Page 26 of The Housemaid
“Please stay up in the attic after bedtime,” she says. “The rest of the house is for my family. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
She shakes her head. “Honestly, I’m not even sure how much we need a maid. Maybe this was a mistake…”
Oh no. Is she firing me at one in the morning because I was watching television in her living room? This is bad. And there’s no chance Nina is going to give me a good recommendation for another job. She seems more like the sort of person who would call every potential employer to tell them how much she hated me.
I’ve got to fix this.
I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand. “Listen, Nina,” I begin. “Nothing was going on between me and Andrew…”
She throws her head back and laughs. It’s a disturbing sound, something almost between a laugh and a cry. “Is that what you think I’m worried about? Andrew and I are soulmates. We have a child together and soon we’ll have another baby together. You think I’m scared that my husband would risk everything in his life for some trampy servant living in the attic?”
I swallow. I may have just made things much worse. “No, he wouldn’t.”
“Damn straight he wouldn’t.” She looks me in the eyes. “And don’t ever forget it.”
I stand there, not sure what to say. Finally, she jerks her head in the direction of the coffee table, “Clean up that mess—right now.”
With those words, she turns on her heel and goes back upstairs.
There isn’t really a mess. It’s just the water glass Andrew left behind. My cheeks burn with humiliation as I walk over to the coffee table and snatch up the glass. The bedroom door slams upstairs, and I look down at the glass in my hand.
Before I can stop myself, I hurl it to the ground.
It smashes spectacularly on the floor. Glass goes everywhere. I take a step back, and a shard digs into the pad of my foot.
Wow, that was extremely stupid.
I blink down at the mess I made on the ground. I’ve got to get it cleaned up, and moreover, I’ve got to find some shoes so I don’t get any more glass in my feet. I take a deep breath, trying to slow down my breathing. I’ll get the glass cleaned up and it will be fine. Nina will never know.
But I’ll have to be more careful in the future.
FIFTEEN
This Saturday afternoon, Nina is throwing a small PTA gathering in her backyard. They’re meeting up to plan something called “field day” in which the kids play in a field for a few hours, and somehow it takes months of planning to prepare for it. Nina has been talking about it nonstop lately. And she has texted me no less than a dozen times to remind me to pick up the hors d’oeuvres.
I’m starting to get stressed because, as usual, the entire house was a mess when I woke up this morning. I don’t know how this house gets so messy. Is Nina’s medication treating some sort of disorder where she gets up in the middle of the night and makes a mess in the house? Is that a thing?
I don’t know how the bathrooms get so bad overnight, for example. When I come into her bathroom to clean in the morning, there are usually at least three or four towels strewn on the floor, sopping wet. There’s usually toothpaste caked into the sink that I have to scrub to get free. Nina has some sort of aversion to throwing her clothes in the laundry basket, so it takes me a good ten minutes to gather her bra, underwear, pants, pantyhose, etc. Thank God Andrew is better at getting his clothing in the laundry basket. Then there’s the stuff that needs to be dry cleaned, of which there is a lot. Nina doesn’t distinguish between the two, and God forbid I make the wrong decision about what goes in the laundry machine and what needs to be run to the dry cleaner. That would be a hanging offense.
The other thing is the food wrappers. I find candy wrappers stuffed into nearly every crevice in her bedroom and bathroom. I suppose that explains why Nina is fifty pounds heavier than she was in the photographs of when she and Andrew first met.
By the time I have cleaned the house top to bottom, dropped off the dry cleaning, and completed the laundry and the ironing, I’m running very short on time. The women are going to arrive within the hour, and I’m still not done with all the tasks Nina assigned me, including picking up the hors d’oeuvres. She’s not going to understand if I try to explain that to her. Considering she nearly fired me last week when she caught me watchingFamily Feudwith Andrew, I can’t afford to make any mistakes. I’ve got to make sure this afternoon is perfect.
Then I get to the backyard. The Winchesters’ backyard is one of the most beautiful sights in the neighborhood. Enzo has done his job well—the hedges are trimmed so precisely, it’s like he used a ruler. Flowers dot the edges of the yard, adding a pop of color. And the grass is so lush and green, I’m half tempted to lie down in it, waving my arms around to make grass angels.
But apparently, they don’t spend much time out here, because all the patio furniture has a thick layer of dust on it. Everything has a thick layer of dust on it.
Oh God, I donothave time to get everything done.
“Millie? Are you okay?”
Andrew is standing behind me, dressed casually for a change, in a blue polo shirt and khaki slacks. Somehow, he looks even better than he does in an expensive suit.
“I’m fine,” I mumble. I shouldn’t even be talking to him.
“You look like you’re about to cry,” he points out.
