The Truth about My Success

by Dyan Sheldon

  She hasn’t had any problem doing sweet, cheerful, helpful and sensitive to the needs and problems of others, because those are all qualities that belong to Faith Cross, and Paloma’s been playing Faith Cross long enough to be very good at them.

  It’s all the other things that make up life at Old Ways that have given her trouble. Indeed, it’s been a learning curve as steep as the Grand Canyon, but with none of the spectacular views and no gift shop.

  At the beginning of this curve was the horse. Sweetie by name, Nasty by nature. She’s a lot larger than Paloma feels she should be, and has extremely unattractive nostrils and whiskers and a permanently disappointed look on her face that reminds Paloma of Leone Minnick. Sweetie snorts and stamps her feet if she doesn’t like the way you’re brushing her, or stroking her, or putting on her saddle. (Or if, as seemed at first to be the case with Paloma, Sweetie just doesn’t like you.)

  Tallulah, who is naturally, if unexpectedly, good with animals, couldn’t understand Paloma’s fear. “They don’t make no trouble,” said Tallulah. “You know where you stand with a horse.” Yeah, thought Paloma, far away. Tallulah told her to bring Sweetie apples and carrots, to make friends. But Paloma was so terrified the first time when Sweetie reached with her monster mouth for the apple that she dropped it and Sweetie nearly bit her foot picking it up. Likewise, the first time Paloma tried to mount Sweetie she was so nervous that she went up one side and straight down the other. Nobody even asked her if she was hurt. They were all laughing too much. When she did finally get on and stay there, she was so frightened she couldn’t even blink. It was Tallulah who finally got her to relax. “It’s not the animals on the ranch who are pains in the butt with bad history,” Tallulah pointed out. “It’s us. The animals are all pretty cool.” Though you probably wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of the bull. “You could ride that horse into Wyoming and pass out and it’d bring you back home. All you have to do is hold on.”

  Apparently, all she had to do with the cow was hold on, too.

  “I thought they have machines to do this,” grumbled Paloma.

  They do, but not at Old Ways. It turns out that the name of the ranch is an accurate and unpoetic description of what it is. Lost in the nineteenth century would be another way of putting it. Although they do have cars and trucks, and electricity, and television, and even a laundry room, that’s as far as it goes. They definitely don’t have a milking machine.

  Will, the foreman, pointed to each thing as he named it. “That’s the pail, that’s the teat, that’s the udder, and in there’s the milk. All you gotta do is get the milk from there into the pail. You just do exactly how I showed you.”

  “I am not touching that thing.” Paloma’s lovely mouth was curled up on itself like a dead slug. “I’d rather hang by my ankles for the rest of the day.”

  Will said he could arrange that. But not in a way that made it sound like a joke.

  On her initial try, it took Paloma two hours to get half a cup of milk. Her fingers hurt so much she felt as if she’d been walking on them. The cow kicked over the pail.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t kick you,” said Will.

  But if Paloma thought she might do better with inanimate objects she was wrong. Even just the concept of cooking and cleaning presented her with a challenge of Mount Everest proportions. She does wash herself and brush her own teeth, of course (she’s not that much of a princess), but aside from personal hygiene Paloma had never cleaned anything in her life. Her cooking skills consisted of pouring herself a drink or opening a bag of chips when Maria wasn’t there to do it for her.

  Gerda Hellman is the housekeeper for the ranch and in charge of giving out work assignments and making sure that they’re done quickly and well.

  Paloma’s first job was to clean up the common room.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do with that,” said Paloma.

  “I’ll give you a clue,” said Gerda. “It’s a broom. But not the kind that flies.”

  The only time Paloma had even seen a broom was in Season Four, Episode Two, an imaginative reworking of Cinderella, but with an angel helping instead of a fairy godmother.

  “You don’t have a vacuum cleaner?”

  “After you sweep up, I’ll show you where the mop is.”

  By the time Paloma was put on kitchen duty she wasn’t even slightly surprised that there isn’t a microwave.

  “So let me explain something about onions, Susie,” said Gerda. “They’re like a birthday present.”

  Only at the ranch at the end of the universe would anyone think an onion was a present.

  “I mean wrapped up,” explained Gerda. “So before you chop them, you have to take off the wrapping.”

  Then Gerda introduced her to the double sink.

  “Oh, come on.” Keeping Faith Cross firmly in her mind, Paloma sounded not pleading – which she was – but teasing. “You must have a dishwasher. Everybody has a dishwasher.”

  “Of course we do.” Gerda clapped her on the shoulder. “In fact, today we have three. Ricky, Sedona, and—,” She handed Paloma a pair of rubber gloves, “—you.”

  “But what about my skin and my nails,” protested Paloma. “I mean, even with gloves—”

  “So far no one’s lost any skin washing a plate,” said Gerda. “And as for nails, unless you’re stranded in the desert and need to dig for water they just get in your way when you’re doing manual work.”

  Being stranded in the desert became a distinct possibility on Paloma’s first day-long hike. She has walked before, of course, but not for miles, and not over rough terrain. She’d figured that, what with the scrubbing and the carrying and the riding and the milking and the hauling out of animals that were stuck where they shouldn’t be (mostly against their will), she’d discovered every secret muscle her body had, but she’d been wrong. There were more. Many more. And her feet hurt so much you’d think they’d never been in shoes before. The singing of happy trail songs didn’t help.

  Every night since Paloma decided to get into the same story as everybody else, she’s fallen into bed with a gratitude usually reserved for major miracles, but when she finally staggered back from that first serious hike she could hardly be bothered to get undressed.

  “The first time’s the worst,” Tallulah assured her. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Sure, thought Paloma. If I don’t die first.

  But, as we all know, nature has made certain that the will to live is very strong in most things – whether it’s a weed or a teenage girl who was born lazy and raised to be useless – and Paloma didn’t die. Instead, she has shown remarkable physical resilience for a girl who, at home in the hills of Beverly, has never walked farther than the car.

  And here she is now, baking in the sun like a cookie in an oven, but listening to Ethan Lovejoy describing all the ways a person can come close to death and possibly expire on a wilderness trek with obvious interest, despite the fact that if she were a cookie she’d have been done fifteen minutes ago.

  “Well, I think that just about takes care of all the important stuff you need to know right now.” Ethan Lovejoy lifts one arm into the air. Because he is sitting on a very large, white stallion and the land around him is very flat and the buildings of the ranch are out of sight, it almost looks as if he is touching the sky. The stallion has a feather stuck in its harness that matches the one in Ethan Lovejoy’s hatband. “All right gang we’re almost ready for departure, but before we get going, does anybody have any questions? Anything you’re not sure of?”

  Facing him is his gang, also on horseback, the dozen residents going on this special weekend. Ethan calls it the Oregon Trail Weekend because – although they are nowhere near Oregon – it is a test of skill, stamina, determination and courage, just as following the Oregon Trail was for the emigrants who used it. The Oregon Trail Weekend is one of the many rites of passage that mark a person’s progress in life on the ranch. First you learn to care for the animals and mas
ter basic domestic chores; then you go on long hikes and build campfires and learn to identify animal tracks and what to do if you’re bitten by a snake; and then you get to relive the pioneer experience, crossing a varied terrain of desert, grassland and forest – though hopefully with no one likely to shoot at you and little chance of dying of thirst or hunger and having your bones picked clean by buzzards.

  Paloma raises her hand.

  Ethan Lovejoy smiles like the moon. “Yes, Susie? What is it you’d like to know?”

  “Well, it’s not really a question.” She beams back. He’s had them sitting so long listening to him go on and on about challenges and human resilience in the face of adversity that they’re all sweating and they haven’t gone an inch. If they don’t start moving soon they may all melt. “I just wanted to say that I packed really light, so if anybody’s got too much to carry I could take some extra stuff with me.” She pats Sweetie’s neck. Gingerly. “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Susie.”

  Paloma continues to smile. But modestly. She has learned a lot during what she thinks of as her imprisonment on Old Ways Ranch. The difference between mince, dice and chop. How to slow the flow of blood from a deep cut. How to get on a horse without being thrown right back off, milk a cow without being kicked and fry potatoes without setting fire to the kitchen. She can identify several different animals by their excrement, as well as by their teeth marks. She knows how long it takes to walk ten miles and why hiking boots were invented. She knows all the words to “Shenandoah”. But, most importantly, she knows what Ethan Lovejoy wants to hear. “I just want to help if I can,” says Paloma.

  “I know you do.” The good doctor can be forgiven for feeling a little smug. Susan Minnick may well be one of his greatest success stories. She has made steady, some might almost say incredible, progress since the day she finally left her room, and has not only thrown herself into ranch work and therapeutic sessions like an entire family of ducks getting into a lake, but is charming, sweet, kind, considerate, compassionate and unflaggingly positive and good-humoured. Every morning she is among the first to have her chores done, her horse fed and pastured, and her room ready for the surprise inspections that happen throughout the week. In short, she is nothing like the girl he picked up at the airport. You wouldn’t even think they were from the same species. Naturally enough, Ethan attributes this change to himself, his staff and the mission of the ranch. He has no idea that Paloma’s playing Faith Cross, who is all of those things (but with the added bonus of angelic powers). “However, I am a little anxious that you may have under packed. You don’t want to find yourself up a mesa without enough water.”

  “Oh no, I have everything.” She pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and holds it up. “See? I made a list, just like you said.”

  What a star.

  Once they’ve established that everyone made a list as they were told to, and packed sensibly and sparingly, as they were told to, Ethan Lovejoy raises himself slightly in his saddle. “Is that it? No other questions?”

  No one so much as blinks. Paloma isn’t the only one who would like to get going.

  Ethan Lovejoy raises his arm again and starts to turn his horse. “In that case, gentlemen and ladies, westward ho!”

  And off he trots. One by one, his gang peels off and follows, Paloma and a boy called Raul Riley bringing up the rear. Come a ti yi yippee yippee yea. Though they aren’t actually heading west.

  Paloma and Raul Riley bring up the rear of the line of riders because they’re the slowest. Raul has discovered photography at Old Ways – the old fashioned, non-digital kind with film and darkroom developing – and is a lot more interested in taking pictures than making time. Paloma is on a horse whose favourite part of any journey is stopping, which she does as often as she can. Sweetie has also been known to simply lie down when she feels that she needs a rest, a habit that has shown that Paloma is not only adaptable but has excellent reflexes, since she always manages to roll out of the way.

  But no matter how slowly you go, even if you’re not the one carrying supplies and a passenger and doing all the walking, the journey is a lot more difficult than riding around LA in a Mercedes. Horses have no suspension, no air conditioning, and no sound system. Saddles are hard and the sun is harsh. The trail is rough and narrow, sometimes dry and flat under a make-up-melting sun, the air moving less than a corpse; sometimes hilly and so thick with trees that the sky seems to disappear, every unseen snapping twig and rustling leaf a threat.

  Given all that, no one would blame you for thinking that Paloma Rose would rather be back on the plane in Economy, pressed between two strangers who wouldn’t recognize a Louis Vuitton if they tripped over it, than bouncing along on Sweetie under a remorseless sun and getting to know new kinds of pain. Humans, however, are less predictable than ants or even the weather, and the fact is that despite the aches, the discomfort and the occasional bursts of song, Paloma is far from unhappy. Since that first fateful commercial when she could barely toddle, Paloma has never really been allowed to just be. No staring at her toes or gazing at the passing clouds. No walking in the rain. No dancing in the moonlight. Both in her real life in Hollywood and her pretend life on the ranch, she is always “on”. But not right now. Now Sweetie is doing all the work, and Paloma is just one of the billions of things on whom the sun has shone, and all she has to do is look out for small creatures darting between the rocks or snakes streaking across the trail and let her mind wander, thinking of things she’d forgotten and didn’t know she cared about – and, for the first time ever, enjoy simply being alive.

  In the afternoon they are back in a landscape of scrub punctuated by fantastical rock formations – towers and pinnacles, arches and spires, mesas and buttes – that rise up around them like the cities of a mythical kingdom. Because the sky is so enormous and the light so intense, she remembers something that for once isn’t an episode of Angel in the House but a documentary she saw about people who survived horrible misadventures – a plane crash in the jungle, adrift in a rubber raft, lost in the desert, falling off a cliff. The only reason she watched this particular show was because Seth Drachman, a climber himself, recommended it and she wanted to impress him, but it obviously affected her more than she thought. She can almost see the man whose jeep broke down so far from civilization it might as well not have existed, staggering over the arid earth, his lips cracked and his skin peeling like old paint.

  And then all of a sudden she thinks she really does see something. To the left of the trail they’re on, near the base of a broken mesa, folded into a clutch of stunted trees. She stops Sweetie, and peers into the distance. It’s still there. She rubs her eyes, and peers some more. Paloma turns to call the others, but the only other she sees is Raul Riley, taking a picture of a formation of rocks that looks like an ornate candelabra – around which, she assumes, the others have all disappeared.

  “Raul!” calls Paloma. “Wait a minute! I think I see something.”

  Raul turns around. “What?”

  “Over there!” She points to the base of the broken mesa. “Do you see it?”

  Raul doesn’t see it.

  “It’s right over there.” Paloma keeps pointing. “It could be a man. See how it’s all sort of crumpled?”

  Raul, who has backtracked only a few yards, comes no closer. “It’s probably a dead tree or something like that. Forget it. Let’s catch up with the gang.”

  “I don’t think so.” Paloma shakes her head. “It looks like a person to me. And I think I see a backpack. Don’t you see it? That dark thing on his left?”

  “What I think is that you’re seeing things,” says Raul. “Ethan said that can happen. Because of the sun and everything.”

  “Ethan also said there are a lot of hikers and climbers around here,” argues Paloma. “What if he’s had an accident and he’s badly hurt? He could die out here.” Seth told her that if someone you were climbing with fell you had to t
ry to help him, no matter how dangerous it might be, if you thought there was any chance he was alive. She has a vague memory that something like that happened to Seth once – he saved someone, or someone saved him. It’s definitely what Faith Cross would do.

  “So we’ll tell Ethan you think you saw somebody lying on the ground,” says Raul, making it clear that he doesn’t think that’s what she sees. “He’ll know what to do. It’s better if him or one of the other counsellors checks it out anyway.”

  But right at this moment it seems important to Paloma to be the kind of person who wouldn’t abandon someone who needs her help.

  “You go on,” says Paloma. “I’m just going to see.”

  “You’re crazy. You can’t go off the trail. What if your horse steps in a gopher hole or something?”

  It doesn’t even occur to Paloma that she’s finally found someone as nervous of Nature as she is. Or was. “I don’t think they have gophers out here.” Not that she’s really sure what a gopher is.

  “OK, but they have other things that dig holes.”

  “Go catch up with everybody,” she orders. “I mean, it’s not like it’s miles away. It’s not going to take me that long. Just tell them to wait for me.”

  “Ethan’s not going to like this,” says Raul. “We’re not supposed to leave the group.”

  Paloma, however, is no beginner when it comes to wriggling out from under the burden of blame. “I think the group left us,” she says.

  Raul looks behind him, as if he wants to make sure. When he turns back, Paloma is already riding away.

  The broken mesa is farther away than she thought, and riding off the trail isn’t as easy as it looks in cowboy movies when the good guy is chasing the bad guy. By the time she reaches her destination she wishes she’d listened to Raul. Especially when it turns out that it isn’t an injured hiker after all. It isn’t a dead tree, either, which makes her feel a little better. It’s the remains of a wolf. The backpack is just a large rock. Now everyone’s going to laugh at her. Ethan won’t yell, because he doesn’t, but he’s going to think she’s a dope. A disobedient dope. And everything she’s done in the last weeks will be undone.