Searching for Tina Turner Read online

  Assorted pictures are jammed between the planner’s thin pages: Kendrick, at two, beaming in a Halloween costume; Camille, all of five, posed in a novice arabesque; a Jamaican vacation five years ago—she and Randall hand-in-hand in the midst of a dive off the cliff at Rick’s Negril Café. He’d held her hand all the way down and into the turquoise water. Her hand tingles now with the memory of the security, the assurance of Randall’s solid grip. There is also a withdrawal slip from their joint checking account, confirmation of enrollment for a Tuesday evening photography course that starts tomorrow night, and Kendrick’s most recent prescription.

  Outside the windows beyond her bed floodlights cast shadows on the house and the undersides of the trees and their leaves. Lena walks to the window and looks down on the magnolia tree spiking in anticipation of a mid-spring bloom. The tree sold Lena on the house when they first saw it from the real estate agent’s car nineteen years ago. It reminded her of Lulu’s recollections of stately southern homes that black folks could only walk by, not live in: huge white flowers that attracted more beetles than bees, the earthiness of the double-colored leaves, scent like strong citrus perfume.

  Her dreams blossom in this home framed with purple hydrangeas, leggy oleander and this magnolia tree. The memories flash in her mind: her children, now grown past the days of tumbling across the sprawling lawn, fearless and eager to show off; brilliant Fourth of July fireworks beyond the silhouette of downtown Oakland and San Francisco’s foggy skyline; the smell of cut grass on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

  She does not want to think about the orchids in her sunroom wilting from lack of water. Nor the jars of homemade apple chutney, bottles of olive oil, and tins of spices in the pantry that await her creative hand. Nor does she want to focus on the jade lion that guards the front door, the photography books stacked on the coffee table—Parks, Arbus, DeCarava, Weems—or the gold-flecked Venetian glass ball that all sit covered with the fine dust of disuse.

  Presence was the word the Italian-accented agent used when they first drove up the winding driveway. “This house fits you and Mr. Spencer well. You both have presence, too.”

  Randall may still have presence after all of these years, but what Lena feels right now is the complete opposite. Her ability to create the future diminishes each day: yesterday she could not raise her arms to shower or comb her hair, this morning she could not keep food in her stomach, minutes ago she could not explain to her husband what is in her heart without sounding whiny or spoiled, and now she can barely stand.

  In the scheme of things, twenty-seven days is not a long time. A flower can bud, bloom, and die in twenty-seven days. At this very minute, Lena is overwhelmed by indecisiveness, incapable of moving her fifty-four-year-old body. The odds of her leaving or staying are as unpredictable as that skittering spider’s path. Call it unhappiness, menopause, midlife crisis, lack of respect, fear of losing who she is, fear that she no longer fits in this dream. Whatever.

  Pick one.

  Chapter 2

  Lenaaaaaa Spencer!”

  Lena cringes at the scratchy, off-key intonation of the familiar voice and tiptoes around the lofty shelves toward the hand-painted FICTION/TRAVEL/PHOTOGRAPHY sign at the back of the store. Ducking in front of the K through P shelf, she closes her eyes and breathes in the dust and must of The Big Black Dog bookstore, her special place to spend time on an overcast day like this one. Candace asks questions—so many and so fast—that, in the past, it has been easy for Lena to be lulled by the woman’s insatiable thirst for scandal in the guise of concern. And she’ll be damned, Lena thinks, if she’ll let Candace spoil her afternoon.

  Lena scans the shelves. These days she feels like one of these used books: in good shape, full of excitement, yet no longer appreciated. Instead of a worn spine, the cover of a misplaced paperback, I, Tina, catches Lena’s eye. Tina Turner crouches, fish-netted legs tucked beneath her, hair as wild as it was in that Mad Max movie. Her smile implies a question: Where is your joy? Something audible clicks inside Lena’s chest like the tumblers of an opening lock.

  The kids’ first nanny asked the same question nearly every day that Lena drove from the bus stop and up the steep, winding hill that Letty was too overweight to walk. “Where’s your joy today, Miz Spencer? Mine is right here.” Letty held her Bible upright in her lap and let it fall open with the car’s swerving motion. Then she would drop her forefinger onto a random passage and softly thank Jesus for his inspiration.

  Lena lets the paperback fall open and points to a paragraph. “People look at me now,” Tina writes, “and think what a hot life I must’ve lived—ha!” Right on.

  “There you are!” The voice breaks the bookstore’s silence once more at the same time that a heavily jeweled hand grabs Lena’s shoulder. “What in hell are you doing on the floor? Didn’t you hear me calling you?” Candace’s gold bangles jingle when she leans toward Lena. “I haven’t seen you since that handsome husband of yours went out of town. When is that luscious man coming home anyway, and why haven’t I seen you at any Circle Club meetings?” Her clothes are coordinated: slim, tight pants under a yellow, belted slicker, ankle-high rain boots match the slicker’s herringbone lining intentionally exposed on turned-back cuffs. “And since when do you wear Kendrick’s clothes?” She pinches Lena’s sweatshirt between two fingers as if she is touching something nasty or unclean.

  Lena scolds herself for defying the rules: her mother’s “Pay attention to what you wear when you leave the house; you never know who you’ll run into.” Even Randall’s: “Put gas in the car when it registers low so you won’t get stuck in the middle of nowhere on an empty tank.” Sometimes things just happen: the car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere, or somebody like Candace shows up.

  Lena stands and speaks her lie without hesitation. “I’m in the middle of a project.” For the last month she has left her trademark starched white shirts, skinny-legged jeans, and high heels in her closet and exchanged them for clothes she should have taken to the homeless shelter. She brushes lint from her pants, circles behind Candace, promises to call soon. Blah blah blah.

  “A project in a bookstore?” Candace grasps Lena’s arm, looks from Lena to the books and back to Lena. “Give me a break.” The petite woman follows her down the aisle to the old-fashioned cash register.

  Sam Black and his big black dog sit side by side behind a massive antique English wooden table. The skinny owner and muscular dog wear the same woolly look on their faces. Each time Lena visits the store she asks Sam who is in charge—owner or pet. Today he responds with the same answer, “Depends on the day,” while he labors with a calligraphy quill over a receipt for Lena’s seventy-five-cent book.

  “Girl, get the DVD,” Candace says, thumping the paperback. She squeaks an off-key line from “What’s Love Got to Do with It” and snaps her fingers. “I’ll tell you what: love doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything. Have you heard about poor Dana?” Candace pauses in anticipation of Lena’s reaction.

  Sam raises his head. His brows protrude above his wire-rim glasses. Candace’s leer warns him to mind his own business. Lena tosses a dollar bill on Sam’s desk and stuffs the receipt into her purse.

  “Dana and Carl are getting divorced.” Candace scrunches her cheeks and eyes with the expression of someone who is about to speak of doom. Lena shakes her head no, and Candace does the same for a long minute, reminding Lena of how her grandmother shook her head and grumbled “unh, unh, unh” at sad news. “They say she’s had too much of her husband—he’s such a tease. There was no way you could tell anything was wrong. I mean, a few months ago, they were flirting and smooching like lovers. Such a pity.”

  Lena remembers that extravagant holiday party: the dolefulness in Randall’s eyes that the loud celebration had precluded them from pursuing, that left as swiftly as it had come. “Here’s hoping for a better year,” he had said, holding her as they glided across the dance floor, and Lena, knowing even then her downward tilt, had hoped
for the same.

  “Nothing is predictable anymore.” Lena lowers her eyes; afraid to let on that this sad reflection is as well suited to herself as it is to Dana.

  “Oh, bullshit. Predictable or not, I’ve been married to Byron Stokes for thirty years, and I’m not about to put myself in Dana’s position. Doesn’t matter what her husband did or didn’t do.” Candace points to her sparkling diamond tennis bracelet and fingers the five-carat wedding ring Randall gave Lena for their twentieth anniversary. “I’m not giving any of this up, sweetie. At our age, it’s hard for a sister to find a man with the same abilities.”

  “It’s got to be about more than… ‘abilities.’ Whatever happened to trying to work things out? What about love?”

  “You heard me: what’s love got to do with anything?” Candace conveys Dana’s story with a half-pity, half-tattletale smile: early last year, Dana told her husband that she would leave him after their twins graduated from high school, unless he changed. “From what I hear, he told her she had nowhere to go without him and his connections. Translation: money. Well, the twins graduated early, and she’s living with her mother. She has to get a job, make new friends, and find a new man.”

  As if, Lena supposes, those simple things are the solution to a woman’s problems.

  “And she’s almost sixty.” Candace tightens her long ponytail, her sign that she denies her almost sixty years. Lena knows that underneath the slicker, Candace’s body is tight, thanks to her trainer. Her makeup is perfect, her skin flawless thanks to modern chemistry and a good esthetician.

  “Should we call her and take her out to lunch, try to cheer her up?” Lena asks.

  “You can if you want to. Sometimes divorced women are double trouble. Some husbands don’t want their wives to see how women can improve after divorce—and unless you’re Ivana Trump, with a big settlement, that doesn’t always happen. Let’s face it, some wives don’t trust their men around them. Happens all the time.”

  “You mean you won’t have anything to do with her just because she’s divorced?” Lena gawks at Candace. For eleven years they have lunched, visited, bestowed gifts, and socialized. She knows Candace is notorious for cutting off women who don’t give her the attention she loves, but not because of divorce. “You’re still friends with Gail Coleman, and isn’t Ada Munson divorced?”

  “People grow apart. We don’t do the same things.” Candace dismisses Lena with a wave of her hand. “I’ll catch up with Dana, of course. I love her to death. But Byron and Carl are friends; more than friends, actually. They’ve helped each other’s careers—you know what I mean—the networking our men do. Byron wouldn’t want me to jeopardize that. Besides, she’s competition now, honey.”

  “Why do you think she would compete for your husband?” Lena presumes that Candace is the only one who wants her portly, beady-eyed husband, money or no money.

  “I don’t need any single women around Byron. His eyes wander enough, and he’s always talking about Dana: how nice she is, how she takes such good care of herself, how her husband is a fool for dogging her. A lot of married men believe divorcées are lonely and horny, and they try to do something about it. I wouldn’t want a woman like Dana around my man.”

  Lena makes her way to the pharmacy as she has done all these months without Randall’s reminder. As if, in his absence, she could forget her responsibilities; as if in twenty-three years she hasn’t been mother and father, doctor and nurse, teacher and tutor every time he goes away.

  Without prompt or invitation, Candace follows. At the counter, she stops alongside Lena and squints at the prescription in her hand. “For Kendrick? Is everything okay? Did he decide to go back to Chicago or transfer to a school out here?”

  “Kendrick is fine. If you’d wear your glasses, Candace, you’d see that’s my name on the prescription.” Lena turns away from Candace’s line of vision and shoves the paper into the clerk’s hand. “You’re being pretty hard on Dana. What if I got divorced?” Lena coughs in hopes that sound will throw Candace off track.

  “Ha! You and Randall are perfect: the black Barbie and Ken. Big everything: house, cars. And trinkets.” Candace flicks Lena’s heavy gold watch. Randall, Lena recalls, likes Candace because she is never embarrassed by what she has or what she does.

  Six months ago, Lena might have considered those words a compliment. This isn’t the first time someone has labeled them perfect: the symmetry of their physicality—she tall, he taller; complementary brown skin tones—neither fair nor dark; stylish, hip clothes from New York and San Francisco designer boutiques— coordinated, but not; their speech proper and grammatically correct—hints of slang at the right time and in the right company.

  “I’ve known Dana for as long as I’ve known you.” If only Candace would stop her blabber and look beyond her frown, Lena thinks, she would understand. The glint in Candace’s eye says she doesn’t see anything but Lena’s clothes and the questionable prescription as fodder for more gossip. “I wouldn’t chuck her friendship just because she’s made a decision to save herself.”

  “Dana was naïve. She should have planned better—if she’d done that she wouldn’t be at her mother’s.” Candace looks Lena up and down and follows her out the front door. “You’re no fool. And if you’re thinking that way, or something close to it, take my advice: don’t. Be happy.”

  If she were the kind of woman who got into physical fights, Lena might find this the perfect time to smack Candace for her ability to think about plans and consequences. She chuckles at the thought of the petite woman falling, more worried about her hair and her jewelry spiraling across the dirty linoleum floor than the fact that she had been assaulted. Then again, perhaps Candace would lie on the floor, the way Lena lies in her bed unable to figure out how to tell her husband that honoring herself does not mean dishonoring him. Once on the floor, she knows, Candace would take action: yell for help with her wretched, squeaky voice, or devise a case to sue, courtesy of pictures taken with her rhinestone-encrusted cell phone.

  “Stop frowning. You take everything too seriously. We all have our bad days.” Candace harrumphs in a way that means she’s never had a day as bad as the one Lena seems to be having and shoves a business card into Lena’s purse. “My personal shopper.”

  f f f

  Outside the pharmacy, a sullen-faced woman steps back from the sidewalk and stares like she would at an escaping shoplifter as Lena rushes to her car. In Montverde—a hillside shopping district that is called by a different name to distinguish it from the flatlands of Oakland but is still Oakland—white people act like they are not used to seeing black people in fancy cars. As she steps into the car, Lena assumes that the contrast between what she is wearing and what she is driving is so great that it raises the question: does the car belong to her?

  “Come on now, I don’t look that bad.” Lena waves to the woman. “Can’t a black woman have an expensive car and a bad hair day, too?”

  Lena negotiates her sleek car between the broken lines on the freeway’s asphalt and ponders Candace’s focus on possessions. In that way, Candace is like Randall. And, she supposes, how she used to be. How many times can she tell Randall?

  Last November, Randall asked Lena what she wanted for her birthday. “A weekend,” she’d said without missing a beat. A weekend together—just the two of them—no laptop, no BlackBerry, like they used to. A simple celebration. A shared, uninterrupted soak in the tub. Maybe in Sonoma or Napa—taste new wines, ride bikes, take pictures, laze in the sun.

  She should have suspected something when Kendrick stayed home longer than usual after Thanksgiving. The evening of her birthday, Randall slipped off his silk tie, blindfolded her with it, and escorted her to the back door. Camille and Kendrick, obviously in on whatever surprise Randall had in store, giggled as the three of them led her out of the house to the driveway. Lena giggled, too, stepping carefully into the brisk twilight.

  When Randall loosened the tie, Lena screamed at the top of her lungs. T
here, in the driveway, sat a low, red Mercedes SL convertible with shiny alloy wheels, buttery leather seats, and keys dangling from a red ribbon tied around the rearview mirror.

  Lena eased behind the steering wheel, while Randall, Kendrick, and Camille faked a silly squabble over who would be the first to ride with her in the two-seater. Randall claimed his right, having paid for the car, Kendrick claimed his as first-born, and Camille claimed hers as the only daughter. In the end, a giggling Lena made them pick a number between one and ten and drove down the driveway with the same enthusiasm and high speed each time one of them buckled themselves into the passenger seat.

  Two days later she thanked Randall again for his extravagance and explained that she loved the car, but she really wanted more of him, not material things, while his voice rose louder and louder. “Just keep the damn thing.” Lena knew he didn’t understand, knows he doesn’t understand.

  Speed is the excitement in her ordinary errands. Zip. Grocery store—milk, juice, bread, peanut butter. Zip. Hardware store—light bulbs, batteries, that thingamabob for the stereo that Randall drew a picture of before he left.

  The radio is off. After Candace’s frenetic proclamation, all Lena wants is the hum of the engine, the alternate whine—like ascendant chords—of the gears, the constant attention required to handle the car. She avoids pillows of exhaust; manipulates, teases, plays in and out of the gaps in the afternoon traffic. Her foot presses down on the accelerator: 300+ horsepower. Her biceps tighten with the thrill of the push past fear and carbon fumes. Gravity takes over with the increased speed; it forces her back into the cushy seat, pumps adrenaline through her body, moistens her palms. A little more, a little more. She moves from the fast to the slow lane, eases up on the accelerator, and exits the freeway.