Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,5
slim, tight pants under a yellow, belted slicker, ankle-high rain boots match the slicker’s herringbone lining intentionally exposed on turned-back cuffs. “And since when do you wear Kendrick’s clothes?” She pinches Lena’s sweatshirt between two fingers as if she is touching something nasty or unclean.
Lena scolds herself for defying the rules: her mother’s “Pay attention to what you wear when you leave the house; you never know who you’ll run into.” Even Randall’s: “Put gas in the car when it registers low so you won’t get stuck in the middle of nowhere on an empty tank.” Sometimes things just happen: the car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere, or somebody like Candace shows up.
Lena stands and speaks her lie without hesitation. “I’m in the middle of a project.” For the last month she has left her trademark starched white shirts, skinny-legged jeans, and high heels in her closet and exchanged them for clothes she should have taken to the homeless shelter. She brushes lint from her pants, circles behind Candace, promises to call soon. Blah blah blah.
“A project in a bookstore?” Candace grasps Lena’s arm, looks from Lena to the books and back to Lena. “Give me a break.” The petite woman follows her down the aisle to the old-fashioned cash register.
Sam Black and his big black dog sit side by side behind a massive antique English wooden table. The skinny owner and muscular dog wear the same woolly look on their faces. Each time Lena visits the store she asks Sam who is in charge—owner or pet. Today he responds with the same answer, “Depends on the day,” while he labors with a calligraphy quill over a receipt for Lena’s seventy-five-cent book.
“Girl, get the DVD,” Candace says, thumping the paperback. She squeaks an off-key line from “What’s Love Got to Do with It” and snaps her fingers. “I’ll tell you what: love doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything. Have you heard about poor Dana?” Candace pauses in anticipation of Lena’s reaction.
Sam raises his head. His brows protrude above his wire-rim glasses. Candace’s leer warns him to mind his own business. Lena tosses a dollar bill on Sam’s desk and stuffs the receipt into her purse.
“Dana and Carl are getting divorced.” Candace scrunches her cheeks and eyes with the expression of someone who is about to speak of doom. Lena shakes her head no, and Candace does the same for a long minute, reminding Lena of how her grandmother shook her head and grumbled “unh, unh, unh” at sad news. “They say she’s had too much of her husband—he’s such a tease. There was no way you could tell anything was wrong. I mean, a few months ago, they were flirting and smooching like lovers. Such a pity.”
Lena remembers that extravagant holiday party: the dolefulness in Randall’s eyes that the loud celebration had precluded them from pursuing, that left as swiftly as it had come. “Here’s hoping for a better year,” he had said, holding her as they glided across the dance floor, and Lena, knowing even then her downward tilt, had hoped for the same.
“Nothing is predictable anymore.” Lena lowers her eyes; afraid to let on that this sad reflection is as well suited to herself as it is to Dana.
“Oh, bullshit. Predictable or not, I’ve been married to Byron Stokes for thirty years, and I’m not about to put myself in Dana’s position. Doesn’t matter what her husband did or didn’t do.” Candace points to her sparkling diamond tennis bracelet and fingers the five-carat wedding ring Randall gave Lena for their twentieth anniversary. “I’m not giving any of this up, sweetie. At our age, it’s hard for a sister to find a man with the same abilities.”
“It’s got to be about more than… ‘abilities.’ Whatever happened to trying to work things out? What about love?”
“You heard me: what’s love got to do with anything?” Candace conveys Dana’s story with a half-pity, half-tattletale smile: early last year, Dana told her husband that she would leave him after their twins graduated from high school, unless he changed. “From what I hear, he told her she had nowhere to go without him and his connections. Translation: money. Well, the twins graduated early, and she’s living with her mother. She has to get a job, make new friends, and find a new man.”
As if, Lena supposes, those simple things are the solution to a woman’s problems.
“And she’s almost sixty.” Candace tightens her long ponytail, her sign