Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“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.”

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 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.