Leaning, Leaning Over Water by Frances Itani

Author:Frances Itani [Itani, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Literary, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781443402514
Publisher: SCEPTRE
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

PLAY PIANO

1955

Mother was in every shadow of the house. In the furniture that had moved with us from Darley and in what was left of the furniture abandoned by Duffy. She was under the winecoloured carpet that Lyd beat with the broom and inside the smoker with spool legs, and on the wicker settee in the porch. I thought of her, too, when I picked away at the keys or pounded chords on our old Heintzman piano. At night I dreamed the weight of it pressing through the floor, going down like a mahogany ship through waves of hardwood, sinking to the crawl space below. I dreamed unthinkables—worms, moles, voles, weasels, proofs of which I hoped never to see. I dreamed Mother trapped below, trying to reach up to get to us, and I awoke, terrified, in the dark.

Sometimes she stood in the doorway beside the long mirror that had belonged to Duffy’s runaway wife. From the piano bench I could see the front of her but in the mirror there was no image of her back. With two fingers I picked out a melody she used to sing: “Norah, the Pride of Kildare.” But when I played—softly, so the others wouldn’t hear—I substituted Mother’s name. “Maura, sweet Maura,” I sang. “What mortal could injure a blossom so rare.”

Mimi’s Tante Florence had taught me how to chord and move my hands over the length of the keyboard, switching octaves. At home, Father stood behind me, hands resting on my shoulders, and said to anyone who might be visiting—there were people in the house constantly now—“She’s a natural. Listen to my child-between. She’s an absolute natural.” I knew without turning around that his eyes were filling, and I tried to squirm away.

When no one was around, I wedged my way behind the piano. It was beached kitty-corner at the end of the living room and had been left like that all the years since its abandonment by Duffy. “Too heavy to move,” Father said. “The floor can’t take the weight of it, shifting around.”

The back of the piano, unlike the deep rich stain of the front, was uncamouflaged—raw pale wood. I stood there, silent, scarcely breathing. It was like being inside an afterimage; holding a negative to the light, seeing mouth and eye sockets white and exposed beyond skin.

“He’d steal the coppers off a deadman’s eyes,” Father snapped as he crossed the room, and I realized with a shock that he didn’t know I was there. He stood for a moment in the doorway of the porch and said, “That puts the kibosh on that.”

There were other days when he recited mournful snippets of Tennyson that lined up inside his head.

…my whole soul grieves,

At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves

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