Searching for Tina Turner (22 page)

“She didn’t run out and get a man—she got her life and career together.” Lena pauses to see if Cheryl’s face shows more than
a momentary interest in Tina Turner.

A tall, lean man steps up to the table. Cheryl beams and points to the shrimp. She puckers and tells him to watch his lips
because the curry is spicy. When his wife, sister, or girlfriend steps beside him, Cheryl turns back to Lena. “Well, Tina
has both now.”

Lena tugs Cheryl past the couple and tells her in one long breath how Tina has inspired her. How she makes sure that each
purse she carries, like the one hanging from her shoulder now, is wide and deep enough to hold her wallet, cosmetic bag, keys,
and Tina’s autobiography.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I love Tina Turner!”

“Her last concert of the year is next month in Nice.” Lena tells Cheryl about Tina’s villa in the hillside city next to Nice.
“Bobbie sent me a first-class ticket.” Her voice is so low that Cheryl asks her to repeat what she said. Lena does and adds,
“But I haven’t finalized anything,” understanding that the concept of postponement is completely foreign to Cheryl.

“Lena, Lena, Lena.” Cheryl slaps Lena on the back so hard that she jumps. Neither one of them is fragile, but Cheryl is obviously
the stronger of the two. “Don’t tell me you’ve reverted to your timid thirty-year-old persona, have you?”

“I’m not used to taking trips alone. And, anyway”—Lena downs the rest of her third glass of champagne—“my contract with the
museum won’t let me.”

“Remember? It’s
who
you know that gets you what you want.” Cheryl winks in that way that means an idea is brewing behind her long eyelashes and
clinks her glass against Lena’s. Her face brightens as her lips form four words that lift a weight from Lena’s shoulders.
“Let’s go to France!”

O
leander—laurier-rose, the French call it—is a slender-leafed, bushy plant that bears cherry red or white flowers. In Northern
California the deceptively beautiful plant lines freeway meridians and roadside pit stops from Oakland to Sacramento. In the
south of France it is everywhere: near the beach, on the streets, in the park in the middle of Nice’s downtown. The leaf of
the oleander is poisonous and as dangerous as it is beautiful, and Lena wonders if this plant is another omen reminding her
to be careful, to look closer before she judges.

The differences between Nice and Oakland, perhaps California, are mostly visual: Nice is old, centuries old. Nice is crammed
with tourists. Signs and flags, all geared for tourist eyes, proclaim it as the fifth largest city in France. Nice is a winding
city, flat and hilly; more complicated than it first appears. The cities smell the same: the air from the bay, the dampness,
the hint of eucalyptus. The light is the same vague and wistful indescribable color that gives the skin a healthy glow and
signals the beginning of the end of the day. Nice is red-tile roofs atop aged stucco buildings, small boutiques crammed one
after another after another into ancient stone buildings, the singsong tones of a bundle of languages. “Bonjour,” a florist
calls out. “Bonjour.” Lena mimics his greeting and stops at his window to marvel at the beauty and art of the floral arrangements,
the rose petals intentionally scattered on the floor to please the eye and the nose. What is different is the absence of the
familiar diversity of yellow, black, white, and brown faces; Lena hears it in language—French, Italian, Spanish, German.

Nothing is familiar. Not the yeasty smell of baking bread, nor the rapid movement of the small, two-door vehicles that resemble
bug-eyed insects more than cars and scoot along the promenade, nor the endless stream of evening strollers, nor their full
and throaty
R
’s. Lena allows this European reality to seep in and merges with the evening crowd. The guidebooks say that the French love
the evenings as much as they do the days. Couples hold hands, toddlers waddle between their parents, teenagers roughhouse
and tease. After two blocks she stops before an ancient portal, Latin words carved above its arch.
V
’s replace the letter
U
, making the words even more impossible to decipher. By the looks of the nineteenth-century dates, the arch has a history
all its own. Like Lena.

Once through the portal, Lena stands before the back entrances of restaurants in a blind alley filled with trucks and garbage
cans that could place her anywhere in the world: the scent of discarded vegetables, overripe fruit, bones, and uncooked meat;
trucks grind leftovers to unrecognizable garbage; men in white smocks and dirt-smeared aprons yell to one another as they
pile the wiggling carcasses of the morning’s catch onto loading docks.

This alley reminds Lena of Randall’s habit of taking her, wherever they traveled, through back streets to smell the real city.
He would stop and talk to dockworkers and busboys, using his hands and face more than any foreign words he knew. “This is
how you find out where the real people eat.” She almost turns to look for Randall, to ask him to sit with her over a glass
of wine. A glass of Beaujolais? She brushed wine on her lips the day he proposed. He said she tasted like violets and berries.

The alley leads to the corner and the wide Cours Saleya. Time to walk where Tina might walk, to smell what Tina might smell.
Even though Nice is one city over from Villefranche, it is sophisticated and charming and, Lena speculates, a city that Tina
might occasionally visit. The promenade of the famous Vieux Carré is crowded. Slender young men and women hand out sample
menus to lure hungry tourists into overpriced and nondescript restaurants; people stroll everywhere—arm in arm, in tight packs,
comfortable with brushing elbows. She inhales—there is a hint of mildew in the air—and sticks out her tongue to taste what
she smells around her: salt, basil, garlic, lavender, and wine. She will come to know that Nice smells different each hour
of the day and night.

A handsome maitre d’ smiles. His badge is printed with his name, Pascal, and the words Bienvenue. Benvenido. Willkommen. Welcome.
“Bonjour, Madame,” he says, waving Lena into his dimly lit restaurant. She accepts his kind gesture. Pascal points to a front
table so that the ever-present blues of the sky, the crackled faces of the ancient stone buildings, the vendors’ striped tents
and handmade crafts, the music, and the passing crowds are set like a stage play in front of her. The streets are covered
with cobblestones. Restaurants’ tables line both sides of the Cours for as far as she can see. Cigarette smoke, fidgeting
kids, quarreling lovers. Cups clinking against thick porcelain saucers. A roving band strums guitars in unison; a troubadour
misquotes the lyrics to “American Pie.”

“You are perhaps waiting for a friend, Madame?” The young man’s accent is melodic. His question is not offensive. He hands
Lena an oversized menu written in French and British English, the prices in euros and pounds. “Nope, not waiting for anyone.”

Cheryl and Lena, once inside their hotel room, had reverse reactions to the layovers and the twelve-hour flight. Cheryl was
enervated. With barely a comment about the room’s Provençal décor—the bedspreads’ tiny cornflower blue and sunshine yellow
flowers, the brass handheld shower head, or the wedge of the Mediterranean visible in a stretch over the ornate balcony rail—Cheryl
snatched a black gel mask from her carry-on, put it on top of her eyes, and crawled under the covers without unpacking her
suitcase, without taking off her clothes.

“A glass of Beaujolais.” Lena is energized. After months of sleeping to forget, she is eager to remember what life has to
offer. She shuffles her feet in a careful, congratulatory dance under the table and points to the wine selection. When Pascal
sets her glass in front of her, she raises it in a mock toast to him, to the crowd, to the sky and blinks back gathering tears.
Last time. Last time. This is the last time she can feel sad in this wonderful place. She downs the entire glass of wine;
unable to drink alone, she leaves six euros on the table and rushes back to the hotel.

f   f   f

“You promised you weren’t gonna do that.” Cheryl stops in the middle of the street and crosses her arms. “I know you’re thinking
about Randall. I can see it in your face.”

Lena scratches her nose and sniffs in that way she’s begun to do when she can’t think of anything to say. The word
anomalous
pops into her mind. Another Auntie Big Talker word; she’d used it last week when she called to wish Lena well on her trip.
While Lena prides herself on her vocabulary skills, she is not sure if what she is feeling is anomalous or just plain normal.
The south of France is beautiful, but traveling with anyone other than Randall is something she has never done.

Lena sniffs again. This trip is all about opening up, like a short story she once read where the main character avoided her
unhappy present by imagining herself drinking coffee elsewhere. When the character finds a friend, she has a hard time opening
up and doesn’t realize until the end that in fact she wants to do just that. Lena wishes to be drinking coffee elsewhere.
Open up and let me in; not by the hair of my chinny, chin chin.

f   f   f

Adults, teenagers, and even a couple of preteens shout into cell phones. Lena checks her purse to make sure she has remembered
to bring her own just as it rings. “Camille?”

“Hey, Mom. Just calling to wish you a good trip. You flying over New York?”

“I’m in Nice.” A mass forms quickly in her throat, and Lena speaks slowly to keep her emotions in check. “How’s the move going?”

“Dad’s pacing outside my door, and Auntie stopped by. She dropped off the stuff you sent… you knew just what I needed…”

In the months after graduation, Lena repeatedly explained how much she wanted to help Camille move into the dorm. It was a
mother’s right to usher her child into a new life, just as she had ushered her into life at birth. Their discussions always
ended the same way: both of them yelling—the anger of the pending divorce wearing thin on their nerves—leaving nothing resolved.

“Dad is a bit out of it, Mom. He’s not doing as well as you are. I don’t suppose you want to talk to him, do you?” Camille
pauses, and Lena wonders what her daughter wants her to say, wonders if Camille needs to be reminded that her father is no
longer her mother’s responsibility. “He doesn’t know all the little things to get. He even said that the move would be more…
organized, if you… The bedspread you sent was cool… and the cookies were good. I… I… wish you were here. I’m sorry.”

“You and your dad will be fine. I love you, baby girl.” Because of their problems and Lena’s desire to forget, she deliberately
chose the day Camille was to move into the dorm as the day of her departure. In the letter sent along with the down comforter,
sachets for her drawers, razors, boxes of tampons, earplugs, flashlight, boxes of tissue, paper towels, homemade chocolate
chip cookies, and a bone-china dipping pot, Lena wrote that she looked forward to the day they could talk freely again, when
they could get past the anger that gnawed at both of them and let their openness lead to a new and better relationship. She
wrote that as Camille and her father searched the aisles of the local bedding store, while they lugged and unloaded her belongings
into the dorm room, she would be flying over New York, looking through the clouds for the rounded dome and tight square rectangles
of Columbia’s campus.

Camille and Randall worked slower than she thought. “I’m with you, baby.” Lena mutes her sniffs with a tissue so that Camille
cannot hear while she tells Lena about her dorm, her roommate, and her class schedule.

“You’ll come at Thanksgiving?”

She nods as though Camille can see her confirmation through the phone. “I might even let Bobbie cook.”

“Spare us,” Camille jokes. “Auntie is better at
selling
cookbooks than she is cooking. Have a safe trip, and bring me back something really French. I love you, Mommy.”

f   f   f

“See? Everything’s going to be okay.” Cheryl hands Lena another tissue while the man next to them pretends not to notice.
“Be happy… we’re in France!”

The knot in Lena’s stomach loosens. Truthfully, Lena admits to herself, it unwinds a lot. “Now, if only I could get you to
stop thinking about that damn almost was-band of yours.” Cheryl’s made-up word rhymes with
husband
.

Like Tina, Lena must learn not to dwell in the past.

The bay is lit by thousands of glimmering lights. There is movement everywhere. The ebb and flow of the Mediterranean slaps
noisily against the gravelly shore. Nice thrives at night. Tourists meander through the high-end shopping district, restaurants
are filled inside and out, and late-evening diners sip dark coffee from small cups, red wine from oversized glasses, and chatter
at each other. Filmy smoke drifts everywhere; every man and woman seems to hold a cigarette in his or her hand, elbows on
tables, the white stick poised inches from their lips while they appear to ponder the next drag.

“For the life of me I can’t understand why everyone smokes,” Lena says. “I suppose that’s who they are, the French. I mean,
look at these women.” Lena sweeps her hands in front of her. They are surrounded by tables full of women with hair turned
up into flips or smoothed into pageboys, scarves tied carefully around their shoulders, expensive leather handbags, pedicured
toes, flat hips and stomachs under skintight dresses, high heels when the rough edges of the cobblestone streets demand something
more practical. “French women pay so much attention to everything else. Strange they don’t care about their health.”

“They’re having fun. We’re having fun. No preaching, no judging, just fun. Especially seeing as you fit right in.” Cheryl
cackles.

“Touché!” Lena beams, glad that she sports her not quite so high heels, which make her feel, more than her skin color, that
she fits in. She perks her head at the soft background music. Tina sings “What’s Love Got to Do with It” on the overhead speakers.