The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone

by Felicity McLean

  ‘Fiction as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’

  ‘What, to Mr Avery? Well, I spoke to him, Tik.’ He scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. ‘And I’ll talk to your mum tonight too. See what she thinks about it.’

  ‘See if she thinks you should report it to the Department?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he admitted.

  ‘What about the Van Apfels?’

  ‘Should we report the Van Apfels, too?’ Dad smiled grimly at his own joke. I could tell he was trying to change the subject so he didn’t have to tell me what was really going on.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell Mr Van Apfel about the car engine being cold.’

  Dad looked flummoxed for an instant.

  ‘I don’t know, champ. Maybe I did the wrong thing.’ He fiddled with his keys in his hand.

  ‘The wrong thing?’ I was stunned.

  ‘The thing is, Tik, I was worried about getting those girls in trouble,’ he said carefully. ‘It’s not always easy to know how their parents might react.’

  * * *

  The way Ruth reported it, it wasn’t until later that night that the Lord visited Mr Van Apfel, who in turn came to Cordie when she was taking a bath. There he held her head under the shampoo-slick surface to cast away all of her sins. Swimming costume sins. Sleepwalking sins. (Cold-car-engines-in-red-hatchbacks sins.) He was careful to keep her cast arm dry, and it protruded like a plaster periscope. While the rest of her shameful body was submerged and washed clean. Baptism among the bath salts and the bubbles.

  And when Mrs Van Apfel walked past putting the clean laundry away, she must have wondered what her husband was doing in the bathroom while their thirteen-year-old daughter was in the bath. But when she heard him talking in tongues, she knew it was the Lord’s work. That he was building a temple to Jesus right there and then in the ensuite.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the backyard with Mum the weekend after Hayley’s sleepover, the grass was dew damp and lush. I padded about touching fern fronds and palms, plasticky camellia leaves. There was a sheen to everything as if the hotter it got, the more things here thrived. Our backyard felt wild and strange and remote.

  Mum walked around the yard dropping little piles of sand, and I trotted behind her keeping her company. ‘What is that stuff? It stinks worse than the river.’ I watched a silty handful slip through her fingers. A marker mound where we had done good work.

  ‘Blood and bone,’ Mum said and she reached into the tub for another sandy scoop. ‘It’s good for the garden.’

  ‘I guess you can do it then,’ I said grudgingly.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mum said. ‘That’s magnanimous of you.’ She didn’t stop working to speak to me, just kept scooping and depositing, bending and turning. I pressed my nose closer and took a deep sniff.

  ‘Peew-yooh! It smells like the river. Don’t you think that’s exactly the same smell as the river?’

  Mum was looking around for her spade now and she answered without turning to face me. ‘Mmm? Tikka-Likka, can you pass me that? No, next to you. That’s it, ta. Funny, I hadn’t noticed the river. Does it smell?’

  I crouched down low next to the tub and read the label that was beginning to peel off it. ‘Nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus.’ It was like some kind of wonderful spell. We should have had that at Hayley Stinson’s party – blood and bone would have brought the ghosts out.

  ‘It says here “fish bones”,’ I read. ‘That’s why it smells fishy.’

  ‘It’s good fertiliser,’ Mum said, seeing my wrinkled nose.

  I sniffed again dubiously, and it got up my nose and I spluttered in surprise. It made my eyes smart and I pressed the heels of my hands into them to stop them from watering.

  I moved off to sit in the shade then, squatting under the wattle tree. It was shedding dead blossoms like little burned bits of hair.

  ‘You’ve got a good spot there,’ Mum said. ‘Nice and cool.’

  But I was sweaty already, even in the shade.

  Mum walked towards me a few minutes later with an armful of vines, green tendrils spilling over her arms. She dumped them in a pile near where I was sitting, then turned and headed back down the yard to cut back some more. Back and forth she went, cutting the thing back then carrying it up the yard. I twirled one of the leaves in my fingers and it was striped like a boiled lolly, with wide white strokes against the green. The next armful Mum dumped was dotted with flowers. Creamy white specks like fat in a chop.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Pain in the neck,’ she answered, and as she headed back down the yard again I saw that a circle of sweat was beginning to bloom on the back of her shirt. I picked the flowers out of the heap and lined them up in a row, then changed my mind and arranged them in a flower pattern. Each individual flower was a perfect pyramid. Three prongs. Three tiny tear-shaped petals.

  ‘Pretty,’ Mum said when she returned with the next bundle. ‘A flower made of flowers. I like it, Tik.’

  ‘What do you call it?’ I asked again, tucking one of the flowers behind my ear. But the flower was too tiny, and my ear was too big, and the thing disappeared behind the fuzzy shell of my ear and slid down inside my collar.

  ‘Wandering Jew,’ Mum said. ‘It’s such a curse. If you miss a bit then the whole thing grows back again.’ Her pruning shears hung loose on a cord around her wrist, and the curved beak of them bumped against her bare skin as she walked back down the yard.

  ‘Wandering Jew!’ I said in surprise, but Mum was walking away, off to collect more armfuls. Wandering Jew was what Mr Van Apfel had called Cordie on the night of Hayley’s sleepover party, and I’d looked it up in the dictionary afterwards. That was when I learned that the Wandering Jew had taunted Jesus, or maybe hit him, on his way to the cross. (The dictionary wasn’t sure, on account of not having been there to see it.) But whichever one it was, what the Jew did was unforgivable. And his punishment was to wander the earth forever – no resting, no destination.

  I’d shivered when I’d read it. And then I’d put the dictionary back on the sideboard where it was kept next to the dining-room table. It made me wonder what Cordie had done that was so bad, and why she wandered the earth in her sleep.

  Mum came back then with another armful of vines and she dumped them on the pile.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you, blossom,’ she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her glove. ‘Can you pop over to the Van Apfels for me and borrow my hose back? Mr Van Apfel was using it the other day to run sprinklers in the front and back yard at the same time.’

  It sounded like the sort of big-deal thing he’d do. ‘Why couldn’t he use his hose and do them one at a time?’ I asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Mum said. ‘Only, I need mine now, so can you nip over and pick it up for me?

  ‘I’ll make us some morning tea when you get back,’ she added.

  I stood and started to walk across the yard.

  ‘But the Van Apfels won’t be home,’ I said, remembering. ‘It’s Sunday. They’ve got church this morning.’

  ‘Damn,’ Mum said, then she made a face. ‘Sorry – not very holy of me. Can you just check if the hose is in their backyard, Tik? Or in the garage, if they’ve left it unlocked. Carol won’t mind. I want to try and get all this finished this morning.’

  She waved her hand across the backyard, where molehills of clippings littered the lawn.

  ‘Okay.’ I shrugged. And I turned and headed up the side path of the house and across the front lawn, and then out into the cul-de-sac.

  There was no life in Macedon Close that morning. No one washed their car in their drive. There were no kids running under sprinkler archways. Even the cockatoos, pale and ghostly, took off when they saw me approach. I walked up the centre of the road, slicing the cul-de-sac up the belly.

  At the Van Apfel house the curtains were pulled wide. Fresh lilies sat in a vase at the window. In fact, the only si
gn they’d all gone to Rise Up across the valley was Madonna, who sulked on the mat.

  ‘Hell-ooo?’ I called out. ‘Cordie? Are ya home?’

  Madonna looked at me with contempt.

  In the front yard angel’s trumpets hung heavy on their stems. There were stumpy canna lilies in violent orange rows, but nothing as interesting as Mrs McCausley’s garden gnomes. And no hose either, as far as I could see. I wandered around the back to take a look.

  There, the air pulsed with dry heat. The pool was disturbingly still. Except for patches where the sunshine hit the surface of the water and made it dazzle and dance. And in the shallow end an abandoned Aqua Duck butted forlornly against the steps, its crew having all walked the plank.

  I hunted around in the bushes and checked along the verandah. Searched in the shade by the fence. But Mum’s hose was nowhere and I was too hot. I decided to call it a day.

  I was halfway along the side path of the house when I remembered what Mum had said about the garage. How I should check in there too, if it was unlocked. And that Carol wouldn’t mind if I did. I eyed the side door suspiciously. It was thick and mission brown. There was a good chance it was open, even if the main roller door at the front was locked. But that wasn’t the problem – the problem was Mr Van Apfel. I noticed Mum hadn’t said anything about whether he’d care. And I wasn’t going to risk getting into his bad books just so Mum could water her plants.

  I walked past the door without trying the knob. Then I sidled back – it didn’t have a keyhole. A door that couldn’t lock. That couldn’t be locked. Well, that was just perfect. Just what you’d expect from a street that didn’t bother with fences.

  For a long while I dithered. The doorknob was metal. It would be blazing hot from sitting all morning in full sun. Another good reason not to want to touch it. No, there was no way I was going into Mr Van Apfel’s garage without getting his permission.

  I retreated around to the front of the house and was most of the way over the crest of the drive, when I thought about Ruth meeting me out in the cul-de-sac in the mornings so we could walk to school together. I thought about the way she stood up to Jason Kenny when he ambushed the two of us the other day. Ruth, who the Lord blessed with that lip so she learned quick smart to survive (or so Mr Van Apfel assured us). Roof. Who backpack-slammed bullies, who spat gumnut pellets. Ruth, who could smash through her recess snack before you’d even left Macedon Close and was still willing to have a crack at yours.

  Ruth wouldn’t let a garage door defeat her.

  I marched up the drive and back down the side path. Gripped the hot handle and twisted it hard. The door opened easily and I stumbled forward. Inside it was impossibly dark.

  Once my eyes had adjusted, I found a light switch to the left of the doorframe. The bulb flickered, then it bloomed into a cool blue–white light that brought everything into focus. The Van Apfel car was missing of course. There was just a car-shaped clearing amongst the mess. Plus an oil stain the shape of North America but with the southern states missing. And crammed around the edges, resting against the garage walls, were tennis racquets and pink and purple bikes in ascending size. There were Christmas lights and a disassembled baby’s bassinet. A discarded papier-mâché volcano, post-eruption. In one corner a rocking chair lay on its side where it was missing one curved wooden rocker. In another corner was the chest freezer, which Mrs Van Apfel kept stocked with meat cuts and iceblocks, and where we sent Ruth, as the youngest, to fetch our food. (That was why, I realised then, I’d never been in here before. I’d walked past this garage a thousand times or more but had never been inside. I’d never needed to. We always met the girls on the driveway, ready with our bikes.)

  On the back wall there were tools of every description: hammers, pliers, saws. Each tool had its own little nail to hang from and a neat black outline showing where it should hang. Mr Van Apfel had set up a workbench there too – a simple timber worktop, covered in at the front with a piece of thin board. The bench was set far enough out from the wall for one person to fit. (It only took one man to keep the Van Apfel household running, after all.)

  But when I walked back there now and stood behind Mr Van Apfel’s bench, when I bent down to see if Mum’s hose was on the ground, I found boxes of nails and screws, coiled cords, electrical tape. Plus a whole wall of Van Apfel girls under the bench.

  The photos were taken at various stages. All showed blonde hair. Skinny limbs. Missing teeth. Some were posed, while others were more candid shots. Three daughters, frozen in an instant.

  Riding a bike. Blowing out candles. Winning a ribbon. One photo was just a bare back turning away from the camera. All you could make out was a spaghetti strap and a lone strand of stringy fair hair.

  I peered closer.

  There was a picture of someone – was that Cordie? – balancing on a fence. Cordie waving. Cordie scowling. Cordie immortalised forever pinching an out-of-focus sister. Cordie asleep in the back of the car. There must have been fifty photos pinned to the plywood wall of that bench. But why would Mr Van Apfel hide them down there? And, wait – why did he only have photos of Cordie? There was none of Hannah or Ruth, except where they’d stumbled into a shot.

  That whole board was devoted to Cordie.

  I decided then that I’d seen enough. More than enough, more that I’d ever intended to see. I switched off the light and closed the garage door behind me and didn’t stop running until I was home.

  ‘Didn’t see my hose then?’ Mum asked when I got back. ‘Never mind, I’ll pop over later.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘Do you still think we did the right thing?’ I asked Laura.

  ‘You’re not doing the right thing,’ she replied, and she pointed at the mugs lined up by the teapot. Black tea sat stewing in each mug. We were in the kitchen at Mum and Dad’s and I had been back almost two weeks, but Laura still felt compelled to direct how I made the tea.

  ‘Milk first,’ she advised. ‘Otherwise the milk heats unevenly.’ In case I didn’t know about whey protein denaturation. Like I didn’t spend half of my life in a lab.

  ‘Sure. Milk first,’ I agreed, because what did I care if she made all the decisions? I emptied the tea into the sink and it whirlpooled darkly towards the plughole. I retrieved the milk from the fridge and then turned to face my sister with the carton in my hand. ‘But do you, Lor? Do you still think we did the right thing not telling anyone Hannah and Cordie planned to run away? Don’t you ever worry we might have got it wrong?’

  It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation – not by a long shot. Though it was the first time we’d had it since I’d been back. Invariably it was me who brought it up and my sister who shut it down, and then we’d both walk away feeling worse for having spoken.

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if we said anything or not.’ My sister spoke with precision. If we were going to have this conversation, then she wanted it over quickly. ‘You know the ending to this one, Tik: they’re not coming home. Nothing we did would have changed that.’

  ‘How do you know it wouldn’t?’

  ‘How do you know it would?’

  ‘The police should have had all the facts,’ I said.

  Laura shook her head decisively. ‘It wouldn’t have brought them back.’

  On the table between us a packet of biscuits sat unopened. Summer sunshine streamed through the window.

  ‘And what about Ruth?’ I said.

  ‘We didn’t even know Ruth was going with them,’ Laura said sharply. ‘So you can’t feel guilty about that.’

  My sister’s barometer for such things had always been two years older, two years superior to mine. And she was right of course, and at the same time she was wrong. I was responsible and not guilty. I was both things, and neither. Like the valley: a thing and a void.

  I made Laura’s tea the way she’d instructed. Then I stood blocking her view while I poured the hot water mutinously into my mug before I added the milk. I placed t
he two mugs on the table.

  ‘Survivor’s guilt, is that it? Is that what this is?’ She looked pleased with herself, and with her diagnosis. ‘You feel guilty you didn’t disappear too.

  ‘Anything could have happened to them that night,’ she went on. ‘Anything could, and anything did, but it’s not your fault, Tik.’ As she spoke I could imagine her patrolling the wards at work, keeping the dying alive. You wouldn’t curl up your toes if my sister was on duty. You wouldn’t dare.

  ‘There was nothing we could have done,’ she said.

  Although of course there was plenty that we could have done. We could have told the police everything that we knew. We could have explained how Hannah and Cordie had planned to run away, I said, and how Mr Van Apfel was violent at home. We could have said something about Mr Avery. About the way he looked at Cordie, the way he always showed up at the same place she was. We should have told the police all that, and we should never have helped those girls try to run away in the first place. We shouldn’t have encouraged them. Given them supplies.

  ‘I didn’t,’ interrupted my sister.

  ‘Fine, but you know what I mean,’ I said. ‘We tried to. We were wrong to speak about the plan like it was a good idea —’

  ‘Wrong to have spoken to them at all.’ Laura talked over me now. ‘In fact, we should never have been friends with them in the first place, would that make it better, Tik? Would you feel exonerated then? Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said.

  On the table our mugs of tea sat stewing. The milk in my mug had separated when I added it to the boiling water and now small flecks of white swirled on the surface like floaters in front of your eyes. Maybe my sister was right about the tea. About the tea, and about everything else.

  ‘You going to drink that or what?’ she said after a while, nodding towards my mug. She spoke more gently now, and she held her head tilted slightly to one side as if she was talking to a child.