Finding My Own Way (12 page)

Countess Galina Balenskaya had been in the last stage of pregnancy when she arrived in Canada in 1919. The manager of the mining camp had taken one look at her and turned her down flat for the job. Her brother Dimitri was able, just in time, to arrange a room for her in a boarding house in Pinkney Corners. To support herself, she took work at the local canning factory. That was where she must have met my grandmother.

Alone and practically destitute, she gave birth to a baby girl, six weeks after her arrival in this country. She named the child Irina. The biggest shock to me was reading that she had given the baby away, feeling she couldn't look after it. The adoptive family lived in Pinkney Corners and assured the Countess that she would be able to watch the child grow up.

I twisted the can opener absentmindedly around the tin of dog food while Ernie drooled in anticipation. It was a sad story, but probably not unusual for someone living under such difficult circumstances.

Now that I'd read her notes, I wondered if Alex's illness had been the only reason that she had never sent the story in. Or had she deliberately sat on it, knowing it might have hurt someone? Could the Countess' daughter still be living here in Pinkney Corners?

My new telephone shrilled, startling me so that I nearly cut myself on the sharp lid of the tin can. “Aunt Irene!”

“Am I your first caller?”

“Actually, you are,” I said. “This is long distance, you know.”

“I'm not going to talk long. Just wanted to make sure the phone company hooked you up. The operator gave me your number. What's your new phone like? You didn't get one of those coloured ones, did you?”

“It's basic black,” I assured her. “Very sensible.”

“I knew I could count on you, Libby.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “And Libby? I do feel better knowing you can call if you need help.”

“Irene?”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember Nan's old friend, the Countess?”

She gave a surprised laugh. “Of course. She was my first ballet teacher. Why?”

“Did you know she lives in a nursing home here?”

“Really? I wasn't sure she was still alive.”

“Do you know very much about her?” I wondered. “Personally, I mean?”

“Not much. She came from Russia. She'd studied ballet over there, as a girl.”

“She's had a very interesting life, actually. Kind of sad.”

“Well, you can tell me all about it next time. Okay, Libby? Bye for now.”

I set the receiver back in its cradle and stared out at the rain dripping through the holes in the eavestrough over the window.

Each time it rained, the roof on the house seemed to spring another leak. Over the weeks I'd watched, with growing concern, the brown stains on the bedroom ceiling slowly spread from one tile to another. When I went upstairs to get the book I was reading on the Romanovs, I discovered a steady drip hitting the side of my bed. I had to push the bed against the wall and find something to catch the drip.

I'd had no idea there was so much work to keeping a house. No sooner did I solve one problem than another would crop up. How much would a pail of tar cost, I wondered? Was tar something I could put on myself? If I ignored the leaks, would the roof eventually rot and fall in? If it did, Ernie and I would have to move to the lower
floor, but how long could we camp out there?

It was dark by the time I fixed my own evening meal. I peeled a couple of hardboiled eggs and ate half a tin of cold baked beans, straight out of the can.

I had difficulty concentrating on my book that evening. My mind kept wandering to Alex's last interview with the Countess. My mother's notes had put to rest any notion I had that the Countess might be Anastasia. The Grand Duchess Anastasia had been in her eighteenth year at the time of the murders. Galina Balenskaya was already thirty-five when she arrived in Canada the following year.

But wasn't it still possible that the Countess knew Anastasia's whereabouts? Since the Countess had been married to a minister in the Tsar's cabinet, she was probably a monarchist, a sympathizer. As such, she might have been contacted by Anastasia, who would be in hiding from the Bolsheviks. From what I had been reading, it didn't seem such an outlandish idea. Or was I like a dog worrying an old bone, unable to let go of Anastasia, the little girl from my mother's stories?

For quite a while, I'd been after Gloria Hooper to come back with me to my place some evening after work. We worked together all week and got along very well. “If you don't have a date, you could have supper with me,” I suggested. “I'd walk you back part way afterwards.” That's what Margaret and I used to do.

But Gloria always had to hurry home to fix a meal for her father. It seemed to me as if she was the parent in that family and he was the child.

I liked Gloria. I knew there were some people who dismissed her as another dizzy blonde because of her Marilyn Monroe looks—the bleached hair, the tiny waist and generous figure. But I liked her warmth and honesty.

“I can't tell you yet when I'm coming,” she said, when I reminded her of my open invitation.

“Doesn't matter,” I promised.

“One day I'll just show up.” And one Sunday she did.

I was sitting out back, working on another story idea for Mr. Thomas, when Ernie suddenly went bounding around to the front and returned in the company of Gloria Hooper.

“Here I am,” she announced happily, her pretty face
flushed from the heat. “Just like I said. Hope it's okay.” She was wearing flaming red pedal pushers, a black cinch belt and a white, peasant-style blouse with an elastic neckline.

“Sure, it's okay.” I laid my papers on the grass, setting one leg of my chair on top of them to hold them down. “Any time's okay. I'm glad you came. You want to sit out here with me or go inside?”

“I'll do whatever you want to do.” Considering the heat, we decided to go inside so that I could make us some Freshie while Gloria caught her breath. Then I dug out a second lawn chair from the back kitchen and we took our drinks down to the riverbank. It would be fun to have company for the afternoon, I thought. Gloria had already made friends with Ernie.

“I'd love to have a dog,” she said with feeling.

“Some people are afraid of Ernie because he's so big,” I admitted.

“What kind is he, anyway?”

“A mixed breed, mostly Newfoundland, I think.”

“He'll keep any strangers off your property,” she decided.

“He already has,” and I told her about the two men that I'd seen here since I arrived.

“What did you do?” Gloria asked. “Were you scared?”

“The first time, a friend of mine pulled into the drive on his motorcycle, and the man just left. That was Michael. The one I told you about?”

Gloria nodded. “Your dream boat,” she smiled.

“The second time, I sicked Ernie on him.”

“No wonder your aunt wanted you to get a room in
town. I don't think I'd want to live out here all by myself.” Gloria pulled the neckline of her blouse down to bare her smooth shoulders to the sun. “Don't you have any cousins or anyone you could stay with?”

“I'm a little short on family,” I told her. “There's only Aunt Irene. Anyway, this is my place. So where else would I go?”

She shrugged and took a long sip of her Freshie.

It was inevitable that our conversation that afternoon would turn to that which we had most in common, our jobs at Savaway. Bobby's girlfriend had shown up at the store last Thursday, and I'd seen, firsthand, how the assistant manager's behaviour toward his fellow workers changed in Karen's presence, how he'd suddenly become all business, calling us Miss Eaton and Miss Hooper.

“Doesn't it just make you sick?” said Gloria, rolling her eyes.

“You don't still go out with him, do you?” I asked.

“Just once in a while.” She shot me a quick glance. “It's not easy, Libby, knowing that if you're nice to him he'll see that Mr. Forth gives you a raise.”

“He will? What if you aren't nice to him?”

“Then you could be the one who spends the afternoon dusting all the teeny little bottles in cosmetics,” said Gloria. “Or else he'll make you sweep out the back room. There are rats out there. I've seen them, eating holes in the cookie boxes.”

“Rats? Really?”

“Yeah. And this time I mean the four-legged kind.” Then we both rolled our eyes and laughed.

Later, after I'd shown Gloria around the house and
my room, she picked up a framed photograph of Alex from the buffet. “Your mother was pretty,” Gloria remarked. “Did she have a boyfriend?”

I shook my head. “I used to think her publisher was her boyfriend. We used to clean the house like crazy whenever he was coming. He drove a big car and always brought flowers. From a florist shop, even.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “I think it was strictly business on Alex's part.”

“Too bad.” Gloria set the picture down with a sigh. “She was so young, too.”

We boiled wieners for our supper, and Gloria showed me how to wrap them in slices of bread, fasten the bread with toothpicks and brown them in the oven.

When I rose to clear the table Gloria said, suddenly, “I know it's awful of me to go out with Bobby, but I don't know how to stop it. He keeps coming over.”

“So, just tell him to buzz off,” I said.

She sighed and avoided my eyes. “The last time he was over, things got . . . well, a little hot and heavy. He had his arms around me, and I felt him start to undo the buttons on the back of my blouse.”

I'm sure my face was the colour of the ketchup bottle I held in my hand. I didn't know what to say.

Gloria looked up suddenly from the salt and pepper shakers she'd been sliding back and forth on the tabletop. “I'm scared, Libby,” she said.

I sat down abruptly. “You are?”

She nodded. “I'm scared it's going to get worse, and I don't know what to do about it.”

“Listen, Gloria.” I clutched her arm with both my hands. “You've got to tell someone about this. Tell your father!”

“Oh, I couldn't,” she said, drawing away from me. “My dad would kill me!”

“He would not! You want it to stop, don't you?”

“Of course,” she said fervently. “Bobby Baker is just a jerk. But he can make it hard for me to keep my job.”

I sat back in the chair, considering. “You know, whenever I have trouble with something, I try to think what Alex might have done. And I think she had the answer to this one.” I told Gloria then how my mother had stood up to Eddie Hackett years ago. “He was pressuring her, I think. Just like Bobby's doing.”

“Well, your mother was a strong person,” said Gloria.

“Sure she was. And you can be too. Alex would tell you that you don't have to accept that kind of treatment. No one does. Bobby thinks just because he's the assistant manager that he has power over us. But he has no right to ask you to do anything for him that you don't feel right about.”

“I know what you mean, Libby,” Gloria admitted. “But saying ‘no' could get me fired.”

“Then, go to Bobby's boss, Mr. Forth!”

Gloria shook her head. “You know that wouldn't help.”

“Why not?”

“Because he lets Bobby run things. Mr. Forth just wants to be left alone.” She smiled wanly. “But you know, I feel better just talking to you about it.”

“Good,” I said. “That's what friends are for. I'm
practising being a good listener.”

“And now I have to be getting back,” Gloria announced.

“So soon?” It was only six o'clock.

She stood and readjusted the cinch belt over the waistband of the red pedal pushers. “I want to be sure Dad eats the food I fixed for him. Before he falls asleep.”

“I'll walk you part way, then,” I told her. “Coming, Ernie?” I didn't have to ask him twice.

“Just exactly what is wrong with your father?” I ventured to ask as we dawdled along. Ernie was happily exploring the ditches on either side of the road, scaring out moles and field mice as he pounced.

“My father?” Gloria plucked the petals, one by one, off a roadside daisy. “He loves me; he loves me not.”

“I don't mean to pry,” I said. “But I did lose my mother to cancer, so I know what it's like having someone close who's really, really sick.”

“My dad's not sick like that,” Gloria admitted, tossing the flower onto the road. “He's sick the way Mr. Forth is.”

I stopped in my tracks, frowning. “Mr. Forth? At work?”

“He's an alcoholic too.”

“I didn't know that!”

“Well, he is. Sometimes he doesn't come out of his office all day. You must have noticed.”

I had noticed. “I just never thought that was the reason,” I said as we resumed walking. “He seems like a nice man.”