Searching for Tina Turner (17 page)

Because the sound of their laughter is so sweet, because she learned from that last meal with Randall, Lena holds her tongue.
She wants to shout from the ceiling that their father is manipulating them, but she waits until Kendrick’s and Camille’s plates
are empty and they seem to have run out of friends and TV reality shows to talk about. “I have something to tell you.”

This same phrase was once a signal for good news or good times: anything from going to Lulu’s to flying kites near the estuary
or taking a trip to a warm place where the whole family could romp in the ocean. Kendrick’s smile turns somber. Camille’s
knees shake underneath the table; a new habit. Their expressions ask the same question: what is our crazy mother up to now?
Or worse: can’t we pretend that everything is the same for a while longer?

“I love both of you, and I want you to be a part of this different life I’m beginning. I rented an apartment near the lake.
It’s small, and there aren’t any fancy TVs, but there’s a bedroom for each of you.”

“I knew it. I knew it when I saw the food. This is bullshit.” Kendrick’s voice cracks like it used to when it first began
to deepen.

“Your timing sucks.” Camille’s dimples disappear, just as tears begin to fall down her cheeks.

“Why is it always about you, Mom? You could’ve waited until later. We were having a good time.”

What does a mother do when she is responsible for her children’s tears? When their hearts are broken, when the decision to
save herself is as hurtful for them as it is for her? The urge, the need to grab both of her children and shake sense into
their heads, is strong. The closest she can get is their hands—one hand on each of theirs, and she holds them in a tight grip
so they cannot pull away. “How can you in one breath be so happy for your father’s move and criticize me in the next for doing
the same thing?”

Now their words fly like arrows all aimed at her so fast and hard that Lena ducks at the imaginary points coming her way.

“You’re our mother.” Kendrick wrenches his hand from Lena’s grasp and rises from the table. “I can’t believe you, Mom. You’ve
fucked everything up for all of us.”

“You’re supposed to take care of us, take care of Dad, take care of our house. What’s the matter with you, Mommy? I hate you.”

Camille’s best friend’s mother called days ago. After apologizing for being the one to break the news, the woman told Lena
that Camille had posted bitter poetry that blamed Lena for the separation on a teen blog. Posted what the best friend’s mother
would only say used words no mother would want her child to write in the same sentence with her name:
selfish, hate, dead, fucking bitch.

“Trust me. Please.” Now Lena’s legs, too, shake beneath the table. How can a child understand the need for a mother to make
it on her own? She pushes her hand against her eyes, knowing that tears will accomplish nothing. “Kendrick, you’re settled
for the summer, but I want you with me, at least some of the time, before you go back to Chicago. Camille, I’d like you to
stay with me.”

“You’re trying to take away everything Dad has worked for,” Kendrick says.

The words, Lena knows, are not his. The hard look on his face, a copy of his father’s, clearly indicates he has more to say.
Her left eyebrow arcs at his nerve, and he backs off. “I don’t know what your father says, but shame on him for it. I don’t
want the two of you to be involved.”

“At least Dad tells us what’s going on,” Camille says.

Her raised finger stops Camille from adding anything more. “Don’t let him brainwash you. Kendrick, you may have a wife someday,
and one day, Camille, you may
be
a wife in this very same position. So, check your attitudes about women who choose family over career.”

“Well, what about Kimchee? Do I have to decide who I’m going to live with right now?”

“No, sweetie. Yes, Kimchee can come, too.” She extends her hand to Camille’s cheek, and Camille shoves it away. “I hope one
day you’ll both understand.”

“Summer school starts in three weeks.” Kendrick stands and hugs Camille. There are no tears in his eyes, but the strain of
his parents’ decision is back. “I’m staying with Dad until then.”

“I love you. Don’t forget that.” Lena promises herself that whatever comes next in her life will show them this pain—hers
and theirs—has been worth it.

“If you loved us, you wouldn’t do this to us,” Camille says; tears stream down her face. “Or to Dad.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…. If I could make it hurt less, for all of us, I would.”

“Then I’m going to stay with Dad, too. You kicked him out of the house. He goes to all of the trouble of looking for a new
place, and now you’re leaving? It’s not fair.”

When Lena went online and read Camille’s poetry, the words, their meaning, were clear but seemingly not directed at her. Now
hearing her children’s words and the force of their anger is hard to take, but the sentiments were easier to handle delivered
from the protective distance of cyberspace.

O
n this fourteenth day since that rainy night, Lena awakens to the music of her neighborhood: children shriek through a game
of tag, a lone bird chirps; a sprinkler head sputters, a gardener’s blower buzzes. It’s been a long time since she’s paid
attention to these early morning noises, and now her ears perk up because she is listening to them for the last time.

Pulling on jeans and a sweater in the haphazard fashion that is now her style, she wanders toward Kendrick’s and Camille’s
rooms to crack their doors open and check their breathing, as if they were still toddlers, underneath their muddled covers.
She stops in the middle of the hallway. Kendrick and Camille are not home. They left last night with barely a smile or a tilted
eyebrow or a mischievous wink and headed to wherever Randall lives these days.

Outside, gears grind in the driveway. This truck announces their separation to the neighbors. Lena storms down the stairs
and opens the front door. Two burly men with huge moving pads slung across their shoulders ask where she wants to begin. She
looks back at them and waits for them to answer their own question.

Their first home was a mishmash of her furniture and Randall’s bachelor trimmings. Lena decorated this house on her own. There
were days spent in cold, dusty warehouses to find pristine bathroom tiles; she scoured through racks of granite slabs, as
long as they were wide, in search of the right one for the kitchen. She hunted through the crowded aisles of the Everyman’s
Bazaar for antiques and sterling silver whatnots. The veneer plastered walls, the coffee table, the dining room table, and
several handcrafted lamps are her designs. The corners filled with unobtrusive objects from their travels. Her mark is on
everything.

The movers ask again, quieter this time. Lena points out what she wants: half of the pots and pans, the mixer, the toaster,
the couch, the coffee table and the photography books on top of it, the jade lion from Hong Kong, the red Chinese armoire,
the Persian rugs, the fine china with cobalt blue bands, silverware, picture albums, all of her clothes. The art she loves
and her photographs.

With a final glance in the dresser’s mirror, Lena examines the gray strands scattered in her reddish brown hair, the puffs
that have replaced the smooth skin under her eyes. She points to the dresser, but not the matching bed where Kendrick and
Camille were conceived, where she and Randall swore to be together till death did them part, where they made love, ate popcorn
and ice cream, slept in each other’s arms. The thought of sleeping in that bed alone, though she has many times over the years,
always eager for Randall’s return, is enough to make her double over in pain.

No. The bed holds too many memories. The last time she and Randall made love, really made love—not just gotten off because
he needed to—must have been months before he left on this last trip. She gasped and held her breath, while he moved in and
out, out and in. He called her name, and she called his from the back of her throat in a moan she can hear right now. She
cannot bear the thought of him making love to another woman in that same space.

At last, the movers signal to Lena that they are done. She wanders around the house. In the hallway, faded squares outline
the rectangles of pictures that once decorated those walls: the concentration on Kendrick’s face during his first piano concert,
Camille’s first recital, Kendrick and Camille at Disneyland, Lena and Randall on their honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta. Short
hair, long hair, mustache, no mustache; infants, toddlers, teens. The story of their lives is in those pictures. She beckons
to the only trim mover of the crew and points to one of the whole family: a black-and-white photograph, Randall’s arm around
her shoulder, she leaning into his, Kendrick and Camille seated in front of them. All dressed in jeans and turtleneck sweaters.
Christmas 1999. The photographer told them they looked perfect enough to model, perfect enough to be the all-American family,
and he’d snapped their picture as they laughed.

Lena is not picture-perfect today. Has not been in a long time. Cannot get back into the groove of designer clothes and perfectly
coiffed hair. Through her loose top, the shoulders of her five-eight frame have not slumped, but she feels bent over and aged.
Feels like punching herself, even though the fingers of her right hand do not fully bend, shaving her eyebrows, eating herself
into obesity. Punishment for what she believes is failure. Her failure.

She works her way through the house past reminders of Randall:
Sports Illustrated, Fortune
, Mentadent toothpaste, Tabasco sauce, Uncle Ben’s long-grain rice, mayonnaise, little-eared pasta shells, and red felt-tipped
markers. She stuffs odd mementos in her tote: his lucky plaid pants, the ones he wore when he won the 10k Race for Race around
Lake Merritt, a can of shaving cream, the blue rubber bulb he uses to clean his ears. She hopes his ears stay dirty and hairy
and full of middle-aged earwax.

At the front door, she pauses then locks it and strides past the movers smoking on the lawn awaiting her next order. An unintentional
wave—a small fluttering hand movement that in another time would have greeted her children, her husband, welcomed friends
and family to her home—lets them know she is ready to leave. She opens the garage door and tosses the opener and all the house
keys onto the floor. Pulling out of the garage, she reminds herself to tell the gardener that it is time to trim the magnolia
tree. But no, she doesn’t have to do that anymore. It is only when she reaches the bottom and looks back at the yellowish
house seated above and away from others that her tears begin to roll. It is only when she looks at the van in the driveway
that she understands that the house is neither Randall’s nor hers—it is just where she used to live.

f   f   f

The sky outside is bright even though Lena’s watch shows eight o’clock: almost the end of the longest day of her life. She
sits crossed-legged in the middle of the living room floor of the place she will call home for a while. Lighted candles cover
the coffee table, the kitchen counter, the wide windowsills. Tina booms through the perfection of the MP3’s tiny earphones
and sings of universal heartache in a tune written back when Lena was happy. When she would not have felt what Tina sings
of those wings and the unhappiness—soundless, surprising, invisible—they bring.

I will never be the same again…

The room darkens, a sign that—though she cannot see it from this side of the building—the sun is toppling behind San Francisco.
In the hours that Lena has been in her new space she has scrubbed, dusted high corner ceilings, sponged fingerprints from
switch plates, disinfected toilets and sinks, bleached the insides of the refrigerator and dishwasher. Signs of whomever lived
in the apartment before are gone, and she wonders if she had smiled and fucked Randall every night and more like he thought
a good wife should, would she be here now?

Once she believed that when they were empty-nesters, she and Randall would move into a smaller place, maybe an apartment in
San Francisco. Once she relished the idea of wearing the sexy nightgowns she rarely wore because of the kids, or making love
instead of dinner on the kitchen counters. That was the way life was supposed to be for her and Randall. What else had she
worked so hard for? Not this loneliness she can already feel sinking into her bones.

“I have to get out of here.”

f   f   f

There are few customers in the video store: a weary-eyed man—an insomniac Lena guesses from the drawn look of his face—two
teens with popcorn and sodas, an old couple tittering in front of the adult movie section, and a bedraggled woman in pink
terrycloth house slippers and a floor-length trench coat. Lena peers at her own fuzzy-covered feet and wonders if this woman
is fighting the blues, too. She follows her down the aisle and pretends to scan the shelves. “I’m getting a divorce, and it’s
so hard to sleep.”

“Me, too. I do nothing but cry. All of the time. And look at me…” The woman’s voice is edged with controlled hysteria. Her
hair and dingy outfit give the impression that no one who cares has looked at her in a long time.

A bleach-stained sweatshirt and Randall’s good-luck shorts hang from Lena’s hips, slimmer now from the stress of separation.
“I came looking for a little inspiration. Have you ever seen this?” She points to
What’s Love Got to Do with It
on the last row of the wall-to-wall shelving. “If you can get past the violence, there’s a message.”

Pink Slippers shivers and stares like Lena is crazy.

“Think about it. She found her inner strength and left a terrible relationship. In her forties. With nothing but her name
and her talent.”

A light of recognition brightens the woman’s reddened, blue eyes. “And then she turned into a superstar, and he was never
heard of again.”

“Maybe there are other movies like this one.” Lena walks up the aisle, her new friend behind her, to the clerk barely awake
behind the counter. The woman appears to be over fifty, if the lines in the corner of her eyes and mouth mean anything. “We’re
looking for movies to inspire us. We’re getting divorced.”