9. Millie
MILLIE
My mother shows up at my apartment at six on a Tuesday with a reusable grocery bag full of ingredients I didn't ask for and the face of a woman who's already decided how this evening is going to go.
"You're cooking?" I ask, stepping aside to let her in.
"We're cooking." She sets the bag on my kitchen counter and starts unpacking containers of rice, beans, chicken thighs, and plantains. "You haven't had a home-cooked meal in weeks."
"I've been eating."
"Takeout doesn't count." She pulls out a cutting board from the cabinet below the sink without asking where it is because she's been in this apartment enough times to know. "And your boyfriend is coming."
I freeze with my hand on the refrigerator door. "What?"
"Duncan. I texted him this morning and invited him to dinner. He said yes."
"You have his number? How?"
"LaToya gave it to me last week." She starts washing the plantains in the sink, her back to me. "I wanted to meet the man my daughter is supposedly marrying. Make sure he's not a complete waste of time."
I close the refrigerator without taking anything out. My mother is a nurse who's worked thirty years at Mount Sinai and has exactly zero patience for performances. She can spot a lie from across a room, which is why I've been avoiding bringing Duncan anywhere near her.
"Mama, you didn't have to do this."
"I know I didn't have to. I wanted to." She turns around and looks at me with the face she uses when she's about to say something I won't like. "You've been in the papers every other day with this man, and I haven't met him once. That's not how we do things, Millie."
There's a knock at the door before I can argue. My mother wipes her hands on a dish towel and nods toward the hallway.
"Go let him in. I'll finish here."
Duncan is standing in the hallway holding a bottle of red wine. He's wearing dark jeans and a gray henley, hair slightly damp, and when he sees my face he has the decency to look apologetic.
"Your mom texted me."
"I'm aware."
"Should I leave?"
I consider it for half a second, then step aside. "No. Get in here."
He follows me into the kitchen where my mother is already browning chicken in a cast-iron skillet that she definitely brought from her own apartment because I don't own one.
She looks up when we enter, wipes her hands again, and crosses to Duncan with the assessing gaze of someone who's seen every kind of man walk through emergency room doors and knows which ones are worth saving.
"Mrs. Harris." Duncan extends his hand. "Thank you for inviting me."
She takes his hand, shakes it once, and holds on longer than necessary. "Call me Deena. And you're welcome, though I'm sure Millie would have preferred more warning."
"Yes, I would have," I mutter.
My mother releases Duncan's hand and points to the counter. "Make yourself useful. Those plantains need slicing."
Duncan blinks, then nods and sets the wine bottle down.
I hand him a knife and a cutting board and he gets to work without complaint, which surprises me more than it should.
My mother goes back to the chicken and I start prepping the rice, the three of us moving around the small kitchen in a rhythm that feels surreal.
"So, Duncan," my mother says after a minute. "What do you do?"
"I run a venture capital firm. We fund startups, mostly in tech and real estate."
"That sounds lucrative."
"It is."
"And before that?"
"Finance. I worked at a hedge fund for three years after college, then started my own company when I was twenty-five."
My mother hums, flipping the chicken. "Millie tells me you two went to high school together."
"We did."
"Were you friends?"
Duncan glances at me, then back at the plantains. "I don't think we were."
"Why's that?"
"I was a pretty terrible person back then. Your daughter was talented and driven, and I responded to that by being dismissive because I didn't know how else to handle it."
I stop stirring the rice. My mother turns around slowly, one eyebrow raised. She studies him for another long moment, then goes back to the chicken. "Well, at least you're self-aware now. That's more than most men manage."
We finish cooking in relative silence, the only sounds are the sizzle of the skillet and the occasional clink of utensils against pots. When everything's ready, we carry the dishes to my small dining table and sit down, my mother at the head, Duncan and me on opposite sides.
The food is good, better than good, and I realize halfway through my second helping that I haven't eaten something my mother cooked in almost three months. Duncan eats like someone who's actually hungry instead of just being polite, which scores him a point I didn't know I was keeping track of.
"This is really excellent," he says. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." My mother takes a sip of the wine he brought, which she poured into a coffee mug because it was the closest thing to her. "So tell me about your family."
Duncan sets down his fork. "My father is a corporate lawyer, semi-retired now. My mother does charity work, boards and galas mostly. I have one sister, she's in grad school at Columbia."
"And are you close with them?"
"My sister, yes. My parents, less so."
"Why's that?"
"My father has very specific ideas about success and I spent most of my twenties trying to meet them. My mother loves me but she's never been good at standing up to him, so she mostly just stays out of the way."
My mother nods like this makes perfect sense. "So you grew up trying to prove yourself to a man who probably wouldn't be satisfied no matter what you did."
Duncan's jaw tightens slightly. "That's accurate."
"And that's why you were terrible in high school."
"Probably."
She takes another sip of wine, still watching him. "Understanding where it came from doesn't excuse it."
"I know."
"But it's a start."
The conversation shifts after that, moving to safer topics like the weather and the construction on the subway line near my mother's apartment.
Duncan asks about her work at the hospital and she tells him about the nursing staff shortage, the twelve-hour shifts that regularly stretch to fourteen, the patients who can't afford their medications but show up to the ER anyway because it's the only place that won't turn them away.
He listens like he actually cares, asks follow-up questions that aren't performative, and when my mother mentions a funding cut to the emergency department he pulls out his phone and makes a note to himself right there at the table.
"What are you writing?" I ask.
"Reminder to call someone at Mount Sinai tomorrow. I might be able to help with the funding gap."
My mother tilts her head. "You don't have to do that."
"I know. But I want to."
After dinner, Duncan helps clear the table without being asked and my mother corners me in the kitchen while he's in the bathroom.
"I like him," she murmurs.
"You just met him."
"I know what I know." She hands me a dish to dry. "He's got baggage and he's working on it, which is more than I can say for most of the men you've dated."
"We're not actually—" I stop myself because that sentence doesn't have a good ending. "It's complicated."
She turns to face me, one hand on the counter.
"Millie, baby, I've watched you build walls around yourself since you were sixteen years old.
Every person who told you that you weren't good enough, every casting director who passed you over, every critic who said you didn't belong, you turned all of that into fuel and it got you here, which is amazing.
But at some point you have to let someone in for real. Otherwise what's the point?"
"The point is winning the Oscar."
"And then what? You think a gold statue is going to keep you warm at night?"
I don't have an answer for that. My mother kisses my forehead and goes back to the living room where Duncan is standing by the window looking at the view of the city that isn't impressive by any standard but is mine.
They talk for another twenty minutes while I finish the dishes, and when my mother finally announces she's leaving, she hugs Duncan goodbye like she's known him for years instead of hours.
"Take care of her," she says, low enough that she probably thinks I can't hear from the kitchen.
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
She leaves before either of us can respond, and then it's just Duncan and me standing in my apartment with the smell of fried plantains still hanging in the air.
"Your mother is terrifying," he says. "She's also one of the most loving people I've met in years."
I grab my jacket from the hook by the door. "Come on, I'll walk you out."
We take the elevator down in silence. Outside, the night is cool and the street is busy with people heading home from work or out to dinner. Duncan's car is parked half a block away, black and sleek and completely out of place on this street.
"She liked you," I say. "Which is inconvenient."
He turns to look at me. "Why's that?"
"Because this would be much easier if she didn't."
We stand there on the sidewalk with the city moving around us. A cab honks two blocks over, someone laughs from an open window above us, and Duncan shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
"Can I tell you something?" he asks.
"What?"
"I went to see you perform once. Before you were famous."
My brain stalls. "What?"
"It was a regional production, some small theater in Brooklyn.
You were doing A Raisin in the Sun." He shoves his hands in his pockets.
"I found the listing by accident, saw your name, and I went on a whim.
You played Beneatha and you were incredible.
I sat in the back row and watched you own that stage, and I remember thinking that I'd been so wrong about you in high school that it was almost funny.
You weren't going to give up, you were going to be a star, and I'd spent four years being too stupid to see it. "
I can't move. I'm standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment building, staring at Duncan Ellington, and my entire understanding of the past ten years is rearranging itself in my head.
"When was this?"
"Six years ago. You were twenty-two, I think. I'd just started at the hedge fund and I was miserable and I saw your name in a theater listing and I just… went."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because what was I supposed to say? It felt wrong to approach you, knowing what I did during high school."
He's right, it would have been. But knowing he was there, that he saw me before anyone else did, before the reviews and the agents and the roles that actually paid, that changes something I don't have language for yet.
"I have to go," I say, because I can't think of anything else to say.
"Millie—"
"Goodnight, Duncan."
I turn and walk back into my building before he can finish whatever he was going to say. The doorman nods as I pass and I take the elevator back up to my floor, unlock my door, and stand in the middle of my living room with my heart beating too fast.
He saw me perform six years ago. He remembered.
I pull out my phone and scroll back through my calendar to 2019, looking for the dates I was in that production. Three weeks in a seventy-seat theater in Bed-Stuy, playing Beneatha Younger for two hundred dollars a week and thinking I'd made it because someone was actually paying me to act.
Duncan Ellington sat in the back row and watched me work, and then he went home and said nothing.
I don't know what to do with that information, so I take a shower and try to wash it off.
But when I'm lying in bed an hour later, staring at the ceiling with the sounds of the city filtering through my window, all I can think about is the look on his face when he told me.
Like he'd been carrying that memory around for years and finally found permission to set it down.
And I think about my mother's words. At some point you have to let someone in for real.