RITA FALLS APART
"I can't do this any more, Nick, I just can't."
Rita was sitting frozen-paralyzed on the main divan in the sitting room. That was a first, a sight that Nick had not seen before, not ever. She'd served people sitting there…. but not sitting, not Rita, not any woman with her status. She wasn't crying, or even visibly agitated. Just nervously 'determined'.
As such, Nick started to strategize, 'how best to get a friend of mine, to quit being hysterical before the Lord and Lady of the manor get home.' From Antigua and Barbuda of all places. Nick, he'd been against it and had told the Commander as much. Neither Fred Waterford nor Ray Cushing - who was accompanying him with his Wife Sonia - enjoyed anything resembling diplomatic immunity there.
Not to mention having a Mexican jet fighter force them out of the sky over the Caribbean!
Out of habit, Nick quickly checked the window to the street, just in case a black SUV was turning into the property. Commander Cushing's detail was handling security for the vacation, leaving Nick at home with little to do. He then he joined her sitting - those days with the security level that New Gilead was operating under, there was little outside vehicle traffic.
Good thing too. When he sat, it seemed to snap Rita out of it. She quickly stood and took a few steps away from the divan. Now facing it in a passive posture, she said as someone awaiting punishment, "Guardian Blaine, I am so sorry."
Nick exclaimed, "'Guardian' Blaine?" He then laughed a bit, "Gilead really is winning if you start calling me that!"
If Nick had not been there to deal with Rita, who knew what would have happened. Everyone breaks, he knew, it's biology. He though it a sign that this - the first outburst of Rita's **ever** - was finally getting to her.
As it was, Rita gave Nick a polite curtsy, then left the sitting room for the kitchen - a place she felt more in control, no matter how little.
Sitting alone, Nick thought that up until then, Rita had just kept her head down - had 'gone with the flow'. Nick had never really worried about her. She had absorbed the micro-aggressions aimed her way, did better next time, which never really seemed to matter.
But until a few minutes ago, Rita had just kept keeping on, keeping on. Until a few minutes ago, she'd not needed Nick to rescue her, not now.
Nick thought, 'it had been me having the affair with her, but it is now Rita losing it over Offred's suicide.' His thought concluded, 'maybe that's what's now wrong with me. Rita loses it - finding Offred swinging from the light fixture. Me, I didn't. Just went into military-mode. Like I'd done in Chicago countless times when picking up pieces of friends.'
Nick stood up from the divan and said out-loud to himself, "I need to stay away from this new Offred."
Nick walked down the short hall and turned into the kitchen where Rita was now furiously busy at the sink. He asked her, "remember when we met, you and me were at that school - the holding centre."
Without looking up Rita said, "Wow, Nick. You're trying to calm me down, and you remind me of that." Without looking up and realizing that she'd been scrubbing the pot she'd been holding far, far, too long, and far, far too vigourously, she said more pensively, "you saved me, Nick. Yet you brought me here."
With Nick still leaning against the jamb of the kitchen door, Rita continued. "You know what The Commander said to me, said it right after Offred had been taken away? He and Mrs. Waterford, they'd been arguing. She'd been really leaning into him. So much so I felt compelled to warn her, that The Commander 'owned' her as much as he 'owned' me or the Handmaid."
Rita continued, now that she had another pot in the suds, ready to overdo it on that one. "Mrs. Waterford had told him, 'what did you expect', which he knew what she had meant. All those 'Scrabble nights' in the Commander's Study. All the trips to Jezebels. The ones YOU drove for, Nick. Sweet Jesus, I hope that Commander Waterford spares this new girl that."
"But the man might have a conscience afterall," she said to Nick, without finishing the words that followed in her head, 'now there's a frightening thought,!'
"That evening, after Offred had been taken," Rita said matter of factly, "The Commander came into the kitchen as I was just about finished. He told me that he was going to give me the night off, that he'd make his own before-bed tea. That he'd wanted the coming Antigua trip to go smoothly."
"I was about to put away to dishes and pans in the drying rack, he asked me to stop, told me to take the rest of the evening for myself - that he'd finish them. After making himself the tea."
Rita turned from the sink towards Nick, "as I was leaving to go to my little cubby-hole for some sleep, he called out my name. Not 'Rita', he called me 'Mrs. Blue.' Hearing that coming from him I froze."
She continued, making hard eye-contact with Nick, "The Commander, he then said he had appreciated 'the staff' here at the house, particularly that day. He said that it had been a 'hard day' for us all. He then said, directly to me, 'Mrs. Blue, it was good to have a friendly face today.' All I could think was to scream at him, 'we're NOT friends'."
"As I stood frozen to the very spot you're now standing on, Nick, he wouldn't let it go. He then said, 'Gilead has had to do some very horrible things, to face the world-wide crises that others won't. We do those hard things because God has blessed and tasked us so.' He then said to me, 'Mrs. Blue, if it ever gets to it, I trust I can count on you to testify - testify that I was never once cruel to you'."
Rita stood silently, then added, "you think I lost it a moment ago. I lost it seeing Offred all blue and contorted from the light fixture, I lost it all over again when he said that."
THE NEW OFFRED
Nick was still leaning against the jamb, motionless in the kitchen doorway.
Rita said, "after he said that, I went to bed. It didn't really hit me until….," at that point Rita raised her head to look at the kitchen ceiling, "….. until this one arrived. A new Offred. I'm not telling you something you don't know - this morning, I cleaned up the Scrabble game in his office. You know what goes on. You drive him, Nick, you drive him and her."
Nick finally spoke, "both of us have had our moments, Rita - but it's important that we get over them."
"Jesus, Nick," she barked once more, this time not so sharply. "I found her, I found your girlfriend. Hanging from the ceiling fixture." She looked at him, "how could you? You remained so calm during it all, how could you! That was damn cold, Nick!"
He leaned back into the darker hallway and sighed, "Rita - at the front, in Chicago, we did not have the luxury of mourning. You had to switch it off, almost immediately."
"Nick, I get it. She was not a fuck-toy for you, you had feelings for her - however true feelings get all screwed up here. She would me ask if you had ever made a pass at me. I told her, you'd never. Which had the added benefit of actually being true! Beth, at Jezebels, she complains you never try anything with her!" She then looked away, "I get it, you two were trying to etch out some normalcy here - she a Handmaid for mercy's sake…."
A tear then cascaded down her cheek almost unnoticed, she said, "I never knew her name."
At that, Nick looked away, then down to the floor, remained silent.
"You know what happened, just before the Waterfords had gone to Antigua?" Rita supported herself at the sink in front of her. "I asked Mrs. Waterford what her name had been. I got a sock in the jaw for my effort. Just for asking a decent question. The girl's name."
Nick said, "what do you want me to say, Rita?"
"I don't want you to tell me her name," she replied. She then looked at his silhouetted figure now set back into the dark of the hall. "I can't decide if I'm disappointed in you or not. You saved me, you slept with her. Me, I want to be like your men at the front. Take it in, acknowledge it, do what is necessary, and move on."
At that, Nick again remained silent, allowing the dark silence of the Waterford estate to absorb everything.
Rita stood back from the sink, straightened her Martha's smock, the gray utilities she detested so. Standing facing him in the kitchen - she abruptly turned to face him.
"Nick, are you going to start up with the new girl, the one upstairs?" Not waiting for Nick to answer, she continued, "That would be weird, Nick, even for you. I get it, Nick, it's not for sex. But it's just as dangerous. The Commander, if he treats this new one the way he treated 'what's her name', you're playing with fire." She paused, "You adopt hard-luck cases. Like me. You never tried anything with me, no quid-pro-quo, I'm just as grateful for that. But with the girl upstairs, just don't fall in love, Nick. That, that would just…." Rita searched for the word, then returned to the one she'd just used"…. that would just be weird."
Nick finally spoke, "the whole thing is weird, Rita."
"Was this what you fought for, Nick?" she asked. "You, Nick, you're the Guardian. If you listen to Ofglen next door, you're even an Eye of God."
Nick waxed fondly, "Gilead could have been great. Gilead is better than the country which took my dad's pension - that killed my brother just as effectively as The Wall, Rita. You should have heard him, Andrew Pryce. Still, he still wants to clean up The United States." Nick said that as long as Andrew Pryce was in charge, Gilead was worth supporting. Everything else was 'temporary', Nick said.
Rita folded her arms, in an 'oh sure' pose. She then said, "The USA? America had not enslaved people for 150 years. Pryce and the rest, first thing they did, they brought back the worst of the USA."
She then took a step back towards the sink. "It's not just the new girl, the one upstairs, she's the type you'll probably adopt - your perverse need to get people through Gilead… get them through, because the one upstairs, she's far from finding her voice or her strength."
THE EYES OF OFGLEN
Rita continued, "the other girl, the one up the street, Offred's shopping partner." Rita paused, "she's on to you - you and Beth, I mean. The things you do for Beth, and for the Martha network. But she also thinks you are an Eye, Nick. If other Martha's begin to suspect that, you might find your food poisoned."
"It's you who feeds me, Rita," Nick said.
"Beth has influence, but Marthas act independently. If Ofglen says the wrong thing to her Martha….."
"She'd be right," Nick said confidently.
Rita crossed her arms, now completely distant from her crisis of a few minutes previous, in another room. Once again, Rita's kitchen had been her sanctuary.
She demanded, "Just who are you, Nick? Mayday, Eye of God, hero of Chicago, puppy-rescuer of enslaved Handmaids?"
"Rita, I'll make you a deal," he said. "I'm going to be in the new Handmaid's company a lot. I'll be damned if anything happens to this one on my watch. I've already failed one…."
".…. one who you cared for ….." Rita added, which stopped him in his tracks.
"Rita, it's lonely."
She finally turned and walked over to the oven, said, "I've got to get dinner on. The Lord and Lady of the manor will be home from their holiday."
Nick straightened up, and added, "not if some NATO country shoots them out of the sky first!" He gave a salute to Rita and concluded, "I'm just glad to see that the old Rita is back. You're going to survive this, girl. You don't need me."