The Truth about My Success (27 page)

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 think 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.

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.