The Pages We Forget (7 page)

The next sound Alex heard was their housekeeper knocking on the bedroom door. “Alex! Alex!” Mrs. Freda cracked the door and said, “Bernard's here and he seems a little anxious.”

“I'll be down in a minute,” he replied as he crawled out of bed. Mrs. Freda was about to close the door when he called, “Mrs. Freda!”

“Yes?”

“Where's Junie?”

“She's in the studio.”

“In the studio?”

“She's been shut up in there all morning.”

Alex looked at the clock. It was eleven-thirty. “Damn.” Alex jumped up. “Why did you let me sleep this late?”

“Junie told me not to wake you.”

“What?”

“She said you needed to rest.”

“Tell Bernard I'll be right down.” Alex walked into the bathroom to freshen up before meeting with Bernard.

Bernard was sitting at the desk in the library talking on the phone when Alex walked in. “What's up, B?”

Bernard signaled for Alex to wait while he finished talking to his assistant, Cheryl. “Pick us up here at six. And be on time. Our flight leaves at eight.”

Alex sat on the edge of the desk and stared at the television. A show forecasting Oscar night was on E! Television. “Are you watching this?” Alex asked Bernard.

“It's a repeat. I saw it this morning,” he answered. “According to E! and a poll on CBS's
The Early Show,
we're still the front-runner.” He paused. “Cheryl, I'll check in with you later.” He pressed the phone's end call button and then turned to Alex. “What happened this morning?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“Junie and Leatrice were supposed to meet with Chip so she could pick the gown she's going to wear Sunday, but Junie called and left a message canceling the appointment. I called here, but Junie told Mrs. Freda to hold all calls. I paged Leatrice to see if she knew why Junie canceled, but she hasn't called me back yet.”

“I haven't talked with her this morning, so I don't know,” Alex said and started toward the door. “She's been in the studio all morning.”

“Really?” Like Alex, Bernard was a bit surprised to hear June was in the studio. Unless she was recording, she rarely went in the studio. Even when Alex was working at home with other well-known artists, she hardly ever sat in on their recording sessions. The studio belonged to Alex. Bernard asked, “What's she doing?”

“I have no idea.”

Unbeknownst to Alex and Bernard, June wasn't alone in the studio, as Mrs. Freda suggested. Torrence Clarke, one of the hottest young producers and recording engineers in the business, was in the studio with her. After meeting Torrence at a local talent showcase three years ago, Alex took the then seventeen-year-old from Detroit's Eastside under his wing. He debuted professionally the next year when Alex allowed him to produce two songs on June's third CD. Both songs were huge hits.

While Alex slept, June had called Torrence around five-thirty that morning and asked him to come over. “I wouldn't call and bother you this time of morning if it wasn't urgent,” she told him. “I'm working on a song and I need your help. Can you come to the house?” Torrence's money-green Jag pulled into the driveway a few minutes after sunrise. They had been locked in the studio ever since.

He was working the huge audio mixing board while June was in the recording booth, preparing to do a take, when Alex and Bernard walked in the studio. June glanced at Alex and Bernard through the big glass window separating the control room and the recording booth. Unfazed by their presence, June adjusted the headphones over her ears then closed her eyes as Torrence cued the music.

“The years have healed the pain.” Her achingly beautiful voice wafted through the studio. “We've learned to love again. Until that moment in time, when again we feel the rhythm, we hear the rhyme. It slowly starts to beat. Then those chapters of our lives start to repeat.”

Bernard sat down next to Torrence, awestruck by the power of the lyrics. “Did you write this?”

“No. She did.”

“What?” Bernard turned to Alex. “This is good.”

Alex nodded, trying his best to disguise the indifference in his body language.

“Our eyes tell stories, of how we used to be,” June continued singing. “Memories locked inside, never to be free.”

June finished the song as Alex and Bernard looked on. She'd been around Alex long enough to read his body language, despite his stoic stare. He liked the song, but that didn't mean she was ready to face him. He was sitting in a corner when she walked out of the recording booth. The go-ahead-and-say-it look on his face told her that he'd figured out what inspired her to write this. She tried not to look at him, focusing her attention toward Bernard instead. “What do you think, B?” she asked.

“It's beautiful,” he responded. “So, I see you've been moonlighting as a songwriter?”

“Actually, Alex has been teaching me over the years. I just never sat down and tried it myself.” She looked at Alex, trying to get a silent nod of corroboration. He looked away.

“Well, you're off to a hell of a start.” Bernard was oblivious to the tension between Alex and June, too enthralled with what he'd just heard.

“It took me there when I first heard it this morning,” Torrence added.

“Speaking of this morning.” Bernard remembered why he had driven out to Grosse Pointe. “Why did you cancel your fitting? We're leaving for L.A. tonight.”

June began to fidget, playing with her hands, trying to find something to give her courage, despite her growing desire to hide. All morning, June had deliberated and mapped out what she would say and how she would bring the subject up. Instead of beating around the bush, she came right out and said, “I'm not going.”

“Wait a minute.” Bernard looked at June, trying to regard what she'd announced. He blinked a few times before he gathered his thoughts. “Now say that again.”

“I'm not going.”

“You're not going where?” Bernard asked for clarification.

“To L.A.,” she calmly answered. “It doesn't matter if I'm there to sing the song or not. The winner has already been chosen.” She turned to Torrence and asked, “Can I hear what we have so far?”

Torrence, feeling quite uneasy and privy to a moment he felt he should not be a part of, looked at Alex and Bernard for directions. Alex offered no assistance, sitting in his space with a faraway look in his eyes.

“Well, Alex?” Bernard asked.

“What do you want me to do?” Alex calmly asked. “This doesn't concern me.”

“Man, what the hell is going on here? It doesn't concern you? You wrote and produced the damn song. If it wins, you're the one who'll walk up there and accept an Oscar! That doesn't concern you?”

Alex was unruffled. “It would concern me,” he said. “If this wasn't just the tip of the iceberg.” He calmly stood and walked out of the studio.

Bernard turned to June. “I don't know what's going on with you and Alex, and I'm going to stay out of it. But, I'm your manager, Junie, and you're supposed to talk to me before you go making decisions like this!”

“I'm sorry.”

“Sorry?”

Torrence interrupted by saying, “I'll wait outside.”

“No!” June stopped him. “I want to hear the song.”

Torrence sat down again. He adjusted a few dials and then turned a knob and the recording began. “Yesterday's songs, some live forever.
Their rhythm and their rhyme, still playing melodies in our minds.”

“It'll sound a lot better when we add a few background vocal tracks,” June said.

“I don't know,” Torrence disagreed. “I don't think this song needs much background vocals.”

Bernard stepped between June and Torrence, taking a decidedly calmer approach in speaking to his star client. “All right, Junie, you say you're not going. May I ask why?”

“Because I have something else I need to do.”

“Something like what?”

“This CD.”

“What CD?”

“I'm recording a new CD. This is the first song.”

Bernard scratched his head. “Does Alex know anything about this?”

“No.”

“And when were you going to tell him? And tell me?”

“I don't know. One day.”

Bernard was speechless.

June began to hum in tune with the song. “You're right, Torrence. Let's keep the background vocals to a minimum.”

•  •  •

Alex had not misjudged the size of the iceberg. Not only was June determined to record the CD, she insisted on writing and producing every song on it. She had coproduced two songs written by Alex on her three previous CDs, but it was always Alex who wrote, produced and charted out the direction of her music. This time, she said she didn't want his help. Her explanation was the
project was personal and it was paramount that she wrote and recorded the CD now.

June's peculiar behavior didn't end there. She had been shuttered in the studio for nearly thirty-one hours when she called and told Bernard she was pulling out of the film,
For His Love.
It was the Tuesday Alex, Trevor and Bernard returned from the Academy Awards ceremony. She told him she couldn't do the film because her new
Pages
CD demanded all of her time.

Bernard and the rest of June's handlers, including Cynthia Duckett, the head of Duckett's PR, Inc., were already working overtime. The rumor mill was already circulating stories about cracks in June and Alex's picture-perfect relationship. First came the headline, “Alex and June, No Longer,” after Alex attended the Oscars ceremony without June. Against Bernard and Cynthia's advice, he excluded her during his acceptance speech. Next was the headline, “June Quits Show Biz,” pasted in bold letters across the top of more than one national tabloid after the news of her quitting the film began to swirl. The most hurtful story was the one that blared, “June Ready to Leave Alex for Old Lover.”

Even Alex started believing the rumors after June backed out on their Easter trip to Hampton Springs. Trevor had been ready since last Thanksgiving's visit to get back to his grandmother's so he could ride the horse Kathryn bought him the previous Christmas. A promise was a promise, he angrily reminded his parents during breakfast. Breakfast was the only time they could count on seeing June outside the studio.

“We did promise,” Alex told June later that morning. He stood in a corner of the studio watching June compose music for a new song on the electronic keyboard. “We can't simply break our promise to him,” he said.

“I can't go,” she answered, not bothering to look back at Alex. “I don't have time.”

“So what do you want me to tell him?”

“I don't know. When's the next holiday? Mother's Day. Tell him we'll go for Mother's Day.”

“We both promised him we would go this weekend.”

“Well, I can't!”

Before he knew he was saying it, Alex replied sharply, “Fine! Then I'll take him! You don't have to go!” Alex didn't know where that statement came from, as the thought of going to Hampton Springs without her was never on his list of things he wanted to do. It wasn't that he didn't like Hampton Springs. Everybody in the town went out of their way to be nice and courteous to him. After all, he was with June. But he always felt they looked at him as her consolation prize instead of the man she really loved. He had never been to Hampton Springs without her, but a promise was a promise.

Alex marched out the studio, up the stairs and into Trevor's room, where Trevor was lying in bed staring up at the ceiling.

“Pack your bags.” Alex tried to hide the contempt he was feeling. “Our plane's leaving in two hours.”

Trevor wiped the stagnated tears from his eyes and sat up in bed. “Is Ma going?”

Alex walked over to the bed and sat down. “No. She can't because she's busy working.”

“But she promised!”

“I know. But remember, she promised before she knew about her new CD. We both know that she wouldn't miss a trip to Hampton Springs unless something very important came up.”

Trevor felt better knowing that his dad wasn't too upset because his mother wasn't going. “So who's going? Just me and you?”

“What's wrong with just me and you going?”

“Nothing,” Trevor answered.

“You ashamed of your old man or something?”

“Come on, Dad.” Trevor laughed. “Chill.”

Alex and Trevor left on a Friday afternoon flight to Tallahassee and returned to Detroit Tuesday night. It was nearly one a.m. when they arrived home. Alex toted an exhausted Trevor up the stairs to his bedroom. Trevor passed out on the bed before his head hit the pillow. Alex put Trevor's pajamas on him, pulling the blanket over him. He turned the light off on his way out of the room.

Alex expected June to be asleep, but she wasn't in bed. The bed had not been slept in since he left. Anger consumed him as he imagined what she had been doing all weekend.

He saw no traces of Torrence in the studio, finding June alone instead. She looked like she was lost in her thoughts, but Alex's anger took over.

“So, is this where you were all weekend when your son was trying to call you?” Alex marched in the control room. June was still scribbling on the sheet. He noticed the title of the song at the top of the page, and it only served to infuriate him further.

“You're back,” June looked up, acknowledging his presence.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“I'm working on a new song.”

“It's two in the morning,” he told her. “You can finish it tomorrow.”

“I have to finish it now,” she replied and began humming the chorus to the song as she played along on the keyboard.

“Because I love you,” she sang. “And my love is true. I love you. No one else will do. Because without you, I cannot see. Who would I love and who would I be?”