The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  ‘I wanted to do nursing, but my parents hated the idea — the night shifts, living in the hospital, inappropriate for a good Italian girl. So I chose teaching instead, and I love it — so that was lucky.’

  On the way home, Alice and Paolina sat in the back seat again, all three men in front.

  ‘Are you two talking about us?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Oh, Sam, you think that’s all we have to talk about,’ Alice teased. ‘Of course. I’m telling Paolina how handsome you are because she can’t see that for herself.’

  It was Antonello they talked about, in hushed tones.

  ‘Do you like him?’ Alice asked.

  ‘He’s gorgeous,’ Paolina said.

  ‘I think he likes you too,’ Alice whispered.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Give me a break. He can’t keep his eyes off you. Double dates soon.’

  ‘As if my parents are going to let me go on dates. Good Italian girls stay home with their mammas until they are married.’

  ‘There are ways, even for good girls like you.’ Alice put her arm around her friend and, lowering her voice even further, said, ‘Leave it to me.’

  They giggled, and Paolina was a little girl again, like the little girls in her class who huddled together with their friends and ran in carefree circles around the school ground, able to forget even their worst troubles, as only children can. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me …

  ‘Paolina. Paolina, are you okay?’

  Antonello was standing at the door.

  ‘Si, si come una ragazza,’ she said and winked. They rarely spoke Italian now that their parents’ generation was dead, but she liked to tease him in Italian. There was an extra playfulness that emerged with the language; it pulled them back into their childhoods.

  ‘Bella Paolina.’ He smiled back. ‘We’ll be late if we don’t hurry.’

  ‘What time is it?’ She hadn’t expected to fall asleep again, and she was disorientated.

  ‘Almost 3.15. We should leave in the next ten minutes.’

  ‘You’re the one that needs to get cleaned up and dressed,’ Paolina said.

  ‘Let’s be late, we’ll be waiting for hours anyway. Can’t believe he sees patients on a Saturday.’

  But he took off his gumboots, came in, and headed for the bedroom to get changed. Paolina sighed: another trip to the oncologist’s crowded and sombre waiting room lay ahead of them. The oncologist was in his forties, and on the wall of his office were pictures of his four children, and what Paolina suspected was his second wife. He was tanned, well-dressed, and always running late, caught up by an emergency or by his tendency to slip into long conversations with his patients about golf or holidays or the weather, as if getting to the point were more painful for him than for them.

  But tomorrow was Sunday and, if she wasn’t too tired, if the news wasn’t too bad, they’d drop in on Alex and his family, and their granddaughters would tell them the stories of their week at school and complain about their parents and their teachers, and they’d all forget for a few hours.

  Chapter 6

  Carrying a tote bag, a hanger with a couple of skirts, and a bottle of champagne, Ash arrived back at Jo’s in a flurry at 7.30. From behind the closed front door, she yelled, ‘Hey Jo, let me in,’ because she didn’t have a free hand to ring the bell.

  ‘Hi, Ashleigh. So good to see you. Can I help?’ Mandy said as she let Ash in. ‘Looks like you’ve brought your whole wardrobe.’

  Ash handed her a bag and the champagne. ‘Thanks, Mandy. You know me — I can’t decide what to wear,’ Ash said, kissing Mandy on the cheek and heading straight into Jo’s bedroom. ‘What are you wearing, Jo?’

  ‘My red dress — maybe.’ Jo’s bed was covered in clothes.

  ‘Great. Can I borrow the blue top? My turn. It’ll go with my pencil skirt.’

  ‘Sure.’ Jo dug the blue top out from the pile and handed it to Ash.

  Since their early teens, when they started buying their own clothes, they often went halves. This required negotiation, but mainly it worked. Ash understood fashion — understood which clothes were in and which weren’t, which clothes would mark you as an outsider, which marked you as an insider, so she directed and managed the shopping trips and the decisions on what to purchase, but that suited Jo too. Without Ash, she would’ve lived in jeans and t-shirts, the wrong kind, and dressing for parties would’ve been a nightmare. Even with Ash, she found clothes shopping difficult. The mirrors in the tiny dressing-room cubicles highlighted all her faults. Clothes clung to her belly, accentuated her hips and her thighs. In those mirrors, with their harsh spotlights, she became the fat girl again. Ash didn’t know about her fat history, or the trip to visit her father and his wife, about them forcing her to go on a diet. There were experiences too shameful to tell even a best friend.

  Sometimes, when they were in changing rooms, in dress shops, she let slip, ‘I feel fat in this.’ Ash laughed at her. ‘Are you for real? I can see your ribs.’ Or ‘If you’re fat, I’m fat, because we’re the same size. Are you saying I’m fat?’ They might have been the same size, but the clothes didn’t look the same on them. Jo was taller and had a fuller figure. However, the real difference was to do with styles and combinations. When Jo wore the red dress, she wore ballet flats and tied her hair back in a ponytail. If she wore jewellery at all, it was a fine silver chain with her birthstone, a small ruby, that she had bought with money her father sent on a recent birthday. Ash wore the red dress with six-inch heels; she wore a tight black choker, and against her long slender neck it turned into a swirl of tattooed waves. Ash’s mother said it made her look like she belonged on a vampire movie set. The dress had a tie on the right side that could be adjusted. Ash tied it low to create a cleavage.

  ‘Cruiser? Lemon or lime?’

  ‘Lime. Can you put the champagne in the freezer — it’s warm.’

  Ash moved Jo’s clothes to one side and unpacked her bag, spreading her clothes out on Jo’s bed, on the chair and desk. They took the drinks into the bathroom. Jo rarely wore make-up, but she enjoyed hanging over the basin, squashed up against Ash, so they could talk to each other’s reflections in the mirror as they painted their lips and eyes, as they transformed their faces from ordinary school girls to grown women.

  ‘Hey, try this mascara, it’s awesome.’ Ash handed Jo the mascara tube. The mascara dyed Jo’s brown lashes black.

  ‘I hope Kevin was okay about not coming to the party … You’ve got a smudge, there,’ Jo said, pointing to Ash’s left eyelid.

  ‘Yup — no problem. It’s great to hang out just us girls.’ Ash stopped doing her make-up and blew Jo a kiss in the mirror. ‘God, who said that once there’s a guy around, he has to come to everything? As if we’re attached. Anyway, he doesn’t like Rosie.’

  But Kevin’s name was all over the pages of Ash’s journal. Smokin’ hot, sexy eyes, warm hands on my breasts … Remembering those passages, Jo blushed. In the mirror her cheeks turned a blotchy red. Kevin wasn’t the problem. Kevin and Ash having sex wasn’t the problem, either. Of course they were having sex. Of course she knew that. She shouldn’t have read the journal. It was private. It was Ash’s private space. No one should have access to your thoughts. She would’ve hated Ash or anyone else having access to her thoughts … but she wouldn’t have risked writing them down, filling up a whole journal with them, tempting fate at having them discovered. Yet Ash was in her thoughts, constantly. All those entries in which Ash fantasised about her future, and often with Kevin — Ash the successful lawyer, the judge, working for the United Nations, working for Amnesty International and married to Kevin, the famous photographer. World renowned. Living in New York. Living in Paris. Jo was nowhere in those scenarios.

  Ash raised one leg up on the side of the bathtub and ran the razor over her skin. ‘I reckon I’m going to quit my job,’ she said. A
sh’s legs were smooth and hairless; there was nothing to shave.

  ‘You’ll cut yourself. There’s shaving cream in the cupboard.’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Whatever, they’re your legs,’ Jo said. ‘What’ll you do about a job?’

  Ash went through a long list of possibilities, including the cafés in Yarraville and half the shops at Highpoint Shopping Centre.

  Their friendship wasn’t equally balanced. Were any friendships equally balanced?

  Laura and Mani’s friendship wasn’t equally balanced, either — though it was closer. Promiscuous Laura had no boundaries, no awareness of the dangers or the consequences, while Mani was the protective and maternal one. Did she get sick of looking out for Laura? Of being the one with all the common sense?

  The first few days of high school, Jo had felt lonely and vulnerable. The older students, especially the boys, seemed too big to be at school; everywhere the Year 7 students went, they were in the way. Get out of the way. Move, you little moron. There was so much noise. The thump of balls against walls, the yelling and screaming from the football oval and the basketball court. Corridors, crowded and smelly, with half-eaten lunches spilling out of bins, sweaty bodies being pushed and shoved against lockers.

  It was their second science lesson and they were put into lab groups — Laura and Mani and Ash and Jo.

  ‘I’ve just moved to Yarraville,’ Ash told them.

  ‘My friends all went to a different school,’ Jo said. It was mostly true: the only girls she’d been friendly with, twins Sarah and Allie, went to Mount St Joseph’s, and the other girls from her Grade 6 class, even though they had noticed her weight loss and made comments about how ‘amazing’ she looked, didn’t invite her to sit with them in class or at lunchtime.

  ‘Do you guys want to have lunch together?’ Ash asked them when the bell rang. Easily, effortlessly, they became friends. Laura and Mani were already a pair. ‘We’ve been joined at the hips since birth,’ Mani told them.

  Ash and Jo became best friends. BFFs. Besties. They hung out at school and on the weekends. They read the same books and watched the same TV shows. Ash was crazy about horses — Jo didn’t get it, but she went and cheered for Ash at the pony-club competitions. When they fought they made up quickly and easily. They stayed over at each other’s houses, went to parties together, got their first periods in the same month. Jo loved being part of a pair. When Jo was alone, everyone asked after Ash. But Ash’s absence had expanded until there seemed to be a big gaping hole in Jo’s evenings and weekends.

  She thought about the night at the Latin American bar: that was only three weeks ago. They had learned to tango. They had danced and laughed. It was an awesome night, they all agreed. Jo and Ash had skipped all the way back to Ash’s place, where they both slept in Ash’s bed and talked until dawn. Jo had felt oh so lucky. They were together tonight, that was the important thing, and when they were together they had a good time.

  Once they were satisfied with their make-up, they modelled different outfits for each other, coming full circle: Jo wore the red dress and Ash the blue top over a pencil skirt. They’d purchased the top, lacy and sleeveless, from an expensive boutique in Yarraville. Squeezed into the fitting room, they both tried it on. They both liked it, but Ash was broke. Ash worked part-time at Happy Paws, walking people’s dogs around the neighbourhood. The pay was legal — just — but not great, and she spent the money faster than she earned it.

  Jo and Ash had one rule about clothing: the person who contributed the most money wore the dress or top first. Jo had worn the blue top to Ash’s eighteenth birthday party.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Ash said when Jo arrived, ‘you weren’t supposed to wear it to my party. Now everyone I know has seen it on you.’

  ‘It’ll look different on you,’ Jo said, not sure whether Ash was serious.

  ‘It’ll look better,’ Ash said, deliberately loud. Jo longed to tell Ash to stop acting like a cow, but instead she let the comment pass. It was Ash’s birthday. Ash’s grandmother was so ill the party had been postponed twice. Now she sat in an armchair in the corner of the crowded lounge room, pale and thin. She managed only a gentle smile as people bent down to give her a kiss on each cheek.

  Jo didn’t make a fuss; everybody knew they were bestest best friends. ‘They’re like sisters,’ was the way Ash’s mother described their friendship to other people — at least when Jo was around.

  Ash twirled a couple of times in front of the mirror and stood facing Jo.

  ‘Looks great,’ Jo said. Ash was pretty and confident and that made all the difference. She had striking auburn hair that (when she didn’t spend hours straightening it or having it braided) fell in long waves down her back. Boys stopped to stare at her as she walked past. The wolf-whistles were always for Ash. Adult women called Jo pretty, but boys didn’t seem to notice her; she was shyer, less confident, more easily missed.

  Mandy said Ash’s confidence was a result of her parents and all their positive reinforcement. In Ash’s household everyone was special. All achievements, no matter how small, were celebrated — the first pirouette, the first kick (and the fuss about the first goal …), the first race, the first story.

  ‘You’re so creative,’ Ash’s father would say when Ash or Jane drew him a picture.

  ‘You’re so clever,’ Ash’s mother would say when Ash or Jane showed her a school project.

  When Jo first met Ash’s family, she believed Ash’s parents were acknowledging what was so: Ash was clever and creative and talented. And so was Jane. But Ash’s parents were soon heaping these compliments onto Jo as well. She found them confusing — no one had ever told Jo she was especially talented or clever.

  ‘Ash’s parents have done a lot of parenting courses,’ Mandy said later to her friend Pam when she thought Jo was out of hearing. ‘They think it’s important you tell your kids how good they are at everything, even if it’s not true. They lie to them.’

  ‘Yep. The positive reinforcement mob. We have a plague of them at school.’ Pam’s youngest was still at primary school. ‘They’ve moved in from the eastern suburbs.’

  ‘What’s the point of having a false sense of yourself? They’re setting those kids up for a fall.’

  Honesty was Mandy’s big thing. The truth: tell it like it is. People who knew Mandy said she didn’t suffer fools, that she called a spade a spade. Jo’s father, David, said Mandy had no diplomacy and didn’t give a shit about other people’s feelings.

  The only television show that Mandy and Jo sometimes watched together — except the football when the Dogs were playing — was Australian Idol. During the early auditions at the beginning of each series, there were numerous overly confident young people who couldn’t sing. Mandy squirmed during that part of the show. ‘See what happens when people lie to their children about their talents? Those parents should’ve told their children that they can’t sing. Save us all the embarrassment,’ Mandy said.

  ‘Maybe his mother likes his singing.’

  ‘Only if she’s tone deaf too. It’s so cruel.’

  ‘Are you for real, Mum? People will kill for five minutes of fame — no matter what. Don’t take it so seriously.’

  But she did. She often found it so excruciating she had to leave the room.

  It was after 8.30 by the time Ash and Jo were ready to go out.

  ‘You need to eat if you’re going to keep drinking,’ Mandy said.

  ‘They’ll be food at the party,’ Jo said. ‘We need to go. We’re already late.’

  ‘I’ve made eggs, bacon, and toast. It’s ready.’

  ‘Thanks, Mandy,’ Ash sang out and then whispered to Jo, ‘Let’s have a quick bite.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jo relented.

  ‘And let’s have some champagne with dinner,’ Ash said, going over to the freezer.

  ‘What are you girls
celebrating?’ Mandy asked.

  ‘Almost done with school,’ Ash said as she popped the champagne and poured three glasses. ‘To us,’ she cheered.

  While Ash had gone to pick up her clothes, Jo had rehearsed several possible conversations she could have with Ash about their friendship, about what was going on: Why are you pulling away from me? What have I done? What did I do wrong? Why are you behaving like such an arsehole? But now they were laughing and giggling and making faces at each other when Mandy wasn’t looking. It felt like they were back to being best friends. Was she being stupid? Maybe there was nothing going on. Maybe she didn’t appear in the journal because she was so much a part of Ash’s life there was nothing to question, there was nothing for Ash to write about, to mull over. Maybe she was imagining problems where there weren’t any. Listening too much to the annoying voices in her head, spinning doubts and anxieties, like the monsters in children’s stories who stir up trouble while everyone is asleep.

  ‘You girls look so beautiful and so grown up,’ Mandy said.

  They rolled their eyes and winked at each other.

  ‘Oh God, Mum,’ Jo said. ‘We are grown up.’

  Mandy smiled. ‘It’s lovely to see you together and having fun.’

  ‘Thanks, Mandy,’ Ash said. ‘Great eggs.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  When they’d finished eating, Jo said, ‘We better go.’

  ‘How are you getting there?’ Mandy asked.

  ‘I’m going to drive,’ Jo said. Jo was the only one in her group with a car, an ancient secondhand Toyota that Pop Jack, David’s father, left to her in his will, along with money for driving lessons and a sad letter apologising for not sticking around to teach her to drive, as if getting sick and dying were his fault. When she was only little, Pop Jack let her sit in the front seat while Mary, her grandmother, sat in the back. He fancied himself a good defensive driver. As they drove, he annotated his every move. Look in the rearview mirror before slowing down. See how I’m gentle on the clutch. The car will last forever if you are careful.