Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

The tanks were their neighbours. Like most neighbours, there were days when they seemed friendly, benevolent, and then there were days when they appeared hostile, even frightening. Some days they could be ignored, some days they were hardly noticeable. But other days, they dominated the street and it was impossible to get away from them. On the worst days, the tanks, dirty grey and black, each with their own large red numbers, concrete and steel stained with rust, were monstrous and menacing, formidable, as they peered over the cyclone fence, leaning all of their heavy weight towards the house.

But there were times, especially in the soft light of a winter’s morning or on days when the wind blew east and the scent of the garden permeated the air, when, even for Mandy, the sight of them was home.

‘Let’s wait,’ she said to Jo. ‘Let’s see what happens after the sentencing.’

It was Jo’s twentieth birthday and Mary had made a cake, but it was sitting uneaten on the bench, and Mary had gone home in tears when she realised her desire to make it like any other birthday was impossible. Mandy and Jo peered over the fence at the bridge. It was peak hour and the traffic was building. The cars were multiplying, like rodents during a plague. They drove with determination, with a destination in mind, with purpose.

The courtroom reminded Antonello of a church. In place of the large crucifix that usually stood above the altar, there was an Australian coat of arms, etched in black on a silver panel. The emu and the kangaroo held on to the shield. Below them, the judge’s wide bench, elevated on a platform, towered over the room. Below the bench there were two tables, separated by a small gap. On the right side, wearing wigs and long black gowns, the prosecutor and his assistant; on the left, Sarah and her assistant. Behind them, rows of chairs. On the left, the empty jury’s seats; to the right, the witness stand; and at the back of the room, in an elevated section behind a gate, the dock.

The County Court wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d imagined a grand building, like the Supreme Court and the old Magistrates’ Court in Russell Street, but instead it was a modern office building, all concrete and glass. Inside, there was no ornate colonial furniture, no sculptured ceilings, no cedar or velvet.

As if they were going to church, Paolina had insisted he wear a suit and tie. He was hot, and the collar made his neck itch. The family filed in and sat on the right side, behind the prosecutor. He and Paolina, and Alex, Rae, and Jane, Rae’s sisters and their husbands, and Nicki and Thomas took up the first two rows. When Kevin arrived with his mother, they sat behind them. Laura and Mani and their parents sat in the back row. Jo’s mother, Mandy, was already in the courtroom. She sat on the other side, with Jo’s grandmother. Like Paolina, Jo’s grandmother held rosary beads in her hands, allowing each bead to slip through her fingers at regular intervals. There was no father: Antonello had a vague recollection of some story about a divorce and another family interstate.

The proceedings were scheduled for 10.00 am, and at 9.45 they’d been led from a small meeting room into the courtroom by a young man who referred to himself as ‘the court clerk’, but looked, in his suit, like a fifteen-year-old schoolboy. Then he announced that the judge was unavoidably delayed , but he didn’t suggest they leave the courtroom, and so they stayed: the lawyers, on both sides, shuffled papers, made notes, and talked to each other in whispers.

When the door opened at 10.30, everyone turned to look. At the sight of Jo being led into the courtroom by a police officer, Jane began crying. Rae put her arm around her daughter, and everyone turned back to face the front. Only Antonello’s gaze lingered as a policewoman opened the gate and led Jo into the dock, as she sat down and the policewoman pulled the gate shut. This Jo didn’t resemble the Jo he’d watched grow up, not even the Jo he’d met at the bridge. She wore a blue jacket and skirt, and her hair was neatly tied back. If he hadn’t known her age, he would’ve said she was in her late twenties. Paolina tapped him on the leg. ‘Turn around.’

The prosecutor approached Alex and Rae. ‘It won’t be long now. The judge has arrived. She’ll invite you to read out your victim impact statements. Do you have copies?’ he asked.

Rae and Alex nodded.

‘It’ll be difficult. We can read them for you, if you don’t want to read them out yourselves. The judge might also decide it’s better for her to read them quietly in her chambers.’

All the family members had been asked to write statements. Antonello and Paolina wrote a joint one, in the end. The pain of losing Ashleigh was impossible to articulate. Numb. Sad. Devastated. All the words they wrote down were inadequate. A gaping hole , Paolina said. Emptiness. The loss of laughter, of the possibility of laughter. The loss of hunger, of sleep. Shivering even on warm days. Deprived of energy. No energy for the garden, the house. Plants dying from lack of water. Surfaces covered in dust. And the ache, worse than any cancer pain. The rush every time he caught sight of a young woman in the distance who might, who could be, who looked like Ashleigh, and having to stop himself from following. Paolina’s refusal to do more tests. Her refusal to go back to the doctor. Antonello’s inability to convince her. The loss of hope. No solace anywhere. Spending hours at the base of the bridge. Memories of the men falling returning in dreams again and again and again. Fury. Anger. And nowhere to direct it.

‘They want statements to justify putting Jo away for a long, long time,’ Paolina had said as they sat in their kitchen with their scribbled notes. ‘If we say how we feel about losing Ashleigh, Jo will go to prison for a lifetime. I can’t do that. Prisons are terrible places, and she’s only young.’

‘We have to write something,’ Antonello said. ‘We have to — otherwise it’s like we’re not affected.’

‘Nello, that’s not true.’

‘The court case is a public acknowledgement of the terrible loss of Ashleigh. That she was important. Important to a lot of people. To us.’

‘But it was an accident and Jo’s already being punished. She won’t recover.’

‘I know it was an accident and she didn’t mean to hurt Ashleigh. I know it was bad luck. I know Ashleigh shouldn’t have got in the car. But Jo needs to be punished by the law. I want the law, the community, to say it was wrong,’ Antonello said.

‘But we don’t need to make it any harder for her than it has to be. You said yourself that you felt sorry for her,’ Paolina said.

‘You’re right, she’s suffering too.’

They had talked about it for a long time, and in the end they agreed to write a short statement about their granddaughter, about her beauty and her potential, her intelligence, the joy she brought to their lives, and about their sadness and grief at losing her.

On the way from the carpark to the courtroom that morning, Alex had said, ‘I hope she gets a long sentence. I know I should be more forgiving. That I should be moving on, and that I should think about what Ashleigh might’ve wanted. I’m trying not to hate her, but she must be punished… and after this fucking court case, I don’t want to see her again, never. I want her to be banished. I don’t want to walk around dreading that I might run into her or that Jane or Rae might run into her.’

Despite Alex’s lingering anger, he and Rae were coming back to themselves, slowly. They were back to parenting Jane, and they were talking to each other again, occasionally touching, winking at each other when something Antonello or Paolina said seemed old-fashioned or tiresome or repetitive.