The chunky silver camera hides between layers of molded styrofoam, cardboard, plastic wrapped cables, a laminated quick reference chart, a 1GB compact flash card, batteries, and quarter-inch-thick instruction booklets in Spanish, English, and Chinese, all of which Lena tosses back into the limp plastic bag. She slips four batteries into the chamber. The camera emits an electronic, susurrant whine. Lena rolls down the window and points to the huge electronics store. Click. Points to the sky. Click. Points to the little girl passing by pointing at her. Click. Turns the camera lens around to her own face. Click. Camera in hand like a newborn, she sets it back in its cardboard cradle on the passenger seat, turns on the ignition, and backs out of the lot.
The city of Emeryville used to be an obscure industrial city on the edge of the entrance to the Bay Bridge. In the sixties and seventies, the mudflats were blank canvases for artists and rebellious hippies from UC Berkeley to build wooden sculptures and Vietnam protest signs in the slushy marshes alongside the freeway. Now the steel factories are gone, replaced with biotechnology headquarters, a mall, and a movie complex; only the train tracks remain. Lena drives to an empty lot next to a new condo building where anise grows wild, and the air smells of licorice.
Out of the car, into the street and the lot beside it. She takes the camera and snaps picture after picture. Click. The rusted iron tracks, the rocks and gravel, the feathery weeds between the jagged stones and splintered wooden ties, the cracked brown beer bottle and discarded keychain beside it. Click. The back of an abandoned warehouse, its dock covered in graffiti, discarded grocery carts, the wrought iron gate of the condo complex. Click. She shoots at every angle she can imagine: upward looking down, downward looking up.
She wishes that she had someone to hug and to hug her back, because she is so filled with the thrill of creating, the thrill of knowing that this old love will be the foundation that roots her to herself, especially if Randall no longer will.
Chapter 13
This lake in the middle of Oakland is only odd because it is not in the middle of the city. But that’s what Oaklanders say: Lake Merritt is a lake in the middle of the city. Actually, Lena thinks, it’s kind of cool. Like the canals in Paris. Or Central Park, if there is a lake in Central Park.
A photographer focuses his camera on a bride and groom in front of a pillar covered with rambling ivy. That is not the picture she would shoot, Lena reflects, pleased that her old passion fulfills the possibilities of Vernon’s prediction. She would pose the couple in front of one of the thick, gnarled trees near the western side of the lake to accentuate the opposites: the couple’s loving intimacy and the bare-trunked tree’s solitude.
With both arms extended above her head, she leans to her left and the bushy-haired man with seventies-style headphones coming her way. She prays he can’t hear himself sing, knows that James Brown never sounded so bad. Arms to the right and away from the man who speed-walks in a kelly green Lycra bodysuit. If only her buns were that tight.
Most runners take the path to the right from this exact midpoint of the lake; there is the option of the higher cement sidewalk or the lower dirt path. A tree-lined grassy knoll between the two paths is filled with twenty or more elderly Chinese men and women in the midst of ancient Tai Chi moves. Lena begins a brisk trot behind a wizened couple holding hands. The gray-haired man and woman move solidly up the tamped dirt path and step to the side at the crunch of Lena’s noisy gait. Today the lake is beautiful, odorless, and clear, with none of the slimy algae that often turns its water brackish.
“I guess this isn’t the best time to get on your ass for not keeping in touch,” a loud voice calls from behind.
“You’re late.” Lena waits for the body of the familiar voice to catch up. She has told Cheryl more than once, over the forty years they have known one another, that she will probably be late for her own funeral. “I guess this is the best time to say you haven’t done much to keep in touch your damned self.”
Lena rubs her hand over her friend’s gray-streaked hair. “You cut all your hair off.” Cheryl has been obsessed with her hair since their college days. She went to the beauty salon two, sometimes three, times a week, despite persistent complaints that she was short on cash. If Cheryl made special arrangements with their handsome hairdresser, Lena never asked what they were, Cheryl’s hair—long, short, or in-between—always looked good.
“And you should do the same; it’s liberating.” Cheryl tugs at Lena’s stubby ponytail. “Us mature women don’t need all this hair anymore. Short hair sets us free.”
“Leave it to you to fight for a fashion trend.” Cheryl is the medicine Lena needs. She would have called her old friend sooner or later. Bobbie’s pushing made it sooner. Lena makes the sign of the cross over her heart when they pass the Church of the Virgin Mary on the opposite side of the street.
“You don’t work and let yourself get all Suzy Homemaker conservative. Stop. Let me look at you.”
When she was in her twenties, Lena jogged the lake regularly. Her legs were her best asset then, and short shorts showed off her trim thighs and molded calves. Lena pulls her pants up to her knees and flashes a quick grin, proving to Cheryl and a chubby-cheeked man that they still are. “Looks are the least of my problems.” Lena continues along the path and motions for Cheryl to follow.
“Let me guess. Mr. Spencer.”
“Something like that.” Lena picks up her pace as a light drizzle begins to fall; joggers speed past them. She pauses for Cheryl to catch up. Back in the day, Cheryl ran faster than Lena, socially and athletically. “I want to take pictures again.”
“Photography is competitive. I’m not even sure how many black photographers are making money.” Cheryl speaks with the knowledge and authority of fifteen years of representing emerging artists working in all kinds of mediums: acrylic, oil, organic and recycled material, metal, and indigenous stone.
“Art can’t be subject to racial boundaries.” Lena snaps. She knows the business world is underhandedly racist—Randall’s battles, his struggle to get to the top, prove that.
Cheryl pokes a finger into Lena’s taut bicep. “It’s who, not what, you know that can keep some blacks from garnering the kind of success that makes them the big bucks.” Cheryl lists the downside of photography: expensive equipment, darkroom time, or the latest digital software. Finding galleries. Rejection, rejection, rejection. “What do you want to work for anyway? You’ve got Randall.”
“Randall may not always be around,” Lena whispers.
“I knew it the minute you called.” Cheryl’s face reminds Lena of a person who has tasted something awful and wants desperately to spit it out. “I could hear it in your voice.”
Lena points to a six-foot, multicolored sign and the giant heads of yellow and orange fantasy creatures visible through the trees. “Our parents took us to Fairyland when we were little.”
“You didn’t call to reminisce.” Cheryl stops to retie her shoelaces and wipe sweat from her forehead with the terrycloth band on her wrist. “Talk.”
It was Cheryl who listened when boyfriends dumped Lena, Cheryl who cried with her when Lena discovered she was pregnant with Kendrick. Cheryl took her to the hospital when she suffered false labor pains, comforted her after John Henry’s first stroke, listened when she had no one else to talk to about Camille’s temper tantrums. Cheryl knows most of the good and bad of Lena’s life.
“Randall and I have separated.”
Cheryl yanks at Lena’s warm-up and embraces her friend. “You’re going to be all right, you know that, don’t you?”
Lena shakes her head no. “Oh, Cheryl, I’m so sorry for reconnecting like this. When I have a problem. I know I haven’t been much of a friend. It’s just that Randall…”
Cheryl and Randall tolerated each other for Lena’s sake. Their common loyalty ended five years ago the evening Cheryl ran upstairs after dinner to say goodnight to Kendrick and Camille and returned to the kitchen in time to hear Randall: “I need more wi
ne. This is the last time we entertain Cheryl. It takes three or four glasses just to put up with her loud clothes and louder mouth.” Cheryl snatched her red cape and silver-studded handbag and told Randall, in a voice more earsplitting than the one he had complained about, that she wouldn’t dignify his comment with a response, loud or otherwise.
“Good friends pick up where they left off without explanation. What do you need me to do?”
“We haven’t talked or decided anything. I’m worried about Kendrick and Camille.”
“I know you love them like they were still babies, but Kendrick and Camille are grown. You need to take care of yourself and get a lawyer, because I know Randall will.”
“I don’t think he’d do that without talking to me first.”
“Ha! Randall didn’t get to where he is today by being timid or indecisive.”
On the dirt path in front of them, leggy, green-wing-tipped geese squawk exclamation points to their conversation. Lena speeds up a small incline, stomps her feet at the top, and yields the right of way to a gaggle of the ubiquitous geese on the graveled path. She sidesteps to her left and away from the bird droppings, and Cheryl steps with her. Any day, rows of downy ducklings will waddle across this same path to the water’s edge. Spring has crept in; bougainvillea buds are fat and primed to burst in sprays of red. Already several new mothers, waists thick with baby fat, determinedly push their newborns in three-wheeled strollers to exercise away their pregnancy weight.
“I’ll help any way I can, but you knew that when you called. You could have told me outright about you and Randall. You didn’t have to make up any excuses.”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Girl, I knew you when you were still a virgin. Please. Divorce is simply another phase of life.”
“We’re not getting divorced.”
“You sure about that?”
Lena gives the only answer she can: a heavy-shouldered shrug.
Cheryl has had two husbands and no kids. Even though her marriages were short-lived—the first one twenty months, the second three years—she once told Lena that marital bliss was an ideal state. Lena thought so, too. She kicks stones from the path, stoops to pick one up, and tosses it at the geese, dispersing them in all directions. Don’t blame us, their squawks seem to say, it’s not our fault.
“I missed you. We can hang out again, even though…” Cheryl waves her hands around her and stops at the promenade where they started. “At our age you better think seriously before you step back into the single life.”
“What’s age got to do with it?”
“We’ve passed men, and not one of them has looked at us, said hello, or, God forbid, flirted. We’re in our fifties. We’re invisible. And while I don’t give a damn about that, you might, if you were single.”
“I’m not the kind of woman that men have ever fallen over themselves for.” She snickers, her broad shoulders relax. Not fat. Not skinny. Breasts Randall still calls, called, perky, hands without dark spots or lines. “I don’t care. Age is just a number, right? At least that’s what you used to say when we were forty, and you hit on thirty-year-olds.”
“Still do!” Cheryl grins. “Just like you say art ignores color, I have to believe art, and possibly thirty-year-olds, ignore age. That said, do you really want to be single and start over in photography or anything else at fifty-four? It’s going to take hours and hours, maybe years of hustle.” Cheryl looks Lena straight in the eye. “Bottom line: is he really all that bad?”
“If I believed he was bad then I would have to question why I’ve been with him all these years. He’s not good or bad; he’s Randall.” From the arches Lena catches a glimpse of the older couple outlined in the distance, they walk arm in arm now, their pace steady and assured.
“Find another way to find yourself. I assume, unless he’s got someone on the side, that he loves you. So what if he doesn’t say it. He gives it, which ain’t bad, sweetie. I could use a bit of loving like that myself. Go screw his brains out and tell him to come back home.”
“I wouldn’t do it because of the money.”
“(a) It’s your money, too. And (b) you’d better get a lawyer, because money, my dear friend, is what Randall is all about. Call me when you’re ready; I’ve got tons of recommendations.”
Chapter 14
The mail has collected in its metal box for six days. Camille stopped her daily trips to the mailbox after her early acceptance letter from Columbia arrived. Her agreement letter went back twenty-four hours later. An oversized envelope stands out among the business-sized ones, the catalogs, the magazines. TIDA’s blue and white logo, the label clearly inscribed in her full name, Lena Harrison Spencer. After packs of coupons, credit card solicitations, and real estate brochures go straight into the recycle bin, Lena trudges back to the house.
She clutches the envelope in her hands, turns it over once, then once more for a clue to its contents. In the six days since she last saw Randall, they have not spoken. Through short, snippy emails, he told her that he would pick up the rest of his clothes and some furniture as soon as he finds a place. Kendrick has shuttled Randall’s belongings and toiletries back and forth between home, the corporate condo, and a hotel suite that Randall has taken in San Francisco.
With one easy tug, Lena rips off the top of the TIDA envelope and yanks out the loose pages of typed correspondence. The cover letter is typed on TIDA’s bold letterhead. Randall’s secretary’s initials are printed in a small font in the lower left-hand corner. He dictates his letters, he doesn’t type, and Lena knows that he would not spend his precious time on a hunt-and-peck search around a keyboard to type a letter to her. If she wasn’t a priority before, why would she be one now?
Ms. Lena Inez Harrison Spencer
3567 Rockhead Road
Oakland, CA 94602
Lena:
Enclosed are Dissolution of Marriage papers my attorney will file next week with the Alameda County Family Court. These documents require your acknowledgment and immediate action. I am not interested in any more drama. You need a lawyer. Please direct future communication on this matter to my attorney. His information is located on the petition.
The cost of divorce and attorney’s fees can be ridiculously high. Stay in the house, and I’ll find other lodging. Be prepared to sell the house within the next 90 days, unless you want to cut a deal before the lawyers get involved. It would be to your benefit to do this, since my expectation is that you start to provide for yourself immediately.
I propose that you keep the house and, with a few exceptions, its contents. The appreciation will offset my stock options, annual bonuses, and a reasonable portion of our joint portfolio. In return, I would expect your written agreement to release any other or future claims on my income, pensions, or IRA.
By waiting to file the dissolution paperwork, I have given you sufficient time to consider my proposal. This is a generous offer. I suggest you take it.
Cordially,
K. Randall Spencer
Cordially?
“Damn you, K. Randall Spencer,” she yells, noting her husband of twenty-three years has signed the letter like he would any other legal document written to a stranger.
“Mom?” Camille bumps into Lena as she rushes into the kitchen. The house had been so quiet, she forgot her youngest was home. Camille’s question is urgent, the tone she would use in an emergency. “Is everything okay?”
“Don’t you have school?” Lena’s voice is harsher than she intends.
“Relax. Teachers’ meetings. No classes until after lunch.”
Lena turns away from Camille. The distinctive pleadings paperwork, its margins lined and the sentences numbered, is scattered on the counter and the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Camille pushes aside the envelope and scans the divorce documents. “Are you crying?”
Lena snatches the papers from Camille’s hand. “This is not your business.”
“So this is it, huh? My parents are
getting divorced. Shit.”
“Don’t curse.”
“Don’t do this to me.” Camille’s eyes tighten.
When Lena reaches out for Camille’s hands, her daughter steps away. “Know that this is not about you.”
“Well, Dad already warned me and Kendrick anyway.” Camille smacks her hands together.
Damn, Randall. Lena’s hands shake with the adrenaline rush. She snatches the TV remote, throws it on the floor, and jams it with her foot into the counter’s wooden toe kick until it breaks apart.
“Mom! Stop!” Camille dashes to the opposite side of the kitchen, waits for her mother’s furor to pass, and covers her eyes with her hands. “He says you gave him no choice. What’s up with that? Don’t you care about our family? Don’t you care about me or Kendrick?” Her voice booms across the room.
Lena laughs. A crazy laugh, like the mad wife in Jane Eyre whose barmy laughter echoed through Rochester’s mansion. Her laughter is so loud, so hard, that fear widens Camille’s eyes and nostrils. Lena prays that daughter understands what mother finds so hard to understand: Randall won’t talk to her, but he has the nerve to tell his daughter and son, before he tells his wife, what will happen to her life. Lena steps close, and Camille freezes when Lena embraces her. “I love you, Camille. Go to school. This is my fight, not yours.”
Without a hug, a wave, a “see ya later,” Camille slams the door. Lena hopes that one day Camille will understand how incapable and powerless her mother is at this moment. How she wants to kick and scream and hold her daughter tight, protect her, and show her how to be strong. When the time is right, when her head is right, Lena will sit Camille down and make sure she never ends up this way. There isn’t one word she can think of that would have made these past ten minutes easier. Damn Randall for putting that on Camille, for putting her in the middle, for putting her on his side.
Searching for Tina Turner Page 11