Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

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.

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.