Searching for Tina Turner (15 page)

With one easy tug, Lena rips off the top of the TIDA envelope and yanks out the loose pages of typed correspondence. The cover
letter is typed on TIDA’s bold letterhead. Randall’s secretary’s initials are printed in a small font in the lower left-hand
corner. He dictates his letters, he doesn’t type, and Lena knows that he would not spend his precious time on a hunt-and-peck
search around a keyboard to type a letter to her. If she wasn’t a priority before, why would she be one now?

Ms. Lena Inez Harrison Spencer

3567 Rockhead Road

Oakland, CA 94602

Lena:

Enclosed are Dissolution of Marriage papers my attorney will file next week with the Alameda County Family Court. These documents
require your acknowledgment and immediate action. I am not interested in any more drama. You need a lawyer. Please direct
future communication on this matter to my attorney. His information is located on the petition.

The cost of divorce and attorney’s fees can be ridiculously high. Stay in the house, and I’ll find other lodging. Be prepared
to sell the house within the next 90 days, unless you want to cut a deal before the lawyers get involved. It would be to your
benefit to do this, since my expectation is that you start to provide for yourself immediately.

I propose that you keep the house and, with a few exceptions, its contents. The appreciation will offset my stock options,
annual bonuses, and a reasonable portion of our joint portfolio. In return, I would expect your written agreement to release
any other or future claims on my income, pensions, or IRA.

By waiting to file the dissolution paperwork, I have given you sufficient time to consider my proposal. This is a generous
offer. I suggest you take it.

Cordially,

K. Randall Spencer

Cordially?

“Damn you, K. Randall Spencer,” she yells, noting her husband of twenty-three years has signed the letter like he would any
other legal document written to a stranger.

“Mom?” Camille bumps into Lena as she rushes into the kitchen. The house had been so quiet, she forgot her youngest was home.
Camille’s question is urgent, the tone she would use in an emergency. “Is everything okay?”

“Don’t you have school?” Lena’s voice is harsher than she intends.

“Relax. Teachers’ meetings. No classes until after lunch.”

Lena turns away from Camille. The distinctive pleadings paperwork, its margins lined and the sentences numbered, is scattered
on the counter and the floor.

“What’s wrong?” Camille pushes aside the envelope and scans the divorce documents. “Are you crying?”

Lena snatches the papers from Camille’s hand. “This is not your business.”

“So this is it, huh? My parents are getting divorced. Shit.”

“Don’t curse.”

“Don’t do this to me.” Camille’s eyes tighten.

When Lena reaches out for Camille’s hands, her daughter steps away. “Know that this is not about you.”

“Well, Dad already warned me and Kendrick anyway.” Camille smacks her hands together.

Damn, Randall. Lena’s hands shake with the adrenaline rush. She snatches the TV remote, throws it on the floor, and jams it
with her foot into the counter’s wooden toe kick until it breaks apart.

“Mom! Stop!” Camille dashes to the opposite side of the kitchen, waits for her mother’s furor to pass, and covers her eyes
with her hands. “He says you gave him no choice. What’s up with that? Don’t you care about our family? Don’t you care about
me or Kendrick?” Her voice booms across the room.

Lena laughs. A crazy laugh, like the mad wife in
Jane Eyre
whose barmy laughter echoed through Rochester’s mansion. Her laughter is so loud, so hard, that fear widens Camille’s eyes
and nostrils. Lena prays that daughter understands what mother finds so hard to understand: Randall won’t talk to her, but
he has the nerve to tell his daughter and son, before he tells his wife, what will happen to her life. Lena steps close, and
Camille freezes when Lena embraces her. “I love you, Camille. Go to school. This is my fight, not yours.”

Without a hug, a wave, a “see ya later,” Camille slams the door. Lena hopes that one day Camille will understand how incapable
and powerless her mother is at this moment. How she wants to kick and scream and hold her daughter tight, protect her, and
show her how to be strong. When the time is right, when her head is right, Lena will sit Camille down and make sure she never
ends up this way. There isn’t one word she can think of that would have made these past ten minutes easier. Damn Randall for
putting that on Camille, for putting her in the middle, for putting her on his side.

As clear as the view through the windows of this metal- and granite-filled kitchen, she tries to see the lesson in divorce,
wants it to open out like the landscape before her: garden, trees, streets, sky, sun, clouds, stratosphere, heaven. Everything
happens for a reason. She knows what Randall doesn’t: she has to be free to fulfill her destiny. How could he explain that
to Camille?

f   f   f

Beyond the windows, the day is brilliant. It feels like black inside Lena’s head. Like midnight and death. Perhaps ninety
minutes focused on her body; a release of her mind to its inner energy is what she needs. Stretch, downward facing dog, sun
position, hands over heart, warrior pose; meditation for a restless mind that cannot stop. But the lethargy, the heavy weight
of gloom, sends her one sluggish step at a time up the stairs.

Randall offers no option. Randall is not the option. Every single part of her body feels dead: her head lolls, her shoulders
slump, her hands hang, her body sinks deeper into the bed until she feels that she is on the floor. Already, her body aches
for the old days, the joy, the joking, sitting together without the need for words, body heat, the pride in her family and
what she worked so hard to build: the promise of happily ever after.

She reaches for the telephone. It takes an eternity to lift it from nightstand to ear. She pushes eleven numbers. If she can
hold on through the sales staff, the canned music, the minutes until her call is transferred to Bobbie’s office, then she
can cry.

“What’s up?” The keys of Bobbie’s computer keyboard click in the background.

“I got divorce papers.” Lena explains Randall’s proposal. She knows she’s done the right thing. It is the anger at being spineless
that hurts the most; the realization that, having given her all to marriage and family, the person she loves more than herself
could let go as quickly as he did his ill-fated assistant. “Maybe I should call Randall—”

“Stop! Don’t let him bully you into something you haven’t thoroughly investigated. Run the numbers. Get a lawyer.”

“A woman. Black.”

“Divorce isn’t about gender, color, or emotion. It’s business.”

“A black woman might understand how another black woman feels.”

“Pain doesn’t know color. Divorce is no more difficult emotionally for a black woman than it is for a white one. The difference
is the shock on the lawyers’ faces when they’ve spoken to you on the phone and heard your very white-sounding voice and then
see what they didn’t expect walk through their door. When they see your black face drive up in your gaudy Mercedes-Benz; when
you list your assets—more than their own—and they want some explanation of why you’ve got it and they don’t.”

“So, how do I decide?”

“Pick the best, the sharpest. The most experienced lawyer will do what it takes to win.” Bobbie’s sigh is long. “There’s a
big difference between cynicism and racism. Understanding how much of either one you will take is how you decide who you’ll
work with and who you won’t.” The tap, tap of Bobbie’s pencil or fingernail against the phone makes Lena feel like a poor
student about to give a wrong answer to the teacher’s question.

“I failed.”

“You stood up for yourself. Did you think if you threw down the gauntlet Randall would sweep you off your feet, make passionate
love to you, and promise to value you for what you do for him and your family? Please.”

“This is the most thoughtless, thought-full decision I’ve ever made.” Lena pulls the covers over her head to shut out the
radiant sun and what was a wonderful view of the neighborhood trees and their speckled shadows, San Francisco, and two bridges
before she opened that envelope. “I should have spoken up sooner.”

“I can’t hear you. Where are you, Lena?”

“I’m in hell. At least he could have given
us
more thought—it’s only been six days. It’s like I’m no good… something that needs to be gotten rid of quickly. Like the garbage
or… a big black spider.”

“Can you finish what you started?”

“I can’t breathe.” Tina started over at forty-five. Now she has to start over, too. “What will I do? I feel like something
is stuck in my throat. I can’t breathe.” Under the weight of the covers Lena feels like a ten-year-old hiding from the bogeyman,
waiting for her big sister to rescue her with a flashlight.

“The choice has been made—move on, sister.”

f   f   f

In the bathroom, Lena stares at the cabinet shelves lined with amber vials of leftover prescriptions for the insomnia that
comes from menopause and the aches that come with aging. She snatches seven amber vials from the mirrored cabinet and folds
them carefully into the bottom of her pajama top. With her free hand, she rearranges what is left behind—aspirin, a box of
cotton swabs, alcohol, peroxide, dry-eye solution, tea tree oil, and a box of estrogen patches—around the shelves, then walks
back into the bedroom. What would Randall say if she did it? What would he do if she swallowed these pills? One by one, she
empties the vials onto the bedspread; pills tumble, bead-like, left and right into piles. They should have held on to simple
things, said I love you. Let’s try.

Her pajamas are wet, her pillow is soaked, her glass filled with Drambuie. She sips and holds the liquid in her mouth. Would
he be sorry that he didn’t try to understand how much she loves him, how much she needs to be herself? Does he understand
that she will never be able to get back what has been broken? She swallows hard and waits for the liquor to go down her throat
and dissolve in her stomach juices. Stupid Randall. Stupid Lena.

Lena rolls the caplets between her fingers, watches them crumble with the heat of her hand. She gulps more Drambuie, lets
it take its last slow ride down her throat. Sleep used to be sweet. If only she could sleep. Forever. If she had taped that
Tina Turner interview she would watch it now. Lena reaches for her book and settles for Tina’s image on the cover.

There is hope in Tina’s eyes and the knowledge that life goes on, and it is good. Tina looks into the camera, looks straight
into Lena’s soul. The book falls open, the words are underlined:
I knew that change had to come from the inside out—that I had to understand myself, and accept myself before anything else
could be accomplished.

Tina reinvented herself.

Tina survived.

L
ena swerves into the underground parking lot of the new apartment building on the western side of Lake Merritt. She has watched
its skeleton rise above the lake from the hill her house sits on and passed it more than once on her walks. Its multistory
reflection on the water makes the structure look taller and whiter than it is. Signs posted on the building’s windows boast
great views of San Francisco and the hills, a gym, a swimming pool, and enticing leases.

The marbled entryway is high-ceilinged and full of tall palm trees. The lobby resembles a five-star hotel—luxurious, comfortable,
and welcoming. The advantage, Lena thinks, as she strolls toward the reception desk, of being married for twenty-three years
is the knowledge the spouses have: they know one another. What Lena knows about Randall is this: whenever he cuts a deal he
makes sure he is on the winning end. Years of watching him barter with humble vendors, cut business deals over dinner, and
recap his victories have shown Lena what her soon to be ex-husband is capable of when he wants something. She assumes that
if Randall wants her to keep the house, he—no they—must be worth more than he has let on.

Today everything is different. She knows it is better to be less controlled by Randall, to be out of the place that no longer
feels like home. Even though, physically, Camille and Kendrick are around, the house has lost its soul.

“I’d like to see a three-bedroom apartment.” Lena stands before the guard at the desk, impressive in his black uniform, as
he dials the leasing office.

A gawky agent steps into the lobby from behind a door with a sign that reads: STAFF ONLY. The young man begins with a tour
of the lobby, the workout room, and a small library area for the use of all the tenants.

Lena waves off his canned spiel and presses her hand to his arm—the same calming gesture she would have made to Kendrick or
Camille. “All I want to see are the available units. I can’t take a sales pitch today. Sorry.”

They head for the two banks of elevators and tour several vacant units until she sees the apartment she wants: one with a
view of the lake and the hills so that she can see where she lived from where she will live.

The apartment will do fine for her and Camille, and hopefully Kendrick, until Lena decides on a permanent place to call home.
She will miss her house: scrub jays trilling at five in the morning, rock doves cooing, rain pelting against the tiled roof;
chirping crickets and dancing butterflies; the full moon through the bedroom window—luminous and mysterious; the crunch of
autumn leaves, winter wind singing through the trees; the secret compartment behind the fuse box where a four-year-old Kendrick
stored his rubber dinosaurs; a six-burner gas stove, blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings.

In this kitchen, three times smaller than the one she has now, she thinks of how she will manage Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas,
too, if she is lucky, and in a few weeks a cake for Camille’s graduation. Lena will do whatever she must to make Camille’s
celebration normal. Let Randall do it. There’s more to raising a child than signing checks. Let him hire a caterer, handle
the details of the graduation party. Ha! Let him make sure Camille roams among family and old friends, collects envelopes
of money and gift certificates, and pretends, if only for one day, that nothing in her life has changed. Let Lena be a guest
in what was her own home.