She ran straight to the hostel. Slipping in through the back door to avoid the receptionist, to avoid being seen by Laurie, who was often in the backyard in the evening, she sighed with relief when she reached the dorm and found it deserted. She emptied the contents of her small locker onto her bed. The clothes she had brought with her from home, she threw into her backpack. The clothes she had bought in Portarlington — shorts, singlets, and thongs, and the white shirt and black pants — she stuffed into a shopping bag to drop back off at the op shop. They were Ashleigh’s clothes, and Jo couldn’t take them home.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Ash, please don’t.
Serves you right.
She left a note for Justin. Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me, but can’t explain. When she reread it, she heard Mrs Hunt’s voice: ‘Cliché, cliché, cliché. If you write in clichés, your writing is meaningless.’ She circled their clichés with a red pen.
Jo rewrote the message: Sorry I can’t tell you the truth. I can’t stay to watch your reaction. My name isn’t Ashleigh, it’s Jo. You are a good person and I enjoyed spending time with you, but please don’t try to contact me.
She wrote another note for Laurie and Sue. Sorry, had to leave. One day I hope we will see each other again. I owe you big time.
‘You’ll have to face it some time,’ Sue had said one afternoon, while they sat together on a bench at the beach, surrounded by seagulls. It sounded like an invitation to confess. Jo considered it. Since the night of the accident, since Ash’s death, there had been no reprieve. Even when other thoughts and memories came, they were quickly swept away. Everything returned to that night. She was worried that once she started to speak, once she started to tell the sorry story, she would not be able to stop, and the outcome would be bad for everyone. It would be a deluge from which there might not be any chance of recovery.
She set the alarm for 5.00 am. She planned to leave the notes in Sue’s letterbox and catch the first bus into Geelong. She’d be gone before anyone she knew was awake.
2010
Chapter 24
It was twenty-eight degrees by the time the Geelong train pulled into Footscray. It would be in the high thirties before lunch, according to a man sitting opposite her on the Werribee train to Yarraville. ‘The last heatwave of the summer,’ he said in the authoritative tone that older men often used with young women, as if they were empty vessels with no experience of the world. She did her best to ignore him.
When Jo opened the front door, she hesitated. All her life this house had been her home, a refuge, but now it felt foreign and unwelcoming. She lingered in the hallway, reluctant.
‘Mum?’ she called out. There was no response. The house was empty. Jo made her way to the kitchen. There were dirty dishes in the sink. At one end of the table was a stack of newspapers and catalogues, and at the other end a single cork placemat, a half glass of water, and a margarine tub. On the bench sat several unopened bills. Every surface was coated with a layer of dust, and along the front of the stove, crumbs congregated. There was a trail of ants from the crumbs to the door. Jo could feel the weight of her mother’s sadness and despair, and the force of the connection that linked them together. She had ruined so many lives, including her mother’s. Jo picked up the melting margarine, pushed the lid down tight, and put it in the fridge. The house was hot and stuffy. She opened the front and back doors and the windows in the kitchen, and then went back down the hall to her room. Jo threw her bag into the corner. She crawled into bed. She could smell her mother’s scent on the pillow, on the sheets, on the doona. Or was she imagining it?
Jo fell asleep and dreamt she was in a warm pool. There were none of the usual lap swimmers jostling for lanes. There were no children jumping and splashing. The water was murky, and she couldn’t see more than an arm’s length in front, yet she swam easily. Back and forth. Back and forth.
At the bottom of the pool, a garden was growing. Plants rose out of the mist. Impossible. Rosemary. And parsley. Broccoli, eggplants, marrow. Garlic and mint.
Jo altered the shape of her swim to avoid the thorny arms of the cactus sprouting in the corner. She was swimming better than she’d ever swum. She could’ve swum forever if it weren’t for the plants growing so fast, transforming the pool into a dense watery forest, and the long and snaking tendrils that reached up and wrapped themselves around her waist, her shoulders, and her throat.
‘What have you been doing all this time?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Jo and Mandy were sitting in the kitchen, sharing the pre-packaged salad Mandy had brought home from the supermarket for her dinner. There was a quick-sale sticker over the original price. Mandy had divided it into two separate bowls. Though the salad — noodles and Asian greens — was soggy, they both ate it.
‘Why Portarlington?’
Jo pushed the bowl aside.
‘Jo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why Portarlington?’
‘Because that’s where I ended up. Grandpa Tom took me there once.’
‘But all that time.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘For two months and half months?’
Jo didn’t respond.
‘Jo, I’m talking to you.’
‘You’re shouting at me.’
‘Yes, I am, but you’re not responding. You’re not answering me.’
‘What? What do you want me to say?’
‘Tell me how you feel. What you’re thinking. I’m your mother. I want to help.’
‘Do you? Really?’
‘I want to help.’
‘Well, you can’t.’
‘Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but you won’t give me a chance.’
Jo looked around the kitchen. Mandy had rules: don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink, not even a cup or a glass; sweep up after meals, because crumbs attract rats. She wiped the benches, the stovetop, and the oven after each use. She vacuumed twice a week. Mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors every second day. Jo noticed that the fruit bowl that always sat on the bench was gone. ‘Where’s the crystal bowl?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Nan’s crystal bowl?’
‘It’s broken. I dropped it and it broke, so be careful. Don’t walk around without shoes on. I don’t think I got all the pieces.’
‘You don’t break things.’
‘Accidents happen.’ Mandy stopped. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to say that.’
The air was brittle and sharp. What was broken couldn’t be put together again. There was now a permanent crack in the world. It couldn’t be mended with a little glue or a row of stitches. It couldn’t be covered up, like her mother might cover a stain on the lino by throwing an op-shop rug over the top.
Mandy wrapped her hands around her mug and stared into it as if the answers to all her problems might be swimming there, under the milky surface. She wore her red supermarket shirt; it was too baggy and too bright. She looked pale and thin in it. Jo stared at Mandy’s arms, fragile, protruding from too-wide sleeves.
‘Didn’t mean what? Didn’t mean to say the word accident? In the hospital when you came to pick me up …’
‘Yes,’ Mandy said.
‘You didn’t touch me.’
Mandy pushed back into her chair. ‘No. I …’
‘You’re ashamed of me. You didn’t just look angry, you looked like you hated me.’ Jo hadn’t meant to say any of this. It was as if there were a leak — the words kept spilling out, and, unable to find the source, she was powerless to stop them.
‘I was angry. I was in shock. I don’t hate you,’ Mandy said.
‘It was the worst moment in my whole life. I wanted to die. And you came an
d I wanted to run into your arms, and for you to hold me, but you didn’t want to have anything to do with me. The sight of me made you cringe. I understand. I hate myself. But you’re … you’re my mother … and I didn’t expect that.’
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘You don’t love me. Not anymore. You’ve loved me all my life. Didn’t you think I’d notice when you stopped?’ The word love wedged itself between them, flaunted itself, as they sat defeated in the messy kitchen. After a while, Jo stood up and went to the sink. She stacked all the dirty dishes to one side and filled the tub with warm, soapy water. Mandy wasn’t the same woman who promised unconditional love to her five-year-old daughter. Jo wasn’t the same daughter.
She turned to face Mandy. ‘I had a job in a restaurant in Portarlington. I stayed in a hostel. I worked long hours. Some days I went for a swim. Most days I went for long walks. I tried to avoid people. I kept to myself. But a couple of people, well, you know … People get to know you and start asking questions. They wanted to know about me, my life, why I was in Portarlington. I couldn’t tell anyone, so I left. I couldn’t tell them, but I couldn’t keep lying.’
‘I don’t hate you. I care about you. I was so worried. You didn’t even ring for Christmas,’ Mandy said.
‘I’m sorry. I wanted to avoid Christmas. I sent you a text.’
‘I care about you.’
‘Of course,’ Jo said. ‘I know.’ But Jo didn’t believe it. She’d expected her mother’s love to be unconditional — wasn’t that what people said about parents, they loved you unconditionally? She’d learnt early on that her father’s love was fickle and conditional and easily forgotten. Now she knew her mother’s love had limits and there were things even a mother found difficult to forgive.
‘I’ve no idea how to steer us through this,’ Mandy said, getting up and taking a clean tea towel out of the drawer to dry the dishes as Jo washed.
‘It’s not up to you.’
‘Can you explain to me …’ Mandy began.
‘Explain what?’
‘How you feel. What you’re thinking?’
There were no tears on the night of the accident, as Jo sat trapped in the car. No tears when they told her Ash was dead. No tears at the police station, even with all the questions and the badgering. No tears the day of Ash’s funeral, or on any of those long nights when she couldn’t sleep and Ash’s voice was loud in her head. She’d wanted to cry, but there’d been no tears; a dry, desolate tract, parched and barren. Now she was sobbing. And shaking. She had to stop washing the dishes and sit down.
Mandy passed her a box of tissues. She made her a cup of tea. She brought her a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders.
Through her tears, Jo considered her mother, a woman she no longer recognised. Maybe she’d never seen her mother — for years they’d been two bodies circling around each other, not connecting, mostly antagonistic. She didn’t know anything about this mother. All Jo’s life, her mother had been doting and loving, ever-present. Other mothers would run late for school pick-ups, but Mandy was always on time. Other mothers went out at night and left their children with babysitters, but Mandy rarely went anywhere without Jo. And then there was the mother she avoided, found embarrassing, didn’t listen to, couldn’t confide in. Did her mother long for another life? A career? A relationship?
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Mandy said.
‘It’s midnight.’
‘I know.’
The silent, cold air hit Mandy as she opened the door. It had been a warm day and she was wearing short sleeves. ‘I’ll get some jackets,’ she said, leaving Jo at the front door, walking down to her room, and grabbing a couple of old windcheaters. On her way back, Mandy took a moment to look down the hallway at Jo. Her daughter was back. Two and a half months she had prayed for her return — she, who wasn’t religious, going with Mary to the Catholic church and lighting candles, sitting with Mrs Nguyễn in her Buddhist meditation group, praying and wishing and hoping. She was on antidepressants. Taking sleeping pills. Drinking more than she should. Working extra shifts at the supermarket. Going crazy. Her feelings for Jo were a poisonous cocktail — anger, grief, guilt, shame — but there was also the relief at Jo’s return home. Was this love?
Mandy steered them out of the house and onto Hyde Street, across Francis Street, and into Stephen Street, away from the bridge. Planning to walk with her daughter as they had often walked when Jo was younger, when walking had loosened Jo’s tongue and she had talked about school, about the teachers and the other girls … Only recently had Mandy begun to wonder if Jo, even then, had kept secrets, and censored her chatter even when it seemed mindless and Mandy thought she was divulging everything. Had she failed to read between the lines, to notice the gaps? Was it possible she didn’t know her daughter? Had never known her? Did other people know their children? Some parents spoke with such authority — my daughter is a deep thinker, my son’s outgoing and popular at school, my child would never do that, he has the determination to get there, she won’t last the distance …
A three-quarter moon glowed behind a thin powder of clouds, giving the night a soft brush. The streetlights shone over the footpath and the road, their beams bouncing off the white trunks of the birch and the gum trees; in the shadows, the houses retreated. They seemed abandoned and neglected, as if their occupants had left under duress, with no time to gather toys or bikes, to pick up discarded jackets and hats, to close shutters, to pull gates shut. In this empty world, Mandy and Jo relaxed into an easy striding — fast enough to keep warm — along the footpaths of the neighbourhood that was now both familiar and unrecognisable.
When a car sped past, triggering a sensor light outside a converted warehouse, the resident dog woke and growled at them. Jo and Mandy returned to their bodies, to discover they were a block away from Ashleigh’s house. Jo stopped. Approached from this direction, the house was partially hidden by several large trees, including an old elm that dominated that part of the street with its broad canopy. But they could see a light was on in Ashleigh’s room, and they could see the rose bushes were gone.
‘In Portarlington, when I first arrived, when they asked me my name, I panicked and said Ashleigh,’ Jo whispered.
‘What?’
‘So the whole time I was there, they called me Ashleigh.’
‘You miss her.’ Mandy reached tentatively for Jo’s hand, shepherding her gently back around the corner.
‘I can’t get her out of my head.’ Her mother’s hand was warm and familiar and almost unbearable. The tears were slow at first, but soon she was sobbing again. ‘You know, when I was in Portarlington and people were calling me Ashleigh,’ she paused to catch her breath, ‘I didn’t … I worried someone would find out. But I didn’t feel bad. I mean, I felt bad because I shouldn’t have used her name, but I also felt better, not so anxious. I felt better, like I was someone else.’
They retraced their steps back down Stephen Street and into Gray Street and then Hyde. There was little traffic, only an occasional car or truck. They passed a cat balancing on a front fence. It leapt to the ground as they approached. They passed a dog sleeping on the front verandah of a small brick house. When they reached the corner of Hyde and Francis, they crossed, walked straight past the house, and headed towards the bridge.
‘Where are we going?’ Jo asked, even though it was obvious.
‘You know,’ Mandy replied. Life required courage; the past needed to be confronted. For some people, lighting candles, meditation, and prayers provided relief. For some people, faith was their anchor. But Mandy didn’t have faith, not in God. Mary always said, blessed are those that have faith. It sounded like criticism to Mandy, as if Mary saw her as one of the damned. She understood that Mary’s faith gave her solace, and solace was what everyone wanted. For Mandy, solace came from facing problems head-on.
At the base of the bridge, they sto
pped at the small roadside memorial for Ashleigh. It had been carefully maintained; several bouquets of fresh flowers tied to the cross. Only the cards and notes had deteriorated: faded, crumbled, the words smudged where the ink had run.
‘That night, I was so angry. So angry I couldn’t speak. I wanted to yell at you and Ashleigh. I wanted to tell you both how stupid you were, how reckless, but I knew there was no point. I knew I should’ve been more supportive, but I couldn’t …’
‘We — no, me, me, I was driving, I shouldn’t have been driving. So stupid. My fault, all of it, I know. We — not just Ash and me, but you and Ash’s family and everyone — are paying for it. I’m so sorry, so sorry, but sorry doesn’t make any difference.’
Above them, on the bridge, the traffic was sparse. The river caught and reflected the lights in bands of yellow and green and red, luminous waves of colour fluttering like flags on a carnival ride.
‘I used to love the bridge at night,’ Jo continued. ‘But it’s different now — the lights feel too strong, and I feel too exposed. I’ve been scared to come here, scared I’d run into Ash’s parents. Or Jane. I want to get the accident out of my head. To get Ash out of my head. Even when I’m talking, I hear Ash. I can’t think.’
‘Jo, honey, she’s dead. It’s not her,’ Mandy said.
‘I know. I tell myself, I tell her, you’re dead, Ash. But I can hear her voice. I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her I wish it hadn’t happened. That I wish she was alive.’
‘But she’s not,’ Mandy said, drawing her daughter into an embrace.
‘No, but I don’t feel alive, either.’
Memories of Ash were relentless. Some memories were like songs stuck in her head; they played over and over again. They were fifteen and sitting on a bench in the park, each of them with their iPods, their different music, in their own world. Ash pulled one of the earplugs out of her ear, and then she pulled one out of Jo’s ear. ‘We should do something.’
The Bridge Page 33