Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,24
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