Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

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 getting 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.’

Jo didn’t have any jewellery to keep safe, and Mandy had inherited the pearl necklace but was happy for it to sit on her dresser with the rest of her jewellery — a few dress rings, the odd strings of beads picked up at the local op shop. When Ash arrived one day with all her journals, a boxful, furious because she’d caught Jane reading one of them, Jo offered her the safe. When Ash filled a notebook, she slipped it into the safe. Until the red Moleskine, Jo had never once violated Ash’s trust.

What was she supposed to do with the journals? It was obvious Rae would want them, not a bulging make-up bag or an old pair of pants. She was sure it was the journals that had propelled Rae to their front door.

She dropped the notebook, switched on the lamp, and opened the safe. The code was Ash’s birth date, 100891. Jo pulled the journals out one at a time and threw them on the bed. A large diary with a reproduction of the birth of Venus on the cover, the yellow edges battered. A small square notebook with Homer and Marge on a motorbike. A purple velvet journal. Emily the Strange and her cats. A New York skyline, with the Empire State Building in the foreground. The first ever journal, a ballerina on the cover, sealed with a gold lock. Soon her bed was covered with Ash’s journals, scattered and random, forming a crazy quilt. Laura’s grandmother had made Laura a crazy quilt, the pieces of fabric cut from Laura’s baby clothes and cotton blankets, creating haphazard shapes. Laura hung it on the wall. Each piece of fabric came with memories and stories that Laura said made it impossible to sleep under.

‘Fuck, Ash. What am I supposed to do with these?’ Jo said.

So many secrets shared. So many asides and sniggers about other girls, about teachers, about their mothers.

I’m dead. I’m dead. And it’s all your fault.

Jo turned full circle twice. Of course there was no one else in the room; she’d know that voice anywhere. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

We were both there.

Jo backed away from the bed and the journals and slipped back down to the floor. Sitting up, hugging her knees to her chest, she said, ‘I thought we’d be friends forever. I thought we’d always be friends. Because of you, I didn’t make other friends. Because of you, Ash. I avoided getting closer to other people. I had my best friend. You can have only one best friend.’

Who else would put up with you?

‘I love you. You’re my friend.’

Was. I was your friend. You still suck at tenses.

‘We were friends for so long.’

It’s not enough. Ash’s voice was sharp and shrill. Ash was dancing around the room, mocking her. A shared history isn’t enough. I was over you. I wanted to move on. I was just being nice. Pretending. Kevin said, Don’t be mean. My mother said, Don’t be awful. My father said, You’ve been friends forever. Good friends are hard to come by. I bet they fucking regret that now.

‘Stop, please stop.’ Jo cupped her ears.

I’m not here. I’m dead.

On top of the pile was the Bonnie and Clyde notebook, the one she bought Ash for her seventeenth birthday. On the cover, a photograph of Faye Dunaway wearing a beret and a yellow jacket over a pencil skirt, and Warren Beatty in his 1930s chalk-striped suit. Faye had a gun in her hand. She and Ash dubbed each other Bonnie and Clyde after stealing a pair of earrings from a shop in the city. The shop assistant, a middle-aged woman in a long, flowing dress, had taken several pairs out of the cabinet for Jo. Jo was the decoy. She tried on a pair of short silver and black earrings, then a pair of long dangling earrings in red and pink and orange, admiring herself in the mirror on the counter. She asked the woman’s advice while Ash slipped the first pair of earrings off the counter and into her pocket. ‘I’ll leave you to it, Jo. See you at the café,’ Ash said and left the shop. Jo continued looking at earrings until there were pairs spread over the whole counter. She told the shop assistant that she needed to have a coffee and think about it. When Jo walked into the café, they burst out laughing. ‘We are totally Bonnie and Clyde. From that old movie your mother likes to watch,’ Ash said, wrapping her arm around Jo. ‘We ain’t good. We are the best. BFFs.’