‘Well, you could come out for a while and have a cup of tea with me and your mother. I wanted to ask you a few things.’
‘Not today, please,’ Jo pleaded and turned away from the door.
It took less than a couple of minutes to find the house. There were cars parked on either side of the street, so she had to double-park. The house, a large weatherboard to which a second storey had been added, was set back on a large block. There was a small rose garden along the front fence and several well-established Japanese maples on either side of the central path.
When Sarah knocked on the door, a teenage girl answered.
‘This is for Ms White. She asked Mrs Neilson for Ashleigh’s belongings.’
Silently, the girl took the bags and shut the door.
Sarah suspected that whatever Ashleigh’s mother hoped to find in the bags, she’d be disappointed.
Just as she stepped off the porch onto the path, she noticed someone — a man standing at the window, holding the curtains open. Ashleigh’s father, Sarah assumed. As he stared at her, she felt both his rage and his restraint emanating through the glass. She paused to meet his eyes. His gaze, intense, didn’t shift. She turned and walked down the path and to the car, and as she pulled out she peered in the rearview mirror. The man was still standing at the opened window, his gaze following her as she took off down the road.
Chapter 15
Antonello headed towards Francis Street. At the lights, he waited and watched as a long line of semi-trailers — fully loaded with tanks and containers, plastered with ‘hazardous chemicals’ signs — headed towards Williamstown Road to make their way onto the West Gate Bridge.
The trucks flew past the dusty weatherboard houses, their motors roaring as the road opened up in front of them, seemingly oblivious to the large red signs demanding CUT TRUCK TRAFFIC — PEOPLE LIVE HERE nailed to front fences. Some drivers were drinking coffee or Coke, while others smoked cigarettes and flicked their ash out of their windows. Antonello imagined that to the drivers, peering down from their high cabins, the cars wedged between them looked like a series of moving Lego blocks.
Antonello had been teaching Ashleigh to drive along this stretch of road. He warned her to keep her distance, to stay back, to give way to the trucks as they swung into a right-hand turn. He insisted it was a serious exercise, and was easily annoyed with her tendency to be distracted by activity on the street, other drivers, and her phone, which beeped constantly to announce another text message. She’d laughed at his seriousness, teasing him, telling him to lighten up, trying to make him laugh with silly jokes. He hadn’t relented. Being one of her driving instructors was a responsibility he took seriously. It was his duty to make sure she was a competent and safe driver so that she wouldn’t have an accident. So that she wouldn’t die on the road.
To avoid the risk of seeing Jo or her mother, Antonello kept to the other side of the road, with his head down and his eyes on the footpath. But he sensed Jo’s presence, and several times he thought he heard their squeaky front gate and the rustle of the trees and bushes that hid her house from the street. Behind the cyclone fence, under the blue sky, the tanks soaked in the morning sun.
Back at Alex’s, family and friends were still gathering. As more people had poured into the house that morning, Alex and Rae and Jane had retreated, shrinking into corners, disappearing. The ordinary rooms were becoming unfamiliar. There were too many flowers, the bunches of blooms garish and overwhelming. Too many voices. Too many people.
Nicki had arrived with food, and together with Rae’s sister Rebecca, covered the kitchen benches with platters of sandwiches. But no one ate. Rae’s parents, who’d arrived straight from the airport, in their holiday shorts and t-shirts, wanted Antonello to give them answers to questions they couldn’t ask their daughter, questions Antonello hadn’t even thought to ask. Their grief made them interrogative, as if the answers to queries about time, about speed, about states of mind would bring Ashleigh back.
‘I morti non tornano,’ he whispered.
‘Sorry,’ Rae’s father, Gary, said. ‘What did you say?’
Paolina nudged his leg under the table.
‘Nothing. I’m sorry, I’m too sad, I can’t speak,’ he said, giving the other man a conciliatory pat on the back. He didn’t want to witness his own grief reflected in the eyes of the other grandfather. There was a time when the two men had been rivals for Ashleigh’s attention and her favour, childish behaviour that manifested itself in too many toys and outings and the invention of silly games.
When the funeral directors arrived, two women in grey suits lugging folders and suitcases on rollers, Antonello followed the others into the lounge room. Alex and Rae struggled under the weight of decisions — the coffin, the chapel, the cemetery, flowers, songs, prayers, eulogies. Jane snuck out of the house, into the garden, her skateboard under her arm, the dog at her heels. Antonello should’ve stayed. He should’ve stayed, but instead he’d absconded. He made excuses to himself. There was too much talk of God and prayers and hymns; he was so overwhelmed by the desire to echo Alex’s outburst on the night of the accident, to shake each of them as they sat around the room — yes, even Paolina — until they understood there’s no fucking God.
What he needed was a mate, someone who would listen to his rage and his grief, who would let him empty himself of it, so that he might be of some use to his son and daughter-in-law, of some help to his granddaughter. In the past, Paolina had been his only confidant, but since the cancer, he’d taken to hiding his rage, his dark thoughts and moods, from her — she had enough to deal with. He didn’t trust his brothers with his emotions. He could trust both of them, Vince and Joe, with his life, with the lives of his children and grandchildren; they were better fathers, better men. But Joe would tell him to calm down, pat him on the back, and expect him to be able to do what he had to do. And Vince wouldn’t know what to say. He would be a stream of platitudes: You need to be strong, gather yourself up, it gets easier …
Under the bridge, the thirty-five red and grey stone pillars, the sculptures that were part of the memorial, threw long dark shadows. The wind howled, and overhead the traffic was a constant clatter as cars and trucks sped over the ridges and joins that stitched the bridge together. Antonello longed for Sam and for Slav, for their friendship. It was futile to try and push the memories back; they had a force of their own.
‘Hey paesano, come and sit with us,’ Sam had called out to him at smoko on his first day, and when Antonello slipped into the bench seat next to Slav, Sam whispered, ‘No bloody Australiani here. Dagos only.’
After that most lunchtimes, they sat at the same table. On sunny days they took their cuppas out to the same spot on the river, and after work, exhausted, they settled at the same corner of the bar at the Vic. They were his first real friends in Australia. At school, it had taken him most of the first year to learn enough English to hold a conversation, and even the sons of Italian migrants who could speak Italian stayed away. Once he left school, working on the building sites with Bob, he tended to keep to himself. He spent his spare time with Joe and Vince, and on the weekends, with some of his cousins who lived across the city in Richmond and Collingwood, but he was lonely, yearning for friends his own age and missing his childhood companions, the boys and girls he grew up with in Vizzini. A couple were in New York. Several were in Australia, one or two in Melbourne, but he only saw them occasionally, at weddings and big religious celebrations. Away from the village, it was too difficult to connect.
‘How long have you been in Australia?’ Antonello asked Sam. ‘Your English is good.’
‘I’ve learnt English from Australian girls,’ Sam said, giving Antonello a wink. ‘Only Australian girls, that’s my rule. Italian girls are locked up by their parents until they get married and it’s too much trouble, all the sneaking around. Australian girls are friendly and sexy. They help me improve my English.’
Sam was short and muscular, and a charmer; women loved him. He was kind and compassionate, with a good sense of humour and a hearty laugh, and on the site, where there were often problems between the real Australians and the wogs, everyone liked Sam. He could turn the worst situation into a joke, and disarm the most racist and aggressive of the men.
He loved being a rigger, loved being up high. ‘You could’ve been a tightrope walker,’ Antonello said to him one day when they were both working on one of the spans.
Sam hurled himself in the air, somersaulted, landed on both feet, and took a bow.
‘Disgraziato!’ Antonello cried out. ‘You are a bloody clown. I don’t want to be scraping you off the ground.’
‘Oh, don’t get so wound up. I wanted to be a gymnast when I was a kid. I used to do somersaults all the time. Planned to run away to the circus.’
Slav was the tallest of the three and the most serious. ‘I’m not Italian,’ he told them on that first day. ‘I was born in Yugoslavia, in the north, in a small town near the Italian border.’ He could speak several languages, including Italian and English. The son of primary-school teachers, he grew up in an educated, bookish household, but when his parents were killed in a ferry accident he, their only child, was shipped to Australia to live with his aunt. She took him in and loved and cared for him as she did her own children, but she and her husband worked long hours on the assembly line at the Ford factory and came home too tired to talk. There were no books in the house and little money; they expected their children and Slav to contribute to the household as soon as possible. In Yugoslavia, Slav’s parents wanted him to go into medicine or follow his love of literature. In Australia, those options slipped away, so he took up a carpentry apprenticeship. He wasn’t a bad carpenter, but he wasn’t a passionate one. He spent his money on books — novels and poetry. Sometimes he recited poems to Sam and Antonello, especially those of the Australian poets he made it his task to become familiar with: A.D. Hope, Bruce Dawe, and Judith Wright. Poets who wrote about the nature of life and death, who documented the lives of ordinary people and often used poetry to take up issues that troubled them — war, consumerism, and Indigenous land rights.
It was Sam who first called them the Rat Pack, one night when they were all dressed up in their suits, on their way to the San Remo Ballroom. ‘Handsome and always together. We have each other’s backs.’
In a parallel universe, they would’ve grown old together, and their friendship would’ve made him a stronger man, a better man.
As Antonello made his way back along the path, he caught sight of the roadside memorial for Ashleigh. There was a white cross, roughly made from two planks of wood. In thick black pen: Ashleigh Bassillo-White 20/09/2009. RIP. There were flowers — roses and lilies, already decaying. Tied and taped to the cross were several cards and notes, but Antonello didn’t bend down to read them. He assumed the memorial had been built by Ashleigh’s friends: the girls that were in the car, or maybe Ashleigh’s boyfriend, Kevin, or even Jo. Roadside memorials were common enough, along the freeways, on the sides of roads, attached to poles and posts, to cyclone fences, to roadside barricades. He avoided them, unless he was with Paolina; then, avoidance was impossible. To Paolina, these temporary altars were sacred places. She was compelled to stop, and if they couldn’t stop, she’d say a short prayer as they drove past, as if they’d passed the cemetery or a funeral procession. She said that some people believed the dead person’s spirit lingered where they took their last breath.
Did the dead exist anywhere? Were they watching? He’d grown up with heaven and hell and had discarded the idea of both, but Bob and Slav were often with him, and now Ashleigh too. Were they ghosts? Not the kind that appeared as thin ethereal apparitions in movies, not the kind he’d imagined as a child, draped with white sheets and the ability to walk through walls. But the kind that lodged themselves in your heart, and in your memories, the kind that came to you in dreams, that you could see when you closed your eyes and sometimes even when your eyes were opened, when a moment came back to you, their voices whispering in your ear, calling out your name. He felt the weight of their unlived lives, of all they might have been; he felt his own inadequacy.
He turned to look up at the bridge. He whispered to Bob and Slav to look after his granddaughter Ashleigh. Wherever she was, he hoped she was with them.
The Ashleigh portrayed in the newspaper articles after the accident bore little resemblance to the real Ash. They quoted the school principal: ‘Ashleigh was an exemplary member of the school community.’ In Ash’s school reports, none of the teachers called her exemplary. They quoted Mrs Zapatero, a neighbour, who cried during her interview: ‘She was quiet and kind.’ This was the same girl who had talked Jo into hacking Mrs Zapatero’s roses one night after the woman had complained to Rae about Ash’s bad language.
One of Ash’s uncles was quoted saying, ‘Jo was a bad influence on Ashleigh.’ An unnamed neighbour: ‘I hope that girl gets what she deserves.’
Ash wasn’t a saint. Jo longed to run up and down the streets of Yarraville screaming at them all, She’s no fucking saint.
Jo tore the articles out, shredded them into small, unreadable pieces, and stuffed them under her mattress. Ash wasn’t a bad person — she was funny, she was clever, she was never lost for words — but sometimes she was a bitch. Sometimes she was a cow. She could be nasty and mean. Say hurtful things.
But Ash was dead and Jo was alive, and even though she wished and wished, nothing could change that. She remembered the text messages sent anonymously the day after the accident: You should be dead. Murderer, scum of the earth, it should have been you who died.
The sender was right. She was a murderer, a criminal. Because of her, Ash was dead. Nothing would ever, ever change that. She could climb mountains, she could win medals, she could save the world from alien invasion, but she would still be a murderer.
You, climb mountains, win medals? Give me a break. I’m dead and you want sympathy.
‘No, I’m not asking for sympathy,’ Jo said out loud even though she knew Ash was not in the room.
The buzzing of a car alarm woke Jo. There was a moment or two in which she was only aware of her irritation at the relentless squawking. Every morning, she woke into her old life. For that first moment, Ash was alive. And then the anxiety, rising, swelling, erupting … remembering Ash. Ash dead. Ash dead.
Was every morning like this for Rae?
Rae was the only woman Jo had ever seen naked. It was during a sleepover at Ash’s house. She had stumbled out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and almost collided with Rae.
‘Oh, sorry, Jo,’ Rae said. ‘I forgot you were staying over. Forgot to put on the dressing gown.’
‘Oh, just going to the …’ Jo said, embarrassed and not sure whether to backtrack to the bedroom or keep going.
‘Go, no problem,’ Rae said. Even though Mandy and Jo were the only occupants of their house, neither of them ever left their rooms without clothes. Rae was lean and fit, with large breasts; she wasn’t embarrassed to be seen naked. When Jo had imagined herself as an adult woman, she imagined herself as Rae.
What was Rae doing now? What were Rae and Alex and Jane and Ash’s grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins doing? How were they making it through the days, through the nights? How would they keep going with their lives? Would they return to work, to school?
Jo’s room was dark and stale. Her head throbbed. She walked over to the windows, but she couldn’t bear to open the curtains. Instead she sat on the floor and leant against them. Blue velvet curtains. Mary had bought them when Jo was going through a blue phase. They were soft and lush, and so much wider than her window that they formed waves.
Mary had been proud of her find. The curtains were in the Salvos op shop in Barkly Street, Footscray, folded and labelled: $4. ‘They’re new. Only rich people would be gettin
g rid of curtains in such good nick. Curtains fit for a princess.’
Jo and Mary took down the old blinds — somersaulting clowns that Mandy bought when Jo was three — and hung the velvet curtains. They were too long, and Mary took them up while they were hanging. Mary wasn’t much of a seamstress, and so the rough stitches in the wrong shade of blue ran across the hemline like scars. Drawn, they were a thick and solid wall that no light could penetrate. Drawn, the room shrank. They blocked out the street. The tanks. The bridge. But not Ash. It was as if Jo were strapped in a seat at a twenty-four-hour cinema, and on the screen images of Ash played on a never-ending loop. Ash sitting in Jo’s computer chair, twirling and spinning and talking about winning a ribbon, about wanting her own horse, about riding in the Olympics. And Jo laughing, ‘The Olympics, give me a break.’ Ash wearing the blue top and the red skirt with a glass of champagne in her hand.
Jo opened her eyes to stop the memories. As she started to get up, she noticed a flash of red under the bed. It was Ashleigh’s Moleskine notebook, her journal. Jo slid her hand under the bed and grabbed the notebook. She felt the weight of it in her hand and remembered the betrayal.
My journal. Spy. Snoop.
I trusted you with my journals. I thought I could trust you, but you can’t be trusted.
Jo shuddered. Ash’s journals were still in the safe in the far corner of Jo’s room, hidden behind an old chest. Grandpa Tom had bought the safe after a spate of robberies in the neighbourhood, long before Jo was born, before Sal, the grandmother Jo hadn’t met, died. Sal only owned one thing worth stealing: her great-grandmother’s blue pearl necklace. There were several different stories about the origins of the necklace. Sal told Mandy that her great-grandmother was from a wealthy family and the necklace was the only thing she took with her when she eloped with Sal’s great-grandfather and the family disowned her. Grandpa Tom said that he was sure his great-grandfather-in-law took after his convict parents and had stolen the necklace: ‘He was a thief in and out of prison all his life.’ Sal wore the necklace in every photograph that Jo had seen. When Sal didn’t wear it, she worried that someone would break into the house while they were out and find where she hid it — wrapped in a cloth at the bottom of the biscuit tin on the top kitchen shelf — and steal it. When a factory in Stephen Street closed down, they put up a sign: Everything for sale. Grandpa Tom came home with a hammer, several boxes of rusty screws, and a safe. A whole safe for one necklace might have seemed excessive, but not to Grandpa Tom. ‘It was a bargain. It gave your grandma peace of mind.’
The Bridge Page 21