“Page two sign and initial here.” Mr. Meyers is gruff with them today, tired, Lena supposes, of their bickering. “This paragraph outlines the purpose of the agreement and commences the specifics of the division of property.”
L. Harrison Spencer
K. Randall Spencer
“What God has joined together, let no man tear asunder,” the diminutive, white minister said on their wedding day in that beautiful cathedral where candles twinkled and the scent of so many lilies made Lena sneeze just as she said, “I do.”
Page 15 covers spousal support and stipulates the amount Randall will pay to Lena until her death, remarriage, or legal domestic partnership. Today, the thought of another man in her life makes Lena laugh out loud. None of these things matters as her Mont Blanc pen holds steadfast to its path across the papers. Randall slides each page to her side of the table after he signs them.
L. Harrison Spencer
K. Randall Spencer
Funny, Lena thinks, what she will remember about this moment. The thin red stripes on Randall’s black suit and matching tiny dots on his tie, how it skews ever so slightly to the right, the absence of his wedding ring. The feel of him pulsing inside her, her body close to his, the smell of their mingled sweat. Her pressing urge—psychological, not physical—to pee. The mediator’s rubber-tipped finger flipping through fifty-two pages. Fifty-two sets of initials. Six signatures. Rows of legal code shelved around the room: dull brown books, gold horizontal stripes—California Family Law, Division of Property. Stipulation, petitioner, and irreconcilable differences. Dissolution of God’s law. The piles. The piles. The piles.
Ain’t nothing guaranteed but death, John Henry used to say. Divorce is a death. She wants a funeral, a farewell to what was. Where is the champagne to toast this freedom?
“By placing your final signatures here, you both agree to the terms and conditions of this Marital Support Agreement. This is a legally binding document and any diversion from it, without the written consent of both parties, is considered breach.” Mr. Meyers glances from Lena to Randall to Lena, then passes the last page to both of them.
Lena looks across the table to Randall’s smile-less face and considers extending her hand to touch him one last time. Their eyes lock in one swift, never-to-be-forgotten millisecond, and Lena will never know if it was reality or imagination that his hand almost extends, too. That love is flat. Gone like a helium balloon slipped from a child’s hand floating up to the atmosphere, to heaven, to God. Pop.
Before they married, Lena practiced signing versions of her new name, like most brides-to-be: Lena Harrison Spencer. Lena Spencer. L. H. Spencer. She decided on L. Harrison Spencer. Now, she uses that signature for the last time.
L. Harrison Spencer
K. Randall Spencer
“And so it is done,” she says, knowing full well she is speaking.
f f f
“I know you’re in bed,” Bobbie says when Lena answers the phone. “You okay?”
“No.” Lena yawns into the phone. Outside, the afternoon sun beams through the window and creates a crisp parallelogram of light on the rug. “It’s been three days—I’ve broken the blue-funk rule, and I don’t care.”
The sisters created the blue-funk rule for themselves years ago to handle heartbreak or disappointment: one, and one day only, to cry, hibernate, stuff themselves with their favorite food—chocolate ice cream with nuts. An empty cardboard pint once full of chocolate ice cream with nuts and chunks of white and dark chocolate sits beside Tina’s autobiography on the long table doubling as a nightstand.
“I have good days and bad ones, Bobbie. This is a bad day. A very bad day. The worst.” Time to get back to the rule, and her time is overextended. “But, it’s my last one. I start work at the Oakland Museum in two weeks, and I signed up for another photography class in the winter quarter.”
“The hardest part is over. I’m glad you’re moving on. Compared to some people, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
More than once during the mediation process Lena has thought about other divorced women less fortunate than her with children to feed, no money, and a real fear of what comes next. She makes a double sign of the cross over her heart, thanks God for her blessings, and promises to donate a little extra to a shelter.
“Leave me alone.”
“You don’t need to be alone. You need to get your ass out of the bed. Look at it this way. At least when the final divorce papers are filed you won’t have to see him.”
Bobbie talks tough. Lena is unsure if Bobbie could take her own medicine if the tables were turned, having kept most details of her love life confidential throughout the years. They were not born into a family prone to share their business with outsiders. Who, she wonders, not for the first time, does her sister talk to when her emotional life gets jumbled and messy? This will be the way she pays Bobbie back: she will pick up the little hints Bobbie infrequently drops and be a better listener.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Time to get back to you. What about Tina Turner? Have you finalized your plans? Have you made plans?” Bobbie’s pen or fingernail taps against the phone, and Lena wonders when a little sister stops feeling like a little sister and begins to feel simply like a sister. She straightens, taps her fingernail against the phone, and tells her sister that she’ll get around to finalizing the arrangements when she gets around to finalizing the arrangements. There is still time to buy a ticket.
“Get up right now.”
Lena picks up the empty ice cream carton and licks the sides for what is left of the melted treat. “Let me have this last moment to sulk, please.”
“Just do it. For me.”
“That’s what Randall used to say.”
f f f
On the stereo Tina croons music meant for scrunching and slow dancing, for making love. A new loneliness tugs at Lena’s insides in a way that makes her draw her body into a fetal pose atop her bed.
Two weeks ago a forwarded invitation showed up in the mailbox alongside invitations to open new credit card accounts. It was the first time she’d been out after sitting in the new apartment for six weeks. Two weeks ago, the effort to pull herself together had been great, but she did, and she looked good in a sleeveless blue dress she hadn’t been able to wear in over a year. Lena left that party within twenty minutes of her arrival after a gentle-eyed, very short man caught her off guard with his oddball question: what kind of fool was the man who could leave someone as good-looking as you?
If Lulu is right—about Lena never following anyone’s advice, maybe, she thinks after Bobbie’s suggestion, she should start. Now. Cheryl would be delighted to get her out of the apartment, but Lena is not ready to take the plunge into her friend’s frenzied social life. Too bad she didn’t get Pink Slippers’ phone number. Flipping through her address book, Lena finds the pickings slim in the names of women she once called friend. She understands the protocol: she is off-limits now, the almost-divorced woman Candace, if she holds true to her word, will spurn. Lena imagines Randall’s social calendar is full: her old friends have probably paired him up already. Good catch. So is she.
Without brooding over her decision, Lena gathers her hair into a ponytail, dusts blush on the apples of her cheeks, layers mascara on her eyelashes. Jeans, heels, white blouse, orange leather jacket. Enough.
Vertigo, a neighborhood restaurant and bar, is within walking distance of her apartment and comfortable. In the old days, whenever Randall and Lena walked into a restaurant, she pitied the men and women seated alone at the bar and assumed they were single and sad. If someone cared enough to look closely, they would see that she is; but she doesn’t want anyone’s pity. Once the hostess establishes that she is alone, she points instead of escorts Lena in the direction of the bar. Couples dine at cozy marble-topped tables; singles eat at the bar, the hostess’s taut finger seems to say.
When the muscular bartender glances her way, she asks twice for a seven and seven on
the rocks with extra lime before the young man acknowledges her. The lime slips from the rim’s edge and into the honey-colored drink when he sets the cocktail down. Never one to sit at a bar, nurse a drink or two, and chat with a stranger, Lena’s mind is a blank as she searches for small talk. “Thanks,” slips from her lips as the bartender turns away. She examines the menu more to busy her mind than select a late-night snack.
On her right, several young women watch the door in anticipation of a friend or perhaps their dates. They remind her of her single days, the first time around, and the occasional bar-hopping in packs; even on the infrequent business trip she avoided solo eating and drinking. On her left, a man, tie loosened from his unbuttoned collar, preoccupies himself with the newspaper while shoving large forkfuls of linguini into his mouth.
A cool breeze blows down the bar when the restaurant’s huge glass door automatically opens for an amorous couple. The man’s wide hand rubs the woman’s—the much younger woman’s—firm hips, and she does not seem flustered by the contact. When she glances at their faces, Lena blanches at the sight of Candace’s husband and the bimbette from her dinner party. Snatching a section of newspaper from the man one seat over, Lena hunkers behind the pages. That same fear and anxiety that took over her when she ran into Candace at the bookstore now runs through her body again. What if they saw her? Poor Lena: no husband, no family; she’s all alone. Alternating her attention between the paper and the door, Lena forgets that Byron is the one who should hide.
From behind the paper, the bimbette’s infantile voice is exactly as annoying as Lena remembers from the night of the party. The night she remembers, too, that Candace confirmed her friendship. Lena drops the newspaper as Byron and the bimbette pass in front of her and the polished wood bar. “Heyyy, Byron.” She exaggerates her greeting, makes it sweet and syrupy like she would for a long-lost friend, and stares right into Byron’s eyes. If Lena ever tells anyone about the scene before her, she will describe it as a moment from a slapstick movie: the bimbette’s face lights up with recognition and dims just as quickly; Byron’s head swivels from left to right searching the bar for the possibility that his wife is there with Lena.
“Be sure to tell Candace I say hello.”
“I’ll do that,” he says, stepping an arm’s length from the bimbette. “Good to see you, Lena.” Lena is positive that even if Byron were fifteen, maybe ten pounds lighter, he could not move out of the restaurant any faster. As for Candace, all of those women who think that she might be a threat to them, ha. It’s the bimbettes of the world, she thinks, they better watch out for.
“That just made my night.” She turns to the man from whom she grabbed the paper and pushes it back down the bar. He shrugs as if he has seen it all. Lena drops a ten-dollar bill on the counter. The bar has become more crowded with couples. The man with the newspaper is still more interested in reading than conversation. Perhaps some other time, she thinks. Then she will find new friends or a prospective lover or even a stranger with whom she will talk and drink and joke.
By the time she gets back to her building, the night guard is making his hourly rounds and the front desk is empty. Lena heads for the wall of silver rectangular mailboxes. She likes to pick up her mail late at night. No one sees her. No one cares.
The mailbox door creaks. Lena pulls out a wad of mail and weekly grocery store advertisements for foods she no longer eats or cares about. It must be four days since she last checked the mailbox. The small box is so full that she is surprised the postman hasn’t complained. Standing in front of the marble-topped counter where the trash can is tactfully concealed behind a maple veneer door, Lena separates catalogs, credit card solicitations, and postcards sent by real estate agents looking for new clients. There are eighteen catalogs. Eighteen businesses that want her to buy furniture, linens, stationery, luggage, and cosmetics. She tears off the back page of each catalog, flips to the middle, and tears out the order page where her name and address are printed: Lena I. Harrison. Identity theft. Who cares?
A red envelope protrudes between bills and solicitations. Lena recognizes Bobbie’s bold handwriting. She always uses a medium-blue felt pen. Royal blue. Inside the envelope, a black-and-white photograph is glued to the front of a note card: Lena and Bobbie, in matching dresses and ruffle-edged pinafores, sit atop the shiny hood of their uncle’s pickup truck. Each of the sisters holds an ice cream cone in a gloved hand. Lena remembers the day the photograph was taken: Easter Sunday, 1956. Lena was almost seven and Bobbie ten. They’d begged to eat Auntie Big Talker’s homemade ice cream before, not after, they changed their yellow and blue Sunday clothes, and for once, Lulu let them. Their grins are wide and toothy.
Lena recognizes the quote from one of Tina’s songs written across the bottom of the photo in Bobbie’s bold slanted hand: There’s something special about you. Inside is a first-class airline ticket from San Francisco to Nice, France, imprinted with Lena’s name.
“Tina said it, and I know it. Use this,” Bobbie’s bold handwriting commands. “Now!”
Chapter 21
Each stark white wall of this square room is covered with paintings from the baseboard along the cement floor to the top of the eighteen-foot ceiling. Red, bright turquoise, cerise, and purple. Bold strokes of gouache form thick paint waves. Black-and-white photographs—thick lips, kinky and straight hair, kneecaps, noses, crusty heels—are spread like collages between the canvases. Some of the paintings are words outlined underneath layers of color. None of the paintings clash; instead of creating a frenetic, jarring sensation, they are ordered in a way that imparts control.
“See, getting out is a good thing.” Though Marcia is Cheryl’s client and not a close friend, she hugs Lena warmly. “Make yourself comfortable, walk around, meet somebody, and take them home.” Her invitation is throaty and sexy.
Randall and Lena first met Marcia on the wooden bench in front of a Diane Arbus photograph, “A Young Negro Boy,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Marcia squeezed onto the bench, uninvited, and talked about the photographer’s work, her hands gesturing rapidly the whole time, without any signal from Randall or Lena.
“Diane Arbus once said or wrote that she believes that there were things nobody would see unless she photographed them.” Marcia offered her interpretations of the artist’s intentions—“She wanted to capture life and give meaning to everyday existence” —that continued over dinner at the restaurant next door.
When Marcia discovered that Lena was a long-time friend of Cheryl’s, she insisted on paying the check. With Cheryl’s help they bought two pieces of Marcia’s art the following week. Marcia encouraged Lena to take a photography class with her on the one occasion they’d gone for coffee. The class, Marcia emphasized with her hands more than her words, was a way to stretch to the next level and, if Lena was really interested in taking pictures, the class would help to make her photography art.
f f f
“Your work is lovely, Marcia,” Lena says.
If there had been a paintbrush in Marcia’s hands for her dismissal of Lena’s flattery, it would have feathered large circles around the room and touched every painting. “This is my home and my gallery.”
“Thanks for remembering me,” Lena calls to Marcia’s back. There haven’t been any invitations in Lena’s mailbox for a long time, despite the change of address notices she sent to all of their friends. No dinners or movies, weddings, or parties. Marcia forgot—or Cheryl forgot to tell her—that Lena and Randall were no longer a couple: her metallic envelope was addressed to the two of them. The familiar unfamiliar sight of their two names together set off a sudden burst of tears. Lena promptly accepted Marcia’s invitation, not so much out of fear that it might be retracted but with the knowledge that if she let it sit she would change her mind and Marcia might not think of her the next time around.
Lena breathes in the scent of cumin and curry and maybe nutmeg or mace. The house smells like home. Old home. She wanders around the condo. An art
ist, whose angular, steel sculptures she loves but can no longer afford, waves from across the room. A singer from a local jazz club Lena keeps intending to visit introduces herself and hands her a postcard with the date of her next show.
The living room and the smaller one across the entryway are full of men and women dressed in every type of clothes from holey designer jeans to African garb. Conversation and hilarity clash with the pianist who alternates between jazz and classical music on an upright piano in the corner. Where Marcia succeeded with the artwork, Lena thinks, she left a lot to make up for with the acoustics.
A thirty-something man dressed in paint-splattered coveralls approaches Lena. “You look thirsty.” He offers her a flute of champagne from a red enameled tray.
“Flirtation or kindness?”
“Duty. Just a starving artist doing nowhere near as well as my friend. Marcia asked me to help out. And as for flirtation…” He leans into Lena just enough so that she can smell the peach scent of his twisted hair. “I’m Imara, bartender-artist, and I’m game if you are.”
Funny, she thinks taking a glass, how women, famous and ordinary, talk about the confidence they’ve gained by the time they reach fifty. Lena feels none of that. She swallows the bubbly liquid in two gulps to calm the tightness nagging at her stomach and takes another. Being single makes her feel like a fifty-four-year-old virgin; her confidence is nonexistent. “Thank you, Imara-bartender-artist.”
Imara is close enough so that Lena can see the tiny moles across his sandy-colored nose. She steps back and away from him. She is not afraid of men; she has simply forgotten what to do. At thirty, before walking into a party, bar, or an afternoon gathering, Lena sought security in the easy hand-to-mouth action of smoking. Even then she found small talk useless; men seem to want conversations in shades of gray. She speaks black and white.
“Well, look who got out of the house!” Cheryl’s voice booms from behind the server.
Searching for Tina Turner Page 16