Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,11

and a neighbor’s cat dashed through a torn screen door and onto Lena’s bed. Her Grammie shrieked when she found the scraggly cat at Lena’s mouth. The incident was funny to Lena until Grammie warned there was nothing funny about dying young because a cat sucked away your breath.

Kimchee jumps into Camille’s arms. Claws drag across Lena’s sweatshirt as Camille scoots past. She scowls with the face of the girl who changed from sweet to sour, once she turned fifteen; tension flits around them like a bothersome moth.

“Please try to control Kimchee, Starless.”

“You’re the one who opened my door, Mother. Nobody else cares.”

f f f

Sleep comes faster when you read in the bed. That was Bobbie’s reasoning in the days they shared a bedroom, and Lena complained she couldn’t sleep with the light on. Lena splashes Drambuie into her only glass of the night and rubs her eyes. Beyond the open curtains, the trees are black silhouettes against the sky. The house is hushed and still. What worked for her big sister never worked for her. At nearly two in the morning, and near the end of Tina’s story, Lena is wide awake.

“Let’s see what else you’ve got to say, Tina.” Without bothering to turn on the lights, Lena slinks down the hallway to her office. “I’ll take all the help I can get.” One flick of the push-button switch and lamplight blanches the desk and everything across it: neon-colored sticky reminders to call the handyman and pay those bills not automatically deducted from their checking account, twenty or thirty square and rectangular envelopes. Lena brushes aside the old mail: an invitation to an art gallery exhibit last weekend, another to a cocktail party the day after Randall left, a charity fashion show this weekend.

Eyes closed, she tries to conjure up Tina’s Mediterranean blue, but all she sees is black. Once she had confidence like Tina. Before Randall’s schedule and his corporate social obligations, before the rush to and from soccer practices, sleepovers, dentist appointments, and drama lessons became what she did best; before her chores became more burden than blessing.

A shallow drawer beneath the cherry wood top runs the length of the desk. Lena tips the lamp base, removes the key hidden underneath, and turns it in the brass lock. Inside an open cardboard box sits embossed letterhead and business cards. Lena Harrison Spencer, Photographer is printed in an elegant and simple type. The spiral-bound booklet beside the box opens easily to the first page: The Lena Harrison Spencer Gallery, A Business Plan, May 15, 1999. Her plan was written in hopes of bank approval on her father’s birthday—fifteen, her good luck number. The table of contents summarizes financial requirements, an implementation schedule and darkroom costs, possible mentors, and clientele from her former job at Oakland’s Public Information Office—contacts she wanted to make before they forgot what a capable director she was.

Randall came home early that showery April day four years ago, excitement written all over his face. Lena stood at the bedroom window hoping the rain would stop so that she could get in a short run before dinner. The sound of his voice, from all the way downstairs, preceded his arrival. “We did it, Lena!” Once in the room, Randall swept her off her feet and spun her around until they were both dizzy. Camille and Kendrick ran into the bedroom, energized by the joyful commotion. Randall grabbed Camille; Lena grabbed Kendrick. Laughing and spinning, spinning and laughing.

The four of them were infected with Randall’s news: they were in the presence of TIDA’s new executive vice president, worldwide operations, six-figure bonus, IPO options, possibilities of golden parachutes. Kendrick and Camille jumped around the room and chanted “IPO, IPO” like they understood what it meant.

Before this promotion, when the dot-com building boom filled Silicon Valley, TIDA’s board of directors broke the mold and expanded northward from San Francisco to Novato. Randall spearheaded the Novato operations, putting him another step closer to running TIDA; neither he nor Lena felt he could turn down the offer, though the daily, almost eighty-mile roundtrip commute from Oakland would be wearing.

For all of the talk and plans beforehand, Lena underestimated the impact of Randall’s worldwide operations appointment. In the beginning, for every day he was out of town, Randall called home. Five-minute conversations where business took a backseat to the ordinary details of their lives; enough time for “I love you” to all three of them and “I wish you were here” to