Home > Necessary People(9)

Necessary People(9)
Author: Anna Pitoniak

“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 Tuesday 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.”

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)
» The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash #4)