The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  Mary kept the car in the garage for the two years between Pop’s death and Jo’s sixteenth birthday. Neither Mary nor Mandy drove, so occasionally Mary’s next-door neighbour Elena drove the car around the block to keep the battery alive.

  ‘Okay … but …’

  ‘What? It’s just down the road in Willy.’

  ‘Okay. Have a good time, girls. Be careful, and keep an eye out for each other.’

  ‘Chill, Mum. Really, you’d think we were ten.’

  They skipped and giggled down the path to the car. Jo drove around the corner while Ash sent Laura a text message. By the time they pulled up outside the row of townhouses where Mani lived, Laura, long blonde hair straightened, in a short, strapless, and very tight lemon dress, was waving at them from the front gate. Mani, cropped dark hair, in a vintage navy dress and cowboy boots, came out the front door. Ash jumped out of the car. ‘Let me take a photo of you two,’ she said. ‘You look like you come from two different planets.’

  Mani and Laura wrapped their arms around each other’s waists as Ash snapped several photographs. Once they were in the car, Mani told them about Laura’s boyfriend putting pressure on Laura to hang out with him all the time and how he’d sent her twenty text messages in the last hour.

  ‘He hasn’t sent twenty messages,’ Laura said. ‘God, you exaggerate.’

  ‘Okay, give me over the phone and I’ll count them,’ Mani said, snatching the phone out of Laura’s hand and sending it soaring across the back seat.

  ‘Stop squabbling, you two,’ Ash exclaimed. ‘I feel like a parent with naughty toddlers in the back.’

  ‘Okay,’ Laura said, giggling, ‘maybe he did send twenty messages. But he’s crazy in love with me, and who wouldn’t be? But now he’s saying things like, “When we’re married …”’

  ‘As if,’ Mani said. ‘Why exactly haven’t you dropped him yet?’

  ‘I’m not wearing one of those tacky bridesmaid dresses,’ Ash said.

  ‘Who said I’m gonna have you guys in my wedding,’ Laura replied, laughing.

  ‘Marriage — you’re a baby,’ Jo said. Laura was the baby, the youngest of the group, only seventeen.

  Laura responded in a soft, sexy voice. ‘But he’s so, so cute, I can’t keep my hands off him.’

  ‘Give me a break,’ Mani shouted. ‘If I was your mother, I’d lock you up.’

  ‘Hell. You’d be a dictator mother. When you have kids, I’ll have to be there to make sure they have a life.’

  When the banter stopped, Ash asked if they had finished their English essay and the conversation moved to homework and study, to the relief of having a night off, to parents and their lectures on VCE and how it was one year and if they were just nuns for the next few weeks, everything would work out.

  ‘Did your mother actually say “nuns”?’ Laura asked.

  ‘No.’ Ash shook her head. ‘It’s one of my grandmother’s sayings: When we were young girls we had to behave like nuns.’

  Jo joined in the laughter, but she was thinking about the nuns that she’d seen at St Augustine’s when she was a child, in their long black habits, their hair hidden behind their veils, and only their faces showing. What would it be like to be a nun? To know your whole life was mapped, your future was someone else’s responsibility to manage and organise?

  Rosie’s party was at Sirens, on the Esplanade in Williamstown. Rosie’s parents had booked out the waterfront restaurant, and by the time Jo and her friends arrived the party was spilling off the deck and onto the sand. The guests included Rosie’s extended family (Greek on her father’s side — enough cousins to a fill soccer stadium — and Irish on her mother’s) and most of their class from school, as well as Rosie’s friends from tennis and choir.

  There was a band playing seventies pop and disco covers. Rosie was a big retro music fan: her bedroom walls were covered with images of David Bowie, Queen, and ABBA. On the dance floor, a couple of Rosie’s older relatives and family friends, men and women in their forties, were showing off their disco moves. Generous, half-decimated platters of finger food sat on each of the tables. Waiters offered up trays with champagne and wine and mixed drinks. On the beach, a group of their classmates were sitting on deckchairs around a camp fire. Most of the girls had matching blankets wrapped around their shoulders.

  ‘Fuck,’ Ash said. ‘Trust Rosie to go all out.’

  ‘I didn’t think you could build a fire on Willy beach,’ Jo said.

  ‘Rosie’s father has connections, remember?’ Laura whispered.

  ‘And plenty of money,’ Jo said.

  ‘There are millions of people in the world worse off than you,’ Mandy told Jo when she wanted the things that Ash or Rosie had — the iPhones, the Apple laptops, the concert tickets.

  Over the last year, there had been several eighteenth birthdays. Some parties were backyards bashes catered by parents and grandparents; some were held in small church halls or at the local bowling club with take-away pizzas and bring-your-own alcohol. Jo had opted for a small family dinner and a night out with friends. Rosie’s party was the first to be held in a fancy restaurant and fully catered.

  On the deck, the waiters tentatively balanced trays of drinks as they moved between the guests, some already drunk and unsteady. Jo and Ash grabbed a drink each, while Laura and Mani disappeared onto the dance floor. Jo and Ash talked to friends and gravitated to the fire, where they took a couple of puffs of a joint that Ben, a classmate, was passing around as if there were no adults at the party, and no chance that anyone would object. Assuming they were stoned, Ben inched closer to Ash and Jo, blew smoke in their faces, and tried to grab Jo around the waist.

  ‘Get off me,’ she said and pushed him away.

  ‘You’re a dickhead,’ Ash said, and they both made their way back up to the deck.

  As the band started to sing ‘SOS’, Rosie’s mother called out, ‘ABBA was my first ever concert.’

  Rosie, who was dancing in the middle of their circle, waved her arms in the air and screamed in response, ‘I wish I’d been there.’

  After the disco set, Rosie’s grandfather called out, ‘Greek music!’ and when the music changed, he threw off his jacket, grabbed Rosie’s hand, started to dance. Soon a large circle formed and arms linked. The dancers sprang and leaped and kicked. Jo and Ash and Mani joined the circle, laughing as a couple of older Greek women taught them the steps.

  After the third song, Jo, head spinning, broke away from the circle and made her way back down to the fire on the beach. She watched Ash and Mani dancing. She wanted to believe in her friendship with Ash. She wanted to believe she mattered to Ash as much as Ash mattered to her, as much as they had mattered to each other when they were younger. During their first months of friendship, she’d been cautious, but not Ash — Ash had organised sleepovers and outings, had insisted they spend their weekends together. Ash had declared the intimacy of the friendship immediately, introducing Jo to her parents as ‘my best friend’ when they’d only known each other for a week. Ash had inched herself into all aspects of Jo’s life in a way Jo hadn’t known was possible, had never experienced.

  Jo gazed up at the stars and tried to think about something else. Anything. She wished she had someone who loved her, loved her best of all — someone like Ian. She imagined him arriving at the party, catching sight of her across the room; she imagined them walking off together for a moonlight stroll along the beach … but then she remembered the night, several months after he’d left the school, when she took the tram to Fitzroy and made her way to his house. Once she arrived, she didn’t know what to do: all the bravado that had driven her there had come crashing down. Ash would’ve knocked on the door. Jo aspired to that level of confidence. Instead she hid behind a tree, dreading that he might see her, might report her. Her head whirled with scenarios that involved the school, the police, and her mother. The anxiety h
ad lodged itself in her throat until breathing became difficult. It lodged itself in her legs, so that standing and moving seemed impossible feats. It was a fog over her eyes, a clatter of voices in her head. Her hands trembled. Shivering and cold, and then hot and flushed. It was a cast spell; she knew it would dissipate, but there was no predicting how long it might take.

  At seven that night when her mother called her for dinner, she was back in her room, but she had no memory of the trip home. Later, when she opened the photo app on her phone, she found the photographs. Four of the Victorian terrace: one of three pushbikes on the front verandah and the stained and ripped couch on the balcony upstairs; a close-up of the green door; another of the front window with the blinds halfway down; and a more distant shot of three birds in a row on the telephone wires, the house in the background. Sometimes when she flicked through those photos, she became nostalgic for that other life, the life with Ian, as if she’d lived it.

  She only stirred when Rosie’s father called the guests back onto the deck. They gathered around the two-tier cake to sing happy birthday to Rosie and listen to her parents make speeches about pride and beauty and a bright future and to Rosie’s slurred response; everyone, even Rosie’s parents, laughed good naturedly.

  After the toast, Jo and Ash headed back across the deck to the fire with the cake and their drinks. They found a couple of chairs, grabbed a blanket each, and settled in.

  ‘Do you ever wonder,’ Jo said before she’d even thought about what she was going to say, ‘if we’ll all be friends once school is over?’

  ‘I guess some of us’ll lose touch,’ Ash said, champagne in one hand and a forkful of cake in the other. ‘We’ll be at different universities and we’ll meet new people.’

  ‘That’s sad, don’t you think?’ Jo’s cake was on a plate on her lap. She’d taken one bite, but now it was stuck in her throat and she couldn’t swallow. She took another swig of her champagne. It helped a little; she drank the rest. In the glow from the fire and the moonlight, Ash’s long hair, with its red hue, shone against her pale skin.

  ‘Does it have to be sad?’ Ash said, letting out a long sigh. ‘It could be exciting meeting new people. Don’t you think?’

  There was a cool breeze and small frothy waves rolled onto the beach. The white caps formed bubbles that burst before they hit the sand. Along the debris line, cracked shells caught the light and twinkled like stars. A group of girls took off their shoes, hitched up their dresses, and screamed as they raced in and out of the water. The fire was dying down; a young waiter came over to stoke it and add logs from a crate he’d carried across the sand.

  ‘Will we lose touch, you and I?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Not if we don’t want to,’ Ash said.

  She wished Ash would laugh and say she was teasing and that of course they’d be friends forever. In the silence that followed, Jo watched Ash eat her cake. Next to her, a couple were kissing — under the blanket, the boy was reaching for the girl’s breasts, the girl pushing his hand away, until finally she tossed the blanket aside. ‘You’re an arsehole.’

  The boy whimpered after her, ‘Come on, babe.’

  ‘I’m getting another drink. Want one?’ Jo said as she scanned the area for one of the waiters who’d been circling all night with trays. The band was on a break, and on the dance floor the few remaining children chased coloured balloons and tied one another up in loose streamers. At the tables, the women wrapped shawls around their shoulders and leaned into their partners.

  ‘No. I thought we might go soon. It’s almost midnight, and if you’re going to drive …’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jo said.

  ‘Okay, but can we go soon?’

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘I promised to walk a couple of stressed-out hounds in the morning, and there’s the English essay,’ Ash said.

  ‘So what? You’re a night owl. You’ll be fine in the morning.’

  ‘And I told Kevin I’d give him a ring, and if he was up he might come over.’

  ‘So you have a date with Kevin tonight, that’s really the reason.’

  ‘It’s not a date, it’s a maybe kind of thing.’

  ‘I thought you were going to stay at my place tonight.’ Jo knew she sounded pathetic.

  ‘We didn’t organise anything, and I’m working tomorrow and we’ve been hanging out this afternoon and all night.’ Ash was forcing a smile. ‘And it’s been great, but … well, I’d like to see Kevin. You get it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Great. Let’s go.’ Jo tried to keep the anger out of her voice.

  ‘Jo, are you okay?’ Ash asked.

  ‘I’m fine. Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll go and find Laura and Mani. Meet you on the deck,’ Ash said.

  While Ash went to look for their friends, Jo shook the sand out of her sandals and climbed up the steps to the deck. She leant against the banister. She would not cry, not here, not now. So what if she and Ash stopped being friends? So what if Ash preferred Kevin? What did it matter anyway? She had other friends, Laura and Mani — not best friends, but friends, and she was good at being alone. She could spend hours reading or watching films or lying in bed daydreaming; she didn’t need Ash. I don’t need you. Trouble was, she remembered not having friends, and the way other kids excluded her. All those lunchtimes sitting alone in the schoolyard, taking tiny, tiny bites of her peanut-butter sandwiches, of her apple — ‘eating at a snail’s pace’, Grandpa Tom called it when she ate like that at home. Purposely slow, making her lunch last the whole hour, so that when busybody Mr Marsh asked, ‘Why don’t you play with the other girls?’ she could shake her head: ‘I’m still eating my lunch.’ Hours watching other girls. Lucy Girello, with her high pigtail plaits, her skinny legs pumping as she won all the races. Lucy, who had once said to her, ‘You’re too fat to skip, you might burst a vein. My fat neighbour burst a vein. He blew up and up, his cheeks turned red and he died.’ Lucy had collapsed to the ground, shaking her legs in the air like a dying beetle. Embarrassed, Jo’s cheeks had burnt under the oppressive summer sun, the other girls sniggering, calling out, ‘Lucy, you’re awful,’ and ‘Look, she’s gone bright red.’ No one standing by her side. Alone. She didn’t want to go back to being alone, to being the one not sitting around in gossipy groups, not sharing secrets, not laughing. The last one picked for netball. For rounders. For volleyball. She remembered. How pathetic to be so grateful to the twins for letting her sit with them, for letting her walk home with them. Grateful and ashamed.

  Most of the remaining guests were sitting at tables or had wandered out to the edges of the deck. Alone, she felt exposed. She wanted to leave. What if she left without them? They could make their own way home. Just as she was considering going, a waiter dipped in her direction and offered her more champagne. He was her age, a tall boy, tired-looking now, his white shirt stained around the cuffs. She grabbed a glass from the tray, drank it in a couple of gulps, and put it down on a nearby table.

  ‘Gee, you must’ve needed that,’ he said. Offering up the tray for another drink, she shook her head.

  Finally the others appeared. ‘Great party!’ Mani said. ‘I could stay all night.’

  ‘We can stay longer,’ Jo said. ‘Ash’s in a rush. But if she wanted to stay, we’d be staying.’

  ‘What?’ Ash said. ‘What are you talking about, Jo?’

  ‘What’s up?’ Laura asked. She had her shoes in her hands and was covered in sand.

  ‘Nothing. You look like you’ve been rolling in it,’ Jo said, helping Laura brush the sand off her hair.

  ‘Sure have.’ Laura grinned. ‘The drummer was on a break.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Mani hit her on the arm. ‘That’s where you got to. He’s Rosie’s brother. What about Rob and marriage and he’s so so cute?’

  ‘What he doesn’t know …’ Laura said with a smile. Boys swarmed ar
ound Laura. It wasn’t just that she was pretty; lots of girls were pretty. Jo guessed it was her easy and joyful nature. Maybe boys were no different to girls, and everyone was drawn to happy people like Laura and Ash.

  ‘Jo, don’t you want to go?’ Ash said. ‘I’d call a taxi, but I’m broke.’

  ‘All set to go, at your command,’ Jo responded.

  ‘What is with you?’ Ash asked as they moved around other guests.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jo said. ‘Let’s find Rosie.’

  Rosie was at the bar talking to an older couple. They waited until she noticed them, and then said their goodbyes. A waiter opened the door for them. Jo didn’t notice the step and tripped. The boy caught her arm and helped steady her.

  ‘Are you okay to drive? We could wait awhile. You could have a coffee,’ Mani said.

  ‘I’m fine. Really. See, I can find my nose,’ Jo said as they stepped out onto the footpath, touching the tip of her nose with her finger. But in truth, she felt drunk: not wasted, just a little tipsy. And angry. Only if we want to stay friends. Do you want to, Ash?

  Once they were in the car and Jo pulled the seatbelt across her shoulder, she thought, I shouldn’t be driving.

  ‘Are you okay, Jo?’ Laura asked when she didn’t turn the key in the ignition.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Ten minutes, she thought. And we’ll all be in bed. Jo turned the key in the ignition. As she drove out of the parking space, she asked, ‘Mani, do you think you and Laura will be friends after you leave school?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mani said from the back seat, grabbing Laura and giving her a hug. ‘Tied at the hip. Friends forever. Even if she’s a slut.’

  ‘Better a slut than a virgin,’ Laura sang out. ‘Friends for life. Every slut has to have a Mani.’

  ‘I didn’t say we wouldn’t be friends,’ Ash whispered. ‘It’s just we don’t know, do we, where we’ll be or what we’ll be doing.’