The Pages We Forget (3 page)

She didn't cry the morning he first ran away and she had not cried once since then. No matter how much it hurt, she wouldn't let herself cry because she couldn't be sure the tears would stop falling if they ever started. So she played it safe and never consciously questioned why he left. Or why he refused to see or talk to her. But now, after seeing his face again and looking into his deep, despondent eyes, she could no longer make herself forget what happened that night. She remembered touching him. Then slowly undressing him. Making love to him. She remembered everything. Even the words she'd tried so hard to forget:
please don't.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn't forget those two words. “Please don't” echoed down the stairway, through the living room and onto the porch as he walked out of her life again.

Scared that Keith might not show up for his father's funeral, June and Kathryn decided it was best for her not to attend. So, June flew back home to Detroit that afternoon, promising herself she would never interfere in his life or attempt to contact him again. Her tears started falling that day seven years ago.

June wiped a tear from her eye, then turned and looked at one of the three framed pictures of her son, Trevor. There was Keith's smile again. Trevor's eyes were his, too. So was his straight black hair and caramel complexion. They could pass for twins.

“The years have healed the pain and we've learned to love again,” she sang and watched her fingers caress Joy's keys. In her mind, she wiped away the tears she had seen in Keith's eyes that morning ten years ago. “Until that moment in time, when again we feel the rhythm, we hear the rhyme, slowly start to beat. Then those chapters of our lives start to repeat.”

She remembered how hard it was to let go, to simply give up on the life she was supposed to share with him, but she did it. She made the painstaking decision to go on, to live, even though the life she would be living would not be her own. She couldn't forget him though. Not the smile on his face as they backed out of her driveway that night. Nor his telling eyes. His touch. Once, when she couldn't recall the sound of his voice and the silence had become too unbearable, she phoned his mother back in Hampton Springs and asked her to make a three-way call to him, so she could hear his voice.

“Remember, you can't say anything, Junie,” Lucy Kaye reminded her as Keith's phone rang. Lucy Kaye didn't know what happened between the time Junie and Keith backed out of Kathryn's driveway and the next morning. But she already knew that whatever happened, June and Keith were keeping it between them. And she
knew what Keith had said about telling anyone his whereabouts. “If it was left up to me, I'd give you his phone number and address.”

“I understand, Mrs. Adams.” The phone continued to ring.
Please be home. Please be home,
June repeated in her mind when he didn't answer after five rings.
Please.

Finally, a wavering voice answered, “Hello?”

He sounded the same. His voice still gravelly. She wondered if he looked the same. Was his hair long or short? Was it still straight and jet black? Did he ever grow the mustache he always wanted? Did he learn to smile again? Hearing his voice wasn't enough now. She wanted to see him, but seeing him was out of the question.

“Ma, I'm sorry I forgot to call you back the other night,” he said, “but I got a little busy.”

June wanted Lucy Kaye to ask him what he was busy doing. Did some friends drop by? Was it his girlfriend? Did he have a girlfriend? Did he go over to her place? Did they go out to dinner? Did they watch a movie? Listen to music? What did she look like? Was she pretty?

“I'm rewriting a story for a nature magazine, and the editor needs the rewrite plus a few more photographs by next week,” he explained. “So, that's been keeping me busy.”

“Well, let me know when the magazine will be out so I can pick up a copy at the supermarket,” Lucy Kaye uttered, trying to lengthen the conversation for June's sake, if not her own.

“You probably won't find it in Hampton Springs. It's a regional magazine, so I'll have to send you a copy,” he said. “Now tell me, are you calling just to say hello or are you still trying to get me home for the Fourth?”

“I was calling to see how my baby's doing,” she answered. “But I really would like to see you next month. So why don't you come
on home and see about your lonely old mother? It's been five years.”

“I can't promise you anything, but I'll see what I can do,” he said. “So…” he started to say but suddenly stopped. “Ma?”

He knows I'm on the phone,
June told herself.
He feels me. He knows. I have to say something.
She opened her mouth to say his name but nothing came out. She tried again and still nothing. “Hello,” she finally mumbled.

“Ma, who was that?”

Lucy Kaye didn't answer immediately.

“Ma?”

“That was Kathryn,” Lucy Kaye responded. “She just walked in.”

“Then, I better let you go,” Keith said. “I'll call you next week.”

“All right,” she replied piteously. “I already know you're going to eventually say no, but please think about coming home for the Fourth.”

“I will,” he said.

Afterward, June apologized to Lucy Kaye. She didn't know what made her say something while Keith was on the phone. It had not been her intention because she remembered the promise she made to herself. She had already broken it by having his mother call him.

That was two years ago.

June looked up from the piano keys and stared at the gold and platinum records lining the parlor wall. She looked at the framed magazine covers:
Rolling Stone. Ebony. Esquire. Vibe. People. Cosmopolitan. Essence. Vogue. Redbook. Good Housekeeping.
Even,
Time
magazine. She'd done good for herself, had nearly everything she wanted.

She felt the compelling urge to say his name, which she rarely allowed herself to do. “Keith,” she whispered and glanced around to make sure she was still alone in the parlor. It felt good. And
since there was nobody around to hear her, she said it again. And again. But this time she played a few keys on the piano and crooned each letter and every sound associated with his name. “K… Kei… Keith. Keith.”

She closed her eyes so she could see his face. She looked in his eyes and felt his fingers touch her. She felt his lips tremble when she kissed him. Then she heard the door close the morning he left her in bed pretending to be asleep. “Why?” she asked and then waited for his reticent eyes to answer her.

His eyes refused to disclose the answer she sought.

(lyrics and arrangement by June)

When I'm with you,

there's no place I'd rather be

'cause you fulfill my every need,

though you're only in my dream.

CHORUS:

You've made my life so happy,

and I'll always want you near.

But what would I say,

if you were really here?

You let me touch the sun,

hold the moon in my hands.

And when I fail to be my best,

you always understand.

I've never felt this way,

because you've never let me down.

When you hold me in your arms,

you turn my world around.

CHORUS

You're always there for me,

when I'm feeling sad and blue.

To have you here forever,

there's nothing I wouldn't do.

I'll never let you go,

never let you walk away.

Without you here with me,

I couldn't make it through the day.

CHORUS

But what would I say,

if you were really here?

I'd hold you real close

and whisper in your ear,

I love you,

if you were here.

J
une craved sunrises like a hungry baby craved its mother's milk. And God could not have created a more beautiful dawning than this one.

There's no way,
she thought out loud as she stood on the ice-covered wooden dock. She watched as the first rays of sunlight waltzed across the sky before skipping across the frozen lake.

Snow had fallen for two days, blanketing the wooded estate with more than twenty-two inches. She was standing in the same spot Tuesday when the storm bore down on the area. Alex had tried to talk her into staying inside. “You can watch from the window,” he told her as he climbed out of bed behind her. “The weather advisory said not to go outside unless you have to.”

“I have to.” She slipped an oversized wool sweater on over her knee-length flannel gown. Then she put on a pair of long johns. “And since you're up, why don't you fix me a cup of cocoa while I finish getting dressed.”

Alex walked over to the window and stared out into the dismal night. The storm had touched down an hour earlier, with trailing gusts strong enough to knock a four-foot limb off the giant sycamore outside. The limb fell on the balcony and scratched the window, almost breaking it. That's what woke them up.

“Junie, there's no way I'm letting you go out there,” Alex said.

“Will you hand me my boots?”

“You're not listening to—”

“Yes, I am,” she said, looking up at him. “I hear you, loud and clear. But you already know…”

“Junie, you're going to freeze.” He handed her the snow boots. “It's below zero.”

“Alex, I don't have time for this. It's already after six. If you hadn't bothered my alarm clock—”

“I didn't touch your clock.”

“So, why didn't it go off?”

“Maybe you forgot to set it.”

“I forgot to set it? Don't go there, Alex.”

“Well, maybe you did. Shit, you're not infallible.”

“Watch it, Love. You're getting upset when you don't have to.” June calmly took a few breaths, giving him a quick smile. “I'm not mad about it. I was just saying. Now, can I get that cup of cocoa?”

Alex left the room without saying another word. June began stringing the knee-high boots. She put on the green and beige scarf Lucy Kaye crocheted and gave her last Christmas, draping it around her long, slender neck twice.

Alex was waiting at the back door with a covered mug of cocoa in one hand and her down-filled overcoat and gloves in the other. He placed the mug on the table by the door and helped June put the coat on. “When you come back in here with pneumonia, don't come crying to me.”

“If I did get sick, trust me, you would be the last person I'd come crying to.”

“Do I detect an attitude?”

June entered the security code to turn off the house's alarm system.

“Well, do I?”

She opened the door.

“Junie!”

“You did, but I'm sorry.”

“You know something? You're starting to wear that word out.”

“Then I'm not sorry! Is that better?”

“Yeah,” he answered and then turned and walked away. “Lately, everything is okay as long as you are the one doing it.”

June hesitated for a moment. Alex was right. She had become such a bitch. Everything he did or said bothered her. At times he could be overbearing and he was always too nurturing. He watched over and cared for her like a doting father would his first newborn. But it was those same traits, the ones she used to call his strengths, that she leaned on after Keith ran away. He helped her find her way back. Lately, however, she'd become short with him, intolerant. She hoped that soon she would be able to tell him everything that had transpired without his knowledge over the past few weeks. She had an appointment with Dr. Wylie Thursday. She figured she would explain everything to Alex after the appointment, when she could assure him there was no reason for him to worry. She hesitated, wanting to apologize, but there wasn't time. Morning was fast approaching. She slipped the leather gloves on and pulled the coat's hood tight around her head. Then, with the cocoa in one hand and using her other hand as a face shield, she stepped into the frigid darkness. She pushed her way through the sixty-eight-yard barrage of wind and snow that gnawed like ants through the layers of heavy clothing. She made it to the dock in time to see the sparse remnants of what was surely a brilliant sunrise above the impenetrable overcast. That was Tuesday.

But this morning, Thursday, could not have begun more quietly spectacular. Sometime during the night, the snow had stopped
falling. She'd stayed up late talking to her mother on the phone and then she spent about an hour and a half skimming through the script,
For His Love,
a psychological thriller about a young woman coping with the anguish she felt upon witnessing her soon-to-be husband rape her sister. June had fallen in love with the story and purchased the rights to the screenplay. She decided to produce the film through her and Alex's company, White Flowers Entertainment. She also planned to star in the film, set to begin production in three weeks. The cast was assembling for a table reading in six days and she wanted to be up to par when she started rehearsing with Zoe Ross, the actress who would play her sister. June's two previous movies had done well. They were hits at the box office and she received good reviews for her acting. Despite the films' success and her success as a recording artist, she saw herself as a budding thespian, so she surrounded herself theatrically with professionals, like Zoe, whom she'd asked personally to costar in the film. She laid the script down and went to sleep around midnight.