by Dyan Sheldon
There’s a knock on the door.
Paloma cries louder.
“Susan?” The door creaks open. Obviously everyone here is too busy chasing cattle to do anything practical like oil hinges. The door creaks shut again. Just come right in, don’t wait to be invited. We’re in the country now! “Susan, I’m your counsellor, Kara McGraw? Your personal counsellor, not for group sessions.”
Paloma doesn’t look up. Kara McGraw’s voice has a lilt in it that makes her sound as if she’s about to burst into song. Paloma can tell from that voice that Kara McGraw thinks ballet pumps are the height of fashion and wears sweaters with snowmen and trees that light up at Christmas – probably with matching musical earrings.
“You and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other in the weeks to come,” croons Kara McGraw, “so I thought I’d introduce myself right away. I know how scary new places can be. I don’t want you to think that you’re all alone here.”
Who is this woman? Paloma doesn’t point out that she is all alone – all alone and miles from home with not so much as a cell phone or a laptop to contact the outside world. Another weapon in Paloma’s arsenal is the Big Silence. You can’t talk to someone who won’t talk back. She didn’t speak to Leone for two weeks after Seth Drachman dumped her and left the show because she knew why: Leone threatened him and had him fired. She only started speaking to Leone again so she could yell at her. Paloma closes her eyes and says nothing.
“Because you’re not alone,” Kara McGraw jingles on. “You have everyone here – we like to think of ourselves as one big family. And a pretty happy one, at that. But especially you have me. I like to think of you and me as a team.”
Don’t do that, Paloma silently begs. Think of us as strangers.
“I know you’re upset, Susan.” Obviously she’s a counsellor because she has so much insight and perception. “Ethan explained that coming here has been something of a surprise for you.” Insight, perception, and a gift for understatement. “I understand that might be confusing to you. And makes you angry. But it really is true that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”
And sometimes people are just cruel to be cruel. People like Leone Minnick.
“But you know what they say, Susan,” she continues. “It’s a really bad wind that doesn’t blow some good somewhere.”
Paloma had no idea that everyone went around saying something so achingly stupid; if she had, she would have told them to stop.
“Well anyway, I just thought I’d come see if you need anything,” sings Kara McGraw. “A drink maybe? Or something to eat? You must be hungry after your trip. I could get you a snack from the kitchen. The food here is really swell.”
What Paloma needs is a ride to the airport.
“And if you want to talk… That’s what I’m here for… Talking. No matter what time of the day or night, my door is always open…”
So shut it!
“You know, it’s really important to talk, Susan,” says Kara McGraw. “That’s a lot of what we do here. Just talk. It really makes a difference. Most of you kids who come here, one of the problems is you’ve never really had anyone to talk to. And take it from me, because I know from my own experience, it’ll make you feel a whole lot better.”
The only thing Paloma plans to say to anyone at Rancho Ridiculous is “goodbye” – which, of course, is also the only thing that could possibly make her feel better.
“It helps put you in touch with your feelings.”
Paloma’s already in touch with her feelings. The sobbing goes up a notch.
But Kara McGraw is not at Old Ways because she gives up easily.
“Hey, I have a super idea, Susan! Why don’t we take a little walk?”
The only walking Paloma plans to do is out of here.
“Exercise is a wonderful mood enhancer, you know. Get those endorphins bopping around like a jive dancer. And it would do you good to get some fresh air. I could give you the grand tour…”
The grand tour up a pile of rocks and over a field of cow pats. Maybe they could get gored by a bull (Season Two, Episode Seven).
“And what about supper?” asks the indefatigable Kara McGraw, still chirpy as a sparrow on a warm spring day. “We’re having fried chicken tonight. Believe you me, it’s the best this side of the Mississippi. You don’t want to miss that.”
Oh, yes, she does.
“I’ll tell you what. If you don’t feel up to coming to the dining room, I’ll make sure the cook puts some chicken away for you for tomorrow. How does that sound?”
Like I might as well die right now since there’s nothing more to look forward to.
“So… maybe I’ll see you later, Susan.”
This time, Kara McGraw does get an answer. Paloma snores.
It’s quite a while later when the sounds of voices and running water wake her up. The water is inside the building and hitting a metal shower stall; the voices are talking and laughing – someone shouts for the shampoo. In Season Five, Episode Two of Angel in the House, Faith Cross spends a week in a college dorm. Obviously, Paloma herself didn’t really live in the dorm – it was just a set. But it was a very convincing set, and gave her – an only child with a bedroom larger than most people’s homes and a bathroom much larger than most people’s bedrooms – a fairly good idea of what sharing a room and living on top of a lot of other people is like. Totally gross. Everybody borrowing your stuff all the time. Sleeping in the same room so someone you don’t even like much can see you with bed head and no make-up and drool coming out of your mouth. Somebody watching you shave under your arms or pick your nose. Knowing every time you farted or had your period. Going through your things when you’re not in the room. If you wanted to have even three minutes of privacy you’d have to lock yourself in a toilet stall. It was as close to communal living as Paloma ever wanted to get. Now, however, she seems to be a lot closer. She is living in a dorm; a mini-dorm occupied by only four people, but a dorm. They’re taking showers together in the bathroom and sharing shampoo. Any minute some girl’s going to come in wrapped in a towel. And here she was thinking her life couldn’t get any worse. Paloma immediately starts to cry again.
She’s crying too much to hear the door to the bathroom open or shut, but she hears a voice say, “Hey! Are you OK?” Very loudly.
At least the voice isn’t lilting like Kara McGraw’s, or a sinisterly calm and gentle monotone like Ethan Lovejoy’s. Which is several points in its favour. Paloma doesn’t look up to see if the body attached to the voice is wrapped in a towel or not, but she does decide to answer. “Leave me alone.”
“You’re Susan, right? I’m your roomie. Tallulah. Me and Pilar and Meg are going over to supper in like ten minutes, are you coming?”
“Leave me alone!”
“You want me to bring you back something to eat?”
“Leave me freakin’ alone!”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“Leave me alone!”
“OK, so I’ll leave you alone. I was only trying to help.”
Paloma listens to the pulling out and pushing in of drawers. Something is zipped. Hair is dried with a towel. Springs creak. And all the while Paloma listens, she waits for the girl to hand her some tissues or get a glass of water or gently try to calm her down. This may not seem to make sense, given how many times Paloma told her to leave her alone, but human behaviour rarely has much to do with logic – and those are the kinds of things Maria does when Paloma is splayed across the sofa crying enough to wash her heart out to sea, no matter how many times Paloma tells her to go away. This girl, however, is clearly nothing like Maria.
Paloma is trying to get a look at her roommate without letting her know that that’s what she’s doing when there’s a knock on the door and it immediately opens. The girl who doesn’t have her own shampoo says, “Isn’t she coming?” Tallulah says, “No, she’s processing.” Someone else says, “Been there, done that.” They all laugh, and then the door shuts behind the
m.
Paloma waits a few seconds, then gets up and peeks through the side of the curtains. Three girls are walking away from the room. The two who could do with one of Leone’s crash, not-one-gram-of-fat-or-carbohydrate-touches-your-lips diets wear baggy shorts and tank tops and baseball caps; the one with the stringy body and the stringy ponytail and the shapeless straw hat is in a faded sundress that makes her look like a used party toothpick. They all walk as if their feet are very large and heavy. Several others – girls and boys – are headed in the same direction. None of them looks half as interesting as a cockroach. Paloma goes back to bed.
It’s the overhead light being turned on that wakes her next. She sits up, blinking. It’s dark outside, and for one glorious second she doesn’t know where she is. But then she remembers. Rancho Nowhere. Hell with horses thrown in. Standing at the foot of the bed is the stringy girl with the stringy ponytail. She doesn’t look any more attractive from the front than the back. She has a narrow, pointy face, as though God started out to make something else – a bird or a ferret, say, but then changed His mind – and eyes the colour of a mocha latte (without the whipped cream and powdered chocolate).
“I know you’re having a hard landing and everything, but so does everybody,” says Tallulah. “Only you’re here, and we have to live together, so I’d appreciate it if you got your bags out of the way. I can’t keep walking around them.”
Paloma blinks some more. “What time is it?”
“Time for you to move your bags.” Tallulah may look like something you’d use to spear a shrimp, but she sounds like the director of Angel in the House. Dictatorial. “You’re supposed to unpack them and then take them over to storage. Didn’t anybody tell you that? There’s no room for them in here.”
Paloma flops back down. “I’m not staying, so I’m not unpacking.”
“If you don’t move them, I will.” And she has the attitude of the show’s director as well.
“Suit yourself,” says Paloma.
The next sounds she hears are the door opening and her bags being thrown outside.
It’s just as well that Paloma isn’t planning to stay at Old Ways since her roommate seems to think that her purpose in life is to wake her up. In the morning she wakes her by standing beside her bed, shaking her a lot less gently than Maria does when Paloma over-sleeps.
“What are you, drugged?” demands Tallulah. “The alarm’s got most of the county up by now. It’s, like, after six. You have to get up.” If she has any sympathy for poor Paloma she hides it well. “This isn’t your fancy house.” She has obviously been through Paloma’s things and seen the labels on her clothes. “We have chores to do before breakfast here.”
Paloma doesn’t open her eyes. “They can take their chores and stuff them up their cows,” she mutters, and turns over. Paloma has enough attitude of her own to bring down the entire Ottoman Empire.
“So I’ll tell Ethan you’re not coming out again today, is that it?”
“I told you, I’m not staying here. So you can tell that sadistic creep I’m not leaving the room unless it’s to get into the car taking me back to the airport.”
“Suit yourself.” The door slams behind her and the sign on the wall that says: Be all you can be falls to the floor.
When Tallulah comes back at noon, Paloma is exactly where she was when she left.
“You still here?” she says. “I thought you were going home.”
Paloma scowls back at her. “Not yet. It’s going to take a little longer than I thought.”
What Kara McGraw, who has stopped by three times today, actually said when asked by Paloma when she was being driven to the airport, was that she’d be taken to the airport when she successfully completed the programme and not one second before. She said this, of course, with a smile on her lips and a song in her voice if not her heart.
“Damn straight, not yet.” Tallulah stands at the foot of Paloma’s bed. “You remember my name? I’m Tallulah. And the girls in the next room, they’re Pilar and Meg. You’re Susan, right?”
“No, that isn’t right. My name’s Paloma. Paloma Rose.”
Some people look prettier when they smile, but some don’t. “Why did she get up?”
Paloma just stares at her.
“That was a joke,” Tallulah explains. “You know. You said ‘Paloma rose’, so I said why did she get up?”
It may have been a joke but it definitely wasn’t funny to everyone in the room.
Paloma’s scowl darkens. “Are you saying you never heard of me?”
“I already told you I heard of you. You’re Susan. Everybody’s talking about you.”
“Of course they’re talking about me. I’m famous. I’m a big TV star.”
Tallulah laughs; a sound as annoying as the buzzing of a fly that’s trapped in your room. “Yeah, sure you are.”
“No, I am. I really am.” Paloma says this very loudly and distinctly. In case, besides everything else that’s wrong with Tallulah – her clothes, her hair, her face – she’s chronically hard of hearing. “I’m in one of the most popular shows ever.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.” Tallulah wipes a stray tear from her eyes; she is still laughing. “And anyway, if you want to know, that’s not why everybody’s talking about you. It’s because you thought you were coming to some fancy hotel.” Apparently the doors aren’t the only things without locks at Old Ways. “Man, everybody thinks that’s like hyper-awesome. They never heard anything so funny.”
“Is that so?” Paloma sounds the way a freezer feels. “Well I’m glad you all find this so funny, because this is so totally unfair that the first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is go to the human rights thing at the UN. I am not supposed to be here. I haven’t done anything.”
Tallulah makes a face that even a visitor from a far-distant galaxy would recognize as total disbelief. “Give me a break, will you Sue? None of us are here because we didn’t do nothing.”
“Well I am.”
“Yeah, sure you are.”
“But I am. My mother did this. She wanted to get rid of me for a while.”
“Why? Because you’re so good?”
Paloma looks at her feet. The nails already need doing. “OK, so maybe I stayed out all night a couple of times and drank and some stuff like that. But it’s not like I burnt the house down or anything.” Some might say that was merely luck. “It was no major deal.” She looks over at Tallulah. “What’d you do?”
In the case of Tallulah Schimmerhorn a more appropriate question might be: “What didn’t you do?” She is, among other things, a felon. Interestingly enough, however, it isn’t the shoplifting, petty thievery, joyriding, or even the drugs and the drinking that have brought her to the ranch.
Tallulah shrugs. “I tried to kill my father.”
For the first time since yesterday, Paloma smiles, though from disbelief, of course, and not happiness. “You what?”
“I didn’t exactly mean for him to die,” says Tallulah. “I just wanted to scare him so he’d leave me alone.”
“And did it work?”
“It must’ve scared somebody ‘cause here I am.” Tallulah shrugs again. “Anyway, I came by to see if you wanted to go to lunch.”
“No. I’m not leaving this room.”
“You have to leave sometime. You’re gonna get pretty hungry.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather starve.”
“OK,” says Tallulah. “I’ll bring you something back.”
Luckily for Paloma, Tallulah knows what it’s like to be difficult, stubborn, angry, contrary and argumentative – and exactly how far it’s likely to get you at Old Ways. And, although it’s true that Tallulah did try to run over her father, she does have a kind nature and a big heart. James Schimmerhorn is the only person she’s ever wanted to see suffer. She brings back food for Paloma. She listens to her grumbles and her rants. She even buys her soda and candy from the vending machines in the common room.
If Paloma were to make a list of every person in the world and rank them according to how much she wanted to be his or her friend, Tallulah Schimmerhorn would be way at the bottom. Under normal circumstances, even if they were stuck in an elevator for fourteen hours, the only words Paloma would be likely to address to Tallulah would be, “Get out of my way.” Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that, under normal circumstances, Paloma would rather defuse a bomb with her teeth than have anything to do with a girl like Tallulah, the homicidal hick. And yet, by dint of her stolen meals and patience and treats, Tallulah is the closest Paloma has ever come to having a real friend.
Tallulah is kept out and busy during most of each day, but when she is in the room Paloma talks to her non-stop. She tells her how mean Leone is in exhaustive detail, cataloguing every offence, criticism and crime committed by her mother – and some that weren’t.
“She said she was sending me to a celebrity dude ranch to relax because I have to work so hard!” wails Paloma. “That’s what she said.”
“All parents lie,” says Tallulah.
She boasts about being a big star and making tons of money and living in Beverly Hills. Tallulah doesn’t believe her. She’s told all her friends what her new roommate claims, and they don’t believe her, either. She’s a fantasist. That’s the correct term for it in this group. Fantasist, not liar.
“The only people I know who aren’t famous are servants,” claims Paloma.
“Not any more,” says Tallulah.
Paloma may only be an average actor, but she’s always excelled at complaining. No matter how good things are, no matter how truly terrible things aren’t, Paloma can find something to gripe about. If Paloma went to heaven she’d complain about the clouds. It’s no surprise then that Old Ways provides her with an endless source of grievance. There is nothing about it – from the quality of the sheets to the power of the shower to the country that surrounds it – that meets with Paloma’s approval.
