Searching for Tina Turner (13 page)

I always thought our love was strong enough

One you could hold on to

Lena climbs out of bed and pulls sweats over her pajamas. Tina gained strength with the help of Buddhist chanting, but it
took courage for her to step out on her own. A moan is Lena’s chant. She releases it and lets this depression that runs deep
in her bones render her passive for the last time. She stands over Randall’s dresser. Sunglasses, cuff links, and a mound
of change are lined neatly on top.

Winter waves crashed on the cliffs behind the restaurant in San Francisco when Randall put that one-carat, emerald cut diamond
on her finger. She believed: wife as partner, wife as friend. She believed when he replaced it with this larger stone. Each
time he twisted her hand this way and that—like she does from time to time—the stone sparkled on her slim finger. The gold
band accentuates the gold in her skin, the gold that comes shining through whenever she sits too long in the sun.

Now she twists her ring—it slips easily from her finger—and tosses it onto his dresser in this bedroom soon to be for one.
Wife in name only.

f   f   f

Lena drives fast and hard. If the two thousand pounds of steel encasing her could lead her to her death, she would not care.
A bridge, an amusement park, hills sprinkled with trees. Forty-two miles in forty-two minutes. To do to him before he does
it to her. Not like sex: no sweet anticipation. No hunger for his touch, his broad shoulders sexy in the dark, his fingers
and tongue working to please, not berate.

The rain pours like December instead of early May. Rain sheets on the windshield so hard that even the fast, swiping wipers
cannot make the windshield clear enough to see more than twenty-five feet ahead. Headlights sweep in motion, cars blur midnight
blue in the black of 9 p.m.

At the double doors of TIDA’s executive suite, the carpet beneath her soaking-wet flip-flops is plush and thick. Framed posters
of San Francisco and the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge line the corridor’s walls; glass sconces light the doors.
Lena breathes in one, two and out one, two and tries to formulate her words. No more pretend. She will not ask Randall why
he puts his wife last, work and grown children first. She fears his answer: wife like ice, distant as the moon, rose thorn
in his side like the white man and the glass ceiling above his head.

It seems stupid, formal, to knock on the door when the corporate apartment key is in her left hand. Knock. It is a red key.
She raises and lowers the key, then returns it to her pocket. With that one gesture she feels the change, the shift. Knock,
knock—have they come full circle? Randall opens the door with the confidence of a big man who knows he can handle whatever
awaits him beyond the threshold. There is no astonished look on his face. No smile or hug or happiness like the times when
Lena visited this same suite for no reason except that she missed him, or surprised him in silk nighties and no panties beneath,
for no reason except that she wanted him. He stands aside without concern for the wildness in her eyes, the intention in her
step. The smell of burning wood reminds Lena of home: Irish coffees, music, conversation, Kendrick and Camille’s fights over
who could stoke the gamboling flames.

Lena scans the long hallway: two closed doors. She pushes open the door to the left, a closet, and the door to the right,
a bedroom, and peers inside each one. Heat from a raised vent tickles the hair on her neck, but she is in no mood to laugh.
From this end of the long hallway to the combined living and dining area Randall appears small and far away; a slight figure
at the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. There is nothing small about Randall. She allows herself to be sidetracked by the
pale green walls and the art she’d seen in a San Francisco gallery that would look perfect there so that she can gather her
thoughts and slow her hammering heart. Lena wipes her wet hands on her sweats and sits on the angular sofa on the opposite
end from Randall. She picks up the remote and clicks off the TV, and this time, he does not complain.

Randall waits and watches. His silence says, “You first.”

Her words fall, like cards from a dealer’s hand, easier than she thought they would. “I love you, but I can’t be this way
anymore.”

“And, I love you, I always have.” Randall’s forehead creases so that little veins snake across it. “But, I don’t feel loved.
Why do you think I didn’t ask you to come on this last trip? I needed a break. From the tension, from the anger.” He rises
from the couch and paces from the window to the small dining table and back, from the heavy coffee table to the fireplace
in front of it.

Rain thrums against the sliding glass window. Its rhythm beats their message. Only when Kendrick and Camille were born, when
Lena walked down the church aisle toward him, has she ever seen this kind of reaction on Randall’s face. His eyes are tight,
his lips fixed, his posture sloped in a way that only she would notice. Her hands tremble. They ache to reach out in a gesture
all their own to take Randall’s hand and make everything all right. She furls her hands tightly in her lap.

“Either we go back to counseling… or… separate.” Lulu will say that separation never happens in their family, that Lena is
inflexible, that she won’t know how to make it without the man who’s taken care of her for so long, that being single at fifty-four
will make for a tough and lonely life. But courage itches in Lena’s right ear, and she will not scratch it away.

Randall paces, diverts to the kitchen, splashes more wine into his glass. He sips, looking at Lena over the top of the clear
rim. “I don’t want some thirty-year-old therapist telling me how terribleI am.”

The clock on the mantle intrudes on his words.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
No time. No time. Sixty ticks mark the minute, change their lives.

She wonders why he doesn’t think the therapist would tell him how terrible
they
are. “Would it make a difference if he were older?”

“No.” No tears, ’cause this man don’t cry. But Randall’s eyebrows fall down, and wrinkles gather on his brow and his mouth
and the corners of his wide eyes. His answer resonates above the crackle of the fire, above the rain’s patter, above the knock
of Lena’s heart. Lena wonders why so much now. It could have been put to better use when Camille screamed at her, when that
damned cat stunk up the house, when Kendrick snipped at her for not being the same ole mom, when Lynne spoke like Lena was
nothing in her own house, when Sharon flirted with him right in front of his wife.

Lena stands and tugs at the space where her ring used to be. She steps toward Randall, but his eyes are dull and flat and
have shut her out. The last words of love that she wants to speak do not fall from her mouth. If she knew then—that he would
never come home again—she would have stolen a last hug. One long kiss goodbye, so that her imagination would not have to fill
the places he no longer is. So that her Thursday chores would have left old sheets on her bed, or towels in the bathroom,
his shirts in the hamper so that his smell would stay with her, and she could breathe deep his cinnamon scent for just one
more night.

The mistake she makes that night is leaving him in control, but old habits are hard to break: the prompt hers, the decision
his. By the time she gets home, Randall will have called Kendrick and Camille. Daughter and son will call her traitor; cite
her tough love, her insistence on rules, and recent inattention as reasons to side with their father. They will comfort themselves
in their father’s temporary attention, so that when she gets home, forty-two miles in forty-two minutes, and gazes upon her
children’s faces, they will no longer be hers. Kendrick will be a turtle hidden in the shell of his twenty-year-old body;
Camille, like her cat, claws extended and ready to fight.

And from this day on nothing will be the same. She will clean for one, not four. And eat for one, not four, and cry for one,
not four.

The freeway signs say exit.

And her heart is broken, too.

S
till woozy with the morning-after haze of sleeping pills, Lena busies herself in the kitchen: chop, mix, sauté. Despite the
intentional clatter of pots and pans, Kendrick and Camille have not gotten the hint, not smelled the vanilla, melted butter,
and thick chunks of milk- and cinnamon-soaked bread simmering on the griddle. Hope rises with the clomp of Kendrick’s heavy
shoes on the stairs; perhaps the smells have lured them after all. Kendrick bolts into the kitchen, his backpack sagging between
his shoulder blades. Camille, dressed in flannel pajamas, thick leg-warmers, and a hooded sweater, strolls behind her big
brother.

“I want to talk to you both about me and your dad.” Lena sets a medium-sized platter with four slices of French toast on the
table, then sprinkles them with confectioner’s sugar. These thick, fluffy pieces of cooked bread are Camille and Kendrick’s
first choice for breakfast food. The memory of six-year-old Kendrick gobbling the spiced bread by the mouthful, syrup on his
cheeks and greedy hands, and a much younger Camille dipping her pieces into the tangy berry compote Lena concocted flashes
in her head. Lena nods toward the table and prays Kendrick and Camille understand: food as love.

“I can’t be late. I’ll grab a breakfast burrito from 7-Eleven.” Kendrick leans against the back door, the eagerness to get
to his part-time job obvious in his shuffling from one foot to the other. He refuses to look at Lena. Camille edges, sinewy
like Kimchee, toward the table.

“It won’t take long. Please.”

Kendrick picks up a piece of toast with his hands and folds it into a pizza-like wedge before swallowing it in two bites.
Camille stabs the toast with her fork and drags it onto her plate. Even now Camille dips. She never pours gravy onto her mashed
potatoes; she dips forkfuls of the creamy side dish into the gravy boat, or chunks of bread into melted butter. When Camille
was eight, Lena decided not to stop the habit and bought her a tiny, bone-china dipping pot.

“I want you to understand that separating from your father doesn’t mean that I don’t love you or that life won’t be the same.”
Lena looks from Kendrick to Camille. Two sets of eyes roam from food to table to each other; anywhere but their mother’s eyes.
“I don’t know how to explain to you what has happened. I’m not sure I fully understand it myself.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that you haven’t been Mom, Mom, in a while.” Kendrick fidgets with his keys,
sticking each of them into the lock on the door, even though only one fits. “And, I can’t speak for Camille, but this is between
you and Dad. I’m going back to Chicago as soon as summer school starts. Dad already agreed.”

“I guess… I mean it’s scary. You know? My life should be about college and prom and graduation, not my parents’ problems,”
Camille mutters. “Dad told us he’s in the middle of some crazy shit at work, and you don’t do anything to help.”

“I’m not going to argue with either one of you. You have no idea of how it is between married couples. You don’t understand
my sacrifices.”

“Those were your choices, Mom.” Kendrick opens the back door and steps out as if his abruptness will change her decision.

“Are you getting divorced?” Camille pushes food around her plate.

“Nothing is settled. No matter what happens, graduation will be the same. For now, I assume, your Dad will stay in TIDA’s
corporate apartment.”

“Can I stay with him?”

“I’d like you to stay with me.” At the sink, Lena runs water into the teakettle and sets it onto the burner. She angles her
head so that Camille cannot see her face and the tears she tries hard to blink away. When steam hisses from the capped spout,
she reaches into the glass cabinet behind her and pulls out two flowery teacups. A heaping dollop of honey, lemon, and chamomile
tea go into the cups. Lena sets a cup in front of Camille.

When Camille was ten, Lena started a tradition similar to the one her Auntie Big Talker had with her seven nieces: they gathered
once a month for a manners and vocabulary lesson and lemon- and honey-laden tea. While the cousins sipped their tea, Auntie
Big Talker read to them: the encyclopedia, obscure English novels, the dictionary. She made them write the words they didn’t
understand on three-by-five cards and insisted the cousins memorize them.
Conundrum
irritates Lena’s tongue now. There is a riddle, but no amusement; no pun in the answer to what mother and daughter can do
to get along.

For her version of the ritual, Lena took Camille to a collectables store and together they selected teacups and matching saucers.
At the bookstore, they searched the shelves until they came across a book about a gutsy little girl who braved her way through
a country swamp. Then they sat at the table in front of the kitchen window, the three tall pine trees outside the sole witnesses
to their closeness. They sipped tea, ate too many cookies and read aloud to each other. In the years that followed, the last
Saturday of the month was theirs. They read the swamp girl’s story more times than either of them could remember, all of Beverly
Cleary’s books—it was because of Ramona’s cat, Socks, that Camille fell in love with cats—and
The Count of Monte Cristo
. They talked about the world and life and what Camille might be when she grew up.

“I’m late for school.” Camille shoves the untouched tea across the table. She is upstairs and back out of the house before
Lena can figure out what more to say.

Lena feels it; a barely perceptible rumble on her emotional Richter scale. She understands it: another shift. A shift from
her cocoon, her warm fuzzy life, the lovely family she worked so hard for has a nasty crack and may soon rupture and split.

Upstairs in her office, Lena lights her candles, holds her book in her hands. It is hard to see through the tears that splash
onto the yellowed pages. The thin threads of similarity between her life and Tina’s are always in her head: their birthdays,
a little insecurity, and deference to men. Creativity. For years Lena’s art has been limited to the preservation of family
posterity: anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, vacations. Time to step it up. If, she wonders, psychics gave Tina clues about
her future, then shouldn’t she consider the clues Vernon gave her?