The Pages We Forget (21 page)

“Our prom picture.”

Keith tensed up again. She was too close. “I'll go so you can get dressed.”

“Please don't,” June said before she even realized what she was saying. He assented, but continued looking away. “Will you look at me?”

Keith shook his head no.

“Please.”

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“I don't know why.” June warily reached for his hand. Shivers went through both of them when she touched him. He snatched his hand away. “Junie, I can't.”

“Keith, I came here because I had to see you,” she said and fought to hold back the tears. “Right now, it doesn't matter what happened, or why you left. I need to feel you again.” She let the tears flow. “I need you to hold me.”

The woman standing in front of him was the girl he used to love. And if there was one thing he remembered about her, it was her ability to deal with whatever the situation was and move on. She was the reason he stayed in Hampton Springs as long as he did. Had it not been for her, he wouldn't have been able to stay past his fifteenth birthday.

“Please,” she begged. “I don't expect anything more. I only need you to hold me.”

“Hold you? How do I?”

“The same way you used to,” she responded.

Keith knew that something other than the need to see him brought her here. She needed something more. Something he wasn't sure he would be able to give her.

“I'm sorry, Junie, but I can't do this.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because things are different now. You're different and I'm different.”

“Yes, we are different. We've both changed. Time has a way of doing that to people.”

“We can't go back there, Junie.”

“I know we can't go back, but that doesn't mean we have to forget who we were then.” She tried to get him to look at her again, but to no avail. “I went on with my life after you left, but I never
gave up on you. I never gave up and I never forgot how much I loved you and how much you loved me. I couldn't forget. So how could you? How?”

“I didn't, Junie,” he confessed and slowly opened his arms. “I didn't forget.” He took her in his arms and held her close to him. Years ago, his touch ruined her life. Now, it was saving her.

(lyrics and arrangement by June)

I didn't know you were going away.

You didn't say you were going to stay.

I don't know what went wrong;

Or why your love is gone.

CHORUS:

You just don't know,

how I've been missing you,

how I've missed kissing

and loving you.

You just don't know,

how I miss holding you,

holding you next to me.

My heart is so empty.

Every day that passes,

I think of what we had.

Why did you have to go?

Tell me, I need to know.

Cause I'm holding back the tears,

from loving you all these years.

I need you here with me.

Come back, oh baby please.

CHORUS

I've tried to forget your touch,

how I loved you so very much.

It's time that I let you know,

that I've never let you go.

(MUSICAL BRIDGE)

Oh, you just don't know,

how much I'm missing you.

missing holding you;

kissing and loving you;

You just don't know.

“D
earest,” Keith typed. “Yesterday, the life I'd been running from caught up with me. It found me barely existing, hiding in a world inhabited by only myself and the creatures of the surrounding hammock.”

He stopped typing, closed his eyes and listened for the familiar sounds that signaled the morning's approach. The unusually chilly autumn wind roused the cypress and oak leaves and blew the screen door open and shut. Other than that, there were no other sounds to be heard, which meant he would have to wait a little longer to see her. He could see the window of the bedroom where June slept from the porch. The room was still dark, but he knew she would be up soon. Even though it had been more than ten years since the last time they watched the sun rise over Bacon Street, he knew she still thirsted for sunrises.

He adjusted the wick on the small kerosene lantern to dim its warm glow. He turned and stared at the words he'd typed on the manual typewriter that once belonged to his father. “Yesterday, the life that I'd been running from caught up with me,” he read aloud. “It found me hiding, barely existing, in a world inhabited by only myself and the creatures of the surrounding hammock.”

He returned the carriage to the left margin, tabbed over a few spaces and typed, “It stared me in the eyes and made me remember.”

The gleam of the lantern bathed the corner of the porch where
Keith sat in a pale yellow light. It cast a shadow across the rest of the porch. And it was from a dark corner on the opposite side of the porch that June first saw him smile. It was when he typed and then read, “And then the little boy with the familiar face called me Dad.”

She had not been able to sleep, so she eased out of bed and slipped onto the porch, where she hid in the shadows and watched him. She sat quietly remembering things about him and moments spent with him she'd somehow forgotten. Moments like, giving him his first shave after he refused to clip the stubble that covered his face. For two hours, she reminisced and watched as he searched for words to describe everything that had transpired since she walked back into his life.

This was the way he expressed whatever he was feeling. He rarely verbalized the angst, the sadness or even the occasional joy he felt. Instead, whenever he was troubled or on one of the rare days when he found something to smile about, he put it down on paper. He regularly wrote letters to himself. “Dearest,” was the way the letters always started. He would go on to record moments from what most people would consider an insignificant life. “I sat outside on the steps and watched as the afternoon rains came and went,” might be the only thing he wrote on a day when words were scarce or he deemed them unnecessary. Some days he would ramble on about whatever came to mind, whether it was about the playful antics of the redbirds outside his bedroom window each morning or his pensive efforts to reassure himself that he'd done the right thing by leaving all those years ago. And the letters would end, all of them, with “Missing You, Keith.”

Keith stopped typing and looked up at the bedroom window. The room's still dark, he thought, but it won't be long.

June wrapped up in the tattered brown cardigan sweater Keith had given her to ward off the cold. She pinched herself again. The
first time was to see if she was dreaming when he held her in his arms. This time it was to make sure she hadn't died and gone to Heaven. Nothing she'd experienced during her enviable life could match the majesty of the moment.

“He's waiting for me,” she whispered. “Surely,” she thought, “this must be Heaven.”

Since arriving here, she had not worried about the malignant growth inside of her or even felt the almost insufferable pain ripping through her body. She unconsciously believed everything would be all right once she found him. That she could walk away from her fading life and start a new life with him, the life she was supposed to live anyway.

A mockingbird's song echoed in the quietude and the wind stilled to a faint breeze. In the distance, high above the mass of trees bordering both sides of the yard, morning neared.

Keith saw morning coming, which meant it wouldn't be long before the sunlight chased away the darkness. He stayed up most nights until sunrise working on his still untitled novel, and right before the sun peered over the horizon he would walk out to the road in front of his house, stand underneath the oaks and silently spend the dawning with her wherever she was.

He looked at his watch, turning his attention up toward the bedroom window. “She's going to miss it,” he said to himself.

He heard her appear out of the darkness.

“Good morning,” she said.

Keith turned around slightly startled and saw her standing in the doorway.

“I'm sorry.” June felt slightly embarrassed. “I didn't mean to sneak up on you.”

“I didn't see your bedroom light come on, so I figured you were still asleep.”

“What are you writing?” June asked and then walked over to Keith and looked down at the words he'd typed.

“Nothing.” He quickly rolled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and placed it face down on the table.

“Personal, huh?” she asked.

“No, not really,” he responded. He mulled over his initial response and changed his answer. “Well, sort of.” Keith stood and motioned toward the screen door. “There's something I want you to see.”

June followed him into the yard, up the straw-covered walkway, and out the gate. She looked a bit bewildered, trying to figure out what he wanted.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they started up Philco Road.

“Look around you, Junie. Just look.”

Massive oak trees, one with a trunk almost four feet wide, lined both sides of the narrow dirt road. Their limbs met and crisscrossed over the road. Through the cluster of leaves, limbs and moss, June saw the first rays of sunlight searching for a pathway through the darkness.

“It's just like at home,” Keith whispered.

June was mesmerized by the beautiful and familiar sight. Morning was almost upon them, and as she'd done thousands of times before, she closed her eyes and listened. A redbird chirped as it emerged from the shadows. A small branch fell in the brush. Among the serene sounds she indulged in, June heard a voice ask, “Why did you come here, Junie?”

She opened her eyes and looked at Keith, who stood directly in front of her, staring at her, waiting for her to respond.

“I know you, Junie,” he said. “And I can tell when something's wrong.”

June wished she could open up and tell him everything, but there was
something she needed to know first. “Can I ask you something, Keith?”

“As long as it's not about that night,” he answered.

“No,” she said. “It isn't.”

June saw the first ray of sunlight when it pierced the thick cover of foliage above them. It was followed by another, and several others, bending and turning until flashes of light and shades of darkness existed side by side.

Keith was shrouded in a pocket of light. He tried to move out of its way like he playfully did those mornings on Bacon Street, but the sunlight changed directions and followed him. He never understood this phenomenon, but she did.

“You're blessed,” she told him one morning. “And it's not because your father's a preacher. God blessed you.”

But he never felt blessed.

“What were you going to ask me?”

June pulled the sweater tighter around her and turned her back to him to avoid looking into his penetrating eyes. She had to keep him from seeing the tears forming in hers.

“Junie?” He touched her on the shoulder.

“Do you still love me?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you still love me?”

“I don't know,” he answered and backed away from her.

“How can you not know?”

“Because I try not to think about it,” he mumbled.

“Then think about it!” She turned around to face him, frustration tinging the tone in her voice. “I need you to know!”

“I don't know, Junie. And besides, it doesn't matter,” he tried to explain. “It shouldn't matter how I feel. Not now.”

“But it does, Keith. It matters to me.”

“Why, Junie? That was so long ago.”

“Yes, it was a long time ago.” She was nearly at the point to where she was ready for the dam to break. “Ten years ago. But, I never stopped loving you or believing in you because I couldn't. Now, please answer me.”

He stared into her eyes and asked, “What's wrong, Junie?”

“Do you still love me?”

“Tell me what's wrong,” he demanded.

“Not until you answer me! Do you still love me?”

Keith was ready to run. Run again. And there was nothing holding him. Nothing keeping him from running, except his feet. They had taken root in the dirt road and no matter how much he willed them to move, to carry him to a place where her words could not reach him, they would not let him go.

In the midst of his inner struggle, he remembered her lying in bed, balled up in the green comforter, half-smiling as she slept. And he was there beside her, staring blankly out the window of Mildred's Bed and Breakfast Inn at the drizzling rain. It was all coming back to him. Once again, he felt the stinging tears in his eyes as he quietly eased out of bed and fumbled in the dark for his clothes. He slipped on his underwear and then the sky-blue pants and white shirt. He picked up the patent leather shoes, stuffed the socks inside them, and tucked the tuxedo jacket underneath his arm. Finally, he turned and stared back at her for what he thought was sure to be the last time.

“Do you still love me?” June begged, but he could not hear her. Not where he was. He was in another time and place, and not even her melodic voice could reach him.

There were six steps between the bed and the door of the bedroom at Mildred's.

“Do you still love me?”

The first step was the hardest part of the journey.

“Answer me, Keith!”

But he made it. Somehow, he found the strength to take the first step…and the next…and the next…until he was at the door.