The Pages We Forget (22 page)

“You can't keep running away from me.” June tried to grab for him, determined to get the answers she desperately needed. “I won't let you. Not this time. Aaaahhh!”

He couldn't hear her, but nothing prevented him from feeling her excruciating pain. He turned and looked back in time to see her collapse and fall to the ground.

“Junie!”

•  •  •

His eyes were wide open but he could not see.

Alex didn't see the bewildered stares and pointing fingers as he rushed into the lobby of the Cancer Center at Shands Hospital in Gainesville. He didn't see the sign directly in front of him.

“Can I help you?” a hoarse voice asked from behind him.

He turned around and saw a burly security guard.

“I'm trying to find the Cancer Center.”

“You're in the Cancer Center,” the guard pointed to the sign. “Patient information is right down the hallway.”

Alex half-nodded and hurried off down the hallway.

“Cancer,” he said to himself. Alex wasn't sure he had heard Leatrice right when she revealed June's secret a few hours earlier. He was in the parlor playing a song from June's new CD on the piano when the doorbell rang.

“I don't feel like celebrating,” he sang softly and took a big gulp from the glass of brandy on the piano. “I don't feel like conversating. Don't feel like masquerading. I'm letting time pass me by.”

The doorbell rang again. This time it was followed by a fist pounding on the door.

Alex stopped playing and looked at his watch. “Who in the hell could that be? It's two-thirty in the morning.”

“Alex! Alex!”

“Hold on, Leatrice.” He stumbled toward the door. “I'm coming.”

Alex opened the door and started back toward the parlor without bothering to look at Leatrice or the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand.

“I need to talk to you,” Leatrice said and closed the door behind her.

“I don't feel like talking!” Alex yelled from the parlor. He sat down at the piano, turning the glass of brandy up and emptying it.

“I should have told you this from the start,” Leatrice said, walking into the parlor. “I never should have agreed to keep it a secret.”

“If it's about Junie, I don't want to hear it,” Alex said and turned his attention to the piano keys. He played the C sharp key and listened closely. “It's a little off-key. Needs tuning.”

“Stop it!” Leatrice slammed the sheet of paper down on the piano in front of Alex. “Look!”

The headline blared from the sheet of paper, “What's Ailing June?” There was a picture of June wearily departing an airplane at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. It was obvious from the photo that June was in distress. Trevor was beside her, holding her up and guiding her through the crowd of onlookers.

“What's this?” Alex asked.

“I printed it off the internet,” Leatrice answered. “It'll be all over the news tomorrow.”

Alex stared at the photo for a few moments, waiting for his alcohol-influenced vision to clear. With the paper in hand, he walked over to the window and looked out at the fog-covered lake.
The light was still out on the dock. He wished he could go outside and lose himself in the darkness. He didn't know what Leatrice was about to tell him, but he wasn't ready to hear it. He wasn't ready to know. He closed his eyes tightly and wished he was somewhere else.

“Cancer,” is all he heard Leatrice say.

“Cancer?”

“June has ovarian cancer.” She sat on the piano stool, ready for the flurry of questions that Alex may have had. “I wanted to tell you, Alex, but she made me promise not to.”

“Cancer? Junie? My Junie has cancer?”

“I begged her to tell you.”

“How long, Leatrice?”

“Four, maybe five months,” she answered. “She needs you, Alex. She really needs you.”

Alex bolted for the door. Leatrice hurried behind him, but he was backing out of the driveway when she rushed out the door. Within the hour, he was on a plane to Florida. He wasn't sure what he was going to say to her or how he could help her once he got there, but he had to be there with her. Nothing else mattered.

Everything made sense to him now. He understood her sudden need to record her new CD,
The Pages We Forget,
quitting the entertainment business which she loved so dearly, and most of all, her insatiable appetence for Keith. Maybe, Alex thought, everything that went on during the past few months was a direct result of her illness.

“Lord,” he silently pleaded as he peered out of the airplane's window. “I know I haven't been much of a praying man, but please hear me now. I don't know what I would do if I lost her. I can't lose her. So please, if you're listening Lord, help her. Help her.”

Alex didn't hear the flight attendant announce the plane's descent or tell passengers to fasten their seatbelts because he was watching
the sunlight variegate across the morning sky. He never shared June's lust for sunrises, but staring out at the luminous flecks of sunlight sprinkled across the billowing clouds below, made him feel closer to her. He believed deep down that they were sharing this moment together.

“Excuse me, sir,” the flight attendant leaned over and said. “Can you please fasten your seatbelt? We're about to land.”

Alex fastened his seatbelt without taking his eyes off the dawning outside the window.

“Thank you,” she said and walked off.

The black Escalade that Leatrice called and reserved for Alex was parked outside of the airport terminal. Within minutes of the plane's landing, he was on his way to Micanopy. He was an hour away when his cell phone rang.

“Dad,” a tearful voice cried out through the phone.

“Trevor?”

“Dad, where are you?”

“I'm on my way there. Where's your mother?”

“She's in the hospital, Dad.”

“Do you know the name of the hospital?”

“It's in Gainesville,” Trevor answered. “It's called Shands Hospital.”

“Where are you?”

“In the waiting room at the hospital.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

Trevor hesitated before answering, “Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“His name is Keith.”

Alex took a deep breath before responding. “Trevor, stay with Keith. I'm on my way.”

“Hurry, Dad,” Trevor's voice cracked over the phone, nearly breaking Alex's heart. “Please hurry.”

The forty or so miles to Gainesville passed in a blur.

“Can I help you, sir?” a stocky male nurse asked when Alex ran up to the nurses' station.

Before Alex could respond, a nurse who recognized him said, “Miss Thomas is in room 509. It's right around here.”

Alex was already turning the corner before anyone could react.

“Room 509,” he repeated in his head as he raced down the corridor. A middle-aged woman was pushing her ill husband in a wheelchair. Her husband, a mere frame of the man his broad shoulders and big hands suggested he once was, stared blankly at Alex. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy had left him with only a few strands of sandy brown hair on his bobbing head. He looked weak and tired. Their eyes met for a moment when they passed. It was long enough for Alex to be staggered by the air of hopelessness that surrounded the man. He saw what he and June were up against.

“Dad!” a voice yelled from behind him.

Alex turned and saw Trevor running toward him. He dismissed the feelings of dread that had momentarily crippled him and hurried to meet his son. Trevor leaped into his arms. A river of tears flowed from Trevor's eyes as he tried to tell Alex everything that had happened since he and his mother left Michigan. “And Ma said that Keith was my daddy.”

“I know,” Alex whispered in his ear. “I know.”

“But Dad!”

“Not now, Trevor,” Alex pleaded. “Please, not now.”

Trevor regarded his dad's expression. Everything his mother told him was true, and he was discerning enough to know the depth of his dad's pain. So he reached for his dad's hand. Trevor led him toward the room.

Alex stalled as they approached the door. He desperately tried to hold back his tears. “I can't, Trevor.”

“It's okay, Dad.” Trevor put his arm around Alex, steadying him. He eased the door open, guiding him inside. “Ma's going to be all right. She said she was.”

Alex didn't know what to expect when he walked into the room. He was slightly relieved when he saw June sleeping peacefully. He stopped at the door and stared at June. Before she left for Micanopy, he had not noticed anything different about her. But now that he knew about the cancer, she looked sickly to him. Her eyes sat back in their sockets. Her skin was pale and she looked thin, a lot thinner than usual.

“Why, Junie?” he asked as he walked up to the bed. He stared down at her and then he took her hand in his. “Why didn't you tell me? I could have helped you.”

He loved her more than he loved himself, and seeing her like this, so frail and anemic, was tearing him up inside.

“Dad, don't cry,” Trevor said and reached across the bed to hold their hands. “She's going to get well.”

Alex looked up at Trevor and tried to smile. He looked down at June, nodding at his son's words. “You're right, everything's going to be fine. I promise.”

Trevor was even more certain his mother was going to be okay. His dad said she would be. He smiled, then looked past Alex. Suddenly, his smile soured.

“What?” Alex asked. “What's wrong?”

And then a voice called from behind him, “Alex.”

Alex turned around and saw a man standing in a corner of the room. The man looked strikingly like his son.

“Hi. I'm Keith.”

(music and lyrics by June)

There are a million stars in the sky tonight,

and I'm wishing on them all.

Hoping they'll lead you back to me,

and you know just where I'll be.

And if memories cloud your path,

make you forget your way home.

My love can lead you through the dark,

if you kept me in your heart.

CHORUS:

I'm hoping you found a place,

somewhere in your heart

to keep our dreams

while we're apart.

I hope you saved a place,

somewhere in your heart

that belongs to me

when your new life started.

I thought I saw your face tonight,

and heard your voice in the wind.

I felt you reaching out to me;

That's what I made myself believe.

Sometimes dreams can make you lose your way,

when you're going it all alone.

But my love can carry you through the dark,

if you kept me in your heart.

CHORUS

So when your world is cold,

and your spirits broke,

take a moment to look inside.

And wherever you are,

I will be there,

if you saved a place in your heart.

CHORUS

(Repeat to fade)

K
athryn wasn't sure why she clipped the article from the
Orlando Sentinel
and then folded it neatly and placed it in a shoebox labeled: “Things Kept.” Inside the shoebox was a Ziploc bag containing a crumpled yellow rose taken from the blanket of flowers that covered her husband's coffin, all of June's grade school and high school report cards, and an autographed copy of June's first single, “Something Special.” She was sitting at the table eating breakfast when she opened the morning paper and saw the blaring headline: “Doctors try cancer drug on humans.”

‘LOS ANGELES—
A potential treatment for cancer that kills tumors by starving them of their blood supply is being tested on humans by doctors at the University of California here, researchers reported Wednesday.'

That was all she read of Mark Egan's story, but she felt the piece was worth keeping. She carefully clipped the article from the front page and the jump from page A-16 then put it in the box of kept things. She didn't think about it again until one Sunday morning months later as she and Lucy Kaye were walking to church. After a few minutes of silently debating why she thought the article was important enough to keep, she concluded it was because her husband had died of prostate cancer and she had been subconsciously remembering how her prayers for a cure went unanswered.

Kathryn sat in front of the television watching
The Wendy Williams Show
and fumbling with the phone in her lap. She was already on
pins and needles waiting to hear from June, when Lucy Kaye snatched the screen door open and ran into the living room. “Junie's in the hospital!”

“The hospital?” Kathryn stood.

“Keith just called me.”

“What happened? What did he say?”

Lucy Kaye hesitated before saying, “He said she has cancer and—”

Kathryn didn't wait for Lucy Kaye to finish telling her what Keith had said. She was already in her bedroom closet pulling out her box of “Things Kept.”

“Keith said she collapsed this morning, but she's stable right now,” Lucy Kaye walked into the room and said. “Alex just got there.”

Kathryn didn't hear anything Lucy Kaye was saying because her mind was on the article.

“Kathryn, what are you looking for?”

She opened the box and there it was, underneath a yellow daisy-shaped Mother's Day card Trevor made a year ago.