The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  Constable Lumina wrote notes with a fountain pen, the blue ink staining her thumb and her index finger. Running writing. Jo’s Grade 4 teacher, Mrs Morris, called it running writing. The students had to conquer the style before they were awarded a pen licence. Jo was bad at running writing. She recalled the shame of being the second-last person in the grade to qualify for her pen licence. A boy, Macka Smith, was slower, but he was a brat who couldn’t read, let alone write. Jo wasn’t good at reading upside down. She wasn’t good at reading people’s running writing. Her father and her great aunt — the aunt who lived somewhere in Canada, somewhere cold, where it snowed in the winter — sent her handwritten letters and cards. When they arrived, Mandy translated them. Not that they ever said anything interesting. Have a good birthday. Hope you have a nice Easter. All the best for Xmas. Her father wrote Christmas with an X. Her aunt spelt the whole word out. Her father’s script was small and squashed; Mandy called it ‘stingy writing’. He wrote about Jo’s brothers: Michael is the captain of the cricket team. Ed is going to start high school this year. Lists of impersonal details. He didn’t use adjectives. Her aunt wrote about gardens and travelling. In her letters, nouns were weighed down by adjectives, though her vocabulary was limited, and everything good was fabulous or stunning or so, so beautiful, and everything not so good was disappointing and unsatisfying.

  ‘Jo, tell us about that evening, before the accident.’ Constable Peters reached out to steady the microphone.

  Jo hesitated. Where to begin? The party, the house … or further back? Did they want to know about her nerves, her anxiety, the panic she felt before Ash arrived? Or the relief when Ash agreed to come over in the afternoon to study? Or later, when she came back with champagne and her clothes: ‘Party time.’ Her warm hug. ‘A strong beginning is what catches the reader,’ Mrs Hunt had told them. The beginning is simple to mark was the first line of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love — it didn’t catch her, she wanted to give up on the novel, and in fact she did several times, wouldn’t have continued reading it if it weren’t for the exams. Those exams.

  The beginning is simple to mark.

  ‘Jo?’

  ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  ‘What time did you get together with Ashleigh?’ Constable Lumina asked. Her voice was soft, and she leaned in to ask her questions, as if they were friends in a café exchanging intimacies.

  ‘Ash was at my place all afternoon, we were studying. Then she went home to get her clothes and came back at 7.30.’

  ‘Did you go out straightaway?’

  ‘No. It was too early. We did our make-up and dressed, and Mum cooked us dinner.’ Jo’s body craved her mother’s: to curl up on the couch against her mother’s body, to be held in her mother’s embrace. Mandy’s grip would be strong, her hands warm. Mandy was her anchor. But Mandy’s hands were on her lap. She had a tissue in one hand, her fist tight around it. With the other hand, she gripped her phone as if someone were threatening to snatch it.

  Jo stared at the vinyl tiles, at the metal-framed chairs, at the notices on the noticeboard, at the poster for Victoria Legal Aid.

  ‘What did you have for dinner?’

  ‘Mum made eggs and toast.’

  Sarah scribbled notes. Her fingers were slender, long, and fast. Her nails were short, but not shaped or filed. Sarah’s nails were like Mandy’s nails. No manicures. Ash had given Jo her first manicure when they were thirteen. They followed the step-by-step instructions in a Dolly magazine. They bought nail files and clippers, and pinched Ash’s mother’s hand creams.

  How could Sarah and Constable Lumina have so much to write?

  ‘Did you have a drink with dinner? Alcohol?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you drink?’

  ‘We had a Cruiser each when we were getting ready. Later we opened a bottle of champagne that Ash brought —’

  ‘How much did you drink?’ Constable Peters was asking his questions in quick succession now, one after the other. His arms were folded and his eyes fixed on the digital recorder.

  ‘A glass each, I think.’

  ‘Were you drunk?’

  ‘I only had a couple of drinks.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘At about nine we headed off for the party.’

  ‘You were driving?’

  ‘I’m the only one with a car.’

  ‘Did you know you were going to be driving?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you still drank?’ Constable Lumina interrupted. In the ensuing silence, she dropped her pen. It rolled off the table onto the floor and she stood up and chased it across the room.

  ‘I only had a couple of drinks.’ Jo tried to count how many. A Cruiser and a glass of champagne at home. At the party she drank another Cruiser or two. A glass of champagne. Another champagne with cake, maybe two … she could count the drinks up until the cake. After that she wasn’t sure.

  ‘We all drank. I drove because I’m the only one with a licence and a car. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t drink that much. It’s not like I was … I don’t get that drunk. I knew what was going on.’ They didn’t believe her. She didn’t believe herself. It was true that she didn’t drink much, not compared to some. If only they knew how much some people drank.

  ‘You have a probationary P1 licence, is that right?’ Constable Peters asked, his eyes on her now.

  ‘Yes,’ Jo whispered, looking away.

  ‘You are aware of the conditions of that licence? You know you must have zero blood-alcohol content when driving? In other words, no drinking at all?’ He was almost shouting at her now. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

  Jo flinched.

  ‘I think we should take a break,’ Sarah said and stood up. ‘A coffee break.’

  Constable Peters turned the recorder off, picked it up, and left the room. Constable Lumina offered to make them tea and coffee and followed him out.

  ‘You don’t have to admit you were drunk.’ Sarah shoved her chair out of the way as she stood up.

  ‘I wasn’t drunk. Not when we left the house.’

  ‘Okay. But later. When they ask about later, don’t lie — you can tell them how many drinks you had if you remember — but don’t admit you were drunk.’

  ‘We were all drunk.’

  ‘Jo,’ Mandy hissed, and both Sarah and Jo turned to Mandy, but she didn’t say anything else.

  ‘You were the one driving.’ Sarah’s voice was soft but stern. ‘It doesn’t matter whether Ashleigh or the other girls were drunk.’

  ‘But we … we usually drank together.’

  ‘Yes, but the person driving is the person responsible,’ Sarah said.

  ‘It’s my fault. Everything is my fault?’ Jo pleaded. Fat cow, Jo thought. Anger was rising in her. ‘It wasn’t only my fault. Fuck. It was Ash’s fault too. It wasn’t …’

  All your fault. All your fault. Killer Jo. That voice again, spitting and hissing in her ear. You want to blame me?

  ‘According to the law, Jo,’ Sarah said in the same soft voice. ‘I know it’s hard, but that’s the law. Unless there is something else you’re not saying. Unless someone forced you to drive the car, unless they held a gun to your head, unless Ash took the wheel or put her foot on the accelerator, unless someone cut you off on the road …’

  ‘Don’t call her Ash,’ Jo said. ‘She hates other people calling her Ash.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sarah rose from the table. ‘But you drank too much. You’re a P-plate driver. No drinking. No more than two people in the car. You know all this.’

  Jo didn’t respond.

  ‘You do know this, Jo, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jo whispered. ‘Yes.’ She tried to remember if she’d thought about it on that night. When she first got her licence, she had been so careful. No alcohol at all. But she often felt o
n edge and tense when they went out, so worried about what everyone was thinking. A drink or two helped her relax. What was the harm in that? She rarely got drunk. She hadn’t felt drunk at the party, had she? Had she driven knowing she was too drunk? ‘I said I’d drive. Taxis are so expensive. My mother doesn’t drive, and Ash hates asking her parents. We were tired. Ash wanted to go home. She was working the next day. She wanted to go home. How were we supposed to get home? I’m a good driver. I don’t drink much. I’ve driven home from parties before, plenty of times. I don’t know what happened, it was an accident.’

  ‘Did you drink less because you were driving?’

  ‘Yes.’ She always drank less because she was driving. She teased the others, told them that when they had their licences they’d owe her, they’d have to drive her everywhere, that she’d be the one getting drunk. But she didn’t mind. She liked being the one with the car, the one they counted on.

  ‘So you drank less that night because you knew you were driving.’

  Jo didn’t say anything.

  ‘When they did the blood test you were over 0.07.’

  ‘Was I? I didn’t feel that drunk.’

  ‘You were drunk, too drunk to drive,’ Sarah said. She gripped the back of the chair. She waited for Jo to meet her gaze. ‘You need to admit, at least to yourself, that you did the wrong thing. That you shouldn’t have been driving. It doesn’t matter what the others did. They shouldn’t have gotten in the car with you. They should’ve stopped you driving. The people whose party it was, the people at the restaurant, they should’ve stopped you driving. Your mother, she should’ve stopped you taking the car in the first place. She should’ve taken the car keys and thrown them away. But they won’t be charged because you’re an adult now and you drove the car. You,’ Sarah said. She rummaged in her bag, pulled out her tobacco, and headed towards the door. Before she opened it, she turned back to Jo, her hand on the knob. ‘For God’s sake, Jo, show that you know what you did was wrong. And apologise and keep apologising and don’t stop.’ She opened the door and left the room.

  ‘Fuck,’ Jo heard Sarah mutter as the door closed behind her.

  Jo imagined what Sarah might’ve been thinking: That girl is an idiot, a stupid, dumb bitch … a murderer. But what would Sarah know, or Mandy or the cops? How could Jo make them understand? Of course she was sorry. So sorry. So fucked up. She wished Ash was alive. She wished she hadn’t been driving. She shouldn’t have been driving, of course. Her body was slack in the chair, as if she were a rag doll, as if the stuffing were seeping out of the unstitched seams, as if she might collapse on the floor and disappear.

  Too many drinks, was that what it came down to? The Cruiser with Ash while they did their make-up, the champagne afterwards. ‘Let’s have some champagne with dinner,’ Ash had said, popping the cork.

  Did they drink the whole bottle?

  Jo willed herself to think about something else. Anything else. School. The English essay, due Friday. The presentation for History, with Bec, who was distracted, private, who hated group work. How would she get these done? Would she be expected to get them done? Would she be allowed to go back? She almost asked her mother, ‘Do I keep going to school?’ But that was a stupid question. What was the point? No need to concern herself with these things.

  Go directly to jail, do not pass go.

  Jo shivered.

  Would she go to prison? Even if they didn’t lock her up, she couldn’t go back to sit in a classroom, to give a History talk. Ash was dead. There would be no more school. No more work in the café. No more life. She didn’t deserve to have a life. There was more than one way to be dead. She could forget VCE. She could forget work. She could forget friends.

  Who’d want to be friends with a killer?

  Who’d want to go out with a murderer?

  Jo cupped her ears. Now she was sweating; her face was damp and hot. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt Ash. I didn’t mean to,’ she cried out.

  She killed Ash. This is what the cops and Sarah were really saying; they were telling her, ‘You killed Ash. You’re responsible.’

  ‘I know.’ Mandy’s response surprised Jo. They were both staring ahead, at the wall with the posters, but until now it was as if they were in separate rooms, as if between them there were a thick, impenetrable wall.

  ‘They think I did it on purpose.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think they do,’ Mandy said quietly.

  There was silence for a few minutes and then Mandy, in a low voice, her resigned voice, the voice she used when she told Jo Grandpa Tom wouldn’t survive the cancer, when she told Jo her father was getting remarried, when she told Jo she couldn’t be bothered arguing with her anymore, said, ‘You shouldn’t have driven while you were drunk. That was wrong and irresponsible. And I shouldn’t have let you take the car that night. That was wrong too. Stupid mistakes, bad mistakes —’

  ‘People do it all the time,’ Jo said automatically.

  ‘Stop it, Jo,’ Mandy said. Her voice remained low and restrained. ‘You aren’t ten years old. You haven’t broken a toy or come home late … Yes, people do stupid things and get away with it sometimes, but sometimes they don’t. And then —’ She paused for a moment and then said, ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘The point?’

  ‘Yes. What’s the point of anything? Of this conversation. Too late now.’

  ‘You couldn’t have stopped me,’ Jo said, but she didn’t feel any of the old resentment towards her mother.

  ‘But I didn’t try,’ Mandy whispered.

  Chapter 11

  In the hallway outside the interview room, Sarah leaned against the wall. Lately, her anger was getting the better of her, and being on a strict high-protein diet wasn’t helping. She craved sugar. She needed a cigarette. She needed a less stressful job. She needed to work with clients who weren’t idiots. Who took some responsibility for their actions.

  ‘Ready to go back?’ Constable Lumina asked, handing Sarah a coffee.

  ‘Give me a minute? I need a smoke.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll come out with you,’ she said, and went across to a desk that had a solitary but high stack of papers and files, opened the top drawer, and took out a packet of cigarettes. Sarah trailed after the constable, through the back door and into a small courtyard where two other cops, both men, sat on a bench smoking. The men nodded at them, and continued their own conversation.

  ‘These car-accident cases are tough,’ Constable Lumina said.

  ‘The worst,’ Sarah said as she rolled herself a cigarette. ‘So much bad stuff that happens is the result of thoughtlessness and bad luck.’

  ‘Not bad luck, negligence.’

  ‘We’re all negligent; we’re all irresponsible from time to time. Apparently, we’re being negligent right now.’ Sarah pointed to their cigarettes. Some people, like her mother, thought she was negligent because she was fat. ‘You’ll regret it when you’re older,’ her mother said. ‘When your knees go, when you have diabetes and high blood pressure, it’ll be your own fault.’

  ‘Smoking isn’t illegal.’

  ‘No. Not yet. Worth too much in taxes. But we know the risks,’ Sarah said, and the constable nodded in agreement. In some jobs, smoking gave the sort of comfort it was impossible to get in any other way. Lots of the cops Sarah knew smoked, and plenty of the legal aid lawyers too.

  Constable Lumina was in her early-twenties, Sarah guessed. Her uniform was a size too big and it fell from her shoulders like it might from a hanger, eliminating all curves. Sarah expected that in civvies Constable Lumina would look adolescent.

  ‘I guess you’ve seen a lot of these accident cases?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Too many, unfortunately. And …’ Constable Lumina sat down next to the table with an ashtray overflowing with butts.

  ‘And? You were going to say something else.’

 
‘Not sure why I’m telling you, but something about Jo reminds me of my brother. He was sixteen when he died. A few too many mates. A few too many beers. And a stolen car. They wanted to have a good time.’

  ‘That’s tough. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. I was a kid.’

  Sarah didn’t ask questions. She knew the answers. Of course the family was broken; recovery was impossible. Of course people went on with their lives. Of course the grief was ever-present, sometimes seeming to recede, but returning, waves of it swelling at unexpected moments, destructive, erosive.

  The two male cops finished their cigarettes and went back inside, their boots thumping down the corridor, the sound audible long after the door banged shut behind them. At the nearby railway station a train arrived, and Sarah heard, Stopping all stations to Flinders Street. The courtyard was a concrete square, surrounded by a tall fence. As well as a wrought-iron table and two chairs, there were a couple of wooden benches, and in the corner a supersized barbeque. Sarah had been here once, when she’d gone to the station’s Christmas drinks. ‘Fraternising with the enemy,’ one of her co-workers called it.

  ‘We take it in turns,’ her boss said. ‘Your turn this year. No point pissing off the cops.’

  Sarah had gravitated to the corner with a group of community and youth workers. They discussed low funding and the lack of emergency beds, and they whispered to one another about the problems they’d encountered with particular cops, sharing strategies for handling the worst of them, naming the ones to stay away from, the ones to call. Sarah told them that when she was sixteen, she’d wanted to be a cop. It was high on her list of possible careers. ‘No way,’ one of them said. ‘Lucky escape,’ another one added. ‘So instead you became a lawyer?’

  They told each other lame lawyer jokes and laughed. She didn’t tell them that her mother said, ‘With your brains, being a police officer would be such a waste. You should do law.’ Her mother had meant corporate law. She pictured Sarah — a slimmer Sarah, of course — in pencil skirts and fitted jackets, earning six figures. But Sarah believed she could make a difference, change things, bring a little justice into the world. ‘Hippy nonsense,’ her mother said. ‘We should never have sent you to that school.’