Searching for Tina Turner (9 page)

“Bottom line, the next couple of years are key. I know we can make this work.” He knelt in front of her, his eyes willing
her to agree. “C’mon, Lena, it hasn’t been that bad, has it? You help me, and I’ll help you. I’m not breaking my promise,
just asking for an extension.”

Hadn’t she known it would come to this moment all along? Lena swore she could handle all of that, take a few classes, develop
a signature style, and check out galleries. How many extensions would it take to get to her dream? She reminded Randall that
she had multitasked her way through kids and work and entertaining and managing the household for years. It would work, she
reasoned, until she heard him say his goal was to be CEO. The sensation, like vertigo, went from head past stomach to knees
easier than she thought it would. Like falling into a cushy ball of fluff. Surrender. Without fight, without words, just the
certainty that the loyalty Randall valued would cost her her soul.

“Okay! I get it. There’s a delivery truck in my driveway. I won’t
wait
for him.” The gloved driver jumps out of the van, opens its double doors, and shoves three boxes onto a handcart. Lena points
to the front porch and a white envelope taped to the wrought iron railing. The driver tips his baseball cap and heads in that
direction.

“See? The universe has just sent you a message. Make things happen. And why don’t you call Cheryl. Your old buddy always could
knock sense into you.”

“I haven’t talked to Cheryl since Daddy’s funeral. Too much time has passed to cry on her shoulder. Especially about Randall.”

“Promise me you’ll call her. If you don’t, I will.”

f   f   f

“Where do you think you’re off to?” Lena opens the trunk and sets the grocery bags on the ground.

“I’m late for Dr. Miller,” Kendrick says. Teenage girls suck their teeth, boys newly out of their teens, or at least this
one, Lena thinks, smirk. Is this what I’ve taught you? she wants to ask. Is this the way you’ll look at your girlfriend, your
wife, when things get tough? She walks to his car and lifts her hand to rub his cheek like she did when he was three, and
they were full and round, but Kendrick bobs out of her reach.

“It’s only two thirty. Your appointment isn’t for an hour and a half.” It takes no more than a glance for Lena to double-check
her calculations on the dashboard clock. “I’ll take you.”

“I can drive myself.” Kendrick throws up his hands, looking, Lena thinks, just like Randall. “I’m almost twenty-one, I don’t
need my mother to drive me around like I’m a kid in grammar school. Anyway, Dad says it’s okay.”

Six months ago, Kendrick’s phone calls and emails became sporadic, unlike his first year at Northwestern, when he called with
weekly updates. Lena and Randall assumed that the demands of his second year and his academic scholarship kept him busy. He
was sulky and distant and had been that way at Thanksgiving. They blamed his moodiness on fatigue. A phone call from his roommate,
upset with Kendrick’s erratic behavior, set Lena in motion. Kendrick confessed that he dabbled, he called it, with uppers,
downers, and sometimes cocaine to help with a bad case of the blues and the pressure of everybody’s expectations. Randall
gave him no options: no more money and treatment—at home or in a rehab center—within seventy-two hours.

The day Kendrick came home, Lena, Randall, and Camille unanimously decided to surprise him at the luggage rounder instead
of circling the airport until he showed up at the Arrivals exit doors. When he appeared at the foot of the escalator, Randall
flinched as if someone had delivered a one-two punch to his head. The couple next to them stared, not with a stranger’s usual
admiration of Kendrick’s confidence, but repelled by his appearance. Nothing about Kendrick was the same. His pants sagged
lower than usual, more from weight loss than trend, a dingy T-shirt hung from his almost skeletal shoulders, his matted hair
was on the verge of accidental dreadlocks. The crinkle in the corners of his eyes that always made Lena think he was up to
devilment, even when he wasn’t, was gone.

At home, Randall set rules for Kendrick and left them for Lena to enforce. He cut Kendrick’s driving privileges and imposed
a ten o’clock curfew and mandatory visits to a therapist.

Arms crossed against his chest, Kendrick frowns as if Lena is wrong. Lena wonders how much Kendrick values her right now.

“I love you, son, and I know these restrictions are tough, but you knew the rules when you opted for home treatment. Only
a few weeks to go.”

“Why are you being such a—” Kendrick catches himself and rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what to tell you except, Dad says it’s
okay.”

“Your father said nothing to me, and you’re not driving anywhere until he does.” Lena takes two bags full of groceries into
her arms. “Come help me.”

“It’s been four months.” Kendrick guns his engine. “I’m ready to go back to school and no curfew. I miss my friends. I want
my privacy back. Dad said it, and I’m outta here.”

“I can’t apologize for something I haven’t done, Kendrick. There’s a reason why you abused drugs. I want to make sure that
you take your time and get all the help you need so that it never happens again.”

“Jesus Christ!” His words snap from his lips. “Are you ever going to forget, or do I have to spend the rest of my life making
up for it? I’m not an addict, Mom. I just made a mistake.”

“Yes, you did, Kendrick.” Lena’s words sail into the air as Kendrick puts the car in reverse and races down the driveway.
“But you don’t have to take it out on me.”

Lena tosses her car keys and oversized handbag onto the kitchen counter and trips, not for the first time, over Kendrick’s
size 12 Nikes. If it’s true that feet never stop growing, Lena thinks, her son’s shoes will be two sizes bigger in no time.
Adrenaline helps her to unload the rest of the groceries, to shove butter, vegetables, and the fifteen-pound roast into the
refrigerator and hurry to the front door. It helps her lift the boxes, one by one, into the living room as carefully as if
they are full of Steuben crystal and to strip away the clear tape of each box in one long piece.

She checks the invoice against the thirty-eight CDs and resists the urge to run to the computer, type each song into a spreadsheet,
and alphabetize them. Instead, CD in hand, she scours the front of the complex stereo system for the simplest buttons: power,
load, play. Randall has, they have, the best, most convoluted music equipment his money can buy. He once told Lena that even
if they couldn’t afford the amplifiers, concert-quality sound of the six-foot speakers with super-sensitive tweeters, woofers,
and other components she doesn’t understand, that he would have bought them anyway. After their children, music is their strongest
common denominator.

The volume knob is obvious, and one exaggerated twist fills the room with music. Tina’s voice bellows from the speakers, and
the infectious melody cloaks Lena. For now, it is the beat she needs—steady, strong, funky. So, Kendrick can drive; can do
whatever he wants without the need of his mother’s consent. He values his father. His father values him. Who values her?

Tina knows it, sings it, summarizes it as clearly as the pain, the ache that works its way to Lena’s heart:
And I don’t understand what’s your plan that you can’t be good to me
.

Tina’s question is Lena’s: “Who will be good to me?” Her question is for Randall, for Camille, for Kendrick.

Through the living room, the hallway, up the stairs and down again. Head and hips shake to the beat. The handmade sofas, the
wall-sized art, the spindly Venetian vases—they say Randall has been good to her. Fingers snap and feet dance. Let the tears
stream.

The day after Randall gave her the yellow diamond, Lena put her camera into the armoire; a memento of who she was and her
value. She stops in front of a black-and-white picture taken with her 35mm the year before she married: Lulu and John Henry
on their thirty-sixth anniversary. The award-winning photo was published by the
Oakland Tribune
for all her world to see. Years later, it was supposed to be submitted along with her business plan. The contrast is high
and sharp; the focus on their eyes. They look straight into the camera, and the lens captures their love for each other and
the photographer.

R
andall flips through the rows of CDs hidden behind the doors of a built-in cabinet that also houses the stereo. He once told
Lena that he wanted to own all of the most important jazz albums of the twentieth century. The first time he mentioned his
goal, he and Lena had been sharing their stories. Like Lena wanted to study photography, Randall wanted to major in music
even though he played no instrument. He chose to major in business—his father didn’t care, Randall said—so that, unlike his
father, his future family would be well cared for. Between the faux-painted cabinet, the shelves of his study, and his vinyl
collection carefully stored in the temperature-controlled crawlspace under the house, he has, like every other part of his
life, overachieved this goal. He loads six CDs into the player and waits for the first track to start. His head jerks with
each click of the volume dial, like a bird attentive to its young; his hands adjust for the perfect balance of bass and treble.

On the opposite end of the rectangular living room, Lena drags her forefinger across the mantel and moves last year’s family
portrait one inch to the left. Randall passes two oversized chairs and the fireplace on his way to Lena’s side of the room.
Tonight, Lena feels like a trophy wife on display in the burnt yellow pants and top Randall insisted she put on. She wears
it to please him; it is not her style. He fiddles with the sabuk around her waist—a cummerbund he calls it—and rubs his thumbs
on the small of her back in a circular motion. She relaxes into Randall’s mini-massage, her head falling against his chest,
and wills him to recall his promise to make one more counseling session.

Three and a half days, the numbers going up instead of down, mark the time Randall has been home, and they have not spoken
of serious matters. Lena wishes this respite signified the desire to move on. No spontaneous touches, no suggestive double-talk,
no teasing as foreplay to time alone. Randall has occupied himself less with thinking or work and more with sweating: hours
of racquetball, hoops with Kendrick beating him only once out of the five times they played, hiking the hills around their
home with and without Camille, jumping rope, and shadowboxing. He has spent quiet time in the living room listening to music
and sorting through his CDs. The coffee table becomes the focus of her attention: a dead leaf pinched from the bouquet of
peonies, hydrangeas, and, her favorite, rubrum lilies; books poked into a perfect pile.

“Are you happy?” Lena asked Randall if he was happy before their first counseling session ended. His deep breathing had more
than physical purpose: thought gathering, a careful delivery of words. Different from the breaths taken the first time he’d
said “I love you.” During the session, his finger thumped against the wing chair’s arm and he said that she should be “fucking
ecstatic, judging by what you have and the life you live.”

“Every day at TIDA, the white boys measure my words and my work for potential mistakes. Work is not about happy. Work is about
beating the odds and kicking ass.” He closes his eyes like she’s seen him do a thousand times—a trick learned in a year’s
worth of biofeedback sessions. “I’d be happy if we could table this.”

“Not work. Like Tina says—whether times are happy or sad.”

“That was Al Green. Tina Turner was singing, Lena, not espousing a philosophy.” Randall’s heavy voice is sarcastically chipper.
“With the money Tina Turner makes, she’s found happiness, trust me.”

The singsong doorbell chimes, and Lena rushes to the dining room for one last survey of the table. She swaps two place cards,
corrects the alignment of a spoon and fork to exactly two inches from the table’s edge, and motions to the housekeeper in
the kitchen to turn the oven off.

Randall steps into the entryway and spins on the doorbell’s last note—his silk shirt flutters from his broad shoulders to
its loose hem. He raises his thumbs: all systems go. “Look around, Lena. What do you have to be sad about?”

f   f   f

From her end of the table, Lena feels like a minor character in her hundredth performance of play: a vital prop, without dialogue
and unnoticed. She is unable to figure out if she has grown away from her friends or too much into herself.

Lynne, who worries more about pedigree than personality, blathers on about a couple she recently met: the husband’s father
was the first black appellate court judge in his state and the wife is a third generation AKA. Charles’s fear of Bali street
food. Candace prattles on about her children: X is getting a PhD, Y is pregnant by her doctor husband again, Z is up for partner
at his law firm.

Lena takes in the room—gilded mirror over the buffet, the crystal chandelier, the curved arches cut into the Oriental rug’s
thick wool pile. What does she have to be sad about?

“How’s your dinner, Charles?” Lena asks Randall’s best friend.

“Perfect, as usual,” Charles volunteers through a mouthful of roast and reaches for another slice.

“And these cut veggies… what are they?” Charles’s bimbette girlfriend asks Randall. As if he knows, Lena thinks. Randall makes
suggestions, like executive overviews, and leaves the details to his wife. The young woman, sultry and innocent at the same
time, refocuses her attention on Randall before Lena finishes her description of the sharp mandoline and its precision cuts
of yellow and red beets, jicama, and carrot tied with softened strands of chive. The bimbette sits on Randall’s left, Charles
on his right. Randall chitchats with the two of them and flashes his even-toothed smile. Watching the three of them, Lena
wonders if Charles brings these air-headed, busty women to their home more for Randall’s entertainment than his own.