Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

In the few months between his meeting with Jo at the bridge and the court case, Antonello had made several attempts to get closer to his son and daughter. This wasn’t easy. There was no going back to the man he’d been before the bridge collapsed, young and naïve, a man who loved easily. Nicki didn’t trust his approaches, but she let him make them, and he was grateful for that. Alex was more forgiving, more receptive. Together, father and son replanted the vegetable garden in Alex and Rae’s backyard and, with Rae’s blessing, a magnolia where the rose garden had been.

They spent hours in the garden, Paolina sitting on a chair in the shade, dozing and waking and dozing again, and Antonello and Alex digging and planting, getting hot and sweaty. At first, they only talked about the soil and the plants, the direction of the sun, or the kind of fertiliser they should use. Antonello’s muscles ached at the end of those days, and his knees creaked and he made jokes about the joints needing oiling. In the evenings, he lay in a hot bath wondering if he had the strength to lift himself up, but the next day he went back again.

A couple of days before the court case, Alex confessed to Antonello that he’d sent text messages to Jo after the accident.

They’d been planting a row of olive trees along the back fence-line. It was a particularly warm day and, exhausted, they’d stopped to have a rest. Antonello was leaning on his shovel for support.

‘I had Ashleigh’s phone. She had a photograph on it, of her and Jo all dressed up — it was taken that night, before they went to the party. She was so beautiful… I was so angry, Dad. I wanted Jo to hurt. I wanted her to be dead. So I sent her messages. I called her a murderer and a killer and said I wished she was dead.’

‘Alex,’ Antonello said. ‘When?’

‘That day, that awful day, and then on the day of the funeral.’

It was not in Alex’s nature to be cruel. As children, when Alex and Nicki fought, Nicki was the one who threw punches, who broke toys. Alex caved early, apologised, made amends.

‘It’s a shameful thing for an adult man to do,’ Alex continued. ‘I know that. I was so angry. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to feel like shit. I wanted her to feel so bad that she’d want to die. I remember thinking, I hope this makes her want to kill herself. I wanted to drive her to kill herself so her mother could feel the pain I was feeling.’

‘Grief can drive us crazy, Alex. Makes us do crazy things.’

‘I wanted to drive a young woman to suicide; people get locked up for doing stuff like that. If Ashleigh was alive, she’d be ashamed of me. If Mum knew, she’d be ashamed of me. Aren’t you ashamed of me?’

‘No, Alex. No, I’m not. And Ashleigh would understand. She’d forgive you. And so would your mother.’

‘Please don’t tell Mum.’

‘I won’t.’ Antonello tossed his shovel onto the ground and put his arms around his son. ‘You are a good man, Alex. A terrible thing happened to you, and it’s hard.’

‘I loved Ashleigh so much,’ Alex said, letting himself lean into his father’s embrace. ‘When she died, I wanted to destroy everything — not just Jo but everything, myself included.’

As they moved apart again, Antonello said, ‘I understand, Alex, better than you think. When the bridge collapsed, I thought about blowing it up. I wanted to obliterate it. And when I realised I couldn’t do that, I thought about suicide.’

‘Why didn’t you ever tell us about the bridge?’

‘The guilt, the grief, the anger… I’m not going to promise you it gets better, but I can tell you that some things make it worse, so please don’t do what I did. Don’t shut down. Don’t hold on to the anger. If you do, you won’t be able to give Jane and Rae the love they deserve. If you shut down, everything will get worse.’

‘I’m starting to see that,’ Alex said. ‘But when people say move on, it seems so cruel. Move on and leave Ashleigh behind — how can we do that?’

‘No one wants you to leave Ashleigh behind, but there are ways to move on. When I look at my friend Sam, I see that he moved on, but he took the bridge collapse with him and he used it to make things better for workers in the future. I am not suggesting you need to get involved with the road accident campaigns or anything like that. But you need to go back to work, go back to being a father and a husband and a part of the community.’

‘Yes,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve been thinking about going back to work. It’s time.’

Jo sat at the back of the courtroom and waited. Sarah, in her fancy black cloak and wig, was barely recognisable. It covered her large frame like a superhero cape, but Jo didn’t expect any superhuman feats; she didn’t expect to be rescued from the inevitable. Jo’s new suit, bought under Sarah’s direction, hung on her loosely. A skirt and a jacket like you might wear to an interview for an office job . But she wasn’t going for a job, she was waiting to be sentenced. Waiting to hear what the judge was going to say. Waiting, and trying not to look at Ash’s family. Not to look at Mani and Laura. Or Kevin. Or at Mary and Mandy. Looking down at her feet, at her mother’s plain blue shoes, tight around the toes.

Her father had rung the night before. ‘It’s too hard for me to get away.’

‘Bastard,’ Mandy said, but Jo didn’t care. ‘I never see him anyway. I don’t need him to come.’

She prayed the judge would arrive quickly, that she would be sent away for a long time, that they’d take her straight from the courtroom out some back door to the prison and lock her away.

Everyone stood when the judge arrived. She came in through a side door, took her seat, and nodded, and everyone sat back down again. Antonello had a strong desire to ask them all to stop. Wait! he wanted to scream, Stop . She’s been punished enough. Let her live her life . But instead he sat still, his hand over Paolina’s, from which the rosary hung like teardrops. All of them acting out their parts.

The victim impact statements, read by the prosecutor, were relentless. ‘The house is so dark,’ he began, reading Jane’s statement out in his deep, old-man voice while Jane sat in her seat crying. ‘It feels like there is never going to be any light again. I’m sad all the time. I don’t think the sadness is ever going to go away. No one laughs anymore. Ashleigh used to laugh all the time. The day Ashleigh died, I was angry with her. She promised to take me shopping but she was home late and then went back out. I told her I hated her. I don’t hate her, and now she’s dead. But I’m angry at her because she got into that car with Jo when they were drunk. And I’m angry with Jo because she drove while she was drunk. She was my friend too and now I have to hate her. The counsellor keeps asking me to write letters, paint pictures, do all this crap so I can stop being angry, but I don’t want to.’

At the end of Jane’s statement, the courtroom was filled with the sound of weeping. The prosecutor read Rae and Alex’s statement, and a statement from Mani and Laura; there were still statements from Antonello and Paolina, Rae’s parents, and Kevin, but the judge said, ‘I think I’ll read the rest in my chamber. I don’t think we should read them all out aloud.’

Antonello thought Rae and Alex might object, but later, during the lunch break, when they all sat in a café around the corner from the courthouse, Rae said she was relieved too. She was so exhausted, emotionally exhausted.

Rae hadn’t spoken all day. In the courtroom, she sat gripping the sides of the seat. She fidgeted in the chair, and whenever they were sent out of the room, she paced the hallway. At lunch, she took a couple of bites of the sandwich on her plate and then shoved it aside. As she walked back, she said to Antonello, ‘It will be over soon. This is the last thing. We’ve been waiting for this as if it meant something, and now I see her… I thought I wouldn’t want to look at her but I can’t help it. She’s a scared kid. I see her and I see Ashleigh, I see them together, and I see she’s lost too. And now I can’t feel what I should feel, I can’t… Now I think I should do something to stop her going to prison, even though I know she should go, she should go… But I can see Ashleigh… It could’ve been the other way around, thick as thieves they were, and how many nights I cooked them dinner, helped them with their homework, and I was happy to see them together, glad my daughter had a friend and they were so close…’ She stopped to catch her breath. ‘I can’t say this to Alex.’