Part 8 (2/2)
”Trust me. Please.” Now Lena's legs, too, shake beneath the table. How can a child understand the need for a mother to make it on her own? She pushes her hand against her eyes, knowing that tears will accomplish nothing. ”Kendrick, you're settled for the summer, but I want you with me, at least some of the time, before you go back to Chicago. Camille, I'd like you to stay with me.”
”You're trying to take away everything Dad has worked for,” Kendrick says.
The words, Lena knows, are not his. The hard look on his face, a copy of his father's, clearly indicates he has more to say. Her left eyebrow arcs at his nerve, and he backs off. ”I don't know what your father says, but shame on him for it. I don't want the two of you to be involved.”
”At least Dad tells us what's going on,” Camille says.
Her raised finger stops Camille from adding anything more. ”Don't let him brainwash you. Kendrick, you may have a wife someday, and one day, Camille, you may be be a wife in this very same position. So, check your att.i.tudes about women who choose family over career.” a wife in this very same position. So, check your att.i.tudes about women who choose family over career.”
”Well, what about Kimchee? Do I have to decide who I'm going to live with right now?”
”No, sweetie. Yes, Kimchee can come, too.” She extends her hand to Camille's cheek, and Camille shoves it away. ”I hope one day you'll both understand.”
”Summer school starts in three weeks.” Kendrick stands and hugs Camille. There are no tears in his eyes, but the strain of his parents' decision is back. ”I'm staying with Dad until then.”
”I love you. Don't forget that.” Lena promises herself that whatever comes next in her life will show them this pain-hers and theirs-has been worth it.
”If you loved us, you wouldn't do this to us,” Camille says; tears stream down her face. ”Or to Dad.”
”I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.... If I could make it hurt less, for all of us, I would.”
”Then I'm going to stay with Dad, too. You kicked him out of the house. He goes to all of the trouble of looking for a new place, and now you're leaving? It's not fair.”
When Lena went online and read Camille's poetry, the words, their meaning, were clear but seemingly not directed at her. Now hearing her children's words and the force of their anger is hard to take, but the sentiments were easier to handle delivered from the protective distance of cybers.p.a.ce.
Chapter 17.
On this fourteenth day since that rainy night, Lena awakens to the music of her neighborhood: children shriek through a game of tag, a lone bird chirps; a sprinkler head sputters, a gardener's blower buzzes. It's been a long time since she's paid attention to these early morning noises, and now her ears perk up because she is listening to them for the last time.
Pulling on jeans and a sweater in the haphazard fas.h.i.+on that is now her style, she wanders toward Kendrick's and Camille's rooms to crack their doors open and check their breathing, as if they were still toddlers, underneath their muddled covers. She stops in the middle of the hallway. Kendrick and Camille are not home. They left last night with barely a smile or a tilted eyebrow or a mischievous wink and headed to wherever Randall lives these days.
Outside, gears grind in the driveway. This truck announces their separation to the neighbors. Lena storms down the stairs and opens the front door. Two burly men with huge moving pads slung across their shoulders ask where she wants to begin. She looks back at them and waits for them to answer their own question.
Their first home was a mishmash of her furniture and Randall's bachelor tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Lena decorated this house on her own. There were days spent in cold, dusty warehouses to find pristine bathroom tiles; she scoured through racks of granite slabs, as long as they were wide, in search of the right one for the kitchen. She hunted through the crowded aisles of the Everyman's Bazaar for antiques and sterling silver whatnots. The veneer plastered walls, the coffee table, the dining room table, and several handcrafted lamps are her designs. The corners filled with un.o.btrusive objects from their travels. Her mark is on everything.
The movers ask again, quieter this time. Lena points out what she wants: half of the pots and pans, the mixer, the toaster, the couch, the coffee table and the photography books on top of it, the jade lion from Hong Kong, the red Chinese armoire, the Persian rugs, the fine china with cobalt blue bands, silverware, picture alb.u.ms, all of her clothes. The art she loves and her photographs.
With a final glance in the dresser's mirror, Lena examines the gray strands scattered in her reddish brown hair, the puffs that have replaced the smooth skin under her eyes. She points to the dresser, but not the matching bed where Kendrick and Camille were conceived, where she and Randall swore to be together till death did them part, where they made love, ate popcorn and ice cream, slept in each other's arms. The thought of sleeping in that bed alone, though she has many times over the years, always eager for Randall's return, is enough to make her double over in pain.
No. The bed holds too many memories. The last time she and Randall made love, really made love-not just gotten off because he needed to-must have been months before he left on this last trip. She gasped and held her breath, while he moved in and out, out and in. He called her name, and she called his from the back of her throat in a moan she can hear right now. She cannot bear the thought of him making love to another woman in that same s.p.a.ce.
At last, the movers signal to Lena that they are done. She wanders around the house. In the hallway, faded squares outline the rectangles of pictures that once decorated those walls: the concentration on Kendrick's face during his first piano concert, Camille's first recital, Kendrick and Camille at Disneyland, Lena and Randall on their honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta. Short hair, long hair, mustache, no mustache; infants, toddlers, teens. The story of their lives is in those pictures. She beckons to the only trim mover of the crew and points to one of the whole family: a black-and-white photograph, Randall's arm around her shoulder, she leaning into his, Kendrick and Camille seated in front of them. All dressed in jeans and turtleneck sweaters. Christmas 1999. The photographer told them they looked perfect enough to model, perfect enough to be the all-American family, and he'd snapped their picture as they laughed.
Lena is not picture-perfect today. Has not been in a long time. Cannot get back into the groove of designer clothes and perfectly coiffed hair. Through her loose top, the shoulders of her five-eight frame have not slumped, but she feels bent over and aged. Feels like punching herself, even though the fingers of her right hand do not fully bend, shaving her eyebrows, eating herself into obesity. Punishment for what she believes is failure. Her failure.
She works her way through the house past reminders of Randall: Sports Ill.u.s.trated, Fortune Sports Ill.u.s.trated, Fortune, Mentadent toothpaste, Tabasco sauce, Uncle Ben's long-grain rice, mayonnaise, little-eared pasta sh.e.l.ls, and red felt-tipped markers. She stuffs odd mementos in her tote: his lucky plaid pants, the ones he wore when he won the 10k Race for Race around Lake Merritt, a can of shaving cream, the blue rubber bulb he uses to clean his ears. She hopes his ears stay dirty and hairy and full of middle-aged earwax.
At the front door, she pauses then locks it and strides past the movers smoking on the lawn awaiting her next order. An unintentional wave-a small fluttering hand movement that in another time would have greeted her children, her husband, welcomed friends and family to her home-lets them know she is ready to leave. She opens the garage door and tosses the opener and all the house keys onto the floor. Pulling out of the garage, she reminds herself to tell the gardener that it is time to trim the magnolia tree. But no, she doesn't have to do that anymore. It is only when she reaches the bottom and looks back at the yellowish house seated above and away from others that her tears begin to roll. It is only when she looks at the van in the driveway that she understands that the house is neither Randall's nor hers-it is just where she used to live.
The sky outside is bright even though Lena's watch shows eight o'clock: almost the end of the longest day of her life. She sits crossed-legged in the middle of the living room floor of the place she will call home for a while. Lighted candles cover the coffee table, the kitchen counter, the wide windowsills. Tina booms through the perfection of the MP3's tiny earphones and sings of universal heartache in a tune written back when Lena was happy. When she would not have felt what Tina sings of those wings and the unhappiness-soundless, surprising, invisible-they bring.
I will never be the same again... I will never be the same again...
The room darkens, a sign that-though she cannot see it from this side of the building-the sun is toppling behind San Francisco. In the hours that Lena has been in her new s.p.a.ce she has scrubbed, dusted high corner ceilings, sponged fingerprints from switch plates, disinfected toilets and sinks, bleached the insides of the refrigerator and dishwasher. Signs of whomever lived in the apartment before are gone, and she wonders if she had smiled and f.u.c.ked Randall every night and more like he thought a good wife should, would she be here now?
Once she believed that when they were empty-nesters, she and Randall would move into a smaller place, maybe an apartment in San Francisco. Once she relished the idea of wearing the s.e.xy nightgowns she rarely wore because of the kids, or making love instead of dinner on the kitchen counters. That was the way life was supposed to be for her and Randall. What else had she worked so hard for? Not this loneliness she can already feel sinking into her bones.
”I have to get out of here.”
There are few customers in the video store: a weary-eyed man-an insomniac Lena guesses from the drawn look of his face-two teens with popcorn and sodas, an old couple t.i.ttering in front of the adult movie section, and a bedraggled woman in pink terrycloth house slippers and a floor-length trench coat. Lena peers at her own fuzzy-covered feet and wonders if this woman is fighting the blues, too. She follows her down the aisle and pretends to scan the shelves. ”I'm getting a divorce, and it's so hard to sleep.”
”Me, too. I do nothing but cry. All of the time. And look at me...” The woman's voice is edged with controlled hysteria. Her hair and dingy outfit give the impression that no one who cares has looked at her in a long time.
A bleach-stained sweats.h.i.+rt and Randall's good-luck shorts hang from Lena's hips, slimmer now from the stress of separation. ”I came looking for a little inspiration. Have you ever seen this?” She points to What's Love Got to Do with It What's Love Got to Do with It on the last row of the wall-to-wall shelving. ”If you can get past the violence, there's a message.” on the last row of the wall-to-wall shelving. ”If you can get past the violence, there's a message.”
Pink Slippers s.h.i.+vers and stares like Lena is crazy.
”Think about it. She found her inner strength and left a terrible relations.h.i.+p. In her forties. With nothing but her name and her talent.”
A light of recognition brightens the woman's reddened, blue eyes. ”And then she turned into a superstar, and he was never heard of again.”
”Maybe there are other movies like this one.” Lena walks up the aisle, her new friend behind her, to the clerk barely awake behind the counter. The woman appears to be over fifty, if the lines in the corner of her eyes and mouth mean anything. ”We're looking for movies to inspire us. We're getting divorced.”
”From our husbands husbands,” Pink Slippers chimes in.
The clerk points to her unadorned ring finger and scribbles t.i.tles on a tablet.
”Oh, look! Waiting to Exhale Waiting to Exhale.” Pink Slippers shouts.
If a cafe were open they could collect their movies and go there to guzzle gallons of coffee and cry. She would have told Pink Slippers that if she had watched that movie sooner she would have slit Randall's tires or burned his clothes or sold all of his stuff and that he probably would have had her arrested.
”Mostly, I want to watch Tina's movie,” Lena says. ”That's all I need right now.”
Outside, Pink Slippers digs in her pockets and pulls out a cigarette. She opens what appears to be, in the brightness of the white neon sign, an expensive lacquered lighter. ”I don't know about you, but this is the most fun I've had in a h.e.l.l of a long time.” She sucks in a long drag and extends the cigarette to Lena, who takes it, coughing as she, too, inhales deeply.
”Thanks.” Lena snickers. ”I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.”
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