Searching for Tina Turner (33 page)

Lena points her camera at a waddling toddler making his way up the stairs without the help of his parents. “I haven’t the
vaguest idea how to describe this to Lulu. I’m going to the top and take a picture.” Bruce gently taps her shoulder before
she climbs to the vestibule of the Byzantine-styled building and points to the funicular. “Cheryl and I are going down.” He
glances at Harmon. “Sorry, man. It’s flat there…”

f   f   f

The
libraire’s
sixteen-foot walls are covered from floor to ceiling with shelves of books. Lena asks the woman behind a tall desk if she
speaks English. “Petit peu,” the woman says, holding a space between her thumb and forefinger of no more than an inch.

“I want to buy a gift. A special memory of Paris.” Lena points to Harmon browsing the tables on the outer edges of the store.
“A surprise.”

“Ah, oui, madame.” The woman’s face fills with glee while she questions Lena on Harmon’s likes and dislikes. The woman pauses
for a minute, her eyes move from left to right as if recalling her entire inventory. She eases off of her stool and enters
the back of the store through a draped curtain. A man comes out and drags a wheeled ladder attached to the shelves until he
spots what he is looking for. He climbs to the very top step, his head grazing the ceiling, and pulls a book out with both
hands. He holds on to the book loosely while descending the stairs like he seems to have done a thousand times. The shopkeeper
holds her arms out to him when he nears the bottom of the ladder, relief visible in her eyes, and places a loving hand on
the man’s balding head.

Lena flips through the book—the pictures are sharp and show the detail she is looking for. The text is in French, but the
pictures need no translation. “Perfect.” She thanks the woman three times until the woman steps from behind the tall mahogany
pulpit that passes for the sales counter and thanks Lena, in the French way—cheek to cheek. “I am hopeful your
ami
finds enjoyment with this book.”

f   f   f

At three o’clock in the afternoon, this sidewalk café still serves ham-and-tomato sandwiches on crunchy baguettes and hunks
of cantal—the hard French cheese Lena loves the most.

“Two more days here and then it’s back to the south of France, Tina’s concert… and home.” Lena passes the brown bag from the
bookstore to Harmon across the table. “Thank you for sharing Paris with me. This is for you.”

Harmon strips away the tape carefully as if his gift is wrapped in expensive paper.

“
Les Églises de Paris
.” He pronounces the words slowly. Lena muses at how much his accent has improved. He traces the outline of the steepled church
on the cover with his finger and opens the book to the first page.
Triforium is a word that will stay with me as much as the memory of you and our little church. If that word describes an opening,
it is what you have built in my heart. Love, Lena.

“Don’t go back to Nice. Come to Chicago.” He reaches his hand to Lena’s cheek and holds it there. His touch holds all the
tenderness he has shown her over the past days.

“I’ve already let you take me off track, no matter how much fun it’s been.” She dips a cookie into her dark wine and bites
into it.

“I can rearrange a few appointments. I’ll stay longer if you do. Let’s see where this—us—is going.”

There is nothing she wants more. Nothing she wants less. She cannot help herself because being taken care of by someone who
cares makes you feel like chocolate ice cream on a summer day. Lena caresses Harmon’s hand. The action, his request, feels
comfortable: a promise of security, a predictable future.

“We’re moving at the speed of lightning. I’m not done with one man. I have to be sure that it’s not this.” Lena waves her
arms from the curlicued Métro station gate to the ornate buildings rising on the hill beyond the café. “And when the time
comes, I’ll be looking for a partner, not someone to take care of me.”

“I hear you loud and clear.”

“This is what vacations are: we laugh, we talk, we fool around. Once we’re back home, we’ll visit. I’m not going anywhere,
and I won’t lose sight of my goals. Not this time.”

“I love you, Lena. I love your search for change. I don’t think you know how indomitable you are.” He presses his hand to
her mouth. “You can’t say anything to me that I haven’t said to myself, or Bruce.” Harmon looks straight at Lena and searches
her eyes for assent. His wide smile, his toothy smile, spreads across his face. “Marry me, Lena. I was going to ask you at
dinner tonight. The concierge even found a bottle of that Cheval Blanc, St-Emilion, to celebrate.” Frown lines disappear as
he pulls a small satin pouch from his pocket and opens it. The ring is a band of diamonds that shimmers in the afternoon light.
“I know marriage is a bigger commitment than you’re ready for right now. So think of this as a promise ring.”

“Too fast, too soon.” Can he hear her fear? she wonders.

“I’m not a capricious man, Lena. I know you’re still married—even if it’s not for much longer. I know what you’ve got to get
out of your system. But, I told you. I assess facts, and I make decisions—business or emotional. I trust my intuition, otherwise
I wouldn’t be here.”

Lena signals with her hand for Harmon to keep his distance. She does not want to cry, does not want to cry. Didn’t the optometrist
tell her that her eyes were dry? Didn’t she laugh and tell him it was because in eight short months she had cried an ocean,
a lifetime of tears, that there were no more, that her whole body was dry?

“I love you because it’s taken you a long time to realize what you want, and now you’re ready to go for it. You admire Tina
Turner and, no matter how odd everybody else thinks that is, you hold on to her as role model. I love you because you’ve let
go of thinking of power as the most important thing in your life. I love you because you don’t want anything from me. If you
go, I’m not sure I’ll get the chance to ask again.”

Lena swallows hard to wet her throat and checks her fingers for nonexistent hangnails. “I don’t love you the way a woman should
when her man proposes marriage.”

“Yes, you do, Lena. Don’t deny it. You wouldn’t be here with me right now if you didn’t.”

T
ake it from your buddy—accept love. It’s a gift. Two marriages, and a whole lot of men in between, have taught me that.” Cheryl
hooks her arm through Lena’s like so many French women do. The gesture confirms the importance of alone time with her friend
and convinces Lena that encouraging Harmon and Bruce to sample eau-de-vie on their own at a private tasting room near the
Place Vendôme was the right thing to do.

The days of this short stay in Paris have toppled like dominoes under a child’s heavy hand. Lena has lost count, can barely
tell Tuesday from Thursday. All she knows is that they have two days left in Paris and that Cheryl is trying to convince her
that love can truly conquer all.

A group of pedestrians moves against the stoplight and across the wide boulevard. Lena loves that Parisians take jaywalking
as seriously as they do their coffee. Couples hold hands, smooch, discreetly pat each other’s bottoms. “Paris makes you want
to be in love, makes you do things you may later regret.”

“You. Not me, honey. I haven’t done anything I haven’t wanted to do. Bruce has been fine company.” Cheryl rattles her newly
acquired—thanks to Bruce—wide gold bangles. “And besides, Bruce is worried that his boy Harmon is too attached.”

“I’ve finally made some sense of the rues and boulevards. It feels like I belong here.” Lena draws an invisible line with
her finger on the map to point the way from Boulevard Saint-Germain, where they stand, to the museum at the Luxembourg Gardens.
The streets converge at odd angles; at every corner a new rue or avenue sprouts, like tree limbs, in different directions.
“Harmon genuinely cares. And that’s more important than what he has or what he can give. If it’s meant to be, it will.”

The museum is separated from the rue de Vaugirard by stairs and a ten-foot wrought iron fence with gold-tipped spikes. Oversized,
cloth posters below the sculpted pediment announce the exhibit. Rows and rows of trees jut out behind the building and offer
a glimpse of the park beyond. Inside the small gallery, the walls of two rooms are covered with Matisse pieces. The rooms
are big enough to accommodate the fifty or so people milling around and small enough to get close to the art and see the brush
strokes, the thickness of the paint, a hint of an original pencil sketch.

The exhibit pays homage to Matisse’s friendship and correspondence with artist André Rouveyre, who influenced Matisse’s creativity
in the latter part of his life. Display boxes are filled with the men’s original letters. In the middle of the first room,
glass cases enclose letters and drawings by both artists. Matisse’s envelopes are works of art covered with endearments and
sketches of abstract leaves from the tree of life in the chapel at Vence.

“These two artists inspired each other to greater heights.” Cheryl loops her finger in the direction of the letters.

“We should… correspond. That’s what they used to say.”

“That’s what email is for.” Cheryl waves Lena forward. “No one writes letters anymore.”

“I still have the letters Randall wrote to me before we were married.” The letters were still tied with the ribbon from the
first bouquet of flowers (the second time around) he gave her for no other reason than he wanted to.

“Well, that bit of ‘correspondence’ should go right into the trash.”

“Sometimes letters communicate what can be hard to say in person.”

“I say what’s on my mind,” Cheryl declares. They move with the crowd into the next room. “Like, for instance, this: for me
this little fling with Bruce is just that, a fling. I don’t expect anything more from him than what I’ve gotten. He’s fun
and funny and a big spender. Now I’ve got a friend in Chicago.”

In the second room one wall is devoted to “Jazz,” twenty vibrant canvases, each one twelve by sixteen inches, working with
the same musical theme. Cheryl stops in front of two canvases of the 1947 piece: the stark black silhouette of a man falling
through a deep blue field of golden starbursts, an elephant balancing on a ball behind slashes of red.

“You compartmentalize,” Lena says. “Work. Relationships. Just like men.”

“And I’m proud of it! But I insist on having fun while I’m doing it. I’m determined not to form any connections that have
the slightest chance of becoming anything more.” Cheryl nudges Lena. “But you, sister girl—you are a one-man woman. You were
that way with Harmon when you dated the first time around, and you were that way for all those years with Randall. So, I’m
asking you—how does it feel to be in love with two men at the same time?”

“I’m not sure what being in love means anymore. I won’t lie; I have feelings for Harmon—maybe love, maybe gratitude. There’s
a gentleness about him that makes him attractive.” Lena moves to the black-and-white charcoal sketches, like first drafts
of a novel, that Matisse created for the Vence chapel. “I love the memory of Randall, but I’m disappointed in the present
him. I love the present Harmon, but I’m disappointed in the memory.”

Cheryl points back to the varying canvases of “Jazz.” “The work in this collection is different from what Matisse had done
in the past. He always used bold colors and these abstracts still carry his love for color, but they are new interpretations
of what he felt. It’s artistic evolution. Rouveyre helped him to understand the need to incorporate old ideas into new images
and let go of the past.” Cheryl paces back and forth between paintings to emphasize her words. “Since I believe that art imitates
life, and I’m your friend, I want to remind you that Tina Turner finally made choices based on putting herself first. You’re
no good to anybody if you can’t do that. Tina figured it out, and maybe that’s what you’re here to learn.”

They study the rhythm, the preparation, and implications of Matisse’s work in light of what Cheryl has said. Harmon’s declaration
was not surprising. His attention and affection feel like more than lust. “I wanted this affair to be the first time that
love and commitment were
not
my priority.”

“And, I might add, isn’t that a bit risky for a woman over fifty?” Cheryl teases, mocking Lena’s own words.

Lena presses her purse for her book, past the point of writing her thoughts in the margins. There is no longer any reason
to compare her predicament. They stop in to the museum’s gift shop, its shelves and counters stacked with art books and mementos
of the exhibit. Beyond the gift shop window a queue extends down the stairs and around the side of the building. Paris is
chilly but bright, its trees are fading from green to gold, and Lena is glad to be alive.

Randall’s love meant security, but when it came down to the two of them sitting across from one another, listening to the
rain scratch against the window that stormy night, none of it amounted to the kind of love that should have kept them together.
Maybe, if she had been more open. But maybe is just a cake that’s all eaten up; if wishes were fishes and fishes could fly…

While Cheryl decides which art books she cannot live without, Lena waits on the museum steps. She has picked the same card
for Camille and Kendrick and jots the same note to them: “The next time I come to Paris, you’re coming with me—even if I have
to drag you kicking and screaming. You’ll love it, and I can’t wait to share this city with my two favorite people.” Her postcards
to Lulu and Bobbie tell them how fabulous Paris is. She will spray Annick Goutal on Lulu’s card when she returns to the hotel.
The last postcard, a black silhouette tumbling through blue space and yellow stars, she addresses to herself. On the left
side she scrawls her note in capital letters, “ME…
THAT’S
WHAT LOVE HAS TO DO WITH… EVERYTHING!!”

H
armon’s body is longer than the silk-covered couch. He sleeps, arms folded atop his chest, head on the armrest at one end,
feet dangling over the cushioned edge of the other. Lena has come to learn a few of his habits: he catnaps in the late afternoon;
he rarely gets into bed before midnight and then without TV, lights, or noise.