Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,12
Lena. No coaching Kendrick’s soccer team or boisterous applause in the middle of Camille’s solemn ballet recitals or input at teacher conferences; no banter, no repartee crisscrossing their dinner table, no middle-of-the-week dates. He couldn’t back Lena up when she disciplined Camille or control Kendrick’s defiance.
Randall’s responsibilities increased. He worked. Hard. The bonus was that he returned to work in San Francisco, but in any given month, he stayed at least two nights in the corporate apartment in Novato. He traveled to their twelve national and international locations. He assembled a new staff, analyzed, brainstormed, strategized new company directions. He dabbled in golf; started smoking cigars and let himself be cajoled into joining the 95 percent white, male-only club on San Francisco’s Nob Hill—all to expand his connections, to expose him to the business powers that be. At TIDA, there were introductions to the board and other key players. Lena entertained executives in their home, gave dinner parties, and assured that Randall sat next to those who could further his career.
“Teamwork is what got us here and what will keep us here,” became their motto, their mantra. Randall practiced his speeches; Lena corrected, edited, offered feedback that he made his own. She hobnobbed with executives’ wives—picked their brains for insight into what their husbands thought of Randall and encouraged them to share TIDA pillow-talk gossip. She was Randall’s behind-the-scenes ears, and her public relations skills sold Randall to them, so that they would do the same to their husbands.
But that was Randall, she thinks now, tucking the stationery and business plan back inside the drawer and locking it. When he committed, he went all the way. Home. Family. Work. If he had thoughts about giving up, he never told Lena, and, at the time, she felt blessed knowing his loyalty extended past TIDA to her and their family.
Once the computer awakens, ten hasty keystrokes yield 11,200 hits and 952,000 Tina Turner mentions: flawless skin and charismatic smiles, albums, song lyrics, an international fan club, the location of Tina’s star on St. Louis’s walk of fame. The official fan club site is filled with one-line blurbs of adoration and appreciation.
So much information, so much tiny print. Each mouse click directs her to different links and websites, each portal leads to more information: a home in Zurich, another in the south of France. Lena scribbles the album titles on a monogrammed tablet, crosses off duplicates. Scroll. Flip. Click. Buy, buy, buy: thirty-eight albums with and without Ike, five DVDs. At another site the lyrics to Tina’s songs are available for free.
PRINT PRINT PRINT. Pages spew from the printer with repeated taps on the button in an erratic rhythm of whoosh and whine, then flutter across the floor. Lena stoops to pick up a page and sinks back into the chair, overwhelmed by the wisdom and specificity of her random selection: the song, “I Don’t Wanna Fight”; the line, “This is time for letting go.”
Chapter 4
The phone rings for the first time all day. Either Kendrick or Camille will answer it. Lena is unsure until she hears Camille’s voice. Kendrick never liked talking on the phone, and now, more than ever, he avoids it.
“Hey, Dad.” Camille paces the hallway and responds to what Lena assumes is her father’s litany of questions. Her voice is conspiratorial. “School’s okay… my senior project… any day now. Get ready. It’s either Columbia or NYU… in the bed… in his room. Yes, Dad, I’m taking care of Kimchee. I miss you, too.” Camille pounds on Kendrick’s door—the pesky little sister she pretends to be. “It’s Dad.”
Kendrick’s deep pitch is barely distinguishable from Randall’s. Like Camille, he paces the hallway, too, allowing Lena to overhear fragments of his conversation: Dr. Miller, car, the fellas. He walks into the master bedroom, hands the phone to his mother as if she cannot use the one beside her bed, and pauses long enough to take a pair of sunglasses from the top of Randall’s dresser.
Lena greets Randall in what she hopes is a version of Camille and Kendrick’s light, happy tone.
“Today’s been a fiasco.” Randall yawns. “Thompson fucked up the terms for a critical section of the contract. He forgot federally regulated language that could have blown this whole deal wide open.”
The negotiation for TIDA’s acquisition of another high-tech communications company has taken most of the past eleven months. So long that Lena wonders how his veteran assistant could have made such a grave error.