The Truth about My Success

by Dyan Sheldon

  When she’s done, Angelina stands behind Oona’s chair as she stares at her new self in the mirror. “What do you think?”

  “I look so different.” She looks like Paloma Rose. It’s kind of frightening. “I wouldn’t recognize myself if I didn’t know it was me.”

  Angelina steps around her for a closer look. “You know who you remind me of?” she says. “That girl on the TV. Justina, doesn’t she remind you of that girl on the TV?”

  Justina waves a pair of scissors in the air. Thoughtfully. “Which one?”

  “You know,” encourages Angelina, “the one who’s an angel.”

  “You think?” Maria appears beside Angelina, looking at Oona as if she’s never seen her before. “I don’t know…” She shakes her head. “I think that girl’s much taller.”

  Oona isn’t the only one having a day of firsts. Leone is actually waiting for them when they return, appearing at the front door even before Oona – wearing one of her new outfits and a new pair of shoes with lifts, her hair blonde and her eyes blue – gets out of the car. Leone stands at the top of the steps, arms folded and eyes narrowed like a general inspecting her troops. “Close,” says Leone. “Very, very close.” She takes a step back and shakes her head. “Now all we have to do is work on the little details.”

  But doesn’t add that the devil, as the saying goes, is in those little details.

  It isn’t long before Oona establishes a routine of sorts. She gets up early to take Harriet for her long morning walk. It’s too early for there to be anyone lingering by the main entrance, but, just to be sure, they go out the back way and take a circuitous route, coming out to one side of someone else’s property on a dead-end street several roads below the Minnicks’. Oona always calls her father as soon as they’re out of the house. Last thing at night she and Harriet take another long walk, and she talks to her father again. These are the best times of the day for her. Peaceful. Pleasant. They haven’t met any coyotes yet, but they’ve met quite a few dogs and their owners, as well as cats and cat owners and a man who has an iguana in his backyard. It’s a surprisingly friendly neighbourhood, but this, of course, may be because everyone loves Harriet. People say hello or stop to talk. By day three she knows several names. Ben and Bill the beagle. Lara and Pixie the Great Dane. Jason and Lilly the dachshund. Moira and Orwell the German Shepherd. Mr Jeffers and Comandante the iguana. Mrs Mackinpaw and her cat Sunshine. Oona has twice gotten Sunshine out of a tree. In between these highlights, Oona spends all her time mastering the details of being Paloma Rose. Which is neither pleasant nor peaceful.

  “Nonono!” It’s been a long afternoon in what is turning out to be a preternaturally long week. If patience were petrol Leone would be lucky to make it around the block right now. “Go back to the door and try it again, sweetie.” She smiles like a doll. “We’re aiming to imitate poetry in motion, not a bulldozer.”

  Oona sits down suddenly. If you ask her, she might as well be in boot camp. Do this. Do that. Don’t do that. Don’t do this. When she closes her eyes at night, she hears Leone’s sweet-as-saccharine voice in her head repeating Nonono, and sees her winter-in-the-Arctic smile. She’s never known anyone so easily dissatisfied. She never lets up. No wonder Paloma threw an egg at her; what’s amazing is that she didn’t throw the plate too. Even when Oona does something right, Leone wants it done better. Oona can’t wait till she has everything down and Master Sergeant Minnick finally leaves her alone; Maria said not to get her hopes up. Leone never leaves Paloma alone, why should she leave Oona alone? When she’s about to be totally contrary, Oona sucks in her bottom lip and pulls her eyebrows together. She’s doing that now. “I’m taking a break.” This is an announcement, not a request.

  Snow and icy winds fall over the North Pole. “You had a break twenty-eight minutes ago.”

  “Well now I’m having another one.”

  Leone crosses her arms in front of her. “You’re not trying hard enough, sweetie. How are you going to be ready in time if you don’t try?”

  “I am trying.” Oona crosses her legs. “But what you don’t seem to understand is that you’re working against the law of diminishing returns here.”

  Leone taps her foot. A different kind of animal would be pawing the ground. “The law of what?”

  “Diminishing returns,” says Oona. “We’ve gone way past the point where me doing it again and again is going to make it any better. It’s just going to keep getting worse.” Oona’s been walking from the front door to the middle of the living room for nearly two hours. So now she has a good idea what it’s like to live in a cage.

  “It’ll get better if you want it to get better.” Leone is not only a woman who possesses the single-mindedness and determination of the fanatic, she is also unrealistically stubborn. “Let’s try it again. And this time concentrate on being poetry in motion not a clodhopper in muddy boots, OK?”

  Oona’s brow is still furrowed, but she stands up. “I’m not a ballet dancer, you know. I just want to get from one place to another. That’s what walking is Mrs Min—”

  “Mom.” Just because someone smiles at you doesn’t mean she likes you, a fact both Leone and Oona are very well aware of by now. “Please try to remember that, darling. It is important.”

  “That’s what walking is, Mom. Getting from one place to another. Not shoving poems around the room.”

  Leone sighs. “But one can walk gracefully, darling.” Paloma’s main weapons are shouting, screaming and throwing the tantrum of a three-year-old – though usually without the lying on the floor kicking her feet part. Oona’s weapon of choice, however, is debate. You can’t tell her anything that she doesn’t question or want a fuller explanation of. She’s not very good at taking orders. Everything is, Why? Or, How come? Or, But that doesn’t make sense. If you gave her instructions on how to cross to the other side of the street she’d either ask for a second opinion or try to convince you that she should stay where she is. Jack says that Oona wants to be some kind of doctor and has a scientific, enquiring mind – not a charge you can lay on Paloma – but Leone thinks she’s a natural troublemaker. You can tell. She sounds sarcastic just saying hello. And she is certainly a lot of trouble to Leone. “Think gazelle, not moose.”

  “Right. Gazelle, not moose.” But Oona isn’t thinking gazelle or moose. She’s thinking charging rhino.

  Oona recently read the story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, in which a man turns into a giant insect. Mr Kafka made becoming someone – or something – else seem relatively uncomplicated. In his story the metamorphosis happens overnight. Gregor Samsa goes to sleep a salesman, and wakes up a Godzilla bug. But changing from Oona Ginness to Paloma Rose is about much more than changing the way Oona looks. As Leone said, gazing at a photo of dear Paloma with a tenderness her only child wouldn’t recognize, “Looking like dear Paloma’s one thing. Being her is something else.”

  It’d be easier to be a Godzilla bug.

  Besides the hands-on life coaching from Leone, Oona spends what feels like the equivalent of at least twenty years in solitary watching DVDs and home videos of Paloma, learning not just the timbres and inflections of her voice – from the little-girl wheedling tone, to the sweet and helpless one, to the contemptuous drawl, to the sour snarl in which she usually speaks to her mother – but the gestures and expressions that go with them. The face Paloma makes when she’s being praised; the one she makes when she wants something; the way she looks when she’s about to throw a fried egg. Her habit of fiddling with her earring when she’s nervous, pulling at her hair when she’s thinking, tapping her fingertips together when she’s in a really bad mood, lighting matches when she’s bored.

  Maria and Jack Silk act as special advisers.

  “Paloma can’t fix herself a bowl of cereal,” says Maria. She’s never used the washing machine, cleared her or anyone else’s dishes from the table, or picked up after herself, or made herself a sandwich. She might recognize an iron but she wouldn’t know how to use it. V
ery often she doesn’t wear things more than once. Oona thinks she means that Paloma wears things once and then puts them in the wash. Maria means that Paloma wears things once and never wears them again. Which may explain why her only real hobby is shopping. The only person she listens to is Mister Silk.

  “Paloma’s not a bad kid,” says Jack Silk. “It’s just that she hasn’t been formally introduced to reality yet.” She’s a C student at best, and that’s when she’s making an effort. Which makes it a rarity. She uses her phone to add anything more complicated than 2+2 and hasn’t finished a book since she was three and had to have Goodnight Moon read to her every bedtime. She could give master classes in tantrums, sulks and mood swings. “She can be sweeter than Tupelo honey, of course,” says Jack, “but not on a normal day.”

  Oona spends another twenty-year stretch practising Paloma’s voice with a CD Jack had made, repeating each sentence into a recorder and then playing it back, as if she’s learning a foreign language. Leaving the restaurants and cafés of Hollywood lonely, Leone spends more time at home than she has in the last year, hanging over Oona’s shoulder, eyes half-closed in concentration, handing out judgments like a kangaroo court. Too fast. Too slow. Too loud. Too nasal. For the love of Hosanna, darling, think of your words as glass balls that you’re gently setting down on the ground, not bullets you’re using to shoot cans off a fence.

  “I feel like I’m being brainwashed,” Oona grumbles. “I bet when I’m sleeping I’m still saying over and over in that silly simper, ‘Oh, but miracles happen every day’.” “Miracles happen every day” is Faith Cross’s catchphrase and, of course, is said sweetly and angelically – as well as very often.

  “I sincerely hope so,” says Leone. “That is the object of the exercise, you know. To make it all automatic.”

  And here she was thinking that Leone’s purpose is merely to kill her will to live.

  “And it’s not a silly simper. It’s inspirational.”

  Oona rolls her eyes at the floor. As inspirational as a greeting card.

  “Maybe what you really need is an android,” suggests Oona. “Then you could programme it to be exactly how you want.”

  If only… As far as Leone’s concerned, an android would solve every problem she has. The surly, rebellious, never-know-what-she’s-going-to-do-next Paloma problem; and the contrary, arguing-about-how-long-a-piece-of-string-is Oona problem and her dog. Who at this very minute is gazing at Leone the way it does, as if it’s waiting for her to die so it can eat her and gnaw on her bones.

  “An android wouldn’t be all that terrific,” says Leone. “Because then I’d have to worry about its battery running out in the middle of a shoot.”

  But although the walking and talking present difficulties, it’s when it comes to thinking like Paloma that the real trouble starts. Except for the remarkable physical resemblance, Oona and Paloma have nothing in common. They don’t like the same clothes, the same food, the same music, the same movies, the same colours, the same actors, the same flowers – the same anything. If they had a choice they probably wouldn’t breathe the same air. Oona couldn’t show less enthusiasm for her new life if she were a princess forced to live in a down-at-heel trailer camp, and not a guttersnipe given the incredible chance to live like a princess. She sits through Leone’s lessons on applying make-up and styling her hair as if she’s being taught how to butcher a cow. She turned all the stuffed toys in Paloma’s room to face the wall because she can’t stand them staring at her. She has to be forced into a decent pair of shoes or an attractive dress. She doesn’t know who half the people Leone talks about are, and when she does recognize a name it’s the way Leone might recognize a term she learned in biology in high school – Amoeba, oh yeah, that sounds familiar. She has fallen asleep watching Angel in the House at least half a dozen times.

  How is Leone supposed to relate to her? She hasn’t been raised by Leone, and so she is a total mystery – an alien being. The fact that she does look so much like Paloma doesn’t make it any better. It’s like having a wax likeness of her daughter that can walk and talk. Leone isn’t a squeamish woman, but if she were it would give her the creeps.

  “Chocolate or vanilla?” demands Leone.

  “Chocolate,” says Oona. Hopefully she’ll never have to eat any. Chocolate makes her break out.

  “Dress or pants?”

  “Dress.” The last time she voluntarily wore a dress was to her mother’s funeral.

  “If you had to choose between going to Hawaii and going to France?”

  “Hawaii.”

  Leone marches back and forth like a drill sergeant. One wearing a linen sundress and open-toed shoes. “Why?”

  “Because they speak English.” Which, says Leone, is more than can be said for a lot of California. “And I love the ukulele.” She wouldn’t know a ukulele unless it came labelled.

  “Favourite colour?”

  “Pink. Because it’s feminine and warm.” It makes her think of bubblegum stuck under a desk.

  “Movie?”

  “The Wizard of Oz. Because it’s a classic and full of positivism and love.” It gives her a headache. Oona’s favourite movie is Blade Runner.

  “Food?”

  “My mom’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Because it always makes me feel better even if I’m really blue.” She has yet to see Leone so much as open a tin or microwave a muffin.

  “Book?”

  “Little Women. Because it’s a classic and says so much about family values.” She hasn’t seen a book since she got here.

  Leone comes to a stop, swivelling on her heels to face Oona. Here comes the million-dollar question. “And if you’re asked what you owe your success to?”

  “You mean besides my loving parents, hard work and faith in myself?” Oona ad-libs. Not without a touch of malice.

  “Those things go without saying, sweetie.” Leone’s mouth looks as if it’s been pulled through a very small hole. “Just stick to the script.”

  “I owe everything to my fans,” Oona parrots, sweeter than a tanker full of kittens and sounding sincere enough to fool the Pope.

  “That’s very good, darling. You’re really improving.” A satisfied smile falls across Leone’s face like a stray ray of sunshine on a muddy pool.

  Oona’s return smile is not as cheerful. Big deal.

  Compared to all of this, learning Faith Cross’s lines is less difficult than remembering who ordered the BLT without mayo and who ordered it without tomato during a busy lunch hour. Maria helps her rehearse in the evenings when Leone goes out to recuperate from a day spent doing more than eating lunch. If only being Paloma were as easy. “It isn’t easy for her, either,” says Maria.

  And then, just when Oona’s starting to feel that death isn’t the only thing that’s endless, Leone declares her ready for her first public appearance. Jack Silk is taking them to lunch at Paloma’s favourite restaurant.

  Which puts Leone into uber-nag mode. She hovers around Oona like an especially stubborn wasp all morning. Are you wearing that? Why don’t you wear this? You want me to do your make-up? You want me to do your hair? You want me to pick out your jewellery? You want me to go over the menu with you? You want to go over what you’ve been doing with your summer again? Remember, you’re not Bill Clinton. Nobody’s expecting you to give any big speeches. Just smile and nod and answer in monosyllables.

  “Now you remember what I taught you about what cutlery to use?” Leone is saying as they walk to the front door together, graceful as a pair of gazelles.

  “I remember.” Three different knives. Five different forks. Three different spoons. Up until now, Oona has never used more than a fork and a knife – and when they lived in the truck they didn’t even have that, they ate everything out of Styrofoam boxes with their hands. She can only hope that she does remember.

  “And the glasses.” Leone opens the door.

  These people don’t use one of anything for some reason.

  “And the
glasses. And the plates, too,” says Oona. God forbid your bread or your salad shouldn’t have a dish of its own.

  “And you remember the difference between the server and the maître d’?”

  Jack Silk is waiting in the driveway in his ivory Jaguar. He waves.

  Oona waves back. “Yes.” One makes more money and is better dressed.

  “And don’t slouch. Or put your elbows on the table. Or drink like a camel. Or pick your nose.”

  As if Oona slouches through the house, spitting like a grumpy camel, picking her nose and banging her elbows down on every table in the place.

  The passenger door opens, causing not so much as a nanosecond’s pause in Leone’s list of disasters to be avoided. “And for God’s sake—” Leone’s heels sound like the blows of tiny hammers against the concrete drive, “—if someone stops to talk to us don’t say anything about riding on the Metro or knowing what a food stamp looks like.”

  “So I guess I shouldn’t mention about living in the truck, then,” says Oona.

  Leone’s smile looks as if it might snap. “I’m going to assume that’s a joke.”

  Jack leans across the seat. “Leone,” says Jack, “why don’t you sit in the back?”

  Leone sits in the back, silent and still as a photograph of a woman who’s had days in her life when she was much happier, while in the front seat Jack talks to Oona about dogs. Although this is news to Leone, Jack Silk apparently loves dogs.

  Leone, whose interest in dogs is approximately minus a hundred on a scale of one to ten, isn’t listening, but thinking of all the things that could go wrong. She hasn’t been this nervous since Paloma’s audition for Angel in the House. Oona, who, of course, is very interested in dogs, isn’t listening either. She’s nervous, too. Not as nervous as she was the last time her mom said she had something to tell her, but nervous nonetheless. Every night Oona falls asleep imagining her and her dad in a little house with a pick-up in the driveway; in a new life. It won’t be the same as their old life, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be good. Oona really wants that money. She’s worked too hard to blow it now.