The Housemaid

Nina and Andrew have a quick courtship. Andrew makes his intentions clear early on: He was engaged to a woman named Kathleen before, which didn’t work out; he’s ready to settle down quickly and is willing to take on Cecelia as well. For Nina, he’s the perfect man: He’s handsome, has a stable job, and is willing to be an involved father.

In the days leading up to the wedding, Nina is unable to find a single flaw in Andrew. The only off-putting aspect is his mother, Evelyn, who is around a lot and isn’t a warm person. In addition, she constantly criticizes Nina’s parenting. However, Nina brushes this aside. Things seem perfect initially, and Nina tries to be the perfect wife. She works out and takes care of herself, always dresses in impractical white clothing because Andrew loves white on her, studies recipes and makes delicious home-cooked meals, and even lightens her hair because Andrew likes her blonde.

One evening, three months into their marriage, Andrew mentions to Nina that her roots are showing. She realizes that she has been so busy with Cecelia that she missed a hair appointment. Andrew asks Nina for some help finding papers stashed in the upstairs storage area. He leads her up to the space in the attic, which Nina is surprised to discover is a room with a cot, a mini fridge, a tiny window, and a closet with just a bucket inside.

Andrew locks her inside the room. Nina doesn’t realize this at first, expecting him to come back. When he doesn’t, she begins to feel claustrophobic and tries to open the window, only to find it painted shut. She yells herself hoarse, until she hears Andrew’s voice on the other side, 30 minutes later, telling her that she’s locked in to learn her lesson. When Nina gets agitated and demands to be let out, Andrew leaves again, promising to come back once she has calmed down.

Nina pounds and scrapes at the door after Andrew leaves, to no avail. Worried about Cecelia, Nina resolves to grab her and run as soon as Andrew opens the door. Andrew eventually returns, at midnight, and tells Nina not to bother screaming, as everything below the attic is soundproofed. He’ll let her out once she has learned her lesson: He’s angry that Nina missed her hair appointment, saying, “I can’t have my wife walking around like a slob with dark roots showing” (208).

Andrew promises to return the next morning once he has decided her punishment, and he leaves Nina locked inside overnight. Nina is forced to use the bucket to relieve herself, realizing that Andrew deliberately set up the room this way. She’s parched and hungry, but the mini fridge only holds three bottles of water, one of which she guzzles down.

In the morning, Andrew returns and informs Nina that Evelyn is watching Cecelia. Nina’s punishment is to give Andrew 100 strands of her hair that she plucks from her head, with their follicles intact. He warns Nina that if the follicle is missing and the root doesn’t show, the hair doesn’t count. He’ll take the hair from her when he returns from work that evening.

By the time Andrew returns, Nina has managed to pluck out her hair, and slides the strands across in an envelope underneath the door. However, Andrew tells her to start all over, as one strand is missing a follicle. He leaves Nina overnight in the room once again. Nina has 100 strands, plus an extra 10, ready for Andrew by the morning. She’s now exhausted and on the verge of passing out. After counting and inspecting all the strands, Andrew opens the door and brings her a glass of water and a bagel. He carries Nina downstairs and settles her in bed, asking her to rest while he takes care of Cecelia. His voice is so kind that Nina almost believes the whole experience was a hallucination.

The day she’s let out of the attic, Nina wakes up in the afternoon to the sound of water running in the bathroom. Her phone displays concerned messages from Andrew about her and Cecelia, and Nina wonders who is in the bathroom if Andrew is at work and texting her. Still dizzy, she crawls across to the bathroom and finds Cecelia with her eyes closed and propped up in a rapidly filling bathtub. Horrified, she’s about to switch off the faucet when the police arrive and a paramedic takes Cecelia away. Nina realizes that Andrew probably drugged both of them; however, she’s unable to explain this to the police, who question her about why she was trying to drown Cecelia. Concluding that she drugged herself, too, the police call and inform Andrew that they “got here in time” (221).

Nina spends eight months in a psychiatric hospital. The story she’s told is that she fed Cecelia and herself some sedatives prescribed by her physician, before placing her baby in a bathtub in an apparent attempt to kill them both. Nina has no memory of any of this, including the prescription, but Andrew’s family doctor assures Nina that this is true. The therapist at the hospital thinks that Nina experiences delusions and depression; the former led her to imagine being locked up, and the latter caused her to attempt murder and death by suicide.

Nina slowly begins to believe this story because Andrew is wonderful to her and she can’t believe he would’ve done something like this. She receives anti-psychotics and anti-depressants. Eventually, she’s discharged, and as excited as she is to see Cecelia again, she dreads going home and resolves to never set foot in the attic again.

Nina begins therapy with a psychiatrist whom Evelyn highly recommends. He suggests that it might be therapeutic for Nina to confront her fear about the attic. After Nina’s initial claims, the police checked the space and found nothing but a storage closet with boxes and papers. Nina tells Andrew about what the doctor suggested on the car ride home, and he thinks it’s a good idea.

Evelyn is at home, watching Cecelia. Nina was allowed to come home only on the condition that she not be left alone with Cecelia, so Evelyn or Andrew is always around. Evelyn mentions disapprovingly that the bedroom lights were left on while Andrew and Nina were out. Knowing how much Andrew craves Evelyn’s approval, Nina immediately takes the blame. Evelyn heads home, and Nina, Andrew, and Cecelia have a family dinner, after which Andrew brings up to the attic. Nina agrees to go up and see it.

Andrew leads Nina upstairs, assuring her that there’s nothing to worry about. When he opens the room, it’s pitch black, which Nina finds strange because she remembers a window. When Andrew switches on the light, it’s unusually blinding.

Again, Andrew shuts Nina in and explains that he boarded up the room and installed the ultra-bright lights—if they’re switched off, the room is pitch black. Being shut in the room is punishment for Nina failing to turn off the lights and thus wasting electricity, as Evelyn pointed out earlier. Andrew admits to having orchestrated the entire ordeal (which Nina believed she hallucinated) to show her what would happen if she tried to get away. He leaves her locked in the room overnight.

This time, Nina rations the water bottles in the fridge, unsure of how long she’ll be in the room. Andrew lets her out the following night on the condition that she doesn’t tell anyone what happened there. No one will believe her anyway, as they’ll think she’s having delusions again. Whenever Nina needs to be disciplined, Andrew will take her up to the room. He says he’s doing so for Nina’s own good: “I’m just trying to teach you how to be a better person” (235).

Nina tries her best to get out of the marriage, begging and bargaining. She tries to be a perfect wife by keeping the house spotless and cooking delicious dinners. Nevertheless, Andrew finds reasons to punish her, so she goes the other way, hoping to repel him. She becomes shrewish and irritable with Andrew, overeats, stops going to the gym, and stops putting any care into her appearance. Andrew continues to punish her, sending her to the room once every couple of months. In addition, she’s punished for any transgressions on Cecelia’s part, like if she refuses to wear the uncomfortable frilly dresses that Andrew picks out for her. Nina lives in fear that Cecelia will be punished directly someday. Andrew taunts her by keeping a jar of peanut butter, to which Cecelia is allergic, in the pantry.

Nina confides in Suzanne, another mother in the PTA. Suzanne pretends to be empathetic but informs Andrew immediately. He already sought out and told all of Nina’s friends about her apparently “unstable” mental history, asking them to inform him if Nina ever said anything strange or erratic. Nina is put in the hospital for another two months and discovers that the director of the psychiatric hospital is Andrew’s father’s golfing buddy.

One day, seven years into Nina’s marriage, Suzanne drops Nina home from a PTA meeting and comments on how attractive Enzo, Nina’s landscaper, is. Despite all the mothers fawning over Enzo’s looks, Nina appreciates Enzo more for his kindness. He always plants beautiful flowers and teaches Cecelia their names, allowing her to help him in the garden when she asks. Knowing that Enzo doesn’t speak much English, on an impulse, Nina confesses out loud to him that Andrew holds her hostage in the attic. Enzo seems horrified by this, and Nina regrets saying anything aloud, as she assumed he wouldn’t understand her.

Andrew locks Nina in the attic and forces her to pepper-spray herself in the eyes because she apparently sprayed too much air freshener in the room. When Nina looks out the small attic window, Enzo catches sight of her. He immediately comes upstairs and bangs on the attic door, asking Nina where the key is so that he can let her out, and she realizes that he speaks perfect English.

Nina asks Enzo to leave, as it’ll be worse if Andrew finds him in the house; with the money and connections he has, Andrew can easily have Enzo deported. Enzo promises to call the police if Nina is still inside the next morning. Before he leaves, he tells her that she doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.

Andrew lets Nina out that night; the next morning, after he leaves to drop Cecelia at school, Nina notices Enzo in the yard. He usually doesn’t work there two days in a row and has come just to check on her. Enzo asks Nina to tell him the truth about what’s happening, and Nina confides in him about everything that has happened over the past few years. Furious, Enzo promises to help Nina find a way to escape.

Nina and Enzo secretly meet at his apartment, where he tells her his story. He had a sister back in Sicily who, like Nina, was married to a rich and powerful man who abused her. One day, her husband pushed her down the stairs, and she died from the injuries. Enzo retaliated violently against the man but had to then leave Sicily for his own safety. He pretends not to speak English now so that the other housewives leave him alone.

If Nina is to escape, Enzo tells her, she’ll need plane tickets, new fake documents, and some cash. Nina manages to organize these in a few days with his help, storing them in two separate security deposit boxes. However, a few days later, when Nina gets home after dropping Cecelia off at school, Andrew is waiting for her with the contents of one of the boxes: the forged documents. Nina rushes to tell Enzo that Andrew knows; Enzo consoles Nina and promises to kill Andrew for her, but she suddenly has another idea.

Nina looks for someone young, pretty, and desperate to replace her and chances upon Millie with her criminal record. Enzo disapproves of making someone else the scapegoat, but Nina explains that Millie has no attachments, unlike Nina with Cecelia, and can escape if she wants to. Nina hires a private investigator to dig into Millie’s past, and he finds “one […] tidbit that changes everything” (258).

Nina convinces Andrew that they desperately need domestic help. She spends the week before Millie is to arrive complaining of migraines and doing no work, leaving the house in a mess. Andrew is furious when he discovers that Nina has put Millie in the attic bedroom and threatens to fire Millie when she arrives; however, he doesn’t, because it’s the first day in a week that he comes home to a clean house and a delicious dinner. Additionally, Millie is young and beautiful.

Nina knows her plan will work only if there’s a mutual attraction between Andrew and Millie, if Millie hates Nina enough to sleep with him, and if they have an opportunity. The first is easy enough, and Nina works hard to orchestrate the other two. She treats Millie badly, making her a victim in Andrew’s eyes the way Nina once was because of her boss, Stewart. With a secret IUD put in, Nina manages to extort their fertility specialist into telling Andrew that Nina will never get pregnant. Additionally, before the appointment, Nina tells Evelyn that she thinks she might be pregnant and asks her to send across Andy’s baby things; with the news that Nina can’t get pregnant, she knows that the sight of his baby things will devastate Andrew. The night after the appointment, Nina picks a fight with him and yells about how if he were with a younger woman, he’d be able to have a child. She’s loud enough to draw Millie down, who Nina can see thinks that Nina is ill-advised.

After this, when Millie’s instructed to get tickets for Showdown, Nina simply gives Millie the wrong dates and takes Cecelia away to camp to keep her safe. With the opportunity created, Nina knows she’s free the moment she sees Millie’s tracking device locate her in the city.

Lying alone in the hotel bed, Nina revels in her freedom and plans where to take Cecelia. Enzo arrives to tell her that Andrew has fired him, too, and Enzo and Nina have sex. She tells him that she’s leaving town the next day, but Enzo insists they can’t leave Millie with Andrew; they must tell Millie the truth. Nina, however, asserts that Enzo doesn’t understand—there are things about the situation that he still doesn’t know.