Snow Apples by Mary Razzell

Author:Mary Razzell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd.
Published: 2006-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

12

NELS PROMISED not to drink again if I promised not to meet the Union steamship. I told him I wouldn’t if it meant that much to him.

I missed going, though. There was so little to do at the Landing that the steamship calling in was the highlight of the day. And I liked walking up the wharf with Mr. Percy after the boat had pulled out. He always had some news. Had he told me that Helga was talking more these days? And that Dr. Howard had mentioned to him that I was “a right smart girl and pleasant to boot”? And so he went on, sure that in me he had a captive audience.

Of course, I’d miss Jack, too. Whenever I saw him he reminded me of the excitement, the things to do in Vancouver. There were times I felt pressed between the mountains at the back of me and the ocean in the front, and I thought I couldn’t wait to finish school and leave the Landing.

But I still loved school. My brother Tom and I were taking Science 12 together even though he was a grade behind me. That’s the way it was in our small high school with only the one teacher. We had to double up on some courses. Sometimes Tom got a higher mark, but that only made me study harder to beat him the next time.

My father had decided to leave Jericho Airforce Base and go to Williams Lake to work at the placer gold mine. My mother was unhappy about this. But he said he’d send sixty dollars every month.

My mother was even talking about buying a piano secondhand. Mrs. Robinson on the North Road had tacked a notice on the bulletin board at the post office: For sale, cheap, piano in A-1 condition. B. Robinson, North Road.

“Of course,” sniffed my mother when she read it, “that means the piano would have to be washed down with Lysol before I would let it in the house. They say she has a social disease.”

“You mean like T.B.?”

“No, I mean syphilis. She’s been a loose woman.”

* * *

“Agnes,” said my father, home for the weekend, “how would you like that piano for a Christmas present?”

“We can’t afford it,” my mother said. “Don’t be daft.”

But we could see that she was excited by the idea. She went through her music sheets, which were stored in the cedar chest.

“Do you remember this?” she asked my father, and she began to hum “The Flower Song,” following the notes with her finger. She could read music. My father played by ear.

Dad went ahead anyway and bought the piano, even though Christmas was two months away. He had it delivered when my mother was out at a Water Board meeting. I wiped it with a cloth wrung out in a hot water-and-Lysol solution, then dried it and rubbed lemon oil into the wood grain. It was made of cherry wood, and when I had finished, it glowed with a soft red sheen.

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