The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  The shriek of brakes and a loud car horn, followed by a man shouting, ‘Fucking look where you’re going!’ comes through the front door, down the hall, to reach them on the verandah. An accident avoided.

  ‘We can go shopping on my day off,’ Mandy was saying. ‘There won’t be so many people around. What do you think, Jo?’

  ‘I don’t know what the point is. I don’t care how long they lock me up for, so anything will do.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Jo,’ Mandy said. ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘You have to find something,’ Sarah said. ‘Something you can do in the world, something that makes it better for other people. If I didn’t have my work, if I spent my whole time thinking about myself, I would’ve slashed my wrists a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m not good at much,’ Jo said.

  ‘When I was a child, when I fought with my mother, I’d run to my nan. She used to say to me, if you want to be happy, don’t think about yourself all the time. Think about leaving the world a little better than you found it. She didn’t mean big things — for her it was looking after her family, keeping an on eye on the older people in her street, helping out at the refugee centre once a week. She used to like to help the people there with their English.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’ Mandy asked.

  ‘Yes, but she has dementia,’ Sarah said. ‘Last time I went to visit, she didn’t recognise me, didn’t know my name. Sometimes there’s a little spark, and I think she remembers bits of the past, from when I was a child. My mother says I’m imagining it and that Nan has no memories left at all. I don’t trust her perspective on Nan. They never got on.’

  What would it be like to lose your memory and forget everything? Would it be a relief? Would the weight lift off your shoulders?

  ‘When things aren’t going well, when I’m worried about stupid things, like not fitting into size twelve jeans, I think about what Nan would say: Pick yourself up, girl, and get on with it. You’ll have to get on with it, Jo, with life. There’ll be a life after all of this is over, and you should plan for it.’

  ‘I guess.’ Jo shrugged. ‘I’ll see you later, Sarah. Thanks for the advice.’ Jo left her mother and Sarah talking, put on her runners, and headed for the bridge. She hadn’t been back for weeks, since the night she returned from Portarlington. Standing on the boardwalk under the eye of the bridge, she watched the birds — seagulls, sparrows, several cormorants, and other birds she didn’t know the names of — as they flew in and out of the mangroves that were part of the Stony Creek Backwash, oblivious to the West Gate Bridge overhead, to the trucks and cars on the Hyde Street. ‘Pick yourself up, girl, and get on with it,’ was Sarah’s advice. As if she’d fallen over during a game of netball, scraped her knee, and was overreacting. Jo had no idea how to pick herself up, or even if it was possible.

  When she turned back towards the road, she was confronted by the barricade that had risen out of the darkness that night, the barricade that had smashed into her spinning car. There it was, the spot where metal crushed and glass shattered. Memories surfaced, and she couldn’t stop them. The loud, unbearable screams — all four of them screaming. Ash screaming. In the moment between her loss of control of the car, between the skidding and spinning and the final crash, Ash was alive, Ash was sitting next to her, alive, and Ash was screaming, her hand reaching for the steering wheel.

  After the impact, silence. And then sobbing and crying, and the calling out of names. Voices and names. Ash. Mani. Laura. Jo. A round robin. Each one calling out. All except for Ash.

  Jo crouched on the ground, against the rail of the boardwalk.

  She heard the horns and sirens, and the voices of strangers — so many voices, are you hurt, I think she’s dead, this one is breathing, get these girls out … And now it was coming back to her, her arm reaching out for Ash, and Ash slumped onto the dashboard, a long tear of blood running from her temple, down her neck, dripping onto the floor. She reached for Ash, to catch the blood, to stop the blood. Her hand on Ash’s skin. Ash still. Ash not breathing.

  ‘This one is dead.’

  Eyes shut tight.

  Knees to chest, the feel of the rail pressing into her back.

  She had reached out for Ash. All these weeks, these months, she had blocked out the image of Ash dead, of the blood, of her hand on Ash’s arm. The horror of seeing, the horror of knowing. Ash, gone.

  A ship’s horn roused Jo, and she uncurled herself and stood up. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  There was no glass or metal debris in the gutter. The bent pole had been repaired. The only reminder of the accident was the small memorial to Ash: a white wooden cross, a couple of bouquets of flowers, and the faded remnants of the cards. She bent down to touch the cross. ‘Ash,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Ash. I miss you.’

  When Jo turned back towards home, she saw a man walking along the path to the bridge. He had a slight limp. There was something familiar about him. And then she knew, too late: it was Ash’s grandfather. Panicked, she considered crossing the road, but he was already drawing close.

  ‘Hello, Jo.’ It was hard to meet his gaze. The sadness in his eyes made her shiver. She held her breath.

  ‘I didn’t see you until … I can go …’ She nearly said his name. Nonno Nello, that’s what she called him. She remembered him saying, ‘You can call me Antonello, or Nello if you want, or Nonno, like Ashleigh here.’ Only, he wasn’t her grandfather, he was Ash’s. What could a child call a man who was older than her own grandparents? Jo couldn’t call him Nonno Nello anymore.

  ‘You don’t need to go.’ There was sternness in his voice. Would he yell at her? She braced herself. She deserved it, and he was entitled to it.

  Antonello stood between her and the path; she stood between him and the memorial. Overhead on the bridge, the traffic continued, immune to them — a breathy whirr, punctuated by the rattle as the heavier vehicles, trucks and semis, drove over metal strips and joins. The scaly underbelly towered over them, and Jo felt reduced, like one of the little people in fairytales about giants.

  ‘I come here often,’ he said. ‘I’ve been coming for years. Usually I have the place to myself.’

  ‘For years? Before the accident?’ Jo said.

  ‘Before your accident. Yes,’ Antonello said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt Ash.’ The words came out in a rush. ‘You must hate me.’

  ‘Ashleigh was so beautiful. And now she’s gone, and —’

  ‘It’s my fault, I know it’s my fault. I’m so sorry. Please believe me.’

  ‘Stop. Stop, please. I don’t hate you, Jo. I’m angry and sad, but I feel sorry for you too. You must miss Ashleigh. You were so close.’

  ‘Rae and Alex and Jane hate me. They must.’ The words, these words, she hadn’t expected to be saying to Ash’s grandfather. She knew they hated her. Nothing else was possible, nothing but hate.

  ‘They’re upset and sad and it’s hard for them. We’ve lost Ashleigh.’ He sounded angry, even though he hadn’t raised his voice.

  ‘It’s all my fault.’ Her face was burning; she was sweating, her hands were clammy.

  ‘It was an accident, Jo. We’ll all have to come to terms with that — you’ll have to come to terms with that,’ Antonello said, bending down slowly to pick up a discarded milkshake cup on the edge of the path.

  ‘But I was drunk, and if I hadn’t been drinking … Or if I’d left the car there … It’s all my fault.’ She should stop talking. Her voice was the pleading voice of a child, whimpering. She had no right to expect him to forgive her, no right to burden him with her guilt. She stole a look at him, but he was looking at Ash’s memorial. She longed for Grandpa Tom and the strength of his arms when he had swooped her up from the floor when she was younger.

  Antonello crossed the path to throw the rubbish into the bin. ‘There isn’t much point in going th
rough what would’ve happened, if you hadn’t done this or that, because in the end it won’t make any difference. You have to find a way to live with what happened.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can.’ What possible life could there be? How did people put something like this behind them? Was it feasible that once she’d been punished, once she’d gone to prison, she could live again? Redemption was at the base of Mary’s religion — confess your sins, ask for forgiveness, do your penance, and then start anew. Pick yourself up, Sarah said.

  ‘You can.’ Antonello’s voice softened. ‘We’re stronger than we think. And if we couldn’t go on, if we couldn’t move on, when someone dies, when bad things happen, the whole world would fall apart. Every day people die, and the people that love them — not all of them, but most of them — pull themselves up by the bootstraps and keep going.’

  ‘But what about the people who killed them? Do we have a right to keep living?’

  Antonello stretched his hand out to Jo, and she took it. His palm was cold but smooth. Not like Grandpa Tom’s hands, rough, cracked, and cut — even after all these years, even though sometimes she couldn’t call up Grandpa Tom’s face, the memory of his hands came back. Hands like sandpaper. Lines and cuts, dips and hollows. Scars, each one a story.

  ‘Come with me,’ Antonello said.

  Jo was thin, her features sharper, than he remembered. She wasn’t beautiful, not like Ashleigh. She was a plain girl. Plain and ordinary and alive.

  It snuck up on him, the desire to take her throat between his hands and wring the life out of her, the desire to slap her hard, to knock her to the ground, to shake her; to yell at the girl, to make her flinch; to scream you stupid, stupid girl; to see her broken and bloodied. It wasn’t a sudden, all-consuming rage — it was a slow monster swelling. The impulse terrified him; he thought his propensity for such evil thoughts, for such an overwhelming desire for destruction, had gone. He closed his eyes and pushed down on the emotion.

  Jo winced. He’d tightened his grip of her hand, and she was trying to pull away. He let her go. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. He saw the terror in her face and was immediately overcome with pity, with something like love, deep and paternal. He resisted the inclination to embrace Jo. She wasn’t Ashleigh. Embracing Jo did not have the power to bring Ashleigh back to life.

  Jo took several steps back, but she didn’t leave. She was the girl who had called him Nonno Nello, who he and Paolina had included on their trips with Ashleigh to the movies, shopping, to dinner. Every year they bought her a Christmas present, a chocolate rabbit at Easter, and a birthday present. Her birthday was marked on the calendar that hung above the phone in their kitchen, along with the birthdays of their children and grandchildren, their siblings and nieces and nephews. Their album included photographs of Jo with Ashleigh. The two girls laughing and scheming, having fun together. The girl in front of him was pale and tired, not much more than a child.

  He thought of Alex and what he might think if he saw his father talking to this girl, Ashleigh’s killer. Alex would feel betrayed. And Rae as well. Alex had said he wished they had never met her. He’d said he never wanted to see her again. He cursed her. I hate that girl. I hope she rots in prison. It sounded like hate. It had all of hate’s outside features, all of hate’s intensity, but he didn’t think Alex and Rae hated Jo. There was too much sadness and grief for any other feeling to find room in their hearts. That was the problem: grief was ravenous. It found its way into each pore, took residence in the body and the mind, making it impossible to distinguish any other feelings. Sometimes grief, unbearable and relentless, disguised itself as hate, as anger. Hate mobilised; grief drained. After the bridge collapsed, Antonello was broken and battered, like an animal left wounded by a clumsy hunter. He was suicidal; he saw no way out. Time, Paolina and his parents told him, give it time, but instead he buried the grief under hatred and anger, and then he spun it into a cocoon that kept him at a distance from everyone.

  In Alex and Rae, he saw himself: the younger man who’d survived the collapse of the bridge but remained lost, unavailable to his family, as if he’d been buried under the debris. His son and daughter-in-law drifted through the house as if they were alone; they didn’t recognise each other or Jane. They loathed any evidence of the world continuing in Ashleigh’s absence. It was this girl’s fault. It was all her fault, that was true, but of course he knew that it was also not true. Death and disaster were intruders — they barged in unexpectedly, and they didn’t discriminate. There was no God’s will or God’s grand plan.

  Maybe it was fate. Was that a contradiction, to do away with God and give fate so much power? Paolina said it was. That for there to be fate there had to be something beyond the human, something or someone that planned life out. Could there be fate without orchestration? Was Ashleigh fated to die young? And if she were, did that mean Jo was blameless?

  Or was it the randomness of life? Meaningless. Unplotted.

  Or was it the fault of the flawed individual? Of the reckless girl who didn’t think of the consequences? Jo hadn’t considered the possibility of an accident. The engineers hadn’t considered the possibility of the bridge collapsing. Was it possible to create a world in which accidents didn’t happen? This question had often kept Antonello awake at night, but he had no answer.

  Was it fair to blame Jo for Ashleigh’s death? The law thought so. And so did Alex and Rae. The accident was her fault. It was due to her recklessness. But Ashleigh wouldn’t rise from the dead because Jo was locked up in prison. The Royal Commission had laid the blame for the bridge collapse on the companies, but Bob and Slav had stayed dead.

  ‘Come with me,’ Antonello said again, and Jo followed him until they were standing in front of the West Gate Bridge Memorial. He pointed to a list of names: the men and their occupations.

  ‘I was there when they died,’ he said. The day Antonello first set eyes on the memorial, had first allowed himself to visit the bridge to read the names of his dead friends — like a list of fallen soldiers on a war shrine — he’d been furious at the inclusion of their occupations. Carpenter, rigger, ironworker: these men were fathers, husbands, brothers, and best friends. They were soccer and football players. They were jokers and kidders. They were gardeners and car enthusiasts. Fishermen, pool players, and surfers. And then there was all they could’ve been — grandfathers and lifelong friends. They weren’t only workers. Not fodder for the city, vehicles for its progress, fools and easy prey. But the memorial was put up by the survivors, not the companies. The men, his mates and co-workers, had raised the money. They chose the wording. He couldn’t destroy their memorial, he couldn’t blow up the bridge. He couldn’t do anything except mourn his friends.

  For almost forty years, the West Gate stood oblivious to the cost those men paid. Every day, thousands of people drove over the bridge and complained about the traffic and the delays, annoyed at the way it choked at peak hour. They sat in their cars and listened to music or talked on their phones, argued with their children in the back seat. They drove over it on their way into or out of the city. They didn’t see the memorial or the names — most of them didn’t know about the accident, and if they had known once, it was now long forgotten.

  ‘I worked on this bridge and I was here when it collapsed, in 1970. I lost two of my best mates. Here, Slav, he was a bit of a scholar and a poet. And Bob, he was my boss, like an uncle. He taught me everything I knew about my job. I spent more time with him in the four years before the collapse than with any other person — more time than I’d spent with my wife.’ He paused and sighed. Jo lifted a hand to the letters of Bob’s name, tracing them like a child tracing letters of the alphabet.

  ‘And these other blokes: men I went to the pub with, played soccer with, sat in the lunchroom with, men I saw every day. I didn’t know some of them well, but when we saw each other down the street, we’d smile and say hello, and we’d nod towards each other as we expl
ained to whoever we were with, he works on the bridge too. We were so proud of the bridge. We were building this bridge, our bridge, the biggest, longest, better than any other bridge … we bragged about it. Some of our other mates were sick of us talking about it, but we thought we were doing something amazing. It wasn’t our fault it fell. The government had an inquiry and they said it was the companies. We noticed things, saw things, we fought, we went on strike. Yet we didn’t fight every single thing. We were tired of saying, Hey, that’s wrong, or That looks a bit dodgy to me, because we didn’t want … we wanted to be the heroes who made this amazing bridge.’

  Antonello stopped and glanced at Jo. Her eyes were shut tight, and he assumed she’d stopped listening to him, like his children, who rarely listened to him. But then he saw Jo’s cheeks were red and glistening. She was crying.

  ‘I felt guilty after the bridge collapsed. Guilty about all the things I hadn’t said, not noticed, refused to notice. Guilty because I didn’t die, because I lived and they didn’t and I wanted to be dead too. And part of me did die. Part of me has never been the same again, ever. It’s taken the death of my granddaughter to see the futility of it.

  ‘Some of the men who were there when the bridge collapsed, who survived, they were braver than me — they faced the tragedy, the deaths, the horror, and decided to make sure it didn’t happen again. They’ve fought for better conditions for workers, they’ve worked their whole lives to make sure we don’t have another tragedy … they’ve lived and loved and made the world better. I wish I’d been able to do something.