Belonging Read Free Page B

professional optimist, always trusting that her ex-husband would come back to her or that one of themany debonair men she loved would marry her. She was very pleased to live her life in transit, meandering around the country, staying with lovers, or in bed-and-breakfasts, or in the homes of friends, and, occasionally, briefly, in rented furnished apartments.
    Erica—for her mother had insisted that Joanna call her by her “real” name—had been lighthearted, good-natured, frivolous, great fun. She always had so many friends that finding a place to stay for a week or a month or the holidays or the summer was never a problem, even with her little girl around. Erica had been loved by many people, people who worked hard and worried late into the night, who enjoyed coming home to Erica with her perfume and laughter, gin and tonics and nail polish, and her well-mannered, beautiful daughter.
    Joanna’s father became a shape passing by, a check in the mail, a distracted voice on the telephone. Joanna was never able to separate who he truly was from the complicated Romeo dissected for her by his girlfriends. Whenever Joanna visited her father, he was living with a new woman who grudgingly designated some small space in her home for Joanna and her suitcase. As she grew older, many of the women confided in Joanna, hoping that she’d have the key to her father. But she had no key. And no female was permanent in her father’s life. He was always changing apartments and women, and along the way Joanna learned things about men in general that made her realize she should never depend on one financially or emotionally.
    Both her parents had died within the past decade; her father from a heart attack, her mother from cirrhosis of the liver. They hadn’t lived to see Joanna’s success, and certainly they would have been puzzled, if they’d had any reaction at all, by her chosen profession.
    Joanna had begun her career with accidental good luck when she was a senior at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Needing money, she took a job on the Kansas City Star , assisting the social editor, who hired her as a favor to her mother. She was assigned to cover retirement parties, wedding showers, costume balls, but time after time her accounts contained brief mention of the guests and lavish descriptions of the homes where the parties were held. The social editor yelled, cut, rewrote, and complained to the features editor, and suddenly Joanna found herself writing a weekly column for the Home section. That eventually led to her move to New York to write for small magazines, then for a big magazine, and finally the leap to television, to the newly formed CVN cable network.
    Two years ago while Joanna was an assistant writer/researcher for CVN’s morning news and entertainment show, she secretly worked up her idea for Fabulous Homes , and when she was ready, she made an appointment with Jake Corcoran, the all-powerful network programming vice-president. With a reputation for brilliance and always furiously busy, Jake Corcoran still found space for her in his schedule one day. Jake was so enthusiastic about her idea that he took the time to advise her in the preparation of her pitch, counseling her to work up a concise, vivid outline of the show, backed up by a fifty-page document detailing what the weekly half-hour show would encompass over a span of nine months, the proposed skeleton production staff, and a production budget estimate. Jake advised her to research and be prepared to discuss just what segment of the American audience would watch her show and what kinds of advertisers would support it. She did all that, as well as using her vacation time to search out, examine, and compile photographs and specs of the first eight houses she planned to show. She had letters of acceptance from the owners.
    The more she actually dug into the details and shaped the show, the more excited Joanna grew. She could envision every shot, every room,