Searching for Tina Turner Read Online Free PDF Page B

the back hallway, stopping halfway through to shut the laundry room door on the heap of dirty
     clothes that will stay there until hours before the housekeeper comes. Thursday she will wash them and leave the clean clothes
     piled atop the dryer for the housekeeper to iron or fold. She ignores a dead bouquet of flowers on the antique table she found
     at a garage sale and the vase’s murky water and heads for the stairs.
    “Camille?”
    Camille has not made a sound since she emerged from her room to grab a hefty helping of chicken and cornbread. Kimchee mewls
     behind the bedroom door, and Lena thinks the cat might mean for her to stay away. “I mean, Starless. I have cookies.” Lena
     realizes, maybe for the first time, that her conversations with Camille through closed doors have become a metaphor for their
     relationship—another barrier to keep them from seeing eye to eye. “Can I come in?”
    A chair scrapes against the hardwood floor. Not once, but twice. Camille is not heavy footed, but Lena can tell from the abrasive
     sound that she has backed away from, not moved closer to, the door. So much for Camille’s promise to differentiate herself
     from friends who withdraw into their rooms and never talk to their parents. The door opens no more than five inches when Lena
     leans against it. Kimchee slides through the gap and trots down the hallway like he owns the house. Cookies tumble from the
     saucer when Camille dashes after her cat.
    Lena stifles a sneeze against the immediate tingling reaction that starts whenever she comes in contact with the furry feline.
     When Randall surprised Camille with the cat to motivate her, Lena had no idea she was allergic. No animals of any kind were
     part of her childhood household except for the summer night when she was eight and a neighbor’s cat dashed through a torn
     screen door and onto Lena’s bed. Her Grammie shrieked when she found the scraggly cat at Lena’s mouth. The incident was funny
     to Lena until Grammie warned there was nothing funny about dying young because a cat sucked away your breath.
    Kimchee jumps into Camille’s arms. Claws drag across Lena’s sweatshirt as Camille scoots past. She scowls with the face of
     the girl who changed from sweet to sour, once she turned fifteen; tension flits around them like a bothersome moth.
    “Please try to control Kimchee, Starless.”
    “
You’re
the one who opened my door, Mother. Nobody else cares.”
    f   f   f
    Sleep comes faster when you read in the bed. That was Bobbie’s reasoning in the days they shared a bedroom, and Lena complained
     she couldn’t sleep with the light on. Lena splashes Drambuie into her only glass of the night and rubs her eyes. Beyond the
     open curtains, the trees are black silhouettes against the sky. The house is hushed and still. What worked for her big sister
     never worked for her. At nearly two in the morning, and near the end of Tina’s story, Lena is wide awake.
    “Let’s see what else you’ve got to say, Tina.” Without bothering to turn on the lights, Lena slinks down the hallway to her
     office. “I’ll take all the help I can get.” One flick of the push-button switch and lamplight blanches the desk and everything
     across it: neon-colored sticky reminders to call the handyman and pay those bills not automatically deducted from their checking
     account, twenty or thirty square and rectangular envelopes. Lena brushes aside the old mail: an invitation to an art gallery
     exhibit last weekend, another to a cocktail party the day after Randall left, a charity fashion show this weekend.
    Eyes closed, she tries to conjure up Tina’s Mediterranean blue, but all she sees is black. Once she had confidence like Tina.
     Before Randall’s schedule and his corporate social obligations, before the rush to and from soccer practices, sleepovers,
     dentist appointments, and drama lessons became what she did best; before her chores became more burden than blessing.
    A