Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

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.