow door. Lina’s English was better than Paolina’s mother’s, but not so good; she must’ve recruited a translator.
On that same day, Paolina rang Lina’s oldest daughter, Rosa, and they reminisced. They remembered their mothers, and the way the two sisters — the oldest and the youngest, bookending the family of eight — were inseparable.
‘They fought so much,’ Rosa said. ‘Remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘About everything. About recipes. About childhood memories. About how to make the sauce, the sausages. God, remember once, your mother grabbed the salt shaker that my mother had in her hands and threw it across the room to stop her putting more salt on the sausages?’
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