The Truth about My Success (17 page)

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.

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 anything 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.

“Hey, you know what?” says Abbot. “I caught your first show last night. You were pretty good.”

“I just do what they tell me,” says Oona. “It’s not that hard.”

“I guess life would be a lot easier if we all had a script,” says Abbot.

It’s the first joke he’s made in a long time.

The smile stays on Oona’s face until Paradise Lodge comes into view. She sighs.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig…

Inside the house, Arthur snores and Maria packs the breakfast she’s made Oona.

Outside, Leone stands under the entrance portico, tapping her toe, checking her phone every two seconds and squinting down the driveway as if she’s a general waiting for last-minute reinforcements to arrive. Leone isn’t humming or singing or enjoying the peace of the morning, she’s buzzing like a bee trapped in a jar. At last a figure comes into view – a small, four-legged, multicoloured figure with ears that belong to a much larger dog. Harriet, the Hound from Purgatory. “It’s about time!” Leone mutters, and goes click-clacking off the stoop, waving her phone like a semaphore. “Where on earth have you been?” she demands as Harriet’s owner appears around the bend. Strolling along as if she thinks she’s going to live for ever. “I was worried sick! I thought something must’ve happened to you!” The gold of Leone’s phone glitters as she holds it out to prove how late it is. “We really should’ve left for the studio ten minutes ago.”

“I was taking Harriet for her morning walk.”

Leone, however, seems to be unaware of this routine even though it happens every day. “Now?” she sounds genuinely mystified. “You had to do it now? When we’re in a hurry?”

“It’s her morning walk,” says Oona reasonably. “So she usually has it in the morning.”

“But you know we have to get to the studio early today.” As if Paloma Rose was ever on time for anything that wasn’t an appointment with her stylist. “I don’t make the schedule.”

She would if she could.

“I make a lot of sacrifices for you, you know,” says Leone. Meaning that going to the studio every day cuts down on her shopping, lunching and being seen time, but she’s far too afraid of what might happen if she leaves Oona unsupervised to stay away. It’s bad enough when she is there. Controlling Oona has turned out to be a lot like herding cats. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask you to at least be on time.” Leone shakes her head sadly, pained, as always, to have to be critical. “I depend on you, darling. I need to know that you’re responsible.”

“I am responsible, that’s why I always take Harriet for her walk.” Oona passes Leone. “I’ll just let her inside and I’m ready to go.”

“Like
that
?”

Leone’s voice stops Oona and pulls her back like a Vaudeville hook dragging a bad act offstage.

Oona looks at her. Blank as a steel door. “Like what?”

“Like
that
.” Leone flicks her fingers at the T-shirt and jeans. “You look like a street person.”

“No I don’t.
Mom
.” She looks like a regular kid. “These are Paloma’s clothes. I didn’t pick them, I just put them on.”

“Well they look different on you than they do on her.” Her frown seems almost to cast a shadow. “And you’re not wearing any make-up.”

Wars have been fought over far less than the make-up argument between Leone Minnick and Oona Ginness. Leone thinks that a woman should wear make-up every waking minute of the day, even if she doesn’t plan to leave the house. Who knows who might drop by? A package may be delivered. There might be an emergency that requires an ambulance or the fire department. And if you are leaving the house – no matter where you’re going – you have to look as if you’re about to be photographed for
Vogue
. Even if you’re being arrested and carted off in handcuffs with a jacket over your head, underneath that jacket your face should be fully made up.

“But they’re going to make me up when I get on set, Mother dear,” reasons Oona. “What’s the point of putting any on now?”