Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,37
a healthy distance between his body and hers, she points a trembling finger in his face. Randall backs away, hands clenched at his sides. He watches her hands, keeps his distance.
“I don’t have time for tantrums. You’re only pissed because you think I’m having an affair with Sharon. Charles told me what you said.”
“I don’t doubt it, but this is about more than who you’re fucking. This is about our life.”
“I don’t need drama at work and at home.”
“No, you’re the drama king, lover man. Like that little trick you did with your tongue the night you came home?”
Randall’s face is motionless except for his pulsing, left eyebrow. “Stop.” He grabs Lena’s wrists. She yanks them away with a force that startles them both. The TV blares with the announcer’s scream and the crowd’s roar. He walks past the photos that mark their years together: wedding day, chubby Camille at six, Kendrick’s senior prom, their first time in Paris. The frames rattle with the weight of his footsteps. Lena steps to the opposite side of the hallway. Is this how it begins?
“Is that why you’re offering me ultimatums, Randall? Answer me!”
“What do you want me to say?” He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. Once at the stairs, he takes them two at a time.
“Is this one of those decisions, like the lemon tree or what restaurant we’ll eat in, what movie we’ll see, that don’t mean anything to you so it’s left to me?” She wonders why what she thinks is not what she says. Power is powerful.
“I’m a businessman, Lena. I have to consider the pros and cons.” Randall shrugs.
Footsteps clamber outside. Randall and Lena used to confine their occasional fights to their bedroom, used to close their door and muffle their words, used to make up and apologize ignoring who may have been right or wrong. They stand stock-still while Lena searches for the right words, the most expedient way to say what’s on her mind in the seconds before Kendrick and Camille come in and shatter this moment as cleanly as the wineglass strewn across the floor. Lena loves her kids; lately, though, they appear at the most inconvenient times. It didn’t matter when they were toddlers and they walked in on her naked or on the toilet. Now, she wishes fifty dollars bought more time.
“I won’t go on like this. I have to consider my pros and cons, too.”
“Don’t threaten me, Lena.” Randall heads for their bedroom and reappears within minutes, overnight bag in hand. “I was thinking about doing this anyway. I need a head start on tomorrow’s work, and you need time to cool off. I’m going to the corporate apartment.”
This is not the Randall she knows. Not the man who talks loyalty. She wasn’t his first girlfriend, or his first wife, but he said she would be his last, that he would be faithful, take care of her, the opposite of what his old man had done with his mother.
Now, Randall’s eyebrows are lumpy with frustration; Lena’s emulate his—proof that married couples look and act alike after so many years together. In better times, if they were to see themselves in one of the many gilt mirrors Lena has placed around the house, they would tease one another over who was the original and who the copy.
“Hey, parents,” Camille calls out. “What’s up with the glass all over the floor?”
Camille and Kendrick suck in air at the same time as if they can breathe the tension they have encountered. Kendrick stoops to pick up the largest pieces and signals Camille to wait. Camille bolts straight into the front entryway, where their father stands near the top and their mother stands in the middle of the stairs. When Kendrick joins them, daughter and son rib their father about his very real need for a haircut. Randall breaks into a smile, leaving Lena flattened against the wall, shocked at his swift transition.
“Where are you off to, Dad?” Camille asks.
“Please give us a few minutes,” Lena prays that Camille and Kendrick are smart enough to recognize her request is really a plea.
“We’re done.” Randall tousles Kendrick’s woolly head when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. “If you think I need a haircut, man, you should check out your wild ’fro.” Father, son, and daughter’s laughter reverberates throughout the house. “I’ve got to be in the Novato office before dawn tomorrow morning. I’m going to stay at the corporate apartment.”