|
Excerpt
Vancouver: May 1952
The piano arrives twenty minutes before the first
students. Anton stands to one side while the delivery men,
thick gloves on their hands, heavy boots on their feet,
carry the second-hand upright through the apartment door.
When they set it down on its castors, it wobbles like a
drunkard, hammers crash against the strings in discord.
Anton stiffens, a lump in his throat. He glares at the
piano, then at his mother, but she won't meet his eyes. The
men ignore him. He's too old to be cute, too young to be in
charge, and he doesn't look strong enough to help them.
Anton is accustomed to dissolving before people's eyes. The
men mean nothing. What concerns him is where his mother
found the money for a piano.
"In through here." Yvonne smiles, extending her arm
towards an open door. The red-haired man walks backwards,
pulling his freight, trusting the taller, thinner man to
guide him. Across the living room and into the first
bedroom off the hall. The piano brings with it the smell of
another world, stale smoke and beer. Or perhaps it is
coming from the men. Harold often smelled this way.
Anton follows, then stops by the doorway. The men
startle at their reflection in the mirror that runs the
length of the far wall, the practice barre that dissects it
and them. They grin. The taller one mugs and prances,
pointing shod feet, mitt-shaped hands. The men's boots
sound menacing in the empty room, grit grinding into the
perfect floor, its smooth, wide oak boards polished to a
fine dull sheen. No splinters here to tear silky ballet
slippers, turn slender ankles, break delicate feet.
With neat, quick steps Yvonne leads the piano men to the
corner by the window. A long, thin patch of morning sun
marks the floor. It will grow larger as the sun climbs in
the sky. Yvonne beckons and the men turn the instrument to
face the room. Satisfied, she bends to pick the record
player up from the floor. After only three weeks of lessons
her records sound tortured: scratched and nicked where she
has repeatedly lifted the arm and set the needle back down,
hoping to catch the beginning of a movement, a steady
tempo, adagio or largo, occasionally allegro, though her
students are young and lack the dexterity and experience
for shimmery bourrees, the rapid beats of entrechat. Now
the records skip and repeat, run along the lateral ruts the
diamond has carved, jolted by impatience or sometimes a
stray foot, an off-balance rond de jamb.
The red-haired man stoops to assist, takes the record
player from Yvonne's small hands. Perhaps he has noticed
her massaging the fingers of her right with the fingers of
her left. Nerves, she always tells Anton. She smiles at the
man. She is wearing pale pink lipstick. A string of pearls
adorns the bodice of her pale pink dress. Anton has never
seen this dress before. The skirt, cinched neatly across
her tiny waist, falls into a fashionable flare over her
slim hips and ends just below her knees. Her stockings have
thin, straight seams that run down the back of her shapely
calves. Or up, depending on how you look at them. Anton
watches the taller, thinner delivery man's eyes running up
along those seams, he's no doubt wondering exactly how and
where they end. His eyes seem like razors, ripping through
his mother's clothes, tearing a hole in Anton's thin chest.
The backs of his knees feel watery, insubstantial. How
could he ever protect her if she needed
protecting? (Published by Goose Lane Editions)
|
