Page 119 of Embracing the Change

My eyes were on Alyona.

“This week’s menu is on the counter. If you have any changes, let me know. I’m going to go pick up that Prada blouse you needed mended, and I’ll be stopping by the market on the way home,” she said this while drying my breakfast dishes.

“Alyona,” I called quietly.

“Don’t,” she whispered harshly.

I lifted my cup from the saucer and took a sip, not removing my eyes from her.

Alyona, a second-generation Russian immigrant, and as such, she had instilled in her an impeccable work ethic and a passionate countenance, couldn’t hold it in for long.

She slapped a towel down on the marble and turned to me.

“I shouldn’t complain,” she stated.

“I’m not sure that’s true,” I replied.

“It isn’t my place.”

I gave her a look.

“Okay,” she snapped. “She makes me feel…irrelevant.”

My lips tightened.

“I know my picking up your dry cleaning and dusting your shelves isn’t going to change the world,” she continued. “But I take pride in taking care of you, in taking care of them.” She swung an arm out randomly to indicate my children. “Maybe my work isn’t important, but still, I checked, and I make more money than she does, and I don’t have to pay rent or live somewhere where I have to commute three hours a day to get to work. So I don’t know why she looks down on me. I know my place. But she doesn’t have to put me in my place.”

With her speech and learning she’d gone so far as to actually compare her salary to Felice’s, it was a wonder my mouth didn’t crack, my lips got so stiff at her words.

I forced them to move when I declared, “What you do is very important to me.”

She snatched up the towel and started polishing the marble with it, mumbling, “I know.”

“And it’s just important, Alyona,” I stressed. “Don’t let Felice make you think any differently. You don’t have to work to find a cure for cancer to be doing something important. This world is able to go around because of all the things everyone does to make it do so. Heavens, the only contribution I’ve made is my three children. I’m very proud of that, and I don’t mind I’m now doing nothing but enjoying my retirement.”

“You raise a lot of money, Miss Nora,” she returned.

I shrugged that off. “The fact remains, if you have pride in what you do, and you do it well, which you very much do, no one should steal that from you.”

Still polishing the sparkling counters, it was Alyona’s turn to shrug.

“Nico adores and respects you,” I carried on. “It breaks my heart, but it seems clear that you’ll be in this family far longer than Felice, if that make you feel better.”

“It doesn’t,” she was still mumbling. “He was so happy on their wedding day, even if…” She turned from the counter to me. “Who wants dirty feet at their wedding? That was weird.”

I smiled, because it was weird.

After I took another sip of coffee, I asked, “Are you okay with all of that?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Nora, but she’s just annoying.”

Felice was that.

No need to dwell, time to move along.

“Right. Now we have to discuss Jamie and the future,” I said.

Alyona’s irritable face turned panicked.

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