by Dyan Sheldon
“I wouldn’t feed this to a mangy old mutt,” she says, scowling at the plate of spaghetti Tallulah brought her from the dining hall.
“So fine. Don’t eat it. I’m not going to lose any sleep because you missed a meal.”
Paloma pulls the plate out of the way of Tallulah’s reaching hand. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to eat it. I have to have something or I’ll die. I just meant it’s disgusting.”
“Everybody else likes it,” says Tallulah.
Paloma gives her a look that perfectly balances pity and contempt. As if that means anything.
“You keep pushing me and I will let you starve,” says Tallulah.
Although Paloma’s room at Old Ways can hardly be compared to solitary confinement in a colonial penal colony, spending all day in a room with no TV, no phone, no music, and no computer does nothing to improve Paloma’s outlook or her mood. Prisoners often occupy their time doing push-ups, or making origami animals, or taming wild birds. Mostly what Paloma does is sleep or weep. Which may be just as well, since she’s finding it difficult to sleep at night. Coming from a major, 24/7 city, she was unaware of all the sounds the night makes when there isn’t any civilization to hide them (and the little civilization there is gets switched off at eleven). Rustlings, thumpings, snorts and cries. Lonely, hopeless calls of longing. Wild, deranged creatures baying for blood. Then, just as she finally starts to drift off, the rooster will decide that it’s daybreak – whether or not it is. Tallulah sleeps through it all. “I prefer wolves and owls to police sirens and breaking glass,” says Tallulah.
Paloma thinks she may be losing her mind through boredom.
Tallalulah may also be losing her mind, but not through boredom. She used to look forward to the end of the day when, after watching a movie or playing a game in the common room, she went back to the privacy of her bunk. The ranch has its own library full of books and magazines, so after her shower Tallulah would get into bed and read for a while, finally falling asleep to the calls and cries and silence of the night – feeling part of the world instead of afraid of it. For her, Old Ways really is a luxury hotel; safe and friendly with no danger that someone is suddenly going to punch you in the head or slam you against a wall.
But she doesn’t look forward to coming back to the room any more. Now she dreads coming back. Gone is the peace and gone is the quiet, replaced by a moaning lump on the other bed. Tallulah has been tolerant, she has been helpful, she’s followed the advice about showing kindness tacked to the wall at the entrance to the serving area in the dining room, but still Paloma just lies there whining and acting like she’s the only person on the planet who’s ever had a bad day.
And so it is that tonight when Tallulah comes out of the bathroom with a towel over her head and sees Paloma hunched up on her bed exactly as she was when Tallulah went in to take her shower (and when she left this morning, and when she returned during the day and after supper), all of the things she’s learned about managing her feelings and letting things go vanish faster than a falling star. The old feeling of wanting to hit something makes her bang the door behind her.
Which does at least make Paloma look over.
“So how long are you planning to keep this up? Isn’t it about time you got out of that bed?” asks Tallulah. “You’ve been here more than two weeks, you know. Your tan’s faded. Pretty soon you’re going to look like you’ve lived in a cave all your life.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well you should care. You can’t keep this up for ever, Minnick.”
Paloma closes her eyes. “I can keep it up till Dr Death sends me home.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Tallulah was once a girl who, finding a damp towel in her hand, would drop it on the floor, but now she drapes it neatly over the back of a chair. “You’ll be an old lady wobblin’ around with a walker before that happens. Ethan doesn’t give up so easy. Nobody ships out of here until they shape up.” Even Zigi Slowly, who did everything he could think of to get kicked out, including setting fire to the barn, was defeated in the end and now works at Old Ways as a ranch hand.
“Well that’s not going to happen. Not to me.” Paloma’s eyes open again. She props herself on one elbow. “Because anybody who thinks I’m shovelling up horse poo and herding cows is seriously wrong. I’m an actress, not the hired help. I don’t do crap like that.”
“There are worse things,” says Tallulah.
“Yeah,” sneers Paloma. “Eating in a cafeteria.”
“It’s not a cafeteria, it’s a dining hall.”
“Cleaning toilets and boiling beans.”
Tallulah gets into bed. “You know, life here isn’t that bad.”
“Maybe it’s not for you.” Although Paloma is wrong about quite a few things, she is, of course, right about this. Old Ways isn’t that bad for Tallulah, not any more. At first Tallulah would rather have been in solitary, but now this is the best Tallulah’s ever felt without alcohol or drugs. She has friends. She has a lot to do. She isn’t under threat every minute of the day and night. She’s proved that she can do more than get into trouble. A lot more. And where she used to shriek and scream and hit things all the time, now she rarely raises her voice. Though that, of course, isn’t what Paloma means. What Paloma means is that Tallulah is a nobody. “You probably live in a trailer.”
Tallulah harrumphs. I’d rather live in a trailer without you than the White House with you. But she knows she shouldn’t take everything personally; she isn’t the problem, Paloma is. “Nobody said you have to like it here. You just have to look like you’re trying.”
“I want to look like I’m lying beside an infinity pool reading The Hollywood Reporter, that’s what I want to look like.”
Tallulah reaches for the switch on the lamp beside her bed. “I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Of course I want to go home.” If Paloma’s voice were an insect, it would be a mosquito. “This may be your idea of a vacation, but it isn’t mine.”
In contrast, Tallulah’s voice is sweeter than corn syrup. “Well then you better get in the same story as everybody else, Princess La-di-dah. Because the longer it takes you to do that, the longer you’ll be here. That’s the way it works.”
“They can’t just keep me here,” argues Paloma. “Not against my will. This is America. I have rights.”
Tallulah raises her eyebrows. “And who’s going to get you out?”
There is a truth in this simple statement that Paloma has avoided facing until now. She hasn’t been kidnapped, she’s been sent here deliberately. By the very same people who are the only ones who can be expected to rescue her. They can only keep her here till Audrey Hepplewhite recovers from her injuries, then they’ll have to bring her home. For the show. But she could still be here for a while longer. A week. Even two. Maybe three. And her tan has faded. If she doesn’t get some sunlight soon everyone really will think that she’s been in jail. Paloma isn’t familiar with the term “sensory deprivation” or its uses in torture and mind-control, but she may be starting to feel its effects. Making friends with a cow may not be too high a price to pay for getting out of this room and having something to do, even if it is beneath her.
“I am not sitting with a bunch of losers talking about my problems,” says Paloma. “That is absolutely something I am not going to do. There’s no way.” That and hiking up some mountain with them singing campfire songs like a bunch of Boy Scouts. “How am I supposed to do all this stupid stuff? It’s not who I am.”
“You keep saying you’re this hot actress. So act.” Tallulah turns off the light.
Out of the mouths of babes… as the saying goes. Or, in this case, out of the mouth of a difficult teenager.
Paloma spends a restless night, doing what she doesn’t always do best: thinking. Weighing her options. Considering the possibility of acting not out of mood, whim, or rage, but logic and reason. Maybe it’s time to not just react to things she doesn’t like, but to make a plan to ove
rcome them.
When she finally falls asleep, she dreams that she is sitting beside Ethan Lovejoy in the old pick-up, being bounced and shaken back to the airport. They aren’t talking because of the racket of the truck, but she’s so excited there are tears in her eyes. The first thing she’s going to do when she gets home is go to the spa. Then she’s going shopping. Then she’s going to her favourite restaurant and will order that chicken they do with the truffles and kumquats and wild rice. When they get to the airport, Ethan lets her off in front of the departures terminal. “You did real good, Susan,” he tells her. “You have yourself a nice life.” She’s so happy she says that she will. She picks up her bag and practically runs to the entrance. And that’s when she sees herself reflected in the doors and windows. She’s an old lady with grey hair and wrinkled skin, and it isn’t a suitcase on wheels that she’s holding but a walking frame. She turns around to shout at Ethan, to ask him how this could have happened to her, but Ethan Lovejoy is gone.
The next morning, when dawn is barely a crack in the darkness of the enormous sky, Paloma is up and showered before Tallulah’s alarm goes off. She dresses in the jeans and T-shirt everyone else here wears – haute couture at Old Ways Ranch. It’s a miracle they don’t make them all dress in buckskin. She puts on the boots that have been provided for her. (Work boots, of course. If you wore them on Hollywood Boulevard everyone would think you’d been cleaning the sewers.) She is waiting with a pleasant smile on her face when Tallulah comes out of the bathroom. Tallulah raises her eyebrows, but makes no comment.
They walk to the stables together. Paloma is introduced to her horse, whose name is Sweetie (a deceptive name for an animal who immediately tries to bite her). She is shown the basic, pre-breakfast routine. She is introduced to the cows and her name is put on the cattle rota for later in the week. Through all of this she is polite and interested, gingerly patting Sweetie out of range of Sweetie’s very large teeth and beaming on the cows as though their noses aren’t larger than her fist. When those chores are done, she follows Tallulah to breakfast and sits beside her in the dining room, showing all the politeness and interest to Tallulah’s friends that she showed to the livestock.
Ethan Lovejoy waylays her as she’s getting ready to leave.
“Well, Susan, what a pleasant surprise.” He touches his hands together; his prayers have been answered. “You starting to feel a little more settled?”
“You know, I think I really am.” She graces him with one of Faith Cross’s sincere and thoughtful smiles. “Wait’ll I tell you what happened this morning.”
And she launches into a delightful anecdote about her and her horse that she remembers from a movie she once saw.
Acting her heart out.
Living the dream
Oona may be living the dream according to Jack Silk but she doesn’t seem to be sleeping it. Most nights, she turns and tosses and wakes every hour or two. Last night, after another fourteen-hour day – one largely dominated by the phrase Nonono! – she was so tired when she finally got to bed that she couldn’t fall asleep at all. When she did drift off she was soon awoken by the rare event of Leone and Arthur being in the house at the same time, which led to the kind of fight that in another neighbourhood would have brought the cops.
It’s after that, that Oona has a nightmare.
Oona dreams that Paloma Rose never returns to LA. Oona doesn’t know where Paloma is – some exclusive resort – but in this nightmare Paloma is having such a great time that she decides to let Oona carry on being her. She is sitting under a palm tree on a beach of white sand that glitters like diamonds, ripping her return ticket into tiny pieces and shrieking, “No more stress, no more mess, vacation’s best!” Even asleep, Oona knows what that means: she is trapped being Paloma for ever. No more peace and quiet. No future full of domestic animals who need her help. No chance of seeing her father get back to being the man who made up songs to old rock tunes and loved playing practical jokes. All of that is gone and in its place is Leone Minnick, telling her how to breathe and how to smile and how to brush her teeth, and a shadow of paparazzi following everywhere she goes. The dream finally ends with Oona and Harriet standing on top of a mountain, trying to see over the edge. Leone is right behind her, telling her how she should stand, when suddenly a man with a camera jumps out from behind a tree. “Teen Angel Thinks She Can Fly!” He shouts. “Smile, sweetheart!”
Oona falls out of bed.
Oona picks herself off the floor, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. Even Maria won’t be up yet, but there’s no point trying to get back to sleep. “Time for our walk, Harriet,” says Oona, and she turns off the alarm.
Oona still takes Harriet for a long walk every morning before she leaves for the studio, and every night after she gets home – no matter what. These walks are Oona’s favourite hours of the day; almost the only time when she feels like herself.
They tiptoe downstairs, so as not to disturb Maria, and into the kitchen. Oona gives Harriet a handful of kibble and puts on a pot of coffee so she can take a cup with her, thinking about Paloma’s life while she watches the carafe slowly fill.
Once she got the hang of it, playing Faith Cross turned out to be easy enough. You read the script, you think about the story, you learn your lines, you listen to the director. Acting in front of a camera is about as hard as eating an ice cream compared to being someone you’re not in real life.
It’s all the other things about being Paloma Rose that make up the stress and mess Paloma was shrieking about in Oona’s dream. Her life is more regimented than a soldier’s, every minute of every hour supervised and accounted for. Fourteen hours in the studio – which include fittings and make-up, and just sitting around waiting between takes, as well as the run-throughs and actual tapings – isn’t unusual. When Oona isn’t in the studio there are lines to memorize; hours with her physical trainer; hours with her voice and drama coaches; and personal appearances and photo shoots – not to mention the constant mental and physical exercise of dodging fans and that insatiable pack of paparazzi.
And then, of course, there’s Leone. Since it is much more difficult to control a person by remote than a television, Leone has always been a regular visitor on the set of Angel in the House – especially after Paloma’s ridiculous infatuation with that full-of-himself script writer – but now she is there all day, every day. She has become Oona’s own personal spook – the spy kind, not the dead kind. She is also Oona’s greatest critic. Half of her sentences start with the words “Darling, you can’t…” The other half start with “Sweetie, don’t…” Almost all of them end with “Have I made myself clear?” As long as they’re in public, Leone rarely leaves her side. She goes with Oona to make-up and to costume changes, and on her visits to hospitals and homeless shelters. She sits there, barely breathing, during takes and interviews. She won’t let her go into a store for a soda by herself. They eat lunch together in the dressing room; they take their breaks together in the dressing room; they wait together in the dressing room. Even when the director takes Oona aside for a chat, Leone is right beside her, her smile like the light on a sound booth: Recording in progress. The only time she lets Oona out of her sight is when one of them goes to the bathroom.
Oona fills her travel mug with coffee, then puts on the hat Maria uses when she gardens and a pair of sunglasses. She and Harriet go out the back way as usual.
It’s a beautiful morning – still so early that the breaking light is fine and misty, but the day is already warm and promising pleasant. Birds sing; colours shine; the air hums. Despite the early hour, the streets are far from empty.
The first friends they run into are Moira and Orwell. Moira’s sipping coffee from an insulated cup; Orwell’s carrying a stick. Moira offers Oona half a muffin, and Orwell drops his stick so he can bend very far down to greet Harriet.
Moira, like everyone else on the dog-walking route, knows Oona as Paloma Rose, but they don’t care about that. No one ever discusses a
nything but their pets. Today, for instance, Moira, who is a high-powered lawyer, doesn’t mention the landmark case she just won, but talks about the time Orwell lost his favourite toy (a rubber duck) and was so depressed she took him to a dog psychiatrist.
“And he got better?” asks Oona.
“Not until I found his duck behind the couch,” says Moira.
They chat with Ben and Bill the beagle, and Laura and Pixie the Great Dane. They say hello to two Brussels griffons, a poodle, and three French bulldogs. Mr Jeffers, without Comandante, drives by in his car, waving, on his way to work. When they get to Mrs Mackinpaw’s house, she and Sunshine are sitting on their porch having their breakfast.
Oona has her morning phone call with her father the rest of the way home, following the flag of Harriet’s tail while she walks. Since Maria took over the job of making sure Abbot at least has groceries and conversation with someone who actually talks back, he’s started to slowly crawl out of his cave of despair. He has things to tell her and things to do. He makes plans and talks about the future as if he now believes he has one. He’s even stopped worrying so much about Oona, now that he knows she’s in such safe hands – and he doesn’t, of course, mean Leone Minnick.
“Really?” Oona tries not to sound too surprised. “You’re going shopping today?”
“Just for food, and a couple of things for Mrs Figueroa.” Maria had been helping Mrs Figueroa, too, but apparently Abbot is now helping Maria. He laughs. “I told you I’ve been getting out a lot more lately.”
Although a five-minute walk around the block would be significant compared to rarely leaving the house, it’s true that Abbot has been getting out a lot more lately. Last week he took the bus to buy a bag of fresh corn tortillas. The next day he took the bus to get himself a new pair of shoes. Yesterday he took the bus to get paint to redecorate the apartment. The day before he took the bus to Venice and sat on the boardwalk for nearly two hours, wearing his old cowboy hat to protect him from the sun. Tonight he’s going to a movie with Maria. He forgets to mention the movie.
