Searching for Tina Turner (37 page)

In the window of a small boutique someone has dressed a mannequin in a sexy and expensive-looking flared skirt and peasant
blouse. The style is classic; Tina likes classic. Lena read it on her official website. The fan club president described the
interior of Tina’s villa and wrote that Tina designed it in a classic style.

“Bonjour,” Lena says. In Paris she learned that the French often think Americans’ ear-to-ear grins and “have a nice day” salutations
are idiotic. She avoids toothy smiles and sticks to French.

The store clerk returns a two-note bonjour and begins, in French, to ask if there’s anything in particular Lena is looking
for, and since southern French is slower than Parisian, Lena captures a few words and offers a toothy smile anyway. In English,
this time, the woman asks again what Lena needs.

“Does Tina Turner ever come in this store?”

“
Mais, non
. How would I know, madame? Sometimes they say she walk around and—how you say? —uh, shops zuh windows?”

“Window-shops.” Lena gently corrects and returns the woman’s friendly smile.

The blocks are short. Lena does a little window-shopping of her own, asking the same question at four more trendy boutiques.

“Do you know where she lives?” she asks another clerk. “Is there a street number or special marking?”

The clerk shrugs and holds her palms up. No one knows—
on ne sait pas
—all the glitterati have villas here. Madame Turner comes to Villefranche-sur-Mer whenever she pleases, possibly she is here
now.

“Perhaps if you try the road that leads up the
colline
, zuh hill, you will find her. You have her address, no?” The woman explains that most of the villas and mansions are gated
and plain from the front. “Les Français,” she says proudly, “keep the beautiful inside for ourselves.”

f   f   f

The hotel’s reception area has three Louis XIV writing tables with marble tops angled in a way to greet its guests as soon
as they walk through the door. The concierge, Jeanne, has taught Lena one or two simple French phrases. Jeanne rushes up to
Lena and hands her an envelope. The triangular flap is embossed with the hotel’s crest; the paper is thick and heavy. Inside,
Bobbie’s name and cell phone number are carefully written in small block letters on a cream-colored card. 9:30 p.m. is written
below the phone number, and Lena is thankful that she doesn’t have to decipher military time. Nine thirty in Nice means early
afternoon in California. The call came in an hour ago.

Lena asks Jeanne to arrange for a cab to take her to the top of Vinaigrier mountain. Jeanne speaks in deliberate English.

“It is more of a big and steep hill than a mountain, madame.”

“Can you find a driver who knows the home of the American celebrity Tina Turner?”

“Of course, I will try to make the accommodations for you, madame.” The grimace on Jeanne’s face does not match her words.
“But, Madame Turner is not simply an American celebrity; she belongs to the world.”

Lena continues through the lobby to the elevator while Jeanne explains that she will try her best to find a knowledgeable
driver but that the French are very private people, and when the famous Madame Turner is in town, she is French, and therefore
her privacy is respected. Lena finds this amusing and completely contradictory to Hollywood, where tours of the homes of the
stars are profit makers, and the paparazzi couldn’t care less about celebrity seclusion unless it offers a financially worthy
photo opportunity.

“I’d like to start early in the morning. I’ll need the driver to be available for the whole day.” With any luck, she thinks.
“Oh, and I’ll be going to the concert at Cimiez the day after, so I might as well use the driver for that, too.”

From the elevator a phone chimes, and, as she nears her room, Lena realizes that it is her phone ringing two doors down the
hall. She runs to the door, unlocks it, and grins at how quickly Jeanne has responded to her request. “I love this place,”
she sings aloud.

“Lena, is that you?” Bobbie’s is the voice Lena hears when she picks up the phone.

“Who else would it be, Bobbie?” Lena’s gold earring taps against the phone in the way that Bobbie and Lulu usually make noise
on their end of a call.

“Lena, honey… Lulu… it’s Lulu…” Bobbie rushes through the facts: she left the house early to run errands and have brunch with
a few of her old friends. Lulu was supposed to go with Aunt Inez to a church barbecue. Aunt Inez rang the doorbell and pounded
on all the doors for twenty minutes. When Lulu didn’t answer, she called the police. By the time they found Bobbie’s number,
there was nothing they could do.

Lena slides to the floor in front of the bed, her head falls back against the hard mattress. Breathe. Breathe. The breaths
do not come; her chest caves inward like a hundred men are standing on it, the air leaks in small puffs from her lungs to
her throat and out her mouth. She tugs the sheet from under the top covering and blows her nose on its edge. “What happened?”

“They found her in bed. She looked like she was sleeping.” From six thousand miles away the magic of long distance does nothing
to muffle Bobbie’s sobs on the other end of the line. “I’m glad I came home. I remembered what you said about her being discombobulated.
I called a couple of times after you left and started paying attention. That’s why I came out here. When I went with her to
the doctor, he said her behavior indicated Alzheimer’s. Maybe a heart attack or a stroke? I don’t want an autopsy. The cause
isn’t important, is it?”

“Our mother is dead? I was going to call her today. I came back to the hotel to call her.” The phone slips from her neck and
tumbles to the floor, leaving the sound of Bobbie’s voice far away and tinny.

“Lena, Lena,” Bobbie shouts. “Are you okay?”

Images flicker in Lena’s head like the 8mm movies John Henry loved to take: mother kissing her dead husband’s cheek goodbye;
mother tying a Kotex on a sanitary belt at the sign of Lena’s first blood; mother laughing at Randall’s corny jokes, hugging
him as if he were her own; mother running fingers through Camille’s hair to twist and braid, and rocking bushy-headed baby
Kendrick, tickling his feet, cuddling him close; mother dead on her side of her double bed, alone and stiff.

When Lena picks up the phone, Bobbie talks as if Lena had never dropped it. “Lena, I want you to do something for me. For
Lulu.”

Lena nods yes as if she were standing in front of Bobbie, better yet hugging her.

“Stay in France. Go to the concert. Meet Tina, talk to her, tell her what she has meant to you for all of these months. Will
you do that?”

“I can’t. It’s selfish. Who will make all the arrangements?”

“Me! I’m not helpless. We’ll postpone the funeral. One or two days, a week, isn’t going to make a difference…”

“How can I have fun when my mother has just died? How can you—”

“Look. Lulu knew how important seeing Tina was to you. She and I had some good conversations over the last few days. I even
got her to drink a little of that scotch I brought them twenty years ago.”

Lena fingers the disposable camera. An inexpensive gift given with richness of heart that money cannot buy. It is full of
Nice and Paris. Lena intended to turn the photos into a scrapbook; Lulu’s eyes to the world. Wanted her to see what she had
never seen: the Mediterranean’s dappled surface, the Eiffel Tower, the boats on the Seine, Notre Dame, her daughter in Paris
doing fine. A sprig of lavender is tied around the camera so that Lulu could smell France, too.

“Don’t beat yourself up.” Bobbie sniffs. “You were a good daughter, a responsible daughter. Lulu was proud of you. Proud that
you could walk away from Randall’s money and try to make it on your own. She knew you were doing what you needed to do.”

Lena knows all of this. It is the sound of Lulu’s voice that she wants to hear saying it.

M
adame Harrison, I am so sorry that you must leave under such sad circumstances.” Jeanne escorts Lena to the awaiting car.
“Please accept my condolences on the death of your mother.”

“I appreciate your help, Jeanne.” Lena hands her an envelope. Inside are the tickets to Tina’s concert. “Enjoy.”

The driver moves the car in and out of traffic, the static of French over the two-way radio relays to the driver, Lena assumes,
instructions for his next pickup. He mumbles then slams the speaker into its cradle.

In the passenger window beside her a spider twirls and scurries from left to right, seeking connecting points on the glass
to weave its silken web.

“Oh my God, a spider!”

The cab driver frantically swerves through the traffic to get to the curb. “
Zut alors,
madame. Pardon. The last person in zuh cab carry a tree. Let me kill it for you.”

“No, merci.” Lena lowers the window. The spider scampers to the top of the glass and crawls over to the other side so that
its sticky underside is close to Lena’s face. She rolls up the window and lets the French Riviera whiz past: Hotel Negresco,
the red double-decker Nice tour bus, the sandy beach where she and Cheryl took their tops off to soak in the sun while Harmon
and Bruce tried to act like the French, not gawking Americans, countless white apartment buildings, cars, and more cars.

Harmon suggested she make her connection to San Francisco in Chicago when she called him. He would join her so that she would
not travel to her mother’s funeral alone, but she insisted his presence would complicate things. His love is on her mind.
Randall is on her mind as well; but, Tina stayed away from Ike. Sometimes the dream is better than the reality. He will be
at the funeral, but not beside her. Even in his sadness, she supposes, he will not comfort Lena in the way he might have if
they were together. She will watch him console Camille and Kendrick, and Lena is okay with that. Randall will be as upset
as she is. He loved Lulu, too.

She unfolds two sheets of Hotel de la Mer’s heavy stationery. The pages are full of her list of things to do. Lena and Bobbie
have spent hours on conference calls with the funeral home and their aunts making the arrangements. Their aunts have phoned
family friends; Lulu’s answering machine will fill quickly with sympathetic messages. If this were a cheerful moment, Lena
would call it Bobbie’s just deserts, since Lena made all of the arrangements for their father. Lena’s job is to compose the
eulogy on the plane ride home, to compress eighty-one years into a short speech.

Kendrick cried when she told him of his grandmother’s death. She waited fifteen minutes while they talked of his classes and
his readjustment to the regimen of school before she spoke the words, “Lulu is gone, Kendrick,” in order to soften the shock.
He called Camille so they could have a three-way conversation. Camille cried, too, at the loss of the only grandmother she’d
ever known. Both kids have called her twice in the day it has taken to change her travel arrangements. Funny, she thinks,
how kids can become so responsible in a crisis.

His dad, Kendrick said, will make sure their son has something decent to wear—no sagging pants. Lulu used to tease Kendrick
about his pants, threatened to pull them down if he didn’t pull them up. Camille chased him around her house because Lulu’s
old legs couldn’t move fast enough. Kendrick never pulled his pants up; his grandmother never pulled them down. Camille and
Kendrick will miss Lulu as much as Lena will; losing two people you love within a year and a half is hard. Three. Lena adds
Randall to her tally: Randall, Lulu, John Henry—losing three people is hard.

The driver parks the car at the curb in front of the airport’s glass exterior. Lena doesn’t bother to stop the daydreams as
she gathers euro coins to pay the driver—tipping him too much to avoid returning home with the heavy loose change—of what
it might be like if Randall were waiting when the plane lands in San Francisco. Perhaps he would take her hand, like a friend.
At the baggage carousel he would lift her heavy suitcase, carry it like he used to carry Kendrick first, Camille later, in
one hand to make their babies laugh, make Lena shake with fear that he would drop the infants, but still have pride that her
husband was so strong, her babies and her life so secure.

This would have been possible had she not moved on to her own fate. When she sees Randall at the funeral, when she cries at
her mother’s grave, he will think all her tears are for her mother, and she will let him; the tears will be for Lulu, but
also for her old life. For its death. For what no longer is and will never be again.

Goodbye to Randall. Goodbye to Harmon. Goodbye to the deep blue sea and the smell of baguettes baking in rough ovens. No regrets.
She has no regrets.

The airport is straightforward and uncomplicated. Lena wears the only pair of high heels she brought with her and the same
sexy dress from that first dinner with Harmon, draped with a pashmina stole in honor of Lulu. On the rare visit to the airport
when they were young, Lulu dressed her daughters in pinafores and patent leather mary janes. The sisters believed the airport
was a miraculous, mysterious place; its high-glossed floors filled with people coming and going to foreign places they longed
to know. The corridors of Nice’s airport are shiny and heavily waxed, too. She has never lost her awe for airports.

Passengers for the trans-Atlantic flight crowd in front of the airline counter; the lines are long but move swiftly. Behind
the soon-to-be-boarded travelers, a swarm of people rush frantically toward the exit door. In the midst of all the commotion,
Lena catches sight of a brown-skinned woman: hair controllably uncontrolled, red-lipped smile, high heels, great legs.

The woman walks at her own pace, accustomed to the attention, the adoration. The crowd grows thicker as everyone recognizes
her. She calls bonjour and hello in a raspy voice like music, like Lena anticipated it would be the first time she heard it
up close.

It is a short walk to the glass sliding doors and the curb where a black limousine waits. The crowd falls back and re-forms
a line. Several autograph-seeking stragglers remain.
I, Tina
is secure inside Lena’s suitcase. She fumbles for a minute to open her luggage. Lena looks up to see Tina Turner walking
through the glass door to the limo.