I feel terrible about this. I really do.
I rip the kitchen apart. I pull out every dish and every cup I can find. I throw pots and pans on the floor. Just as Millie arrives, I’m getting to the refrigerator. Growing up, I was responsible for my fair share of chores, and it’s physically painful for me to take a milk cartoon and throw it on the ground, letting the milk spill out everywhere. But I force myself. Means to an end.
When Millie enters the kitchen, I turn around and look at her accusingly. “Where is it?”
“Where… where is what?”
“My notes!” I bring my hand to my forehead like the horror of it all might make me faint. “I left all my notes for the PTA meeting tonight on the kitchen counter! And now they’re gone!” And then accusingly: “What did you do with them?”
I do have notes for the meeting. But they are safely tucked away on my computer. Why would my only copies be here in a pile on the kitchen counter? It makes no sense, but I keep insisting it’s true. She knows I didn’t leave the notes there, but she doesn’t know that I know that.
I yell loud enough to get Andy’s attention. He feels sorry for her. His heart goes out to her because I’m accusing her of something he knows she didn’t do. He’s attracted to her because I’m turning her into the victim.
The same way I was the victim when I got yelled at for my breasts leaking milk all those years ago.
“I’m so sorry, Nina,” Millie stammers. “If there’s anything I can do…”
My eyes sweep down to the disaster I created on the kitchen floor. “You can clean up this disgusting mess you left in my kitchen while I fix this problem.”
And at that moment, I have accomplished all three of my goals. First, the mutual attraction: her in skinny jeans and effortlessly beautiful. Second, Millie hates me. Third, when I storm out of the room, they have an opportunity to be alone together.
But it’s not quite enough. I have one other ace up my sleeve.
Andy wants a baby.
It won’t happen with me. Not with the IUD sitting snugly in my uterus. And Andy is going to discover I’m barren, because the private investigator Enzo found for me managed to get a few great photographs of the fertility specialist with a woman who isn’t his wife of twenty-five years. All the good doctor has to do is tell Andy there’s no chance I’ll ever get pregnant, and those photographs go in the garbage.
The day before our appointment with Dr. Gelman, I give Evelyn a call down in Florida. As always, she seems less than thrilled to hear from me.
“Hello, Nina,” she says drily. What do you want from me? is implied.
“I just want you to be the first to know,” I say, “that my period is late. I think I’m pregnant!”
“Oh…” She pauses, torn between wanting to be excited for her first biological grandchild and hating the idea that I would be the mother of that grandchild. “How lovely.”
Lovely. It’s probably the opposite of what she’s thinking.
“Hopefully you’re taking prenatal multivitamins,” she says. “And you need to follow a strict diet when you’re pregnant. It’s not good for the baby if you have lots of calorie-laden treats, like you usually do. Andy is lax about letting you get away with it, but for the good of the baby, you should try to control yourself.”
“Yes, of course.” I smile thinly, delighted that Evelyn will never be the grandmother of my child. “Also, I was wondering… It would be so great if you could send us some of Andy’s old baby stuff. He was talking the other day about wanting to pass on his old baby blankets and stuff like that to the new baby. Do you think you could send it?”
“Yes, I’ll call Roberto and ask him to send over the box.”
“Lovely.”
Andy is shaken by the revelation from Dr. Gelman. I watch his face in the doctor’s office as the bombshell drops. I’m afraid Nina will never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. His eyes fill with tears. If he were anyone else, I might feel sorry for him.
Then that night, I pick a fight with him. And not just any fight. I remind him of the very reason why he will never father a child with me.
“It’s all my fault!” I summon tears to my eyes by remembering the time when he locked me in the attic and turned the furnace up full blast, until I was clawing at my skin. “If you were with a younger woman, you could have a child. I’m the one who’s the problem!”
A younger woman like Millie. I don’t say it, but he must be thinking it. I see the way he looks at her.