Necessary People

by Anna Pitoniak

  We never talked about it, but I knew that Stella and Jamie assumed that what I did was easy. Making a clean break with your past was dramatic, but it simplified things. Just think of the complications I’d avoided: holiday visits home, weekly phone calls, the fraught negotiations of a child growing older. But they didn’t know how the past, even after such merciless severing, could follow you like a phantom limb.

  Diane Molina, my high school history teacher, had sent me long and earnest e-mails during college, filled with questions. How was I? How was school? What was I reading? At first, I liked getting those e-mails because they made me feel less alone. Then I liked getting them because they made me feel smart, telling Diane about books and ideas that she’d never heard of. Eventually, though, I came to dread those e-mails. Even the sight of Diane’s name in my in-box gave me claustrophobia. When I graduated, my college e-mail expired. The bounceback did the work for me. I didn’t tell her where I was going next.

  That’s why Jamie’s questions on the plane had bothered me. I wasn’t one of those corn-fed country girls who pined for home; didn’t he know that by now? But maybe he didn’t, because his experience was so different. Jamie was lucky. In New York, his smooth manners and mellow accent were charming. It set him apart from the cold Yankee workaholics, even as he kept pace with them. It didn’t work that way for women. Keep your Southern accent and sweet tea smile, and you are placed in a very specific category.

  And so our business was filled with people like me, accentless and delocalized. Most reporters rose through the ranks with itinerant gigs at Middle America affiliates. Climbing the ladder gradually allows your oxygen levels to acclimate, Fargo to Denver, Denver to Chicago, and finally to the big leagues. It’s also a useful way to exfoliate the past. By the moment of arrival in New York or Los Angeles or D.C., the accent is gone. All that remains is a hard and untraceable delivery.

  When they appear on-screen, reporters and anchors remind those back home of just how far they’ve come. For some people, that’s a motivation. For me, it was terrifying. I didn’t want my parents to see my success, or understand what it meant. I had an irrational fear of them tracking me down, coming to New York to demand money or attention. The best disguise was staying behind the scenes. If my name and reputation was only known within the industry, all the better. It was a language that wasn’t even open to them.

  Jamie’s phone was ringing. He put down his drink mid-sip and started patting himself. When he finally located his phone, he frowned at the screen and silenced the call. The phone rang again, and this time he switched the ringer off.

  “Who was it?” I said.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” He waved to our waitress. “Could I trouble you for another strawberry margarita?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Another for you, sweetheart?”

  “Ah,” I hesitated, because the hangover was already looming.

  “She’ll take it!” Jamie said.

  Then I heard my phone ring. I reached for it and answered it automatically. Jamie’s eyes went wide. Too late, I realized what was happening.

  “Hey, Stell,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Why isn’t Jamie answering his phone?” she said. “He’s there, isn’t he?”

  “Um, I don’t—”

  “What the fuck,” she said, “is wrong with him? Is he bleeding? Has he been hit over the head? Because that’s the only reason he should be ignoring my calls.”

  “He’s in the bathroom right now,” I said. “He’s, uh, been in there for a while. I think he ate some bad food on the plane.” I grimaced, and Jamie mouthed a thank-you.

  “So what? He brings his phone into the bathroom with him. He’s attached to that thing like it’s an umbilical cord.”

  “I don’t know, Stella. Honestly.”

  “Well, whatever. I had a shitty day at work, thanks for asking. I had—”

  Lately, her tirades had gotten worse: slights minor or imaginary, which she perceived as mortal wounds. This time, she had gone to New Jersey to record a stand-up, but her segment had gotten cut at the last minute. This happened all the time to young reporters at KCN, but Stella didn’t measure herself against them. She measured herself against stars like Rebecca Carter, who never had to put up with this shit. “I’m too good for this place,” she’d said, more than once. “I go down the street to another network and they’ll triple my salary.” Her confidence was so brazen that I’d started to wonder if she had some secret leverage over the executives. After a while, I said, “Oh, look, Jamie’s back.”

  “God, finally. Put him on, will you?”

  Jamie kept the phone a few inches from his ear. Even over the music in the restaurant, I could hear Stella’s loud haranguing. He unenthusiastically said, “Uh huh” and “Yeah, totally” and “Okay, yeah, love you” and finally hung up with a sigh.

  After a long pause, he said, “I don’t get it.”

  I kept quiet. My policy was to remain neutral during their fights.

  “It’s like she’s a different person,” Jamie continued. “I mean, you must see it, too. Right? You see how ridiculous she’s being? I’m not allowed to miss a single phone call from her, even when I’m on assignment?”

  “She wants what she wants,” I said. “And she’s used to getting it.”

  “Well, when is someone going to finally say no?”

  I looked at him, pointedly.

  “Good Lord.” He sat back and gripped the edge of the table, as if bracing himself for the sudden plunge of a roller coaster. “I thought that dating Stella Bradley would be fun. I didn’t sign up for—I don’t know—personality rehab.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “But I’ve never found the solution.”

  Jamie leaned forward and sucked at the last inch of his drink, the straw making a harsh guttering sound. A grown man inhaling a pink margarita like his life depended on it was an objectively funny sight, but this wasn’t an appropriate time to laugh.

  “She’s going to drive me insane, Violet,” he said. “She makes me so angry. Sometimes I feel like I’m about to lose my mind. Like I’m going to snap.”

  “Jamie,” I said. “If it’s really that bad, why don’t you just end it?”

  Silence. From the way Jamie looked at me, I could tell he was thinking the same thing. Why didn’t he end it? Well, why didn’t I end it? Being Stella Bradley’s best friend had always rested on a delicate formula. There were the bad parts, and there were the good parts. Lately the balance had shifted. The good was almost gone, and it was almost enough to break me.

  But there were things it was safe to talk about when you were several drinks deep at an Applebee’s in Panama City, and this wasn’t one of them. Jamie knew that, and I knew that, and despite the Bahama Mamas and strawberry margaritas, we were still smart enough to turn back from the edge of this cliff.

  We picked at the remnants of dessert, then went home. We said good night in the hallway of the Marriott—my room on the left, Jamie’s on the right—and as I lay in bed, hearing the distant mechanical churn of the ice-making machine, all I could think was if Stella finds out that I planted this idea in his head, she is going to kill me.

  About twenty minutes outside of Panama City, the highway led to a paved road, which led to a dirt road, which snaked through the forest. At the yellow mailbox we’d been told to look for, I turned down the driveway. It was rutted with potholes, and pebbles and rocks pinged against the undercarriage of the car. The light was filtered and dappled by the cypress trees. At the end of the driveway was a small bungalow, the clearing illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.

  It was a few minutes before noon. Ours was the only car in the driveway. “I’m going to look around,” I said to Jamie, who stayed in the car and nodded behind his sunglasses.

  Willow lived inside the confines of a water management area. The trees were tall and vibrant green, and the lakes and creeks we’d passed were filled with crystal-clear water. Signs along the road pointed to hiking trails and ca
noe launches. This had always confused me about Florida: that a place of such overwhelming natural beauty could contain so much man-made ugliness. It felt like a perfect metaphor for something.

  The ticking chorus of birds and insects was interrupted by the sound of an approaching car. I rapped on the window and Jamie startled awake. The car, a modest gray compact, came to a stop. Willow stepped out, but she stood behind the open door like it was a shield.

  “You’re the newspeople?” she said.

  I waved. “We talked on the phone. I’m Violet Trapp, and this is Jamie Richter.”

  She slung a bag over her shoulder. “I’m guessing you want to come inside.”

  As we followed her through the front door and my eyes adjusted to the indoor dimness, I was struck by how clean and spare her living room was. The walls and floorboards were painted white. There was a brightly colored Mexican rug, three minimalist armchairs, a few pictures tacked above the desk in the corner. I’d been expecting simplicity, but the kind that reflected panicked transit: a suitcase, a mattress on the floor. This was not that. This was a life that had been arrived at carefully, after rigorous purification.

  “Thank you for talking with us,” Jamie said, as Willow emerged from the kitchen holding a glass of water. She was beautiful, and her clothing aligned with her simple home décor. Like a Calvin Klein model in the nineties: jeans, a white shirt, sleek dark hair.

  “Willow,” I said, “at this point, we’ve turned up a lot of information about—”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s not my real name.”

  “What would you prefer?” Jamie said.

  “Nothing. You should just know that I hate the name.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “That’s fine. What I was saying is, we’ve got plenty of evidence against Danner. If you choose to go on the record, you won’t be taking them on alone. Several other people have spoken out. And you’ll have reporters and producers and KCN executives—every resource we have will be behind you.”

  She stood up and left the room. From the kitchen came the sound of running water. The living room was oppressively hot and still. My forehead was dotted with sweat, I was thirsty and craving air-conditioning, and the heat made me feel slow and exhausted. Willow took her time in the kitchen. Jamie caught my eye and shrugged.

  When she returned, she was holding an orange. She stood between the kitchen and the living room, leaning against the doorjamb. The scent of citrus spiked the air as she dug a fingernail into the skin and began slowly peeling it away from the fruit.

  “You realize how much I don’t want to do this,” she said.

  “I understand,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow, like, do you?

  “Violet probably explained this,” Jamie said, “but there are things we can do. We can keep your face in shadow during the interview. We don’t have to use your name, or your location. The world doesn’t have to know where you are, who you are, today.”

  Willow peeled the orange in one long spiral. She hefted the naked fruit in the palm of her hand, like she was testing its weight. She broke the orb into two symmetrical halves, then handed one to Jamie and one to me.

  “Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Jamie looked at her quizzically. “Do you have any questions for us?”

  “I sleep with a gun in my nightstand,” she said to me. “Did George tell you that?”

  “He did,” I said.

  She crossed her arms. “Let me guess. You were thinking you’d come down to Florida and find some ruined woman. Drunk off her ass in a trailer.”

  “I didn’t think anything,” I said, although she was exactly right. This picture—white floors, scent of oranges—it was not what I’d imagined.

  “I’m in school now. I’m getting my business degree. That’s where I was this morning. I happen to be at the top of my class. Did he tell you that?”

  “George spoke highly of you,” I said.

  “I bet he did. What a knight in shining armor.”

  “Willow, we won’t force you. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  She held my gaze. “I don’t want to do anything. I have to.”

  After a long pause, Jamie cleared his throat. “We can do the interview tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll film you here. Violet and I will be with you the whole time.”

  Jamie drove us back to the hotel, where we would call Eliza and tell her that the interview was set for the next day. But in those final moments of quiet in the car, I felt an anticipatory let-down. Wrung out by the heat, plagued by a thumping headache. Willow, in her little white house. There it was: the answer to the question we’d been chasing for months. It was both sadder and more ordinary than anything I’d been expecting. The world leaves people broken, but they find a way to put themselves back together again.

  Jamie interrupted the silence. “That poor woman,” he said.

  “I was surprised,” I said. “Weren’t you? Her house. The business degree.”

  “That’s what worries me. The tough guy act. It’s not real.”

  “It seemed real to me.”

  He shook his head. “It’s going to crack at some point. You don’t go through what she went through without a reckoning.”

  “So, what, you think she’s doomed? She can never have a normal life?”

  “I’m just saying, she needs to take the measure of what happened to her. Didn’t that freak you out? She should be angry. She should be pissed. But it’s like she’s been lobotomized.”

  “Maybe she already dealt with it and now she’s fine.” For some reason, Jamie’s reasoning irritated me. I wanted to believe in Willow’s life. I wanted to believe in the possibility of her reinvention. “Maybe she managed to put everything behind her.”

  “Maybe,” Jamie said. “But I doubt it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  back in new york, we showed the raw interview footage to Eliza and Rebecca. Rebecca grew wide-eyed at Willow’s graphic descriptions of the doctor’s violence. Eliza wore a grim frown, which deepened as it went on.

  “What a fucking bastard,” Rebecca said, when it was over.

  “It’s awful,” Eliza said. “It makes you sick.”

  “I was sure she was going to bail on us,” Jamie said. “She almost backed out that morning. Violet calmed her down.”

  “She wanted to be sure it was worth it,” I said. “That her talking would actually help to change something. Not just result in her getting sued.”

  “Christ Almighty. If a story like this doesn’t change something,” Rebecca said, “then I don’t even know why we’re here.”

  Ginny joined us later that afternoon. In the conference room, Eliza and Rebecca showed her everything we’d assembled: the interviews with Willow, George and the other sources, the scattered bits of evidence that finally added up to something coherent, and damning.

  “When are we going to Danner for comment?” Ginny said, clasping her hands atop the table. Her lack of emotion was normal. Rebecca got hot with outrage, Eliza was fiercely competitive, but Ginny was the ballast that kept the whole ship steady.

  “Monday,” Rebecca said. “We’ll give them twenty-four hours.”

  I spent the weekend working. There were several producers on the story by now, but it didn’t stop me from obsessing: double- and triple-checking every fact and quote, asking the beleaguered editor to try dozens of variations. I sat with the writer who was polishing Rebecca’s script, even though Rebecca would inevitably rewrite it herself just before airtime. On Sunday evening, Eliza stopped by the office and saw me at my desk.

  “You’re still here?” she said. “Violet, you have to get some sleep.”

  “I’m just checking one more thing,” I said.

  “Direct orders,” Eliza said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We’re in good shape. It’s diminishing returns at this point.”

  Darkness came early in November. I wrapped my scarf tight as I walked home, shoved my hands deep in my pockets.
It was good to breathe the fresh air, to watch taxis speeding through intersections, to smell the sweet roasted chestnuts, to let normal life serve as distraction from the somersaults in my stomach. The thought of waiting another two days for the story to air was almost unbearable. I was confident that the story was good, that it was important, that it was ready. What I didn’t know was how the world would react to it.

  When I got home, Stella was in the living room, paging through the Sunday Styles. She pretended to be interested in the articles, but really she was just looking for pictures of herself amid that week’s social scene. “There you are,” she said. She folded the newspaper, a perfect facsimile of a responsible adult. “You’ve been ignoring my texts all weekend.”

  “I’ve been a little busy,” I said. How much had changed from years ago, when I was alone in this apartment, eagerly waiting for Stella to text me back.

  “Hungry?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “Starving, actually.”

  “Good,” she said. “Let’s go out.”

  On the walk to the restaurant, Stella huddled close, her arm looped through mine. She smelled like the sweet chemical tinge of hairspray from her hit that morning, and the same musky perfume she’d worn for the last seven years. The bistro was on a quiet street near our apartment. It was authentically French, the kind of place that had no menu, just a chalkboard listing the day’s items. We ordered a bottle of Burgundy, and when the waiter filled our glasses, Stella lifted hers to touch mine.

  “It’s been a million years since we did this,” she said.

  “Well, we’ve both been busy,” I said. “Occupational hazard, I guess.”

  She tilted her head. “You know, Violet, you seem different.”

  “What do you mean?” I took a chunk of bread from the basket, spreading it with a thick coat of butter. Stella wouldn’t touch it; she was exceptionally weight-conscious these days. She subsisted mostly on wine, lettuce, and green tea.