The Truth about My Success

by Dyan Sheldon

  The cabbie, who has three daughters of his own, wants to wait until Paloma’s inside, but Paloma sends him away. “It’s OK,” says Paloma. “My friend knows I’m coming. He’s waiting for me.”

  This, of course, is so far from the truth that it’s barely in the same language. She hasn’t seen Seth Drachman since last winter. When he told her he didn’t want to see her any more. Unless he was on the couch and she was on the TV. He said you could call it a case of delayed maturity. She might think the secrecy and sneaking around and danger of their relationship were romantic, but he didn’t. He could lose his job, his reputation – his whole future – if anyone found out. He didn’t think it was worth it for either of them. She didn’t believe him. Not at first. She thought Leone must have threatened him and scared him off, but she was sure that once he realized how much he loved Paloma he would stand up to her mother. Instead of standing up, he quit the show. She called and texted and called; he changed his phone. She sent him notes and letters, she turned up at his door, she parked outside his building; he moved. She only knows his new address because she gave the janitor at his last building two hundred dollars she stole from her mother to tell her.

  She presses the button next to Drachman, S.

  The light on the closed-circuit TV comes on. He can see her. “Yeah?” But he doesn’t recognize her with her longish, straight dark hair and glasses, standing there in her jeans and T-shirt and a flannel shirt Mrs Buckminster found in her closet. “What is it?”

  “It’s me,” says Paloma. “Paloma.”

  When Paloma drove her car into a fence that time to get even with Leone for making Seth break her heart, there was one, maybe two, seconds of silence after the crash. It was the silence of a mountain after you’ve fallen off it. There is that silence now, and then Seth says, “Go away.”

  “I can’t.” For once she manages not to whine. He said he hated it when she whines. “I really need to talk to you.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Go away.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “Your whole life is an emergency.”

  “I just wan—”

  “How did you find out where I live?”

  “Look, I have nowhere to go. I—”

  “Well you can’t stay here. I’m busy. Go away. Or I’ll call security and have you removed.”

  In her tiny bungalow, Mrs Buckminster and Lilly the cat sit on the couch, watching a movie. Back at Old Ways, everyone is in the common room by now, playing games or flicking through the TV channels or just hanging out. Arthur will be out getting drunk somewhere and Leone will be sipping a martini on the terrace, and Maria will be listening to her radio station and knitting something for someone’s baby. And upstairs Seth is about to go back to being busy with his new girlfriend. Only Paloma is all by herself.

  This is when she finally bursts into tears.

  And then decides to go to the studio. There may be someone from the show still there. Someone from the crew. Or even the security guard. All she needs is someone who can give her Jack Silk’s phone number or tell her where his office is. If she can find his office, she can sit in a doorway across the street and grab him when he shows up in the morning (Season Three, Episode Nine). Wiping away the tears, Paloma turns and walks away, wondering where she can get a bus.

  Don’t get mad, get even

  The impostor’s name is Oona. Because they both now know that it is wise to be wary, neither of them speaks much during the drive from the studio in case the driver is listening in, but as soon as he drops them off, she introduces herself to Paloma. “My name’s Oona. Oona Ginness.”

  “Well, you know who I am.” Paloma looks up at the house. “I don’t want to go in there.” She’s not even sure why she got in the car. Where else would the phoney Paloma be going at this time of the day? But curiosity and resentment got the better of her. That and the fact that this girl can help her; she owes Paloma that much. And it seemed better than sleeping in a doorway. “I don’t want to see my mother.”

  “She’s not home. She went out for dinner.”

  Paloma laughs. Sourly. At least Leone is reliable in some ways.

  Harriet greets them at the door, her tail moving so furiously it looks like it’s wagging her. Of course she has a dog, thinks Paloma. I don’t even like dogs, I like cats. How out of character can you get? But she pets the brown head anyway. She seems OK for a dog.

  The three of them go upstairs.

  Angry as she is with her mother, Paloma thought that some part of her would be glad to be home. In her own house; in her own room; in her own life. But it isn’t just other people who can surprise us; we can even surprise ourselves. As Oona shuts the door behind them, instead of thinking safe at home at last, Paloma feels like a stranger in a very strange land. Or maybe it’s just that she’s really seeing the room for the first time. The furniture, the curtains, the bedspread, the canopy, and the wallpaper weren’t chosen by her but by Leone and a decorator named Enzo. The stuffed toys that fill the shelves were all gifts from fans. The only things that made the room hers were the clothes she threw everywhere (most of them bought by Leone or given by designers as promotional presents), and now they’ve all been put away. It’s no more her room than a room in a hotel.

  Oona has heard enough about Paloma’s moods and tantrums to be expecting a scene of epic proportions as soon as they are by themselves, but Paloma merely looks around the room with a slightly dazed expression – almost as if she’s never seen it before. “You OK?” Oona finally asks.

  “Yeah.” Paloma shrugs. “It’s just really weird being back. I feel like I’ve been away for years. Like that guy in that story.”

  Harriet jumps on the bed, but Oona stays standing by the door with her hands behind her back, Paloma a few feet ahead of her, her mouth so small she seems in danger of swallowing it.

  Oona sees a girl who is nothing like the one she studied so closely: whose clothes she wears, and whose voice she mimics and whose mannerisms she’s memorized. She sees a girl who could be any teenager you pass on the street or sit next to on the bus.

  Paloma almost feels as if she’s looking at an old photograph of herself. Maybe not when she was younger, but when she was different – although until now it didn’t occur to her that she’d changed at all. “I don’t think you look that much like me,” she says at last. Oona’s earlobes are thin, her fingers are short and kind of stubby, her nose is at least one-sixteenth of an inch longer than Paloma’s.

  “Neither do you,” says Oona. “I don’t think I would’ve recognized you if I didn’t know who you are. You look really different.”

  Paloma sits down beside Harriet. “I bet you look really different, too.”

  Oona takes the armchair. She says she’s heard a lot about Paloma but nobody ever mentioned that she has a sense of humour.

  Paloma smiles for the first time since she left Mrs Buckminster. “I guess I picked it up over the summer.” Calluses. Milking skills. Bed making. Fire building. An impressive repertoire of hiking songs. And the ability to crack a joke instead of throwing the nearest inanimate object. All in all, a vacation she’ll never forget.

  “So…” Oona shifts in her seat. “You going to tell me your part of the story? Then I’ll tell you how I wound up here. And then we can figure out what to do next.”

  Miles away, Jack Silk sits on the deck of his house, smoking a cigar and giving his sister in New Jersey advice about her problems with her teenage son. At a corner table in a Hollywood restaurant, Leone picks at her salad and smiles gracefully as she learns that, besides Paloma, the only family member to be on camera during Sunday’s interview will be Harriet. In this room, Harriet sleeps, dreaming she’s playing ball with Oona, and snoring softly. And so the world turns and time passes while the stories are told.

  “I hope you know that if I’d had any idea of what was really going on—”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” Paloma shakes her head. “I know that. I don’t blame you at
all. I know exactly whose idea this was.”

  “It’s really incredible, isn’t it?” Oona shakes her head. “I mean, you couldn’t put this story in a movie or anything like that because nobody’d believe it.”

  “They’ll believe it when I’m through telling everyone.”

  “Telling everyone?” repeats Oona.

  “You bet. I’m going to make her pay. I am going to make her so sor—”

  Although Oona was paying very close attention to Paloma’s story, she suddenly feels as if she’s missed something. “Her?”

  “Yeah, her. My mother’s going to be sorry she was ever born.”

  “Oh, but Leone— I mean, yeah, she went along with the scheme and everything, but I don’t think this was her idea. Leone’s—” Too stupid? Too unimaginative? Not quite ruthless enough? “Leone’s no Lady Macbeth.”

  Paloma frowns. “Lady who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m sure this was Jack Silk’s idea. I told you, he’s the one who arranged everything. He’s like the evil puppet master or Svengali or something. He’s the one who always takes care of things.”

  Paloma shakes her head. “No, not Jack. Jack wouldn’t do something like this to me. Not unless she poisoned his mind. Jack really cares about me.” Unlike some people much closer in the gene pool. “I already figured it all out. After I fire my parents, Jack’s going to be my guardian.”

  Oona leans forward as though a sudden passing formation of fighter jets is making it hard to hear Paloma. “Jack? You’re going to make him your guardian? Are you kidding? The only person you have to be guarded against is him.”

  “You’re wrong,” says Paloma. “Maybe he was weak enough to let my mother talk him into sending me away, but—”

  “But nothing. I heard him. He persuaded Leone. And it was Jack who came to me.” Maybe Paloma wasn’t listening closely enough to what Oona had to say. “It’s Jack I have the contract with. It’s Jack who’s been dealing with the honcho at your ranch. I think it’s Leone who got talked into it. Jack’s a really smooth operator.” Smooth as oiled ball bearings. “I bet you anything that if you go to him, he’ll put you back at that place so fast you’ll think you were never out. And if he doesn’t do that, he’ll make it so no one listens to you. And if they listen, they won’t believe you. If you ask me, you’d be better off putting yourself up for adoption than go to him.”

  “But my plan… I have it all worked out, and I think it’s a really good plan. I’m going to get Jack to call an all-media press conference so I can tell the whole world exactly what happened to me. Name and shame, that’s what I’m going to do. And then my career’s going to start all over. Only the way I want it to be this time, not the way Leone wants it to be.”

  Oona shakes her head. “I really don’t think your plan can work, Paloma. He won’t do it. Not in a billion years. You’re wrong about Jack Silk – he’s not on your side. The only side he’s on is his. I told you, I heard him. I know what he said. And I know what he did.”

  Paloma leans back on her elbows, chewing at her bottom lip and thinking – remembering. She goes back to the night Jack and Leone called her into the living room. About Audrey Hepplewhite’s car crash, and how worried Jack said he and Leone were about Paloma. About his description of the resort where she was going. She can see him waving goodbye to her at the airport. Bon voyage, sweetheart. Have a great time!

  She sits up straight, her expression grim. “Maybe you’re right,” she says. “When I think about it I— Well I guess I’ve been kidding myself.” She stands up and starts to pace back and forth. “But if that’s true, then I want them both punished. Leone and Jack. I don’t think they should get away with treating me like this. Or you. They’ve been using you too. Do you think they should get away with it? You think we should just do nothing? Just say, oh well, that’s OK?”

  “Of course I don’t.” This is something to which Oona has given quite a lot of thought. “But you know what they say. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold. Or at least at room temperature.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get mad, get even. You don’t want to rush into this. You want to make them suffer. Let them really start to panic. Leone’s already a wreck, worrying that you’re going to show up at any minute. And then worrying that you aren’t. She’s terrified everybody’s going to find out what they did.”

  “But see, that’s what I said! I want everybody to know what they did. I should have a press conference.”

  “It’s not going to help you, though, is it? They’ll be burnt toast, but you’ll be burnt toast, too. What you need to do is to be as calculated and methodical as Jack Silk’s been. You want to take control. Real control. Not just have a public meltdown. You want to get into the driver’s seat, and make sure the two of them are in the boot.”

  Paloma folds her arms in front of her. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  Oona snaps her fingers. “Easy. You just slip back into your life like you’ve never been away. Only since you have been, you have something on Jack and your mother that you can use to your advantage.”

  “But you said if Jack knows I’m here he’ll just send me away again.”

  “Not if you have witnesses,” says Oona. “Not if you do it before he knows what’s happened.”

  Paloma tilts her head to one side, as if looking at Oona from a different angle will make everything clear. “What witnesses?”

  Oona grins. “How does half the country sound?”

  “Half the country? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a major network interview. Where you can just take over where you left off. Only because you’ll be the one with the power. Jack Silk won’t be able to bully anybody or buy them off. And there’s nothing he can do to you.”

  Paloma sways in place. “Um… maybe nobody told you, but if you’re thinking of something like The Late Show I kind of messed up with them.”

  “Not The Late Show,” says Oona. “Better than that. Lucinda’s At Home With show. It’s like a whole hour interview. If you really want to tell the world your story, that’s the place to do it.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m telling you, I really messed up. They’d never book me on that.”

  “You’re already on. Sunday. Right downstairs. Leone’s been running around like she’s in a marathon getting ready for it.”

  Paloma sits back down. “Oh my god, but that’s perfect. Lucinda! How did you ever manage that?”

  “It’s a long story. But Jack and your mom aren’t going to want anything to go wrong. This is the miracle they’ve been waiting for. So that’s where your finger’s on the button.”

  “But where am I supposed to go in the meantime? I—”

  “That’s no problem.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nope.” Oona opens her arms wide. “Where do you hide a tree?”

  “Hide a tree?” repeats Paloma. Maybe it’s not Oona’s fault that she’s the way she is. Maybe being her would make anybody crazy. “What are you talking about?”

  “You hide a tree in the forest,” explains Oona.

  “We’re going to hide me in the forest?”

  Oona shakes her head. “We’re going to hide you here.”

  The last place they’ll ever think to look.

  Show Time

  Sunday at last.

  There has always been something slightly unreal about Paradise Lodge, but now it has been turned into a television studio. There are people everywhere – all of them as busy as blackbirds in the spring. They run cables and check the lighting. They check the sound and rearrange the furniture that Leone spent all last week arranging. They set up cameras and shout out commands. They march from room to room with clipboards and phones and a lot of purpose. They sit on the stairs with laptops on their knees or talking into headsets with serious expressions.

  Leone, who cannot believe that Lucinda would rather meet Harriet than meet her, has been hanging around in
the hopes of attracting someone’s attention. Which she has finally managed to do. A youngish man in a Hawaiian shirt who is wired for sound, comes up to her and thrusts a vase of tiger lilies into her hands. “This has to go,” he says. “And I’m afraid you’ll have to go with it. You’re getting in the way.”

  “But— but I live here,” she stammers. “I’m Leone Minnick.”

  She might as well be the housekeeper.

  “Sorry. I don’t make the rules, I just obey them.” Gently but firmly he steers her towards the door. “No civilians on set.”

  “But I’m not a civilian,” she protests. “I’m Paloma’s personal manager. And it isn’t a set. It’s my—” She breaks off as the door shuts behind her. Holding the lilies in front of her like a battering ram, she stomps down the hall.

  The TV crew arrived at about the time the rooster would have begun crowing if the Minnicks had a rooster, and have spread through the ground floor of Paradise Lodge like a flood pushing everything out of its path.

  Including Leone, who has stormed through the house like a small tornado in high heels all week, but now has been metaphorically shoved out to sea.

  “It is my house,” Leone is muttering as she comes into the kitchen. “I don’t see why I should be treated like a second-class citizen in my own home. After all, I have been very important to Paloma’s career. No one can deny that. Where would she be without me?”

  Maria, who has been summoned back by Leone and is not being treated like a second-class citizen but like a servant, glides past her with a fresh urn of coffee. “At least they give you a monitor so you can watch,” she says as she passes.

  Lucky me, thinks Leone, but in reality even she has to admit that she is lucky. They’ve made it to Sunday without any interference from Paloma. You can’t get luckier than that. Leone has been so busy over the last few days that a family of five could have moved into one of the guest rooms and she wouldn’t have noticed, so she is, of course, completely unaware that her missing daughter has actually come back home. As far as Leone’s concerned, God heard her prayers, and kept Paloma away. Not only that, but Arthur has been sent out of town by Jack so that he doesn’t stagger in on the interview unexpectedly. And – just in case Paloma decides to put in an appearance after all – there are four young men (also provided by Jack) who look like gardeners but wouldn’t know a hibiscus from a hosta patrolling the property.