Searching for Tina Turner (19 page)

Lena listens closely to Mr. Meyers, rests her hands in her lap, and wipes them on her dress. She steadies her eyes on the
evenness of the gold bands on the ochre law books behind him so that her gaze doesn’t move to Randall’s. She doesn’t want
to look at him, doesn’t want to acknowledge the anger she sees in the small jerky motions of his right hand.

“You’ve chosen mediation, I assume, because it avoids the costliness of a court case. In mediation, both parties will come
to a mutually acceptable resolution. Neither party may end up with all that he or she has requested. In this room, compromise
is the operative word. Typically, the process takes five to six sessions.” Mr. Meyers reads from a document atop the pile,
in a clear and practiced manner, what they will accomplish in the sessions. He explains the rules and tells them their lawyers
may be present but can only advise, not advocate for them.

“In this case, because the wife is not currently employed, temporary spousal support must be set. That is what we will determine
today. How much the supporting spouse—in this case you, Mr. Spencer—pays the non-working spouse on a monthly basis is defined
by California Family Code and a computer formula. And, by each party’s income and expense declaration supplied by both of
you prior to today.”

Mr. Meyers turns to his laptop and types. He tabulates numbers on an old-fashioned calculator with one hand. The calculator
shakes like a miniature locomotive; paper billows from the top like steam. When he is done, the mediator writes a five-figure
number on two separate yellow pads and passes them to Lena and Randall at the same time.

Just as Lena has a new mantra, so, she thinks, does Randall.

“Shit,” he whispers under his breath.

Lena hears him loud and clear. He snatches a red pen from the mediator’s pile and strikes a bold line through the figure that
will be the above-the-line, tax-deductible amount of spousal support the state of California requires he pay.

“This is a non-negotiable number,” Mr. Meyers insists.

“I see no reason why I have to pay for her apartment. I told her to stay in the house. This was her choice.”

“By law, Mr. Spencer, regardless of where Mrs. Spencer has chosen to live, this,” the mediator says, rewriting the number
on Randall’s pad, “is what you’re required to pay until you and Mrs. Spencer reach your final agreement.”

“Then we better get done quickly, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for her life of leisure.”

f   f   f

For the rest of dinner the night those years ago that Randall gave her the diamond, Lena was in a fog. Between the wine, the
food, and his surprise, he’d caught her off guard. At home, in bed, she climbed on top of him, a bottle of almond oil in her
hand.

“I’ll do everything I can to support you. I believe in your dream.”

“It’s not just
my
dream.” Randall sucked in a deep breath and tried to hold on to his train of thought while Lena’s fingers massaged his legs
and thighs. “It’s
our
future.”

She rubbed him, stroked him, tasted him until he moaned. “But,” she said, letting her hair drop over her face and onto his
shoulders, “I don’t want to lose
my
dream.” Before he lost his concentration, she quieted and let him release, let the feel of him run from her thighs to her
breasts, let it sing in her head.

Afterward, she cuddled into him. “I don’t want to be a stereotype. The man makes the money, while the little woman takes care
of the house and the kids.” They had had this discussion before: black people changing stereotypes, breaking the barriers,
creating a new norm. “So, I’ll accept the diamond;
if
you agree that I’ll get back to my plan after one year.”

He admitted with all of the changes he wanted to implement at TIDA, it would take at least eighteen months to two years to
gain full acceptance. “Two. For me.”

Lena thought of partnership and sacrifice, the two words John Henry had stressed before he walked her down the aisle. The
biggest question in her mind as Randall ran his fingers over her body, the diamond above her breasts, was what would stop
Randall, once the two years were over, from another promotion, another big deal, another giant career step to becoming the
black king of the world. What would his sacrifice be in this partnership? She pressed two fingers to his mouth.

“Deal.”

His smile was easy to hear in the dark. He took her fingers into his mouth and sucked. Lena pointed to her diamond with her
free hand. “Then, we’ll renegotiate.”

The allure of Randall’s promise was seductive. Lena substituted being the successful woman for being the supportive woman
behind the successful man. By the end of Randall’s second year at TIDA he’d been given more responsibility, and she slipped
deeper into her cashmere cocoon.

f   f   f

Randall whips out his PDA and punches the screen with the metal stylus. “Let’s schedule all of the sessions now.” Every one
will be the same: a single step forward, two or three back.

“You are not in charge here.” Lena snaps. “And don’t use that tone with me.” In this instant, she leers at Randall and assumes
his expression mirrors hers. They are, after all, an old married couple. No stranger, not even Mr. Meyers, knowing full well
their circumstances, would ever have guessed these two people had once been giddy lovers or shared a bed or parented two children
or lived together for twenty-three years.

“Mr. and Mrs. Spencer! Please leave the hostility outside.” In every meeting from this first one to their ninth, Lena and
Randall will pout and argue unconcerned about the mediator’s cautions and his piling, un-piling and re-piling of the items
around him, until their lawyers attend the sessions and assist in settling who gets what and the amount of permanent spousal
support that Randall will pay Lena until she remarries, cohabitates, or dies.

Mr. Meyers presses a finger to a lone droplet on his left temple. He glances at his watch and suggests they stop here. Lena
sympathizes with the man; her own armpits are damp. She stares at Randall and wonders if, underneath what looks like a cool,
poker face, he is straining to hold back his own sweat. She wonders if he has another compartment, called cool, that helps
him maintain this demeanor. Probably. Someday, if they can ever sit together calmly again, she will ask him about that ability
and perhaps he will teach her how to do the same.

“We will begin the division of assets in our next session,” the mediator says.

There is a clue, Lena thinks, an intimation in his tone that suggests that Mr. Meyers is no more looking forward to it than
she is.

f   f   f

Angela Bassett spins and lip-synchs on TV. Pink Slippers is right: the violence is hard to take. Lena concentrates on Angela
Bassett’s biceps, her forceful performance—her angst, the slow trust in self, a Buddhist chant:
nam myo ho renge kyo.
Bottom line, the movie is depressing. Every time Larry Fishburne fake-pops Angela, Lena cringes. But thankfully, with one
click of the remote she can skip those scenes and focus on the message, not the violence.

Tina’s message is about getting away. Anywhere. Far. Fast.

Lena picks up the autobiography, leaves where it opens to fate:…
that trip changed my whole life. I felt like I had come home—like I had never known my real home… I loved France—loved the
ambience of it… on that first trip to France, that’s when I began to feel, deep down inside, that maybe I was French, too.

France!

Lena skips to the computer. Connects to the official Tina Turner website. Tina lives in the south of France. It was one of
those places that Randall and Lena planned to visit when they talked about the world and seeing as much of it as they could.
They promised to lie nude on the beach, to learn French, to extend their trip westward and sip Bordeaux in Bordeaux.

A performance schedule for this year and the next is imposed over pictures of Tina and international celebrities. Lena selects
“concerts” from the top left margin. One, two, three clicks. Lena scrolls through dates and places and stops on the final
entry: October 8th. Nice, France.

Moving to the computer once again, she selects a travel website and dials Bobbie.

“I have to meet Tina!” Lena shouts, happy that her sister can pick up a conversation in the middle of her slumber. One day
she will thank Bobbie with more than words for talking to her, listening to her any time of the day or night.

“Go for it.”

“Tina loves France. She lives in the south of France. We…” Lena swallows hard. “I mean
I
always wanted to go to the south of France.”

“As long as you’re going for the right reasons. Seeking, not running away.”

“I want to meet Tina. I want her to sign my book.” Yes, that’s what she wants. She thumbs the pages of Tina’s story like a
deck of cards. “And I’m going to take pictures, hundreds of pictures.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“Randall demanded, and the mediator acceded, that I find work. Which I’ll do, with Cheryl’s help. But, he has approval over
any large expenditures I make until the final division of property.” Lena accepted the condition with an exception to the
furniture she needs for her apartment. “… And what about Lulu?”

“Why does he get to call the shots?”

Lesson number four: let Randall
think
he has the upper hand.

Bobbie puffs on her cigarette. “As for Lulu…”

Lena holds her breath and waits for Bobbie to say she’ll take care of Lulu, to say she’ll come home and change light bulbs,
lift the heavy packages from Lulu’s car to the house, balance her checkbook, drag the trash to the curb, say she’ll listen
to Lulu’s endless parables.

“You’ve got to live your life… that’s what I’m doing. Lulu and I are fine on the phone,” Bobbie says. “In person, that’s a
different story. She can’t cope with my life… and I’m not going to keep trying to explain it away. Anyway this is about you,
not Lulu.”

Lena gets out of the bed and heads for the window. An airplane, well on its route to a faraway destination, blinks the only
illumination in the dark sky. She presses her ear to the glass, straining to hear the engine’s distant rumble. “I listened
to Tina all evening long. I forgot how much I used to like her.”

“It’s like you’re obsessed with an assignment: write an essay on why you like Tina Turner,” Bobbie says.

“We have intersecting emotional points. Her birthday is November twenty-sixth, too.”

“Is this why you woke me up?”

Lena knows that it doesn’t matter what time it is or what day, her sister will always stop, listen, and love.

“When you were eleven you thought you had something in common with aliens. You spent hours at the library researching life
on Venus.” Bobbie chuckles.

“This is not the same. She got past her fear, and this is what I know: there’s a little Tina Turner in all of us. Call it
pep, audacity, or a look that camouflages the pain. We do what we have to do—be on stage or be who everyone else wants us
to be—and finally come to the conclusion that nothing will work, unless we’re true to self.” Lena stops, breathes in and out
slowly. “I’m just searching for the Tina in me.”

“Well, don’t wear your hair like Tina’s.” Bobbie’s wit is sharp even at this hour. “I don’t think blond is your color.”

T
he months since Lena walked out of that corporate apartment, the door refusing to close behind her, have flown much like summer
does for a school-bound youngster—with speed and the inability to distinguish one day from the next. Mediation sessions. Body-numbing
depression. Drizzling spring rain. Camille’s graduation celebration; Lena entering through the front door feeling like a stranger
in the house she made a home; mother and children like strangers until she gathered them both in her arms. Juicy peaches have
given way to bushels of tart green apples at the farmers’ market, where now she looks, but doesn’t buy. Foggy mornings, the
threat of drought. September breezes blow warm across Oakland and the Bay Area even as New England leaves redden and the Midwest
prepares for winter’s blanket of snow. Awake at six, Lena sports a light jacket this cool morning ready, like everyone else
in the Bay Area, for Indian summer—another round of flip-flops, shorts, and weekends of sunshine.

This morning’s exercise around the 3.5-mile perimeter of Lake Merritt is her march of tears: because Kendrick is back in Chicago
and rarely responds to her emails or phone calls, because Camille lives with Randall and chooses to have him drop her off
at Columbia—a decision made a day after her eighteenth birthday one month ago. When Camille visited two days after graduation—and
what turned out to be a civil and joyous celebration—she slumped onto the couch and absentmindedly jangled the extra set of
keys Lena gave her. “All my stuff is at home.”

Lena sat, holding herself, and her tongue, in hopes that Camille would recognize her disappointment by her body language.
Then Camille came up with what Lena supposed was a peace offering.

“Come to New York for Thanksgiving.”

“Well, Camille,” Lena said, not bothering to argue with her daughter’s decision or fight back the tears at her offhanded dismissal.
“That’s not quite the holiday I envisioned, but Bobbie will be excited, and maybe I can get Lulu to come, too.” Only four
at the dinner table for Thanksgiving, not the twenty or so—cousins, Lulu, Randall’s father, friends without local family—she
always included. No days and days of planning, shopping, cooking. No thrill of turning disconnected items into mouthwatering
dishes everyone stuffs themselves with. That thought hurt then. It hurts now past her heart, and if asked her, she could not
describe the pain.

After today she will no longer cry.

f   f   f

Mr. Meyers prefaced each of their sessions with a rolling summary: credit card debt divided 70 percent him, 30 percent her;
equal division of savings and stocks; Randall kept his beloved Raiders sky box; Lena the Berkeley Repertory Theater seats;
fifty-fifty split of the SF Jazz season tickets.