Necessary People

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by Anna Pitoniak


  “But I watched Terrance that night. Remember, you were there.”

  “Terrance is Terrance. Rebecca is a star. And the first time you’re up close and personal with someone like that—that’s special.”

  “You make it sound like I just lost my virginity.”

  “It’s an appropriate metaphor.”

  I squeezed the wedged lime into the narrow neck of my Corona. “Well, it was much more exciting than losing my actual virginity, let me tell you.”

  Jamie laughed, and I felt a ripple of uncertainty. Why did I say that? It sounded flirty, and I hadn’t intended flirty. We were at the bar with our colleagues, the Friday night ritual to ease the transition from week to weekend. For the workaholics who thrived at KCN, the cadences of normal life could be difficult. Some dealt with it by working all weekend. Others dealt with it by drinking and going out too much. And then there was Jamie, the rare producer who maintained a semi-normal life, and his psychological health, in addition to his career.

  It was like Jamie’s wick burned slower than everyone else’s. He accepted the imperfection of the work we did, which didn’t make him love it any less. I had read once that the South was the only part of America that understood tragedy, because it was the only part of the country to experience defeat in war. This was grandiose, I knew, to leap from a calm voice in a Midtown bar to the sweep of history. But after a beer or two, my thoughts tended toward the grandiose. So did Jamie’s. That was part of the reason I liked him so much.

  “What about you?” I said. “The first time you met Rebecca. What was it like?”

  He held up a finger. “Let me ask you a question. Tonight, when you were watching. Who did you want to be? Rebecca, behind the anchor desk? Or Eliza, in the control room?”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “Eliza.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. A gut feeling. Eliza’s job seems more interesting. And harder, in a way.”

  “But you were saying that you couldn’t take your eyes off Rebecca. That she had something that made her different from Terrance. Better than him.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “But whatever that thing is, I know I don’t have it.”

  Jamie snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”

  “Hey,” I said. “You could at least pretend to disagree.”

  “You know what a producer can do? She can take mediocre talent and make it good. She can take good talent and make it very good. But she can’t take good talent and make it great.”

  “You mean stars are born, not made?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “Mostly my point is that a producer has to know his or her limits. Self-awareness. That’s what separates us from the talent. That ineffable thing you were talking about—you know what I think it is? Delusion.”

  I laughed. “This is Rebecca you’re talking about.”

  “I mean it in the kindest possible way,” Jamie said. “If you think you’re special and chosen, if you deliver the news believing that you possess some unique authority, guess what? It looks great on camera. People buy it.” Jamie shrugged. “But you and I, we know what we don’t have. We’re too honest with ourselves to feel like we deserve the spotlight.”

  “Because no one deserves the spotlight?”

  “Precisely.” Jamie lifted his beer in salute.

  “This Socratic method of yours,” I said. “Is this how you haze all the new assistants?”

  Jamie looked around the bar, at the tables covered in beer and nachos, at our colleagues gossiping energetically despite the dark circles beneath their eyes. “You see these people? Two or three years from now, most of them won’t be here,” Jamie said. “But I have a feeling you’re in this for the long haul.”

  Chapter Three

  on a saturday morning in November, sitting in the kitchen with coffee and the news, I heard the front door open.

  “Hello?” a voice called from the other room. “Anyone home?”

  “Mrs. Bradley?” I called back. In the foyer stood Anne, and a second woman. Anne was wearing leather driving shoes, a field jacket, and a silk scarf. The other woman was wearing a wrap dress, a trench coat, and kitten heels. Both of them had perfect blond bobs. I was in yoga pants and a threadbare T-shirt, my unwashed hair in a ponytail.

  “I see what you mean,” the second woman said to Anne, with a frown.

  For a moment, I thought she was talking about me. Then she started walking the perimeter of the living room, craning her neck to look at the ceiling, running a hand along the mantelpiece. “Great bones,” she said. “Southern exposure.”

  “It just seems a shame to have this place sitting so empty,” Anne said. “Oh, Violet, let me introduce you to our decorator.”

  The decorator had a practiced smile and a firm handshake. She also had a chipless peach manicure and expertly applied makeup. Her whole look was impeccable, in the way of someone whose livelihood depends on aesthetics.

  “So what are you thinking?” Anne said, trailing the decorator from the living room to the kitchen. The decorator nodded as she took in the marble countertops, the white cabinets, the six-burner range. “Kitchen’s in great shape,” she said. “This place must have been renovated a few years ago. New lighting, some open shelving and glass doors, and it’ll look fabulous.”

  She sniffed, then peered into the sink, where a cast-iron skillet was soaking. “Do you cook?” she said to me.

  “A little,” I said. I’d bought pots and pans from the thrift store, and had been teaching myself with cookbooks borrowed from the library. It was the cheapest way to eat, and I liked the transformation of it, how the lowliest ingredients could become luxurious with time and effort.

  “How lucky for you,” she said. “A professional-grade kitchen like this.”

  “I thought Stella should come back to something more homey,” Anne said, as we followed the decorator down the hall toward the master bedroom. “Who can blame her for staying away? This is daunting!”

  There was a keenness behind Anne’s laughter. For a woman like Anne, having a daughter like Stella was the ultimate achievement, a testament to good genes and good parenting. Her love was possessive, as attuned to Stella’s absence as I myself was. She wouldn’t admit it, but I could tell the months of Stella’s sporadically answered calls and texts had hurt Anne.

  After surveying the master bedroom, the decorator turned to the next door in the hall. “Oh no,” Anne said, putting her hand on the woman’s elbow. “That’s Violet’s room. We don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I see,” the decorator said. “My mistake.”

  “You’ve probably put your own stamp on it by now. Haven’t you, Violet? You’ve had the run of the place.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m very grateful.”

  “Well,” Anne said. “I’m sure it won’t be much longer until Stella is home for good.”

  After the decorator finished jotting down measurements and notes, she said to Anne, “I have a team of painters who can get the place done in a few days. Then we’ll get everything delivered and installed. Less than a week and this place will be transformed.”

  “Wonderful,” Anne said. “Violet, when do you leave for Thanksgiving?”

  “Thanksgiving?” I said.

  “It’s only a few weeks away,” Anne said. “You must have booked your flights by now. You know they get very expensive if you wait too long.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “You are going home, I assume?” She arched an eyebrow. “Given that your parents didn’t even come for graduation? They must miss you terribly. Violet is from Florida,” she said to the decorator. “That’s why I thought Thanksgiving would be the best time to get this done.”

  The decorator nodded. “It’s much easier when the home is unoccupied.”

  “So when do you leave, Violet?” Anne said. “Monday? Tuesday?”

  “Uh,” I said. “Tuesday. Tuesday night.”

  “So we can get the painters in here by Tue
sday morning,” the decorator said. “If you don’t mind taking your things with you, so you don’t have to come back here after work.”

  “Perfect,” Anne said, clapping her hands. “It’s about time we make this place livable.”

  Over the past four years, I’d gone home with Stella for almost every holiday. I perfected the role of polite, self-sufficient houseguest. I did the dishes and ran errands, and expressed frequent gratitude for their hospitality. Even with Stella gone, I suppose I’d been unconsciously counting on an invitation from the Bradleys for Thanksgiving. My other friends from college knew that I always spent holidays with them. It was too embarrassing to disprove that. And it seemed better to go along with the lie I’d told to Anne.

  I texted Stella: Classic Anne Bradley encounter today.

  It took her twenty-four hours to respond: What happened?

  I wrote back immediately: She’s decorating the apt. Every decision is life-or-death important. It’s like HGTV except they kill you if you pick the wrong shade of eggshell.

  For days after that, I opened the messages on my phone to check whether her response had somehow failed to pop up on the screen. One sleepless night I scrolled through our text message history. For so long our words went back and forth with a steady thwock, like a tennis ball in a rally. When Stella left about six months ago, our exchanges became sporadic. When she was awake, I was asleep. When I was lonely, she was too busy having fun.

  But I wasn’t lonely, for the most part. Childhood had accustomed me to my own company. If I had one person who really understood me, that was enough. I didn’t need a big group of friends, didn’t need anyone beyond Stella—and I still had her, even if we didn’t see each other every day. I trusted that.

  It was only when Stella’s absence was invoked by other people that I felt self-conscious, stripped of my passport to this world. News of her travels filtered through the social grapevine, and I was at the outer reaches. “I heard she’s having a crazy time in Mykonos,” a girl from college said, with an arched eyebrow. She was like the girl who had stayed in our apartment; she mistook gossip for intimacy, but she did so with such conviction that I felt compelled to nod along, pretending to know exactly what she meant.

  Earlier that fall, during one of our Friday nights at the bar, Jamie was quiet for a while, and then he said, “Fair warning. At some point, I’m probably going to have to yell at you.”

  “Where did that come from?” I said. “Because I took the last mozzarella stick?”

  “When it happens, I don’t want you to think it’s personal,” he said. “This is the weird part about becoming friends with your coworkers. The screwups.”

  “Me, screw up?” I made a mock-offended face, but at the same time I felt a flush of gladness at that simple declaration, friends. “Maybe I’ll just be perfect.”

  But then in mid-November, for a story about an American track runner who was charged with taking steroids, I had to find a photo of the coach who ran the doping program. A quick search produced the perfect image: the athlete and the coach, embracing after the last Olympics, gold medal around the athlete’s neck. The story ran at the bottom of the hour, in the D block. The picture—it really was perfect; the pride, the hubris!—sat above Rebecca’s shoulder for the better part of the two-minute story. I was pleased with my work.

  Right after the broadcast, at 9:07 p.m., Jamie’s phone rang. As he listened, his face turned redder and redder. When he hung up, he took a deep breath, and turned to me. The transformation was rapid, almost Hulk-like. I’d never seen Jamie like this.

  “What is it?” I said, alarmed.

  “How did you not double-check it, Violet?” His anger was tightly coiled, barely contained by his words. “Are you kidding me? How did you let that happen?”

  “Let what happen?” My stomach flip-flopped.

  “The goddamn photo!” he said. “That was the wrong person! That wasn’t the coach. That was another athlete. A retired athlete who happens to be incredibly famous.”

  “Oh,” I whispered. “Oh my God.”

  “And,” Jamie said. “And. In addition to being incredibly famous, this other athlete has staked his entire reputation on never doping. Ever. He’s unimpeachable. He’s like Mother Teresa. How could you not check that?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Jamie. I’m so sorry. I’m—”

  “Don’t apologize to me,” he snapped. “Apologize to him. We just smeared his reputation in front of a million people.”

  “What do I do?” I said, panicked.

  “Start working on a correction,” he said. “Rebecca will have to read it tomorrow.”

  It was the worst day I’d ever had at KCN. Eliza, rolling her eyes as Jamie explained the situation. Rebecca’s visible exasperation as she read the correction during the next night’s broadcast. It had been my mistake, but Rebecca had to own it. The lawyers had to sign off on a precisely worded letter of apology to the retired athlete, which performed the delicate dance of expressing genuine remorse but also avoiding a lawsuit. After the horrible twenty-four hours were over, Jamie collapsed into his chair with a sigh. “So, are you okay?” he said, with a look of genuine concern.

  I nodded. I would have burst into tears if I hadn’t cried so much already.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he said. “But we have to get these things right. It’s a really, really big deal when we make a mistake like that.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  “We’ve all been there. Everyone has at least one colossal fuckup in their first year.”

  “It’s an awful feeling.” After a moment, I added, “Thank you for warning me, though.”

  “About the yelling? It happens, but I don’t like it. Makes you feel like an asshole.” He shook his head wearily. “Sometimes this job can drive you crazy.”

  I worked late on the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. Around 11 p.m., Eliza passed my desk on her way to the elevator.

  “Burning the midnight oil?” she said.

  It was the first time Eliza had spoken to me. There were too many layers of hierarchy between us. But from afar, I had developed something of a crush on her. Where Rebecca was chatty and friendly, Eliza was intimidating and cool. My spine instinctively straightened as she stopped at my desk. She was a woman who forced you to be on your A game. No tolerance for meekness.

  “Catching up on some things,” I said.

  “Remind me of your name?”

  “I don’t think I ever officially introduced myself.” I stood up. She seemed slightly amused as she shook my hand. “Violet Trapp.”

  “How long have you been here, Violet?” Eliza said.

  “I started as an intern in July, and became an assistant in September.”

  “And you’re practically the last person in the office.”

  “So are you.”

  She smiled. “True, but we don’t pay you enough to justify you working this hard.”

  “Maybe that’s a chicken-and-egg question,” I said. “Which comes first?”

  “The hard work, or the payoff?” she said. “Good point.”

  She had a camel hair coat draped over one arm. As she pulled the coat on, flipping her dark hair free from the collar, she said, “Have a good holiday, Violet. See you Monday.”

  Jamie thought he was doing me a favor by arranging the schedule so that I had Thanksgiving and Friday off. “You work too hard,” he said. “Use your vacation days. Take a break.” I would have preferred to work all week, but to keep up appearances, I’d come up with a plan. I slept beneath my desk on Tuesday night, which was surprisingly cozy, duffel bag as pillow and coat as blanket. On Wednesday night, I caught the train to Long Island. Deep into the off-season in the Hamptons, hotel rooms were cut-rate. I’d been careful about budgeting, packing lunch and eating plenty of pasta, and I had a few hundred dollars saved up for emergencies. This counted, I suppose: maintaining my fiction for Anne Bradley. The area was familiar fr
om tagging along with Stella in previous summers. If I was going to be alone, at least I could be somewhere scenic.

  It was midnight by the time the train arrived in East Hampton. The taxi dropped me off at a motel on Montauk Highway. I didn’t realize how tired I was until the next morning, Thanksgiving morning, when I woke up and saw that I’d slept for eleven hours.

  In town I found a coffee shop that had stayed open. I caught my reflection in the window. The red parka that Stella had given me years ago was still in good shape, buttons replaced and stains carefully scrubbed away. At the beach, it was a beautiful fall day, cold but made warmer by the sunshine, the ocean glittering and rippling in the wind. There were a handful of people running and walking their dogs. A middle-aged woman, with the radiant health and silver hair of a vitamin spokesperson, emerged from the water in a wetsuit. Far offshore, boats puttered in the waves.

  My mind wandered back to Christmas, my freshman year of college. That first time I went home, the house was shabbier than usual. Dishes piled in the sink, rancid black mold in the shower, an intense air of neglect. My mother was wary and skeptical, like I was a body double sent to fool her. Only when she got sufficiently drunk did she let down her guard.

  “Where’d you get that shirt, hmm?” she said, pinching the fabric between her fingers. It was a gray henley, a soft cashmere blend. “How’d you afford this nice little thing?”

  “A friend lent it to me,” I said, which was true.

  The next day, my mother was wearing the shirt. She’d taken it from my room while I was sleeping. “Your friend won’t mind, right?” she said, a cloying twist in her voice. She was thoroughly enjoying herself, stretching out the sleeves, using the hem to wipe spills, leaning close to the frying pan while she cooked, the grease speckling the fabric. “Mom,” I finally snapped, when she purposely sloshed red wine down her front.

  A vicious grin spread across her face. “Just…be careful,” I said, trying to suppress my frustration. But it was too late; I’d taken her bait.

 

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