Searching for Tina Turner (12 page)

With one swift turn, Kendrick and Camille connect palms with a loud high five and slap a second one with Lena. “What’s that
corny old-school saying? Something about a man’s heart?” he asks. Lena offers a thumbs-up to her son’s obvious hint, knowing
that if the timing were different—or more full of the happiness of the old days—that would have been her only intention.

f   f   f

Lena places small, square white bowls filled with curried carrots topped with fresh basil—for color and contrast—and strips
of sautéed chicken fillets on the kitchen table. Mixed green salad and jasmine rice balance the Thai food; the proper mix
of carbs, protein, and veggies. She stirs passion and love into the tangy coconut soup in the hope that Randall will taste
those emotions and daydreams of contentment while the lemongrass stems soak in cool water.

The first time Lena cooked for Randall, it was a disaster. She called the New Orleans hole in the wall they had visited and
begged the cook for his shrimp Creole recipe, then labored hours more than she should have, given how simple the recipe read.
Once they sat down to eat, the shrimp were tough, the sauce salty, and the rice mushy. After two mouthfuls, Randall told Lena
to get her coat. “I’m not the kind of man who’ll suffer through his woman’s bad cooking.” He chuckled when she playfully twisted
his arm. “You just remember those words when
you
cook for me.” She wanted to tell him that her feelings were hurt, that if the tables were turned she would have eaten his
salty food. That was the first time she held her tongue with Randall. In that moment she learned his intolerance for error,
and it bothered her, but not enough to stop seeing him. That was the first and only time he left her food on the table. In
the end, her cooking snared him.

Surely, she thinks, it will help her keep him.

At five minutes after eight Randall opens the kitchen door, his tie loosened from his collar. His lips are tight; his moves
calculated like a boxer considering which corner is neutral territory.

“Truce.” Lena helps Randall slip out of his jacket and leans close.

This night her neck and the dip between her breasts, behind her ears and knees are covered with jasmine. Jasmine is the scent
that mixes best with Lena’s own. Randall gifts her with bottles, bars, and creams of the lavish fragrance every other Valentine’s
Day, though Lena cannot remember the last time she wore the perfume. Perhaps when malaise overtook her long before Randall’s
nearly month-long departure? Or after the Christmas holiday party and the argument, in front of Candace and Byron, over the
best route to take home? Or last summer when she asked him not to take her car to the horrid, lecherous man at the flatlands
automated carwash and he did anyway? Randall sniffs. The jasmine will do its work; help them to recall that first year of
marriage, that first serious argument, and making up.

“Truce.” He gave her a bottle of jasmine oil, and later, massaged it all over her. All those years, it stood for apology,
if needed—his or hers—for romance and good loving. Now, a hint of prim satisfaction stretches across Randall’s face, and Lena
wonders if he remembers that first time she wore the perfume, much less expensive then, the scent still the same. Randall
looks from the food to Lena and slides onto the upholstered bench. He sniffs. At the food. “Smells good.” At Lena. “You, too.”

Lena scoops a healthy portion of the made-from-scratch green curry sauce over his rice. This food comes close to what she
thinks he experienced in Bali: spicy, thick, and rich. Once she settles in beside him, she takes his left hand in her right.
They sit that way for a time that she does not count, the smell of her jasmine mixing with the curry, until he reaches for
the remote control on the bench. When she grabs it first, he tickles her arm until the remote falls loose so that his fingers
can now dance on its pad. The TV screen explodes like lightning in the darkened room. Even as she scrutinizes him, his eyes
puffy from concentration and the long day, Lena knows he seeks solace in the inanity of TV.

“I’d like to talk about the party and about us. We need to clear the air and make a fresh start, and we can’t talk if the
TV’s on.” Lena catches herself and the sigh about to escape her lips. One. Two. Three. It took all day to concoct this exotic
meal, to gather the ingredients, to select the right tiny red chilies to heat up their food and their marriage. “I worked
hard today to make this evening… special.”

“And I worked hard today so you can make fancy food. Are you ready to apologize?”

“I think we need to apologize to one another.” Lena uncovers the tureen and hastily ladles chunky soup into Randall’s empty
bowl.

“I don’t see it that way.”

With exacting synchronicity, Lena’s jaw twitches at each abrupt change of channel—the staccato of newscasters, commercials,
random dialogue—and his casual acceptance, his expectation that all of his meals will be this grand, this tasty.

“Let’s make a deal. A little food. We’ll talk.” Lena presses her hand to the back of his neck, and the spot at the base of
his ear that usually makes him melt. “Then we’ll watch the last quarter. Upstairs. In bed. That is, if you feel up to it.”
For Lena and Randall, makeup sex has always been their best.

“But the Warriors play the Lakers tonight.” Randall grins like a mischievous boy. “Last game before the playoffs.”

Lena pushes thumb against the Y, Vernon’s Y for change, on her palm while the basketball players on TV run up and down the
court. Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man. The urge to scrape scrape scrape the
fragrant food down the garbage disposal, to flip the on/off switch again and again until the whirring is smooth and food,
ground to pulp, washes down the drain, is strong. As are Kendrick’s last words. She yanks away the remote from Randall’s hand
and turns the TV off. Wineglass in hand, Lena pushes away from the table and goes to the sink full of the pots and pans and
skillets she used to prepare the special dishes.

“You’re acting like a spoiled brat.” Randall clicks the TV on again.

“I’m sorry.” Anxiety rushes to Lena’s tongue, mixes with her spit, and swims over her taste buds. Maybe I am, she wants to
shout, a spoiled, frustrated midlife woman unable to get her husband to accept her apology, her food, her sweet jasmine perfume,
to understand she seeks change for the benefit of the both of them. In the instant she hurls her glass across the floor, Lena
both intends and regrets the action. The glass shatters, scattering wet shards from the sink where Lena stands all the way
to the table at the opposite end. Only the stem remains intact. The odor of wine mingles with the basil and curry, and the
kitchen smells more like a cheap bar than home.

“Look, Lena. I don’t know what more you want.” Randall stands, a man on the verge of action, looking from Lena to the shattered
glass to the louvered door that separates the kitchen from the hallway. The long, low sigh he releases is like, Lena supposes,
the tears she fights with a barrage of rapid blinks. “I’m tired. And you’re obviously irrational.”

“Don’t leave, Randall, we’ve got to do this sooner or later.”

“I’ve done all I’m going to do tonight, Lena.” The door swings hard and wide as he passes through it.

If she were taller and huskier, if she were a man, Lena knows she would punch Randall, punch him hard until he fell, until
he understood. She tiptoes around the pieces of glass and through the swinging door. Keeping a healthy distance between his
body and hers, she points a trembling finger in his face. Randall backs away, hands clenched at his sides. He watches her
hands, keeps his distance.

“I don’t have time for tantrums. You’re only pissed because you think I’m having an affair with Sharon. Charles told me what
you said.”

“I don’t doubt it, but this is about more than who you’re fucking. This is about our life.”

“I don’t need drama at work
and
at home.”

“No, you’re the drama king, lover man. Like that little trick you did with your tongue the night you came home?”

Randall’s face is motionless except for his pulsing, left eyebrow. “Stop.” He grabs Lena’s wrists. She yanks them away with
a force that startles them both. The TV blares with the announcer’s scream and the crowd’s roar. He walks past the photos
that mark their years together: wedding day, chubby Camille at six, Kendrick’s senior prom, their first time in Paris. The
frames rattle with the weight of his footsteps. Lena steps to the opposite side of the hallway. Is this how it begins?

“Is that why you’re offering me ultimatums, Randall? Answer me!”

“What do you want me to say?” He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. Once at the stairs, he takes them two at a
time.

“Is this one of those decisions, like the lemon tree or what restaurant we’ll eat in, what movie we’ll see, that don’t mean
anything to you so it’s left to me?” She wonders why what she thinks is not what she says. Power is powerful.

“I’m a businessman, Lena. I have to consider the pros and cons.” Randall shrugs.

Footsteps clamber outside. Randall and Lena used to confine their occasional fights to their bedroom, used to close their
door and muffle their words, used to make up and apologize ignoring who may have been right or wrong. They stand stock-still
while Lena searches for the right words, the most expedient way to say what’s on her mind in the seconds before Kendrick and
Camille come in and shatter this moment as cleanly as the wineglass strewn across the floor. Lena loves her kids; lately,
though, they appear at the most inconvenient times. It didn’t matter when they were toddlers and they walked in on her naked
or on the toilet. Now, she wishes fifty dollars bought more time.

“I won’t go on like this. I have to consider my pros and cons, too.”

“Don’t threaten me, Lena.” Randall heads for their bedroom and reappears within minutes, overnight bag in hand. “I was thinking
about doing this anyway. I need a head start on tomorrow’s work, and you need time to cool off. I’m going to the corporate
apartment.”

This is not the Randall she knows. Not the man who talks loyalty. She wasn’t his first girlfriend, or his first wife, but
he said she would be his last, that he would be faithful, take care of her, the opposite of what his old man had done with
his mother.

Now, Randall’s eyebrows are lumpy with frustration; Lena’s emulate his—proof that married couples look and act alike after
so many years together. In better times, if they were to see themselves in one of the many gilt mirrors Lena has placed around
the house, they would tease one another over who was the original and who the copy.

“Hey, parents,” Camille calls out. “What’s up with the glass all over the floor?”

Camille and Kendrick suck in air at the same time as if they can breathe the tension they have encountered. Kendrick stoops
to pick up the largest pieces and signals Camille to wait. Camille bolts straight into the front entryway, where their father
stands near the top and their mother stands in the middle of the stairs. When Kendrick joins them, daughter and son rib their
father about his very real need for a haircut. Randall breaks into a smile, leaving Lena flattened against the wall, shocked
at his swift transition.

“Where are you off to, Dad?” Camille asks.

“Please give us a few minutes,” Lena prays that Camille and Kendrick are smart enough to recognize her request is really a
plea.

“We’re done.” Randall tousles Kendrick’s woolly head when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. “If you think I need a haircut,
man, you should check out your wild ’fro.” Father, son, and daughter’s laughter reverberates throughout the house. “I’ve got
to be in the Novato office before dawn tomorrow morning. I’m going to stay at the corporate apartment.”

From the living room window, Lena watches Randall’s long car pull out of the garage. Twenty-five years ago, Lena discovered
that Randall had returned from the East Coast the summer day she drove down Highway 580. From a distance, she watched a man
trying to talk a highway patrolman out of a ticket. His distinct hand movements tipped her off: Randall.

Lena sped across two lanes and parked her sports car on the embankment. When the CHP drove off, she jumped out of her car
and waited for Randall to look her way; a different version of their first meeting. They hugged for five minutes while cars
honked their appreciation for such a public display of affection.

Now, anger fuels Randall’s swift descent down the driveway, morphs his taillights from red dots to snaking stream. His car
disappears down the hill and around the corner. Lena loved the way she felt that day long ago: protective and powerful. Powerful
enough to slow traffic, to keep Randall from speeding away, to control her destiny. For all of the years she has loved him
and more, she has cared for him, worried about him, prayed for his safety. In this instant, she doesn’t care what he does,
how fast he drives, or where he goes. But never, never in a million years, did she ever think she would wish he would go to
hell.

T
hree days.

The first day, Lena retreats to her bed, a bottle of water under the sheets, the bottle of Drambuie on her nightstand. Calls
ring through to the answering machine. She listens while Lulu asks, “Why haven’t you come over?” The light bulb in the bathroom,
she insists, needs to be changed right away because the new energy-efficient bulbs make her look old and green. She listens
when Bobbie insists, “Pick up and tell me what’s going on, Lena-Bena.” She listens to Candace: “I hope you gave Randall a
piece of your mind. Let me know if you want to talk.”

The second day Randall calls late in the afternoon, Lena answers when his number flashes on the caller ID screen. She lays
the phone on his pillow instead of using her hands and listens to Randall ask about Camille and Kendrick and what bills have
come in the mail.

This third day falls into night, and feathered, dark clouds gather in the sky with the threat of rain. She cannot move in
her bed, cannot talk to her children, cannot stop thinking of the vials of pills in the medicine cabinet. The lyrics Lena
printed out, what seems like years instead of three weeks ago, are piled on the bed. Of all of Tina’s songs, “On Silent Wings”—the
words more than the melancholy music—brings tears. She does not have the mental ability this night to understand if it is
good or bad to be so average, to live life, or lose love in such an ordinary way that it can be generalized in lyrics that
could, and probably do, apply to many. But the songwriter has captured what she believed: the willingness to share a life,
the strength of a love that held when times were tough. Someone to hold on to. Randall. They read like her story: