Helena didn’t appreciate being challenged, but what put her on the defensive was finding out that Bette had gone to Peggy behind her back to get support if Helena’s decision wasn’t in her favor. Peggy had the authority to over-rule but she trusted Helena to be fair and told Bette as much before she left for her two-yearlong sabbatical.

With Peggy out of the way, Helena saw her opportunity to teach Bette a lesson in humility; not that she practiced it herself. At the time, Helena didn’t know about Bette and Tina’s break-up nor did she know that Tina was pregnant unbeknownst to Bette. When she arrived in Los Angeles a few weeks later she couldn’t have walked into a better set-up had she orchestrated it herself. For her scheme to work, Bette had to be fully invested emotionally and financially for maximum impact. Finding out about Tina’s baby before Bette was a major coup to set the stage. Using Tina’s animosity against Bette to gain her affection worked right into the palm of her hands. But now she was afraid that Bette was gaining strides. As she got closer to delivery Tina would be craving the emotional connection to her baby’s mother. Helena knew a thing or two about that longing, having experienced it when her ex-wife Winnie Mann was pregnant with their son Wilson and again when they adopted their younger daughter Jung Yin.

***

Tina and Helena were having this conversation while the seamstress continued pulling and tugging, and trying to be inconspicuous. Finally, she finished. After helping Tina out of the dress, she threw it over her arm and walked to the back room with the promise that it would be altered, dry-cleaned and delivered to Tina by early afternoon the following day.

Standing in only maternity bra and panties Tina instinctively touched her belly. She recalled the day she’d met Helena; it was the same day that Helena had revealed the pregnancy to Bette. Ironically, it was Bette’s bullish behavior and anger about Helena’s new agenda to support social services and move away from the arts that had caused them to argue the night before, and distracted Tina from telling Bette her news.