Searching for Tina Turner (21 page)

If Lulu is right—about Lena never following anyone’s advice, maybe, she thinks after Bobbie’s suggestion, she should start.
Now. Cheryl would be delighted to get her out of the apartment, but Lena is not ready to take the plunge into her friend’s
frenzied social life. Too bad she didn’t get Pink Slippers’ phone number. Flipping through her address book, Lena finds the
pickings slim in the names of women she once called friend. She understands the protocol: she is off-limits now, the almost-divorced
woman Candace, if she holds true to her word, will spurn. Lena imagines Randall’s social calendar is full: her old friends
have probably paired him up already. Good catch. So is she.

Without brooding over her decision, Lena gathers her hair into a ponytail, dusts blush on the apples of her cheeks, layers
mascara on her eyelashes. Jeans, heels, white blouse, orange leather jacket. Enough.

Vertigo, a neighborhood restaurant and bar, is within walking distance of her apartment and comfortable. In the old days,
whenever Randall and Lena walked into a restaurant, she pitied the men and women seated alone at the bar and assumed they
were single and sad. If someone cared enough to look closely, they would see that she is; but she doesn’t want anyone’s pity.
Once the hostess establishes that she is alone, she points instead of escorts Lena in the direction of the bar. Couples dine
at cozy marble-topped tables; singles eat at the bar, the hostess’s taut finger seems to say.

When the muscular bartender glances her way, she asks twice for a seven and seven on the rocks with extra lime before the
young man acknowledges her. The lime slips from the rim’s edge and into the honey-colored drink when he sets the cocktail
down. Never one to sit at a bar, nurse a drink or two, and chat with a stranger, Lena’s mind is a blank as she searches for
small talk. “Thanks,” slips from her lips as the bartender turns away. She examines the menu more to busy her mind than select
a late-night snack.

On her right, several young women watch the door in anticipation of a friend or perhaps their dates. They remind her of her
single days, the first time around, and the occasional bar-hopping in packs; even on the infrequent business trip she avoided
solo eating and drinking. On her left, a man, tie loosened from his unbuttoned collar, preoccupies himself with the newspaper
while shoving large forkfuls of linguini into his mouth.

A cool breeze blows down the bar when the restaurant’s huge glass door automatically opens for an amorous couple. The man’s
wide hand rubs the woman’s—the much younger woman’s—firm hips, and she does not seem flustered by the contact. When she glances
at their faces, Lena blanches at the sight of Candace’s husband and the bimbette from her dinner party. Snatching a section
of newspaper from the man one seat over, Lena hunkers behind the pages. That same fear and anxiety that took over her when
she ran into Candace at the bookstore now runs through her body again. What if they saw her? Poor Lena: no husband, no family;
she’s all alone. Alternating her attention between the paper and the door, Lena forgets that Byron is the one who should hide.

From behind the paper, the bimbette’s infantile voice is exactly as annoying as Lena remembers from the night of the party.
The night she remembers, too, that Candace confirmed her friendship. Lena drops the newspaper as Byron and the bimbette pass
in front of her and the polished wood bar. “Heyyy, Byron.” She exaggerates her greeting, makes it sweet and syrupy like she
would for a long-lost friend, and stares right into Byron’s eyes. If Lena ever tells anyone about the scene before her, she
will describe it as a moment from a slapstick movie: the bimbette’s face lights up with recognition and dims just as quickly;
Byron’s head swivels from left to right searching the bar for the possibility that his wife is there with Lena.

“Be sure to tell Candace I say hello.”

“I’ll do that,” he says, stepping an arm’s length from the bimbette. “Good to see you, Lena.” Lena is positive that even if
Byron were fifteen, maybe ten pounds lighter, he could not move out of the restaurant any faster. As for Candace, all of those
women who think that she might be a threat to them, ha. It’s the bimbettes of the world, she thinks, they better watch out
for.

“That just made my night.” She turns to the man from whom she grabbed the paper and pushes it back down the bar. He shrugs
as if he has seen it all. Lena drops a ten-dollar bill on the counter. The bar has become more crowded with couples. The man
with the newspaper is still more interested in reading than conversation. Perhaps some other time, she thinks. Then she will
find new friends or a prospective lover or even a stranger with whom she will talk and drink and joke.

By the time she gets back to her building, the night guard is making his hourly rounds and the front desk is empty. Lena heads
for the wall of silver rectangular mailboxes. She likes to pick up her mail late at night. No one sees her. No one cares.

The mailbox door creaks. Lena pulls out a wad of mail and weekly grocery store advertisements for foods she no longer eats
or cares about. It must be four days since she last checked the mailbox. The small box is so full that she is surprised the
postman hasn’t complained. Standing in front of the marble-topped counter where the trash can is tactfully concealed behind
a maple veneer door, Lena separates catalogs, credit card solicitations, and postcards sent by real estate agents looking
for new clients. There are eighteen catalogs. Eighteen businesses that want her to buy furniture, linens, stationery, luggage,
and cosmetics. She tears off the back page of each catalog, flips to the middle, and tears out the order page where her name
and address are printed: Lena I. Harrison. Identity theft. Who cares?

A red envelope protrudes between bills and solicitations. Lena recognizes Bobbie’s bold handwriting. She always uses a medium-blue
felt pen. Royal blue. Inside the envelope, a black-and-white photograph is glued to the front of a note card: Lena and Bobbie,
in matching dresses and ruffle-edged pinafores, sit atop the shiny hood of their uncle’s pickup truck. Each of the sisters
holds an ice cream cone in a gloved hand. Lena remembers the day the photograph was taken: Easter Sunday, 1956. Lena was almost
seven and Bobbie ten. They’d begged to eat Auntie Big Talker’s homemade ice cream before, not after, they changed their yellow
and blue Sunday clothes, and for once, Lulu let them. Their grins are wide and toothy.

Lena recognizes the quote from one of Tina’s songs written across the bottom of the photo in Bobbie’s bold slanted hand:
There’s something special about you
. Inside is a first-class airline ticket from San Francisco to Nice, France, imprinted with Lena’s name.

“Tina said it, and I know it. Use this,” Bobbie’s bold handwriting commands. “Now!”

E
ach stark white wall of this square room is covered with paintings from the baseboard along the cement floor to the top of
the eighteen-foot ceiling. Red, bright turquoise, cerise, and purple. Bold strokes of gouache form thick paint waves. Black-and-white
photographs—thick lips, kinky and straight hair, kneecaps, noses, crusty heels—are spread like collages between the canvases.
Some of the paintings are words outlined underneath layers of color. None of the paintings clash; instead of creating a frenetic,
jarring sensation, they are ordered in a way that imparts control.

“See, getting out is a good thing.” Though Marcia is Cheryl’s client and not a close friend, she hugs Lena warmly. “Make yourself
comfortable, walk around, meet somebody, and take them home.” Her invitation is throaty and sexy.

Randall and Lena first met Marcia on the wooden bench in front of a Diane Arbus photograph, “A Young Negro Boy,” at the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Marcia squeezed onto the bench, uninvited, and talked about the photographer’s work, her hands
gesturing rapidly the whole time, without any signal from Randall or Lena.

“Diane Arbus once said or wrote that she believes that there were things nobody would see unless she photographed them.” Marcia
offered her interpretations of the artist’s intentions—“She wanted to capture life and give meaning to everyday existence”
—that continued over dinner at the restaurant next door.

When Marcia discovered that Lena was a long-time friend of Cheryl’s, she insisted on paying the check. With Cheryl’s help
they bought two pieces of Marcia’s art the following week. Marcia encouraged Lena to take a photography class with her on
the one occasion they’d gone for coffee. The class, Marcia emphasized with her hands more than her words, was a way to stretch
to the next level and, if Lena was really interested in taking pictures, the class would help to make her photography art.

f   f   f

“Your work is lovely, Marcia,” Lena says.

If there had been a paintbrush in Marcia’s hands for her dismissal of Lena’s flattery, it would have feathered large circles
around the room and touched every painting. “This is my home
and
my gallery.”

“Thanks for remembering me,” Lena calls to Marcia’s back. There haven’t been any invitations in Lena’s mailbox for a long
time, despite the change of address notices she sent to all of their friends. No dinners or movies, weddings, or parties.
Marcia forgot—or Cheryl forgot to tell her—that Lena and Randall were no longer a couple: her metallic envelope was addressed
to the two of them. The familiar unfamiliar sight of their two names together set off a sudden burst of tears. Lena promptly
accepted Marcia’s invitation, not so much out of fear that it might be retracted but with the knowledge that if she let it
sit she would change her mind and Marcia might not think of her the next time around.

Lena breathes in the scent of cumin and curry and maybe nutmeg or mace. The house smells like home. Old home. She wanders
around the condo. An artist, whose angular, steel sculptures she loves but can no longer afford, waves from across the room.
A singer from a local jazz club Lena keeps intending to visit introduces herself and hands her a postcard with the date of
her next show.

The living room and the smaller one across the entryway are full of men and women dressed in every type of clothes from holey
designer jeans to African garb. Conversation and hilarity clash with the pianist who alternates between jazz and classical
music on an upright piano in the corner. Where Marcia succeeded with the artwork, Lena thinks, she left a lot to make up for
with the acoustics.

A thirty-something man dressed in paint-splattered coveralls approaches Lena. “You look thirsty.” He offers her a flute of
champagne from a red enameled tray.

“Flirtation or kindness?”

“Duty. Just a starving artist doing nowhere near as well as my friend. Marcia asked me to help out. And as for flirtation…”
He leans into Lena just enough so that she can smell the peach scent of his twisted hair. “I’m Imara, bartender-artist, and
I’m game if you are.”

Funny, she thinks taking a glass, how women, famous and ordinary, talk about the confidence they’ve gained by the time they
reach fifty. Lena feels none of that. She swallows the bubbly liquid in two gulps to calm the tightness nagging at her stomach
and takes another. Being single makes her feel like a fifty-four-year-old virgin; her confidence is nonexistent. “Thank you,
Imara-bartender-artist.”

Imara is close enough so that Lena can see the tiny moles across his sandy-colored nose. She steps back and away from him.
She is not afraid of men; she has simply forgotten what to do. At thirty, before walking into a party, bar, or an afternoon
gathering, Lena sought security in the easy hand-to-mouth action of smoking. Even then she found small talk useless; men seem
to want conversations in shades of gray. She speaks black and white.

“Well, look who got out of the house!” Cheryl’s voice booms from behind the server.

Imara-bartender-artist slips his card into her hand. “Call me.”

“Your taste in men is as good as ever, Lena. Barely separated and flirting with that delectable young thing?” Cheryl’s clothes
coordinate with Marcia’s paintings. Her form-fitting lavender pantsuit might have been simple on anyone else. The long jacket
is slit on both sides from the waist down, and the fuchsia and turquoise pashmina across her shoulder matches her earrings
and bold jade and silver jewelry. She is at once sophisticated and ostentatious.

“The end of January.” Lena resists her new habit of rubbing her third finger left hand and instead motions to Imara. “The
settlement papers are signed, but the divorce won’t be final for four and a half months. Hell of a way to start off the new
year. It’s one of the hottest pieces of gossip since that newscaster’s wife caught him with his assistant on the floor of
his office.”

“I’m sorry, Lena. I know it’s been tough.”

“It’s been a bitch, if I do say so myself.” Lena avoids Cheryl’s eyes.

Imara-bartender-artist hovers around the two women until Cheryl takes another glass of champagne from the tray and points
a finger of her free hand at Lena. Together they head for the table that Marcia has covered with food. Cheryl loads her plate
with curried shrimp, chicken, and rice pilaf. Lena puts a teaspoon of each of the same dishes on her plate along with a dab
of mango chutney.

“Eat, ladies.” Marcia unloads another platter of food on the table. “And when you’re done, Cheryl, take Lena to look at that
painting over the fireplace.”

“Art, my dear, gifted client, is not on my mind.” Cheryl looks around the room. Her eyes pause at every man who is not attached
to a woman. “There aren’t many men here, and tonight this girl is on the prowl. Except for the champagne-serving cutie, and
I assume Lena’s got dibs?”

Falling into their old she-said, she-said rhythm, Lena lets Cheryl know that it’s too soon for her to think about men. “But
even I have to admit the pickings seem slim.”

“Girl, you better forget that Negro and have some fun! Randall was always too stuffy. You need to be like Tina Turner and
move on.”