Finding My Own Way (15 page)

I'd later witnessed what had happened outside the truck when Hackett tried to move in on Alex a second time. But until now, I had not seen the whole picture.

After a long time I got to my feet and began, with
shaking hands, to get my things ready for the next day. It was as if I were in a trance. I made my lunch and ironed a skirt and blouse. Then it dawned on me that I was going to have to face Bobby Baker tomorrow. Would I still have a job?

“I have to have a job,” I muttered, slamming the iron against the fabric on the board. “Or else I can't stay here.”

During the course of the evening my fear turned to indignation. The nerve of that man, coming to my house! How dare he treat me like that, treat Gloria Hooper like that. How many other girls at the store was he trying the same move on? Someone ought to get rid of him. I didn't think Mr. Forth could do anything about it, but there must be a head office somewhere.

That night, as I wrote in my journal, the words that poured onto the paper were my catharsis. I filled seven pages before I was spent. This would be a good topic for an essay, I thought as I reread it. With renewed energy, I began to rewrite it, tighten it. When I finally dropped my pen and slid down into bed, I decided it was probably the best piece of writing I'd ever done. And it was real! If I pared it down to 250 words, maybe worked on it in my lunch hour the next day, I could show it to Mr. Thomas.

To my great relief, there was no sign of Bobby the next morning, and it appeared to be business as usual at the five-and-ten. Maybe, I thought, he was working a later shift. When I went to pick up my purse and lunch bag, Mr. Forth suddenly emerged from his office and came down the steps, as if he had been waiting for me.

“Libby, things are a little slack around here right now.” I knew he was addressing me because he'd called
me by name, but he avoided looking directly at me when he spoke. “Bobby and I think maybe you should just work evenings for a while. Say, five till nine?”

Five till nine! That was only four hours a day. “That won't be permanent, will it?”

“I wouldn't think so.” But his tone was not promising. He scratched his scalp and grimaced, still not meeting my eyes. “Hate to cut your hours, but you were the last one hired.”

“I hate it too, Mr. Forth,” I said, with feeling. “I really need the money.” But Bobby knew that, didn't he?

“Try it like this for the next couple of weeks, will you Libby? Things may pick up again.”

So, this was Bobby's idea of scaring me into being “nice” to him. Well, never mind; I'd show him! As long as he didn't come up with any more restrictions to my hours, I'd get through it.

If the assistant manager came in at all that day, he stayed out of my way. At five o'clock I went over to the newspaper office. Mr. Thomas pushed his chair back from the typewriter when I came in and smiled. “What can I do for you, Libby?”

“I had my hours cut at the store,” I announced, dropping into the chair across the desk.

A frown creased his kind face. “I'm sorry to hear that, Libby.”

“Mr. Forth said it would be for two weeks.”

William Thomas raised himself and pulled his wallet out of a back pocket. “Let me lend you enough to tide you over,” he said. “Till you get back on regular hours. You can even pay me back if you want to.”

“I'll be okay.” I waved the offer away. “As long as it's not for too long. I can use a holiday, I guess.”

“That's the right attitude. I wish I could take a holiday myself.” He took his seat again and laced his fingers behind his head. “Been doing any more writing?”

“Well, since you ask, I was working on something last night.” I opened my purse and handed him the folded sheets of paper. “You can read it if you like. It's still a bit rough, because I planned to work on it some more before I brought it over. But I would like to know your opinion.”

“Well, thanks, Libby.” William Thomas smiled and took the papers from me, laying them on top of a wire basket where there was a pile of more of the same. “I don't have time to read it right now, but I will take it home with me tonight.” He removed his glasses and sat with his fingers pressed to his temples. “If I ever get home. It looks as if I'll be here quite a while, unless I pull something off the wire service.”

“Is there anything I could help you with?” I asked.

“No, but that reminds me. Marge wanted me to tell you she was going to the nursing home to do some letter writing, and she wondered if you were still interested in visiting the Countess.”

“I sure am!” I sat up straight. “When is she going?”

“Well, it's usually mornings,” William Thomas said.

“That's okay. It looks like my mornings are open for the next two weeks.”

“Perfect,” he nodded. “I'll have her call you and she can pick you up.”

After she dropped her husband off at the
Pinkney Mirror
on Wednesday morning, Marjory Thomas had the use of the family station wagon for the rest of the day. I discovered when she came to call for me, that we were also delivering newspapers along the way.

“If I can do this once in a while to help out,” Marjory puffed, hauling a bundle of papers over the tailgate, “it'll ease William's work load a little. He hasn't been feeling well lately, and I worry about him.” She heaved herself back in under the wheel and pushed her damp hair off her forehead. “That last bundle goes with us to the nursing home,” she said.

Anxious as I was to meet the Countess, I was a little apprehensive about my first visit to a nursing home. I wasn't sure what to expect. Would there be, as I'd heard somewhere, blood curdling noises and bad smells? Alex used to say Nan was fortunate that she got her wish and escaped such a fate in her old age. My grandmother had died instantly of a heart attack, doing something she loved—standing in her perennial garden, staking the delphiniums.

We stopped at the receptionist's desk inside the front
door of the nursing home to ask where I might find the Countess. “She's on the second sitting for breakfast, dear,” the young woman behind the desk smiled. “They aren't out of the dining room yet. Come on, and I'll take you to her table.” Seeing that I had been attended to, Marjory Thomas headed off down the hall, on her own.

I think I could have picked the Countess out of the crowd myself; she was just as I remembered her, tiny and hunched. Her hair was still quite black and twisted severely into a small knot at the back of her neck, emphasizing the length of her nose, the pendulous ear lobes. The receptionist pulled a chair forward from the wall for me, and I sat at a table ringed by wheelchairs.

“Good morning.” I smiled nervously at the residents around the table. The Countess was tearing a slice of toast into bite-size pieces. “My name is Libby Eaton,” I said, addressing her. “I met you once a long time ago. My mother was Alex Eaton. She interviewed you at your house in town, and I came with her. I was just little.”

The dark eyes turned towards me. They were a little less penetrating than I remembered, but she seemed to know me. “Measles,” said the Countess, chewing.

“Chicken pox,” I said.

A waitress was making the rounds of the tables with a teapot. She right-ended the Countess' cup onto its saucer and poured some tea for her. Holding it in two gnarled hands, the old woman lifted the cup to her lips.

I looked around me at the others in the dining room. Given the number of people in the room, it was surprisingly free of conversation. There was not much small talk as the residents concentrated on the business
of eating, and the attentive staff moved among them.

“And how is your mother?” the Countess asked suddenly. The cup rattled into the saucer.

I leaned towards her. “My mother died at the end of last summer,” I explained. “She had cancer; she was only forty-two.” The Countess merely nodded. I guess living in a place like this one got used to dying.

The attendants had begun collecting the residents to take them from the dining room, and the Countess too started to wheel herself away from the table. “I came to visit you,” I spoke up. “If it's all right with you.”

“Is all right. You may push me to my room,” she acknowledged. “I show you which one.” She settled her hands in her lap, and I moved to the back of the chair.

When the Countess said the word, we turned in at a room painted a cheerful shade of yellow, near the end of a long hall. The room's other occupant lay curled on a bed behind a half-drawn curtain, a breakfast tray untouched on the stand beside her.

I swung the Countess' chair around to the position she suggested, and the old lady reached down herself to set the brakes. Seeing no other chair in the room, I half leaned, half sat on her bed.

“I knew your mother?” the Countess queried, looking doubtful now.

I nodded. “Actually, you were friends with my grandmother Nancy, and you taught my Aunt Irene to dance.”

The Countess' eyes lit up at the mention of Irene. “My star pupil. My only pupil. Ah, Nancy, yes, such a good person. I do not know how I could have got on without
her.” The wrinkles at the corners of her mouth pleated themselves into a smile. “So nice of you to visit me.”

“I came with a friend who volunteers here, writes letters for the residents,” I told her. “I wanted to see you and maybe hear more about your interesting life? I know from my mother's interviews that it wasn't an easy life. Do you mind talking about it?”

“Ho, no. Always, I love to talk. The stories I could tell you! I am Russian, you know,” she said with pride. “Life in Russia was good—parties and plays and concerts. Over here, not so good. Sergei, my husband, he was dead.” She pulled a lace handkerchief out of the cuff of her blouse.

“I know. I'm sorry. You came here to Canada to be with your brother,” I prompted.

“Dimitri, yes,” she said fondly. “He was working in mine. He had place for me too, as cook there. But when big boss saw me, he said no. I was like this.” With her hands she indicated a large mound over her midsection. “Ready to have baby. So,” she shrugged, “no job. I come to Pinkney Corners instead. I get room in boarding house. All we can afford. But I was lucky. They need me to work at canners. One day, big joke too, I am running house with rooms to rent! So I did okay.”

“I've been reading some Russian history,” I said, wanting to guide this conversation in the direction of Anastasia's story, “about the last Tsar and his family, the Romanovs? Do you know some people say that Anastasia, the youngest daughter, did not die with the others?”

The old lady smiled and shook her head. “Rumours,” she said.

“You don't think it's true?”

“Of course, it is what we all hoped,” she admitted, twisting the handkerchief around her fingers. “Those Bolsheviks, they tell big lie. That only Tsar had been executed, that family was safe. But finally, they admit truth, and then we know.”

She hunched forward in her chair and crooked a yellow finger, beckoning me closer. “Listen,” she hissed, putting the finger to her lips, “I tell your mother secret. Now I tell you.”

“What is it?” I whispered, bending closer in anticipation. Had she heard from Anastasia?

“My baby girl,” the Countess confided. “I had no money. What could I do? I couldn't look after her.” (I knew this secret already.) “I would find friend to take her. Maybe someone close by. Then I watch her grow to be big girl.”

A nurse bustled into the room then to pick up the other resident's tray and the Countess, to my surprise, put out a hand to waylay her. “I am feeling tired,” she announced.

“You want me to help you onto your bed, dear?” The nurse glanced at me, and I hopped quickly to my feet. “She sometimes has a nap in the morning,” she explained.

The nurse set the tray down again, and I stood aside while she put her arms around the Countess in her chair. The old woman's arms encircled the nurse's neck and, with one practised movement, she was lifted onto the side of the bed. My visit was over.

While the nurse adjusted the drapes over the window,
I turned to say goodbye, disappointed that I'd learned nothing new. Unexpectedly, the Countess reached for me. “You know my Irina?” she whispered.

I hesitated. “I don't think so. Does she still live in town?”

“You do know! You do!” she insisted. The vise-like fingers gripped mine. “But it is secret. My friend, she had little daughter already, but she said she would take Irina. She could be little sister to her own child, to her Alexandra.”

I froze, open-mouthed.

“Coming?” the nurse queried and left me no choice but to follow her out into the hall. “Come again anytime,” I heard her say. “It's good to have people dropping by. Some of these folks don't get any visitors at all. The Countess, though, is one of the lucky ones, especially now that her nephew is in the area.”

I stumbled down the hall towards the lounge where I was to wait for Marjory Thomas. My head swimming, not watching where I was going, I slammed shoulders with a man who was turning into the hall.

“Oops, sorry,” he said, although it was clearly my fault. In my agitated state, I had the fleeting thought that he looked familiar.

Irina, the Countess had said. And I knew her? Of course I knew her! How could I have missed the truth for so long?

At some point, Marjory Thomas must have come to fetch me and drive me home again. I really don't remember.

I had trouble concentrating on anything else for the
rest of the day. Bobby Baker might have had cause for complaint, had he been at Savaway during my shift. My mind was whirling. How do you tell a member of your family that she has another family she doesn't know about? That she is actually the daughter of a Russian Count and Countess?

At nine-thirty that evening I unlocked the back door of my little house and went inside. No wonder Alex never wrote her story! It hurt to think that my mother went to her grave with the weight of this secret. How I wished she had shared this knowledge about our family with me. Or with Irene, at least.