Necessary People

by Anna Pitoniak

  In different circumstances, Anne would have put a stop to this foolishness, but she was consumed by her own quest. There were so many places in the world that Stella might be. Anne packed a gigantic suitcase and bought an open-ended, around-the-world plane ticket. London, she’d start in London, because she had to start somewhere. Then to Barcelona, or Marrakech, or Santorini. She would find her daughter. She would be gone for as long as it took.

  Chapter Seventeen

  when you’re in a relationship, life becomes easier in ways that seem small at first, and gradually become significant. Take the Monday-morning-in-the-office dance. When a colleague asks about your weekend, and you’re single, it’s a scramble to come up with the right answers. You have to look busy, with friends and meals and interesting activities, like rooftop yoga and wine tastings. It isn’t acceptable to do nothing multiple weekends in a row, unless there’s a hurricane or a blizzard. If you’re ambitious in New York, ambition doesn’t end when the week does.

  But with Oliver, weekends took care of themselves. We went out to dinner, to museums, to Broadway and off-Broadway performances. Oliver was lobbying for a position on the board of Lincoln Center—at thirty he was young for it, but that didn’t stop him—and along with his sizable donations came a subscription to the ballet and the opera. His enthusiasm was both broad and intense, and it was easy to go along for the ride.

  “Do you have plans on Tuesday night?” Oliver said, opening a bottle of wine while I cooked dinner. When he finished pouring the wine into my glass, he twisted the bottle so the liquid wouldn’t drip down the neck. I’d noticed that if a waiter failed to perform this maneuver, Oliver would frown, and leave a bad tip.

  “Other than work, you mean?” I reached for the glass, but he stopped me.

  “It needs to breathe,” he said. “There’s a new show opening at the Public. You can take the night off, can’t you?”

  “I can’t. You know what my schedule is like.”

  He laughed flatly. “You must really love your job.”

  I looked up from the shallot, which was turning into a fine dice with the help of the expensive chef’s knife I’d bought after my most recent promotion and raise. “Once upon a time,” I said, “you thought my job was fascinating.”

  Oliver wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. “I still think that,” he said. “But am I not allowed to resent it for taking away the woman I adore?”

  “Nope,” I said, resuming the chopping. “We’re a package deal. Can you get the water started? The big pot, under the counter. Lots of salt.”

  “When was the last time you took a vacation?” Oliver said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s not a great time. I’ve got a lot on my plate, and—”

  He held up a hand. “A long weekend, then. Can’t they spare you for a few days?”

  “I guess so.” The olive oil in the cast-iron pan was sizzling by now, and I dropped the shallots in. After they turned soft and golden, I’d add diced tomatoes. The meal was simple—pasta, salad—but Oliver was impressed by whatever I cooked. He liked to brag about this to his friends. I cooked, and I worked, and I was from real America, not a born-and-bred New Yorker. In other words, I was nothing like the kind of woman that a man like him tended to date.

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything. You can try the wine now, if you like.”

  The police were cautioning the Bradleys against hope. By now they assumed Stella was likely dead, but with no body and no weapon—and no sign of the boat—the leads were scarce.

  At KCN, without new information to fan the flames, the gossip had finally died down. My visitors and lunch invitations slowed to a trickle. People are scared of loss. They’d rather say nothing than risk saying the wrong thing. This wasn’t fun for them anymore.

  Occasionally Eliza would call me into her office, close the door, and express concern. Was I taking care of myself? Did I have someone to talk to? I always answered by saying that work was a good distraction. When I finally asked for a day off, Eliza smiled gently. “Good,” she said. “You need a break.”

  Oliver and I drove out to Long Island on a Thursday night in early April. It was late when we arrived at the hotel—a small place in East Hampton, gray shingles and white trim and green lawn. A woman appeared at the sound of our knock and showed us to our room.

  “Special occasion?” she asked.

  “It’s our four-month anniversary,” Oliver said.

  After she left and closed the door, I said, “It is?”

  But Oliver was already in the bathroom, turning on the faucet in the clawfoot tub. He held his hand under the stream of water, adjusting the knobs. “Let’s take a bath,” he said. He shucked off his shoes, started unbuttoning his shirt.

  When the tub was full, soft drifts of jasmine-scented bubbles on the surface, I undressed and slid into the water. It was almost too hot, but the pain released its grip in a few seconds. “I didn’t realize you were keeping track,” I said, settling into the tub’s curved back, closing my eyes against the flickering candles around the edge.

  “What kind of a boyfriend would I be if I didn’t?” Oliver said.

  Checklists were Oliver’s way. Expensive hotel, bubble bath, candles—and I could bet there’d be champagne and oysters later this weekend. His predictability was a pleasant change after Stella. After a moment, I opened my eyes. Oliver, in his bathrobe, was sitting on a stool and gazing at me. “Aren’t you getting in?” I said.

  “I’m savoring this moment.” He smiled.

  “You’re sweet, Ollie,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh—God, sorry. I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t like that nickname.”

  “I hate it,” he said, teeth bared. He stood up and walked out. From the bedroom came the blaring sound of the TV, much louder than it needed to be.

  “I’m sorry,” I called out. “Oliver. I’m really sorry.”

  When he came back several minutes later, his face was dark. He stood with his arms crossed, towering above me. “You realize that she was the only one who ever called me that?”

  “Who was? Stella?”

  “She knew how much I hated it. She relished saying it, just to drive me crazy. And look—now she has you saying it, too.”

  “It was a stupid slip. It won’t happen again.”

  “You know, Violet, sometimes I look at you”—he gestured at the tub, and I became hyperaware of my naked body—“and all I can see are the ways in which she left her mark.”

  “She was my best friend,” I said. “Of course she rubbed off on me.”

  “You’re thinking about her right now, aren’t you?”

  “We’re talking about her, Oliver.”

  “This was supposed to be a nice weekend. A getaway.”

  “It is, it’s—”

  “Not when it’s all about Stella,” he said coldly.

  A draft came from the open door. In the guttering candlelight, the hollows and shadows of Oliver’s face stretched and retracted like a yo-yo. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry, Violet. But my whole life, she’s been the center of attention. After she disappeared, I thought this was the silver lining.”

  My heart was thudding faster. My face flushed, pricking into sweat. “This?”

  “This,” he said, smiling. “Us. Finally getting free from her.”

  I felt light-headed. A laugh track from the sitcom on TV, loud and false, echoed off the hard tile walls.

  “I’m turning into a prune,” I said. “Pass me that towel?”

  I was aware of Oliver’s gaze tracking me as I stood up, the water sucking at my limbs. I wrapped myself tightly in the towel, but he stood in the door to the bedroom, blocking my way.

  I shivered. “I need to get some clothes on.”

  “You loved her, didn’t you?” he said, gazing at me.

  “Are we still talking about this?” I tried to get past him, but he shifted in response.

 
“Please answer the question,” he said firmly.

  I stopped. Looked up, and stared him right in the eye. “Of course I loved her.”

  “But you love me more.” It was a statement, not a question. His words hung in the air for a long beat. Oliver took a step closer, and ran his hands down my bare arms. I let the towel drop to the floor.

  After we had sex—good sex, charged and sparking—and I went into the bathroom to pee, the candles around the tub had extinguished down to waxy stubs. Only one was still burning, a tiny flame dancing above a pool of clear wax. A romantic prop that had outlived its moment. I licked my fingers and pinched it out with a small hiss.

  When I woke up the next morning, the bed was empty. Oliver’s note said he had gone downstairs for breakfast.

  “You’ll love this place,” Oliver had said, on the drive out from the city. “It’s known for its food.” He thought a love of fancy cuisine had to accompany my love of cooking. He tried so hard, paying attention to every little detail. But I was the last person who could fault him for that.

  “There you are,” he said, when I came into the dining room. There was a fire crackling in the fireplace, the smell of wood smoke and coffee in the air. The table was covered with plates of fruit, a basket of bread and pastries, several newspapers. Oliver had already worked his way to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal.

  “What’s our plan for the day?” I said. The bread was dense with raisins and pecans, the bright yellow butter dotted with flakes of salt. It was, I’d admit, delicious.

  “I have a tee time at Maidstone. Do you want to use the spa this afternoon? And we could walk on the beach before lunch.”

  “Sounds nice,” I said.

  The warped intensity of the night before was gone. Instead, it was like Oliver and I were reading from a script, a performance of normalcy. Our words sounded so rote, so trite. I felt detached from the scene, watching from above and wondering, is this really how couples talk? Could two idiosyncratic, complicated people really be reduced to these clichéd exchanges? The man on the golf course, the woman at the spa. But maybe this was just what it was like to be in a relationship. How would I know?

  I was reading a novel from the free shelf at work—publishers sent everything to us, even though the only authors we ever had on Frontline were politicians hawking their campaign books—when my phone started to buzz. “Do you need to take that?” the pedicurist said, already rising from her stool.

  This wasn’t one of those spas with hushed voices and silenced cellphones. They knew the reality of their clientele. How much work had been conducted from this very chair, by New Yorkers pretending to take vacation but really just relocating their career-focused selves a hundred miles east? Negotiations, conference calls, divorce settlements, you name it.

  “It’s fine,” I said, gesturing at the frightened-looking woman to sit down. She probably had PTSD from previous clients. “Just a few e-mails. No problem.”

  A tornado had ripped across Kansas the night before, and Rebecca was going to anchor from the scene for tonight’s broadcast. The rundown was being scrapped as a result, including a story I had worked on. It was one of those Community Cares segments, a feel-good story about a New Jersey mother with an autistic toddler who had formed a support group for other parents like her. She was genuinely lovely, and shy, and hadn’t wanted the publicity. I had to twist her arm to allow a camera crew into the support group. Now I’d have to call and tell her the segment had been bumped. And by bumped, I mean it would never air, but I wouldn’t say that.

  “I have to make a quick call,” I said to the pedicurist. “But you can stay.”

  She nodded, and continued applying polish to my toenails, wearing that expression that so many waiters and taxi drivers and housekeepers and executive assistants have managed to perfect—those whose job it is to pretend they have gone temporarily deaf.

  After making the phone call and answering several e-mails, my mood improved. I didn’t feel like myself if I wasn’t working. I tried to explain this to Oliver at lunch—a luxurious lunch with wine and oysters, check and check—when he looked at me crossly for responding to e-mails between the appetizer and the entrée. He had taken the day off; why couldn’t I?

  See, the things that Oliver liked about me now were the things that would eventually have to disappear, if we stayed together. That’s how it was done, in his world. He wanted to be the kind of man, he thought he was the kind of man, who was progressive and modern and supportive of his ambitious partner. But he also lived in a world of definite rules. After marriage, the women gave up their high-powered jobs. They hired caterers for the dinner parties they were expected to host. Society absorbed them. It was forgotten that they had ever lived anywhere that wasn’t New York. This weekend felt like an audition for that role. The woman painting my toenails had no idea that I’d grown up in the cruddiest town in Florida.

  Oliver wanted to go for a drink before dinner, at a place in Sag Harbor that made the best martini on the East End. This wasn’t just his opinion; the New York Times had declared it so. He treated culture like big-game hunting, bagging specific items for his collection. But when we got there, the door was locked and there was a sign in the window: CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. REOPENING ON MEMORIAL DAY.

  “Damn it,” Oliver said. “I wanted you to see this place.”

  “Should we head straight to dinner?”

  Oliver looked at his watch. “But our reservation isn’t until 7. This is so frustrating.” He frowned, and glanced down the street. Summer was several weeks away, and the town was quiet. He said, “There. I guess we can get a drink there instead.”

  The bar was on the next block. It was shabby but comfortable, neon signs in the window and TVs behind the bar tuned to a basketball game. We took a table in the corner, the legs uneven and rickety, the surface sticky with spilled beer.

  “Well.” Oliver looked annoyed. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “You know, it’s the weirdest thing,” I said. “This place feels familiar.”

  Oliver arched an eyebrow. “Have you been here before?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve never even been to Sag Harbor.”

  Our conversation was stilted and stiff, a hangover from our lunchtime bickering. We made our drinks last, the melted ice turning them watery, Oliver checking his watch every few minutes. Whenever the Knicks scored, and the men at the bar erupted in cheers, he startled.

  Finally, it was time to leave. Oliver paid the bill and I lingered in the restroom, smoothing my hair and reapplying my lipstick. Dating Oliver initially felt like payback. Stella had taken over my turf—well, I could take over hers, too. And he reminded me of her in certain comforting ways. But sometimes I thought, what am I doing? Oliver thought he had finally found someone who preferred him to Stella. But that’s ultimately where the problem lay. Oliver wasn’t an adequate replacement for Stella; I’d never love him the way I loved her.

  I left the restroom and saw Oliver outside, hands shoved in his pockets and jacket collar turned up against the springtime chill. At the door, I glanced back one more time. That’s when I spotted the man clearing the empty glasses from our table. Rolled-up sleeves, tattooed forearms, bar towel tucked in his back pocket.

  He saw me at the same moment I saw him. Then, suddenly, I put it together.

  “Stella?” he said, stepping closer. “It’s Stella, right?”

  “I—uh, I’m not sure—”

  “I remember you.” He smiled. “It was, what, three or four years ago? You came into the bar over in East Hampton.”

  My mouth opened and closed without making a sound.

  “Don’t you remember me? I’m Kyle. We, uh, you know.” He blushed. “I always wondered if I’d run into you again. And here you are. Stella. You don’t forget a name like that.”

  “I think you have the wrong person,” I finally said. Outside, Oliver was glancing over his shoulder, looking impatient. “I’m sorry. I have to get going.”
r />   “Wait!” he said. “You’re making me feel crazy. You really don’t remember?”

  “I just—sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I could feel Kyle’s eyes following me as I walked away. I had to grip the doorknob hard to keep my hand from shaking.

  The world is a place of brutal chaos, which is what makes it so easy for a crime to remain unsolved. If the criminal has done an adequate job of erasure, the world will supply infinite explanations to fill the vacuum. What happens to the missing woman? Maybe she has a psychotic break and slips away from her life in the middle of the night. Or she crosses the road at the wrong time and is hit by a car. Or a man kidnaps her and takes her prisoner.

  This is why, from the very beginning, I knew my plan would work. Stella, who blazed through life with equal parts dazzle and risk, supplied enough material for dozens of theories. She was part of that sisterhood of glamorous women who met untimely ends, the Diana Spencers and Grace Kellys and Marilyn Monroes of the world. No one would say it out loud, because it reeked of victim-blaming, but I’m certain there were people who looked at Stella Bradley’s story and thought, that girl was always trouble. A sickening thought pattern, but for my plan to work, I had to take advantage of it.

  Because when you have a woman like that at the center of the story—beautiful, wild, trouble—then who bothers to look very closely at the peripheries of her life? Suspicion sweeps through the darkness like a lighthouse, illuminating the ex-boyfriend or the town loner, but it doesn’t linger for long. Especially not on those who are quiet and ordinary, whose very faces indicate their forgettability. Who, as Thoreau would put it, will go to the grave with their song still in them.

  A person, in other words, like me.