by Dyan Sheldon
“So she’s vanished again.”
“No, Leone. She’s not Houdini. She’s here. In the city. We just don’t know where yet.”
“What about this old lady you mentioned? Maybe she went with her.”
“He’s working on it. But it looks like she bought her ticket with cash, too. So it’ll take a little time.”
Leone is, of course, relieved that Paloma is all right – or was as of Monday. What mother wouldn’t be? But one of the problems Leone has always had with being a mother instead of being God, is that a mother can’t know everything or control it. And right now she would like to know where Paloma is and what she’s planning to do.
“It’s Wednesday,” she reminds Jack. “The interview’s on Sunday. I’m just about to go into the restaurant to finalize everything. If Paloma—”
“Just sit tight,” Jack advises. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”
Leone hasn’t been to church since she was twelve, and isn’t what you’d call a praying kind of person, but she does believe in negotiation. The second she hangs up from Jack she starts negotiating. “Please,” Leone whispers as she gets out of the car. “Just keep her away until Monday. Or at least Sunday night. Don’t let her ruin the interview. That’s all I ask.”
Poor Leone. The time may not be far away when she wishes she’d asked for something more.
Oona collapses into the back of the car with a sigh. It’s been a long day. For a change, Paloma Rose isn’t on her mind. It’s already the middle of the week. If Paloma was going to show up at the studio, surely that would already have happened. No, tonight what Oona’s thinking about is the interview with Lucinda. She’s starting to feel nervous, as anyone would who’s never been interviewed on network television before. And although Oona is used to dealing with people and answering questions, the people she’s used to dealing with aren’t one of the most influential women in the country, and the questions she’s used to answering are along the lines of “Does it come with fries?” and “Do you have soya milk?” What if she makes a fool of herself? What if she stumbles and stutters and shows herself to be a fraud? If she does blow the interview, will Leone try to murder her on air or will she wait till everyone’s left?
These thoughts and others are running through her head as the car leaves the lot and pulls into the road, and is almost immediately stuck in traffic. It moves but it moves slowly. A few feet. A yard or two. Half a block.
It’d be faster to walk, thinks Oona, and glances out the window at the people who are walking, leaving the traffic behind. Some tourists with guidebooks, searching for stars. Several men in suits walking briskly and with purpose. A girl moving slowly, lost in her thoughts. It’s not the face of the girl that makes Oona look twice, it’s the way she walks. Oona has studied that walk. She has it down pat.
Without a second thought, Oona opens her door and leans out. “Hey! Hey!” she calls. “Over here!”
Paloma stops as if she’s suddenly been turned to stone. Her eyes meet Oona’s.
There is no surprise in Paloma’s look. No confusion. She knows, thinks Oona. It isn’t a coincidence that she ran away. She found out somehow.
“Come on,” Oona beckons. “Come on, get in!”
Paloma doesn’t think twice, either.
“How did you find out?” whispers Oona as Paloma sits beside her.
Paloma shuts the door. “I saw you on TV.”
Why Paloma finally went to the studio
Paloma’s favourite interviews have always been the ones where she’s asked fun questions like which ten famous people from history you’d invite to a barbecue and what your superpower would be if you could choose one. She usually picks being invisible or able to travel through time as her superpower – things she figures would be really useful. Imagine Leone nagging at her about something and all of a sudden Paloma just disappears or whisks off to have lunch with Marilyn Monroe.
But that was before her first (and hopefully last) overnight bus journey. What a ride. Somewhere between the air conditioning breaking down and the man locking himself in the toilet, Paloma decided that the next time she was asked what her superpower would be she’d say, “To be able to sleep like Mrs Buckminster.” Mrs Buckminster could snore her way through Armageddon. Strapped to a camel balanced on a log on a boiling sea. Nothing disturbed her. The seats were as comfortable as solid rock, but Mrs Buckminster curled up like a kitten on a cushion. When the AC died and the temperature in the bus turned it into a moving sauna, Mrs Buckminster smiled in her dreams. When the windows were opened to let in some air and they all nearly choked with the dust, pollution and baked heat that swamped them, Mrs Buckminster made the sound of a well-tuned engine. Two babies and the old woman in the plastic shower cap cried through most of the night while someone who hadn’t seen the No Alcoholic Beverages sign sang “Dancing Queen” during the short intervals when they were silent, but Mrs Buckminster didn’t hear a thing. A small child threw up in the aisle, and, sound asleep, Mrs Buckminster patted Paloma’s knee.
Mrs Buckminster only wakes as, after what seems to Paloma like several unusually long days, they finally reach LA.
“Goodness me,” says Mrs Buckminster, straightening up in her seat and rubbing her eyes. “I must’ve dozed off.” She peers out the window. “Will you look at that weather!”
It is raining in an unwelcoming, why-don’t-you-go-back-where-you-came-from? way.
Paloma wouldn’t care if it were snowing. She’s so happy to get off the bus that she’s ready to climb out the window and kiss the ground. But the closer they get to the bus station, the clearer it is that this isn’t a part of town where you do anything with the ground except move over it very quickly. No wish-you-were-here postcards of Los Angeles have ever included this neighbourhood. Rundown and dirty, the station looks as if it’s waiting for a violent crime to happen. Again.
“So what are you going to do now?” asks Mrs Buckminster as they clamber off the bus.
Paloma told Mrs Buckminster that she’s staying with a good friend in the city, but since she’d lost her phone and doesn’t know his number and his landline’s unlisted she has to wait for him to get home from work.
Paloma shrugs. She hasn’t thought that far ahead. “I guess I’ll stay here till it’s time to go over to my friend’s place.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” Mrs Buckminster shakes her head. “You can’t just sit around the bus station all afternoon in this weather. I won’t allow it. Do you know what kind of people hang around bus stations?”
Paloma glances around, trying not to look at anyone or anything specific. This is the kind of place where you wouldn’t be surprised to see a rat run over your foot or someone peeing against a wall. “Not just people waiting for buses, right?”
“That’s right,” says Mrs Buckminster. Perverts. Criminals. Crazies. Rapists. And unlucky people who have nowhere else to go.
Paloma puts on her Faith Cross, nothing-daunts-me face. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be OK.” Even she doesn’t sound convinced.
“I know you will be, because you’re coming home with me.” Mrs Buckminster picks up her case with one hand and takes Paloma’s elbow with the other. “I insist. You’ve been on that bus for nearly an entire day. You need some place to relax. If you nod off in this dump you’ll be lucky to still have your shoes on your feet when you wake up.”
They take another bus to Mrs Buckminster’s bungalow. Bus number three for Paloma. At least the air conditioning works on this one.
Like Mrs Buckminster (and, indeed, like Paloma Rose at the moment) the bungalow has seen better days. It could use a coat of paint and there’s a damp patch in the living room where the roof leaks and you have to be careful of that loose board on the porch. Leone Minnick has Paradise Lodge redecorated every year or two by flocks of professionals who flap around with colour charts, and fabric swatches, and laptops and iPads filled with ideas, but Mrs Buckminster’s decorating has been done by life and time in
their higgledy-piggledy way. Furniture from the sixties. Wallpaper from the seventies. Curtains from the eighties. A Styrofoam Santa Claus made in 1992. Nonetheless, although small and full of the many things Mrs Buckminster has collected or simply not thrown out over the years, the bungalow has a warm and welcoming feeling. A lot warmer and more welcoming than the greeting Paloma is likely to receive at Seth Drachman’s.
Mrs Buckminster makes lunch for the two of them – scrambled eggs with cheese, toast and a salad of lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Then she puts Paloma into the spare bedroom for a nap. “You just have yourself a little siesta,” says Mrs Buckminster. “If you’re not up by supper time, I’ll give you a shout.”
Paloma is asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow. She dreams that she’s home. But the home in her dream isn’t Paradise Lodge. It’s a small, white cottage with a thatched roof and green shutters at the windows. There’s a garden of wild flowers in front of the cottage, and smoke rising from the chimney. Hares leap through the high grass and birds chirp in the trees. Paloma is in the kitchen, baking. The table is covered with pies and cakes and fat, golden biscuits. Paloma sings while she works. I’m so happy, she says to the dragonfly that’s landed on the windowsill. I’m really, really happy. And then thinks, but this is just a dream. I’m so happy anyway, she thinks, and rolls out a piece of pastry shaped like a heart.
When she wakes up the house smells of just-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. She looks around at the unfamiliar walls covered with unfamiliar photographs and the shelves crammed with unfamiliar books and knick-knacks, and doesn’t know where she is. At first Paloma thinks she’s still dreaming; then she thinks she’s back in the episode of Angel in the House with the lonely old woman and the runaway. And then, as if she has some extrasensory power that enables her to know when guests are awake, Mrs Buckminster appears in the doorway with a glass of iced tea and a plate of cookies, looking, to Paloma, exactly like the really sweet grandmother in Season Two, Episode Seven. The rain pounds on the roof, and a wave of lightening bleaches the sky. A black and white cat Paloma hasn’t met before passes Mrs Buckminster in the doorway and jumps onto the bed, purring. Just as Mrs Buckminster is the first old lady to bake her cookies, this is one of the few animals Paloma has been near in weeks that hasn’t immediately tried to bite her. She nearly bursts into tears.
Mrs Buckminster won’t let her leave yet.
“I don’t know what happened to you on that ranch of yours, but you’re in no state to go wandering the streets of this city looking for your friend. I’m going to cook you a nice supper, and we’re going to listen to the radio and have a quiet night. You can go to him tomorrow.”
Mrs Buckminster takes Paloma with her to buy the fixings for the nice supper. They walk slowly under one large umbrella, Mrs Buckminster pointing out all the interesting sights of the neighbourhood. The street that was in a movie. The house where the woman who does Mrs Buckminster’s hair lives. The tree Mrs Buckminster’s grandson fell from last time he visited. The dog who saved its owner’s life by jumping out a window and going for help. The house that always has the best decorations at Christmas. When they get to the store Paloma can’t get over how big it is – so big that you’d think it must hold at least one of every possible food in the world. Paloma has met countless celebrities, two governors, three senators and the prime minister of a country whose name she’s forgotten, but it is this store that has her speechless with amazement. She loses Mrs Buckminster four times.
“Anybody’d think you’d never been in a supermarket before,” laughs Mrs Buckminster.
Paloma hasn’t. She’s been in several gourmet delis and at least one small grocery (which, of course, ended badly), but never a store the size of an airplane hangar.
On the way home, Paloma carries the bags and Mrs Buckminster holds the umbrella.
“You want to give me a hand with supper?” asks Mrs Buckminster, slipping an apron over her head.
Until she was exiled to Old Ways, the only time Paloma ever gave anyone a hand with anything was when she shook theirs. “Sure,” says Paloma. “I’m a pretty good cook.”
She doesn’t want to sit by herself in the living room while Mrs Buckminster makes the pasta sauce. She wants to be in the bright, crowded kitchen with the photos stuck to the fridge with magnets, and the bulletin board that takes up one wall and is covered with postcards and more photos and drawings made by Mrs Buckminster’s grandchildren, and the Little Red Riding Hood cookie jar on the counter. At Paradise Lodge, unless Paloma and her mother are fighting, the house is usually pretty quiet. If Arthur’s home, he’s on his laptop or his phone if he isn’t passed out; if Leone’s home she’s on her phone; if Paloma’s home she’s plugged into something in her room. The Minnicks don’t really talk to each other except to argue. Maria used to listen to some Chicano radio station while she cooked, singing along, but Leone finds Mexican music either too loud or too sad or too Mexican, so Jack Silk bought her a personal MP3 player and she listens on that without joining in. Which means that the only sounds you are likely to hear are from machines, and those will be at a distance and behind a closed door. As if they live in a waiting room. It is only now that Paloma wonders for what it is they’re all waiting.
Paloma likes to listen to Mrs Buckminster’s rambling stories; to the radio playing on the counter and to the purring cat on her chair at the table. Although she’s not really aware of it, it reminds her of something that happened when she was eight or nine. Leone and Arthur had gone away somewhere and left her with a woman who frightened her because she smelled like bleach and made her eat cauliflower. Between the bleach and the cauliflower, Paloma threw up her supper and was sent to her room. She lay on her bed crying for what seemed like hours. Until she finally noticed the light that was filling the room. It was so bright she thought her mother had come home and tiptoed in to comfort her. But it wasn’t her mother, it was a moon so large it seemed to be pressed against the glass of her window, watching over her. And she stopped being scared, and fell asleep with the moonshine on her like a hug. Mrs Buckminster reminds her of that moon.
Mrs Buckminster watches Paloma chop the onions. “You really do know how to cook, don’t you? I didn’t think you young people went in for that kind of thing any more.”
“Some of us do,” says Paloma. Modestly.
Tuesday comes and Paloma stays. Mrs Buckminster could use some help with her garden. And there are a few odd jobs in the house that need someone tall and strong and more agile than a seventy-five-year-old woman with a bad knee. Paloma teaches Mrs Buckminster a card game she learned at Old Ways, and Mrs Buckminster shows her some of the scrapbooks she’s been making since her children were small. Neither of them mentions the fact that Paloma is still there.
She stays Wednesday, too. Paloma hasn’t quite finished with the garden. It’s early evening before she’s done. As she nears the house she can hear voices in the kitchen. She’s about to open the back door when she hears her name. Or one of them.
“So who do you think this Susan is?” The voice is unfamiliar to Paloma and belongs to Mrs Laguna from next door.
“I think she must be a runaway. She never talks about home.” This voice is completely familiar, of course, because it belongs to Mrs Buckminster. “I don’t know what to do. I really don’t…” Mrs Buckminster sighs. “I keep thinking how worried her poor parents must be. Can you imagine? They must be beside themselves. Not sleeping. Not eating. Jumping every time the phone rings. Remember how I was when Lilly disappeared that time?” She lost ten pounds and cried even in her sleep. “And Lilly’s a cat.”
“You should call the police,” says Mrs Laguna. “You pretty much know where she came from. There’ll be a report. They’ll know what to do.”
Mrs Buckminster says, “Ummm…”
“You can’t keep her here,” says Mrs Laguna. “You have to go to the authorities. You don’t know what trouble you could get in if you don’t.”
“You really th
ink I should call the police?” Mrs Buckminster is torn. She wants to do what’s best for Susan, but she doesn’t want to make things worse for her either. And she doesn’t want her to leave. She likes the company. Lilly is a wonderful companion, but she is limited. Susan’s such a sweet girl, helpful and considerate, and she seems very alone. Most girls her age never lift their heads from their phones or whatever it is they carry around with them all the time, but Susan hasn’t so much as sent a single text. Who knows what made her run away? “What if she has a good reason for leaving home?” she asks Mrs Laguna. “All those stories in the paper, what horrible things people do to their children…”
Mrs Laguna, however, isn’t torn at all. “And all the stories about what children do to their parents, let’s not forget about them. You don’t know what she’s planning. Maybe she wants to rob you.”
“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” says Mrs Buckminster.
“She could be on drugs or something,” counters Mrs Laguna. “You could wake up dead.”
Mrs Buckminster tells her not to be ridiculous.
“You can’t just keep her here. What if she’s committed a crime? That’d make you an accessory.”
Mrs Buckminster sighs. “She was working on a ranch, not robbing a bank.”
“The police will know what to do,” insists Mrs Laguna. “That’s what they’re there for. You pay your taxes. You have rights.”
“I don’t know…” Mrs Buckminster’s voice is dragging its feet. “I think I should talk to Susan first. I won’t do anything behind her back.”
Unfortunately, this last part of the conversation is the part that Paloma doesn’t wait around to hear. She’s already gone in the front way, and is jamming her few things into her bag. By the time Mrs Laguna leaves, Paloma is already long gone herself.
She takes a cab to Seth’s place. Seth lives in a modern apartment house, all glass and chrome and bonsai palm trees in the foyer.