The Pages We Forget (29 page)

Mr. and Mrs. Whitehurst, the only residents of Bacon Street who were there when the original seven families agreed to forget the past and start anew, now worried that their decision to live apart from the rest of the world had somehow contributed to this horrible transgression. Keith's confession was proof. He ran away to keep from shattering the image his father had of him. If Jordan Rickards had been able to live outside the world his parents
and the others created for him, maybe his wife would have stayed and this never would have happened. That's what they concluded, and in doing so, placed the blame on themselves.

No one went untouched.

For the first time in her sixty-three years, Mrs. Blue Hen's faith wavered. She didn't question God when her husband died in a car accident the day after he bought the yellow '55 Chevy he'd worked six days a week for two years to buy. Her faith wasn't brought into question the night her daughter, Wilhelmina, laid her ten-month-old son, Simon, in the bed with his grandmother before she walked out of the front door and never returned. Instead, she told everyone that she had chosen to raise her grandson because Wilhelmina had enlisted in the military and would be serving in Europe. She believed in God's infinite wisdom, despite the imperceptible reasons for her husband's tragic death and for having to be the only mother her grandson knew. But today, she looked toward Heaven and asked what could be right about having to ask her grandson had he been touched.

“I'd give anything to keep from having to ask you this,” she told him. And she would have, had she not already witnessed its crippling impact on Keith's life. “Did Coach ever touch you?”

“What?”

“Did he touch you?”

“You mean like?” He glanced down at his genital area.

She nodded yes.

“No,” he stuttered. “Why would he touch me there?”

Mrs. Blue Hen watched as his dream of pitching for the Atlanta Braves faded along with his innocence and her faith.

Although it had been forty-six years since Mrs. Rosa Lee married and moved off Bacon Street, she felt the tremors that day. She
had not thought about her youngest son since he confessed to murdering a convenience store clerk in Perry seventeen years ago. She went home after hearing his confession and removed every photograph of him, every piece of clothing that belonged to him, and every other sign of his existence. And, she did not speak his name again until the afternoon when the revelation of another unspeakable act forced her to relive the shame.

The picture no longer perfect, their lives no longer theirs, they joined Keith, June, Lucy Kaye, and Kathryn and did the only thing left to do.

“They won't get the police involved if you leave and never come back,” Alex informed Coach Rickards later that evening.

“Where will I go?”

“I don't know,” Alex answered. “But if you leave, which is in your best interest, they're prepared to make you a very good offer for your house and land.”

“My house and land? What's Keith trying to do to me? Take everything I have? Destroy me?”

“Isn't that what you did to him?” Alex turned and looked across the neatly manicured yard. He shook his head in disgust. “You really don't get it, do you?”

“I said I was sorry! What more does he want from me?”

“He wants you to leave. And so do the others.” Alex stared at Coach, who sat in his porch swing. The reality of what had occurred earlier that day had not fully settled in.

“This is my home and these people are my family,” he said. “Why do they want me to go?”

“You molested one of their children!”

“No!” Coach objected. “That's not what happened. That's not how it happened. You have to believe me.”

“Keith trusted you!”

Coach stood and walked toward Alex. “Please,” he said and reached out to Alex. “Help me. They'll listen to you.”

“Don't!” Alex stepped back toward the steps. “Don't expect any sympathy from me because I don't have it to give. When you molested Keith,” he said, “you ruined June's life. She wouldn't be with me now if you hadn't done what you did to Keith, but she wouldn't be dying! And another thing. Count yourself lucky. Because if you had put your hands on my son, you wouldn't have to leave. You'd be a dead man right now. Now accept Keith's offer or we're calling the cops.”

“Why can't we discuss this?”

“Accept or decline!”

“Why?” Coach sat back down. “Why is he doing this to me?”

“I'm only going to ask you one more time. Do you accept or decline?”

“I'll go,” Coach reluctantly answered. “I don't know where, but I will go.”

Alex walked off of the porch and didn't look back.

•  •  •

The following Friday, two moving vans pulled out of Coach's driveway. Kathryn and Lucy Kaye were assisting a crew of florists and decorators as they hastily prepared her house and yard for June's wedding. June's condition had worsened, so Kathryn moved the wedding from the church to her house. She and Lucy Kaye were stringing a wreath of golden oak leaves, ornamental berries, and magnolia blossoms across the porch banister. They tried their best to ignore the vans, but it had only been seven days and that wasn't nearly enough time for them to forget and to forgive.

Kathryn nudged Lucy Kaye, whose eyes were filled with tears, to the door. “We will be inside,” Kathryn signed to Inez, who she'd asked to assist her in coordinating the wedding.

Lucy Kaye went inside but Kathryn couldn't walk away. She had to wait long enough to watch the two vans drive past her house. They were transporting more than the well-kept furniture, heirlooms and keepsakes of one of the first families to settle into the Quarters and the first to move into their new home on Bacon Street. The van pulled around Sheriff Walker's blockade at the corner of Bacon and Willow Streets, carrying the banished memories of four generations of Rickards.

•  •  •

The living room, the dining room, and the hallways were filled with bouquets of hydrangeas, sunflowers, roses, orchids and an assortment of other seasonal flowers.

Everyone saw the tears in Lucy Kaye's eyes when she
and Kathryn walked through the living room and up the stairs, but they pretended to be so involved in what they were doing that they didn't notice. June, more peaked and emaciated, was lying on the couch staring blankly at the television while Alex, Keith, and Trevor installed a new ceiling fan in the living room. Her health was failing more rapidly now, and she was taking more and more medicine to make her condition tolerable. Everyone, including June, had accepted the inevitable, but they were still struggling to come to grips with the abeyance of their lives without her.

Keith stood on a footstool holding up the ceiling fan while Alex stood on a small ladder and attached it to the wires. “Trevor, hand me a screwdriver,” Keith said.

“The big one or the little one?” Trevor asked.

“The little one.”

Keith handed Alex the screwdriver and Alex used it to tighten the last screws.

“What do you think so far, Junie?” Alex asked.

“It looks good,” she answered without turning away from the television. A television special devoted to her and her music was airing on BET, and the show's host was reflecting on June's early years as a youngster in Hampton Springs. There were pictures of June singing at age nine in Mt. Nebo's adult choir and pictures taken from her high school yearbook.

“What are you watching?” Alex asked.

Despondent, she answered, “Another one of those tribute shows that's talking about me like I am already dead. She was a shooting star! Did you see her? Did you spot her before she burned out?”

Alex stepped down from the ladder and sat down next to June. “They're just trying to show you how much they love you,” he told her. “They want to make sure you know.”

“Her latest CD,
The Pages We Forget,
is still riding the top of the album charts after eight weeks,” Roxie told viewers. “The title cut from the CD is also number one on the singles chart. Personally, I think this CD is June at her absolute best. If you don't believe me, check out the video to the album's title track, ‘The Pages We Forget.' ”

Trevor closed the toolbox and walked over to the couch so he could watch the video. “Keith, have you seen Ma's new video?” Trevor asked.

“No.” Keith shook his head.

“Yesterday's songs. Some live forever,” June sang as she walked up the stairs of a Victorian-styled inn, which was an exact replica of Mildred's Bed and Breakfast. She stepped lightly, hand-in-hand with no one, but in her mind, holding onto a man whose face she
hadn't seen in seven years. “Their rhythm and their rhyme, still playing melodies in our minds.”

Keith stepped down from the footstool and walked over to the couch. He stood slightly behind June, Alex, and Trevor.

“A story behind each, of a love we both promised to keep,” June sang as she remembered touching and kissing her lover. “So many, many years of lonely nights filled with tears.”

Keith remembered the night depicted in the video.

“Our eyes tell stories of how we used to be,” June sang in the video and, in her mind, undressed her lover. “Memories locked inside, never to be free.” They were there again. “And now after all this time, we pass like we've never met.” June stood alone at the window, wrapped in a green comforter, solemnly staring out into the rainy night. “Neither wanting to remember the pages we forget.”

Keith knew June was still feeling the hurt he caused her when he walked away that morning. It was etched across her face and he could hear it in her faint sobbing as she watched the video. “I'm sorry,” he said and placed his hand on her shoulder.

“I know,” she replied and wiped the tears from her eyes. “It wasn't your fault.”

Although she had said yes to marrying him, Alex was still uneasy about June's relationship with Keith. He knew this moment was theirs, one that he had no place in, so again he buried the envy and jealousy and did what he thought was best for her. “Trevor, I need you to help me in the kitchen,” Alex said.

Trevor knew what was going on, so he followed Alex into the kitchen, being careful not to look at his mom or Keith as he walked out of the living room.

“The years have healed the pain,” June sang as she made love to her imaginary lover. “We've learned to love again.”

Keith sat next to June. She reached for his hand and he placed
his hand in hers. Once again, they watched their lives change forever.

“Junie, if I could turn back the hands of time, I would never have left you.”

She placed a finger across his lips and nodded her head in agreement.

“You asked me if I still loved you,” Keith uttered, moving her finger from across his lips. He stared into her eyes. “I—”

“Please don't,” she begged.

“I have to, Junie.”

“No, you don't. Please.” Since the morning he left her in bed pretending to be asleep, she'd dreamed of one day hearing him say the words that she could not allow him to say now.

Keith reached around her and then took her in his arms and held her close to him. He still loved her. But she was right. It was too late. He ran too far and waited too long. Still, that didn't stop him from asking, “May I kiss you?”

“Please do,” she answered without hesitation.

Tenderly, affectionately, his lips met hers.

“And now after all this time,” June sang in the video. She stared out the bedroom window as the rain scribbled her lover's face on the black canvas of night. “We're still feeling the rhythm and hearing the rhyme. Will we ever remember? Why don't you want to remember the pages we forget?”

A peculiar calm followed; June was ready now. All her questions had been answered. Her life redeemed. Lived. There was only one thing left to do before saying good-bye. Marry the man who saved her, who stood beside her and loved her even when she wasn't able to love him back.

•  •  •

Trevor lit the first candle and began the sunrise ceremony to unite his mom and dad. He walked over to light Simon and Lucy Kaye's candles. They in turn, lit the candles of the people behind them, and when all the candles were lit, they placed the candles in the holders that lined the aisle. The forty guests included Delaine, president of Antmar Records; their Grosse Pointe neighbor and friend, Anita Baker; Susan Taylor, the former editor of
Essence
magazine; and the rest of June's Hampton Springs' family.

Keith was inside waiting for the door of the study to open and for June to step out. He paced the hallway, pausing as he turned around each time to fidget with his boutonniere. Keith stopped pacing and walked to the window and stared enviably at Alex, who wore an identical tuxedo with a boutonniere of five mini-spray rosebuds framed in a spiral of white silk. He tried not to, but he couldn't help wishing he was the one standing at the altar waiting to take her as his wife instead of the one giving her away. Alex had been right. He couldn't walk away after loving her. For more than ten years, he ran from her. But now, the thought of facing the rest of his life without her cut deeper than anything.

Inside the study, Kathryn's eyes were fixated on her daughter as Inez arranged June's ballerina-length silk-tulle veil.

“You're beautiful,” Kathryn remarked.

June tearfully stared back into her mother's eyes and responded, “I love you so much.”

“And I love you. Now stop that crying.” Kathryn reached under the veil and wiped June's eyes with a handkerchief. “You're too pretty for that.”

Inez opened the door. “It's time.”

Keith's heart raced.

Kathryn pushed June's wheelchair into the hallway. The sequined
flowers appliquéd to the elegant white gazar sheath shimmered beneath the silk veil.