Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,33
door; his complexion is swarthy, but clear. The line between the top of his upper lip and his neatly clipped mustache reminds her of old military pictures of her father. Lena steps away from the door.
“Come on in; I won’t bite.” His husky voice reassures. The older man extends a sunburned hand and introduces himself as Vernon Withers. Like the southern gentleman his drawl makes him out to be, Vernon leaves the front door open as if the geraniums, crickets, and fluttering moths could offer help, if she needed any.
“I’m Lena.” Her mind hesitates where her feet do not as she approaches the front room where low flames crackle in the sooty fireplace.
“Chamomile tea, Lena?”
Her left, then right eyebrow arches at this first hint of Vernon’s insight. Chamomile is the tea she loves to drink when she is tired or stressed.
“I know, you’re wondering, ‘Now how in the hell does he know that’s the tea I like?’” Vernon winks at Lena and waddles toward the kitchen looking more like a rascally elf than a man who is supposed to know about the future. “No need to answer, dahlin’, just accept.”
Unsure of the psychic process, Lena accepts Vernon’s offer of tea and walks to a small wood-paneled area beyond the living room where two brocade-covered chairs face one another, a small round table between them. The room’s walls are the soft yellow of fading daffodils; the house smells like lavender sachet and old people. Water splashes, the microwave beeps.
“You have questions?” Vernon sets a cup and saucer painted with red-lipped geishas by her left hand. “Ask the first thing that comes into your head.”
“I’m only here because…” Lena figures if Vernon is true to his title he should know why she’s here and what her questions are. “I’m here because a friend recommended I see a reader.”
“Reader is confusing. I prefer psychic, like my sign outside says, it’s more… specific. So?”
Questions are not her problem; they frolic like curious monkeys in her head. It’s answers that have her stuck. When she entered the house, she didn’t bother to check it out or ask if there was anyone else present. Lena squirms under Vernon’s expectant stare and glances back at the door. He spreads her palms open, then rests his on hers. His touch fills her with a peace she hasn’t felt in a long time. He stares at her eyes, in almost the same way John Henry did when she misbehaved as a child, then examines the jagged, interlaced lines across her palms.
“The palm, my dear, is simply a reflection of our lives. Yours are beautiful. Youthful.” He stares at her left hand, pushes and presses the Mount of Venus beneath her thumb. “The lines on the dominant hand vary across the span of one’s life, because of the changes in life’s path. This section of your hand tracks midlife. See? A Y. The Y represents choice and change.”
“Everybody has that.” Lena wonders if this is what the psychics saw in Tina’s hands.
“But, everybody isn’t here.” Vernon opens his hands. His right hand is without a little finger. Any other time she would have asked the story of this missing digit. Better to see this odd injury instead of something, like a sixth finger, he claims enables second sight. She searches for the Y. Nothing on his palm resembles that letter.
“Say what you want, dahlin’, but you’re the one willin’ to plop down your husband’s hard-earned money in the middle of the night, fuzzy slippers and all, for me to tell your future. You rang my doorbell. This isn’t the time to be indecisive. Look where that got you this evening.”
Lena jerks her hands away from Vernon and pushes back from the table. “What would you know?”
“It’s not what I know, but what I sense: you can’t keep letting people push you around. Sit still and let me have your hands so you can get your money’s worth.” Vernon sips his tea and peers around the room as if to search for scones and crumpets. His face is playful and serious. He pulls a gold watch on a chain from his pocket and sets it on the table. “Now, take your watch and set it beside mine.”
“You’re pushing me around just like everybody else.”
“Like I said, Lena, you rang my doorbell. Don’t fight me; I’m not the one you need to show your strength to. Trust.”
Lena looks around the room and through the open kitchen door. The house is quiet; the