Searching for Tina Turner (8 page)

“What can I help you with today? I won’t be able to stay as long as usual, I’ve got to get ready for Saturday. Randall wants
friends over for dinner.”

“That’s nice, baby girl. That should make Randall happy.” Holding her right elbow with her left hand, Lulu opens then shuts
the sliding glass door to the sparsely furnished family room behind them. After John Henry dropped dead of a heart attack
on the eve of their fifty-ninth wedding anniversary, Lulu went into a frenzy. She threw away John Henry’s yellowed, fake-leather
recliner, years of past issues of
Life
and
National Geographic,
unopened liquor bottles, except for the now forty-year-old bottle of twenty-year-old blended scotch whiskey Bobbie gave them
years ago as an anniversary present, the old TV, the broken hi-fi and the treadmill John Henry used every other day until
it broke.

After Lulu forces the metal latches—top, bottom, and two above the handle—closed to the accompaniment of small grunts, Lena
heads for John Henry’s tool room, the one room Lulu left untouched, and grabs a can of WD-40. At the sliding door, she sprays
each of the four latches and the metal runner tracks. She works the latches and the door back and forth until they roll without
effort.

Lulu pushes at Lena’s arm. “You get on home. Get ready for your party. Fix yourself up. You have a good life, Lena—I know
I’m repeating, but it’s the truth.”

“What if that isn’t enough?”

“Then
make
it enough. Make it enough to last until death do you part. I hope you’re not thinking about doing something foolish. There’s
no way you could live like you do without Randall.”

“You… you sound like a page from a black-mama manual: if you got a man, then you got to be happy.” Mother and daughter stand
opposite one another, two sets of hands perched on their own hips just like they did when Lena was a teenager, eager to get
from under her mother’s old-timey ways.

The locks glide open when Lulu opens the glass door, and Lena knows she is being ordered to leave, as Lulu’s superstitions
demand, the same way she came in.

“I’ll get somebody—at least to cut the lawn and trim the roses, there are so many.” Lulu sighs with resignation, as if this
decision is her punishment for growing old without a man, and heads toward a full white rose bush. She nips three blossoms
with her shears. “This is an Austin tea rose. Your father gave it to me for our fortieth anniversary. It stands for happy
love.” She dribbles water from the hose onto a paper towel then wraps it around the thorny stems and hands the bouquet to
Lena. When Lulu starts to water the lawn again, it occurs to Lena that Lulu has been watering the same spot since she arrived.
She is either methodical or more forgetful than Lena cares to ponder.

“How are you feeling, Lulu?”

“Don’t worry about me; I’m fine. Your father would take care of the yard, if he were here. Your father was the man.” Her words
are practiced like the rosary she recites every Friday morning. “Your Uncle Joe was busy all of the time. He was a big shot,
like Randall. Worked day and night on his real estate business so his family could have a big house—not as big as yours—and
a new Cadillac every year. Inez liked to decorate, but she had to ask your uncle for the money.” Lulu’s face is serious, her
eyelids close.

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Well, when Inez wanted new wallpaper in her bathroom, she peeled pieces from around the bathtub, the sink, places she knew
Joe would notice, and she flushed them, and a few women’s items, down the toilet. When the toilet backed up, Joe told Inez
to call the plumber and while she was at it, she might as well get somebody to replace the wallpaper as well.” The wind sprays
dirt onto Lulu’s face. She wipes her eyes with a lacy handkerchief peeking from her pant pocket and aims the water at the
wilted juniper bushes beyond.

“I can’t believe Uncle Joe was that stupid.”

Lulu ignores the metered patter of Lena’s foot intended to get Lulu to make her point. She pauses, her smile the best indication
of how much she is enjoying her story and her daughter’s undivided attention.

“Men need to
see
things to understand them. They don’t like to
hear
about women’s problems. If a woman understands the man, the man will understand the woman.”

“I think you’re never on my side.”

“I know you don’t like what I’m saying, Lena. You probably think it’s old-fashioned, but that little piece of advice kept
my man by my side for one day short of fifty-nine years. Figure out how to handle your husband while you
think
on that.”

S
hoppers stare at Lena’s tear-smudged eyes; a toddler points a chubby finger; his mother shushes and whisks the child away.

“Why did you talk to Lulu about you and Randall?” Bobbie asks. The sister Tina loved, Lena recalls, was not around when life
turned bad. Growing up, Lena went to Bobbie when she wanted to know about life, bribing her first with hot cocoa and extra
marshmallows before Bobbie would talk to her little sister. Lulu’s advice was most thorough when it came to etiquette and
politics. She told her daughters how to vote (Democrat) and why (hundreds of Negroes beaten with hoses, arrested, suffered,
some killed so that every Negro in America could), but not how to handle a man; just that they needed one. Lena knows that
Bobbie, miles away in New York, is more than willing to tell her what to do.

The courtesy clerk crams the last grocery bag into the trunk. Lena tips him five dollars and paces, phone crunched between
shoulder and ear in the same way Lulu held hers. The converted warehouse in front of the parking lot is shaped more like an
apartment building than a grocery store.

“At least I include her in what’s going on in my life.” And you never do, Lena wants to say, but then Bobbie would hang up
like she always threatens to do whenever the conversation comes close to the intimate details of her life. “I’m all discombobulated.
Why Randall wants a party so soon after coming home—”

“Because he knows he can.” Bobbie taps a pencil against the receiver, and Lena wonders why both Bobbie and her mother like
to make noises when they talk on the phone. “How’s Lulu?”

“She seems a bit discombobulated, too. I think I might go with her to her next doctor’s appointment. But if you must know,
I was getting… perspective.”

“You wanted ‘perspective’ from the woman who ate, slept, and dreamt John Henry Harrison?” Bobbie laughs.

“What do you know?”

“I don’t have to be heterosexual, or married, to know that you let your husband get to you. You’re too hard on yourself.”

“It’s what I do.” Lena sighs like her eight-year-old self under fire from her big sister. “And why don’t you call Lulu more
often? You haven’t been home in a year.”

“Lulu doesn’t know how to have a regular conversation without implying that religion and a good man can cure all she believes
is wrong with me. I love her, and I forgive you for being rude, but don’t change the subject. This is about you, not me. You
love being married. You love Randall. I simply tolerate him because he’s the father of my niece and nephew.” Randall and Bobbie
argue whenever they are together. The last time Bobbie was home, it was over music: easy-listening jazz versus bebop. “He
would not be where he is without you. And that’s a fact.” Lena imagines her sister wagging her finger on the other end of
the phone.

“What difference does it make?” Lena groans at the sight of Dr. Miller’s stocky frame between cars one aisle over. She ducks
and rattles her purse. “God, where are my keys? Kendrick’s therapist is headed this way. Dammit, I don’t want him to see me.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself. Hand him the phone—I’ll say it if you won’t.”

At the end of his first session, Kendrick stepped into the waiting room and told Lena that Dr. Miller wanted to see her. Lena
assumed he wanted a payment and stepped into the tiny office, checkbook in hand. Once inside, she was surprised by the kitschy
coziness of the middle-aged doctor’s office. Flowered cushions on a slouchy sofa. Masks smeared with white ash, African spears,
and fertility goddesses with swollen bellies and distended breasts. Their shared heritage seemed all the more reason to like
him.

“My grasp of family dynamics will constitute a critical area of Kendrick’s therapy.” Dr. Miller settled into his recliner,
his stubby legs struggled to reach the ottoman. “Kendrick has given me permission to discuss our conversation with you. While
I will not breach doctor-patient confidentiality, I do sense that there are other issues, as they relate to you, specifically,
that cause Kendrick to question your… value.”

“As opposed to his father’s? And measured by what? His income as opposed to my… non-income?” Lena focused on the cable-stitched
afghan folded over Dr. Miller’s armrest. The stitches were uneven and lumpy: a gift from a feeble-handed grandmother for her
adored grandchild. “What does that have to do with why he took drugs?”

“There may be clinical depression. I’m not certain, of course, we’ve only spoken once. It’s like a puzzle, and I have to fit
all of the pieces together to assess the reasons Kendrick chose to use drugs so heavily. What
you
have to consider is the impression you’ve created and how it will affect his relationships with women and his view of women
in general. Especially if the woman appears to be weak.” Nothing moved on Dr. Miller’s body, not his eyelids nor a finger
chilled from the air conditioner’s breeze.

Lena pushed off the sofa like a baby and stumbled to the door. She glowered at the therapist and did not bother to ask how
he could make such a snaky assumption after only fifty-five minutes with her son.

Now, Dr. Miller stands in the middle of the parking lot, four plastic grocery bags in one hand, and pats his jacket and pants
pockets with absent-minded vigor. Lena pretends to search underneath the car while Bobbie yells, “Give it to him! Give the
phone to him!”

Lena shakes her head no and stays lowered until she hears a car engine start. The doctor, his head swiveled in the opposite
direction to monitor the parking lot traffic, drives away when she peeks over the hood. In the car, Lena pulls
I, Tina
out of her purse and riffles the edges with her thumb to let Tina provide inspiration, this time for how to keep away from
people she doesn’t like. “Don’t laugh. I’m reading Tina Turner’s autobiography. I like her guts.”

“She has more than guts—surprise, I read the book. I own bookstores, remember? And she left without fear and without money.”

“I haven’t been on my own since I was thirty-one. I could never make as much money as Randall does. Maybe Lulu is right.”
Like John Henry, Lena is not much of a risk taker.

“Sell yourself short if you want to, but all you have to do is want it bad enough.” Bobbie puffs on a cigarette and yells
to a distant voice in the background that she can’t help right now, that she’s unavailable for a while so would they please
close her door. Papers rustle, and Lena imagines stacks and to-do lists atop her sister’s antique desk. “Once she left, Tina
only looked forward and took every opportunity that came her way. She even cleaned houses, for a minute, until she got a break.”

“Stop smoking. I can hear you puffing all the way from here.” Lena swerves out of the parking lot and steers through the streets.
“I want my life to be the way it was. And I don’t know how to get it back.”

“You wouldn’t be so into Tina if that was your intention. And slow down, I can hear you gunning the engine
all the way from here
.”

“It’s not so easy to give up your dreams.”

“You don’t have to give up anything, and you don’t have to meet any of Randall’s stupid ultimatums. This is
not
a corporate takeover. Tell
him
to go fuck himself. If you don’t want to have a goddammed party, don’t.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already called everybody and shopped at three different stores.”

Lena senses Bobbie shaking her head on the other side of the line. Unh. Unh. Unh. Exit, stick to the twisty road, left at
the stoplight, one right, another couple of lefts, and she is almost home. From a half block away, Lena watches exhaust sputter
from Kendrick’s nearly new, lemon-colored Mustang. A brown delivery truck blocks his car. She extends her hand out of the
open window and waves to Kendrick and the deliveryman.

“Stop waiting for Randall’s permission. Let’s see, when you were seventeen you waited for Leonard Templeton to ask you to
the Senior Ball. As I recall, you never went. You waited for Randall to tell you when you could go back to work. And you still
don’t work.”

The second time she asked, they sat on the couch in Randall’s home office working on a speech he was about to give at the
annual board of directors’ meeting. He read it through, noting changes, words, phrases, commas, and periods that gave him
time to breathe or the audience to ponder. Lena suggested memorizing the first paragraph to make immediate contact with the
audience and gain acceptance and interest right away.

“I went to the bank today,” she said.

Whether he heard her or not, she couldn’t tell. He recited the first paragraph, experimented with his delivery—serious, with
humor, smiling, not smiling, hands, no hands. “When I gave my father his first cell phone last year, he was astonished at
the power of such a small device. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet.’ As I stand before you, on the cusp of a new
century, ready to introduce the future of telecommunications, I speak those same words to you as I did to my father: ladies
and gentlemen, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

As soon as he finished, her thumbs lifted in approval, Lena started again. “I talked to the manager about my photography business.
It’s been two years, and I’m ready.” She smiled at the end of her sentence, hoping her declaration was light enough to encourage
Randall’s agreement.

“You’re happy aren’t you? The kids are happy. I’m happy.” He took her hand and didn’t wait for her reply. “I know I promised,
and I mean to keep that promise.” Randall stood and paced the length of his office, delivering his words in the same way he
had practiced his speech: her expertise, her willingness to polish his speeches, not to mention her first-rate entertaining
had become critical to his success.