clearly as the pain, the ache that works its way to Lena’s heart: And I don’t understand what’s your plan that you can’t be good to me.
Tina’s question is Lena’s: “Who will be good to me?” Her question is for Randall, for Camille, for Kendrick.
Through the living room, the hallway, up the stairs and down again. Head and hips shake to the beat. The handmade sofas, the wall-sized art, the spindly Venetian vases—they say Randall has been good to her. Fingers snap and feet dance. Let the tears stream.
The day after Randall gave her the yellow diamond, Lena put her camera into the armoire; a memento of who she was and her value. She stops in front of a black-and-white picture taken with her 35mm the year before she married: Lulu and John Henry on their thirty-sixth anniversary. The award-winning photo was published by the Oakland Tribune for all her world to see. Years later, it was supposed to be submitted along with her business plan. The contrast is high and sharp; the focus on their eyes. They look straight into the camera, and the lens captures their love for each other and the photographer.
Chapter 8
Randall flips through the rows of CDs hidden behind the doors of a built-in cabinet that also houses the stereo. He once told Lena that he wanted to own all of the most important jazz albums of the twentieth century. The first time he mentioned his goal, he and Lena had been sharing their stories. Like Lena wanted to study photography, Randall wanted to major in music even though he played no instrument. He chose to major in business—his father didn’t care, Randall said—so that, unlike his father, his future family would be well cared for. Between the faux-painted cabinet, the shelves of his study, and his vinyl collection carefully stored in the temperature-controlled crawlspace under the house, he has, like every other part of his life, overachieved this goal. He loads six CDs into the player and waits for the first track to start. His head jerks with each click of the volume dial, like a bird attentive to its young; his hands adjust for the perfect balance of bass and treble.
On the opposite end of the rectangular living room, Lena drags her forefinger across the mantel and moves last year’s family portrait one inch to the left. Randall passes two oversized chairs and the fireplace on his way to Lena’s side of the room. Tonight, Lena feels like a trophy wife on display in the burnt yellow pants and top Randall insisted she put on. She wears it to please him; it is not her style. He fiddles with the sabuk around her waist—a cummerbund he calls it—and rubs his thumbs on the small of her back in a circular motion. She relaxes into Randall’s mini-massage, her head falling against his chest, and wills him to recall his promise to make one more counseling session.
Three and a half days, the numbers going up instead of down, mark the time Randall has been home, and they have not spoken of serious matters. Lena wishes this respite signified the desire to move on. No spontaneous touches, no suggestive double-talk, no teasing as foreplay to time alone. Randall has occupied himself less with thinking or work and more with sweating: hours of racquetball, hoops with Kendrick beating him only once out of the five times they played, hiking the hills around their home with and without Camille, jumping rope, and shadowboxing. He has spent quiet time in the living room listening to music and sorting through his CDs. The coffee table becomes the focus of her attention: a dead leaf pinched from the bouquet of peonies, hydrangeas, and, her favorite, rubrum lilies; books poked into a perfect pile.
“Are you happy?” Lena asked Randall if he was happy before their first counseling session ended. His deep breathing had more than physical purpose: thought gathering, a careful delivery of words. Different from the breaths taken the first time he’d said “I love you.” During the session, his finger thumped against the wing chair’s arm and he said that she should be “fucking ecstatic, judging by what you have and the life you live.”
“Every day at TIDA, the white boys measure my words and my work for potential mistakes. Work is not about happy. Work is about beating the odds and kicking ass.” He closes his eyes like she’s seen him do a thousand times—a trick learned in a