Read What He's Been Missing Online
Authors: Grace Octavia
What He's Been Missing (5 page)
But A. J. answered, “Well, we were considering New Year's Eve.”
“Yes. One year exactly from the engagement,” Dawn added.
“I see. Well, I don't commonly take appointments during the holidays,” I said. “It's a personal limitation. I try to keep that time open so I can spend it with family. Friends. You understand?”
“Oh . . . We didn't even think of that,” Dawn said. “Of course.” She laughed. “Why wouldn't you? While we were out getting engaged on New Year's Eve, you were probably out somewhere fabulous. A ball with your”âshe looked at my bare ring fingerâ“boyfriend?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Butâ”
The magical couple looked into me with eager, hopeful eyes. I so, too, wanted to be playing on their team.
“Butâclose.” (What was that?)
“Ohhh!” they both gasped.
“I knew it!” A. J. said. “You probably have half the guys in the city chasing you. The one you love is so lucky.”
“That was so sweet to say,” Dawn said to A. J. She turned and kissed him on the cheek.
He leaned into her and put his hand over her hand on his leg.
“We understand,” Dawn went on. “You have to keep some limitations. We were just thinking: it's a new year, and we want to have the wedding on that day to symbolize our new life. Us starting out together, as a family, in our new lives.”
When Dawn said “family,” the twosome nestled closer together.
“We'll just think of another date,” A. J. said. “Maybe in October?”
I hate the entire month of October. It's a month of nothing. It comes in between the beautiful unraveling of summer in September and the final push of fall in November. Basically, all it does is hold people waiting until its very last day so they can dress up like demons and witches. It was an in-between thing. A. J. and Dawn were on to something. They needed a beginning.
“I'll look into some things,” I said before Dawn could answer A. J.'s question about October. “See what I can do about New Year's.”
“Really?” Dawn looked like she was about to pop out of her seat and hug me. “Seriously? For us?”
“Yes. I'll see about it. I'll give you two a call later this week to confirm.”
Dawn jumped out of her seat. She came around to my seat and hugged me tightly.
“I just had to give you a hug. Thank you so much,” she said, pulling me to my feet.
Then A. J. came around, too, and all three of us were hugging.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It's no problem, really,” I said in their embrace.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
I felt like we'd all just gotten engaged.
My first love had driven a red Ford pickup truckâbig time in Social Circle in 1990. His name was Chauncey Billups. He was big and strong and so black Grammy Annie-Lou wouldn't let him sit on our front stepsâin the country, after you pass a certain age, sitting on a girl's front step is a sign you're courting her and Grammy Annie-Lou wasn't having that. When I was thirteen, Grammy Annie-Lou told me Chauncey and his people were too “damn black and country”âall that when his house was less than a mile from ours, which in Social Circle meant our families once lived on the same plantation. They just lived a little farther back from the Irving plantation house that was now separated from the rest of our homes by fences and dirt roads and served as a museum and café for visitors coming to Social Circle to buy sweet onions and see the “old South.”
Grammy Annie-Lou's house was closer to the plantation because her grandfather had been the blacksmith for old “master” Redeem Irving, whom he'd actually grown up with, and had become his card partner who always “won low”âhow they say we got our last name. Family myth says Reedem and my great-great-grandfather were actually half-brothers. Chauncey Billups's family lived farther from the house. His great-great-grandparents were sharecroppers and every line of his family since were farmersâhe'd actually be the first in his family to go to college when he left Social Circle to go to the University of Georgia and become an agricultural scientist. Well, Grammy Annie-Lou didn't know anything about the University of Georgia being in Chauncey's future when we were fifteen and making eyes at each other in school. And she didn't want to hear anything about “that black Billups boy.” But, as they say, “What you want the least will come to you the easiest.” I was my mother's only child. She died when I was just three months old. Social Circle in the 1980s was like the rest of the world in the 1880s, so my father immediately tried to marry someone else, but it didn't work. His heart was too broken so he went home to live with his mama. By the time I was a teenager, I was ready to rebel and tired of the two of them fawning all over me. Chauncey was just what I wanted.
He'd just gotten his driver's license and his father gave him his old rusty red Ford that had been sitting in their backyard since forever. But Chauncey fixed it up and got it on the road. One day, he drove up to my house and didn't come up on the stoop, but he honked the horn and said, “Hey, little gal, you wanna ride?” Shit, I was in that car faster than a fly. We went everywhere. And soon we were secret boyfriend and girlfriend. He took my virginity in the front seat, and I didn't know anything about birth control, so I got pregnant. I also didn't know anything about being pregnant, so I didn't know what was going on until I was sitting in church between my father and Grammy Annie-Lou and saw red everywhere on my dress. Grammy Annie-Lou dragged me to the bathroom thinking it was my period, but I wouldn't stop bleeding. The blood was everywhere. Soon the bathroom was filled with women. Mama Billups, too. They didn't tell me what was going on. They had me stand over the top of the toilet with my legs wide apart. I remember that Grammy Annie-Lou didn't look worried anymore. She looked afraid. They all did. When we walked outside the bathroom on our way to my father's car, he was standing right at the door. “Who done this to you?” he demanded. “You tell your father!” Grammy Annie-Lou pushed him back. “Leave her alone, Robert. Now is not the time. We've got to get this girl to the hospital. Move back!” She pushed again and the women made a circle around me.
The next morning, I woke up in my bed with a bedpan on the nightstand. At the hospital, the doctor had said I'd had a misscar-riage. Grammy Annie-Lou was asleep in a chair beside the bed. I heard my father's voice out front on the porch. He wasn't yelling, but I could hear his anger. I limpedâfor no reason other than that I thought I shouldâto the window. Chauncey was standing at the foot of the steps. My father was at the top. The old red Ford was parked in the dirt road in front of the steps. I pressed my ear to the window so I could hear. “You took my best thing from me. The only thing I have that's worth anything. The only thing I love,” my father said. “A man can't take something from another man without paying for it.” Chauncey didn't respond. I looked to see him stand straighter. “You ruined my girl,” my father said. “What are you going to do?” Chauncey looked at me in the window. “You look at me, son,” my father said. “My daughter ain't about to be no one's good-time gal, so you can take your eyes off her. After high school, she's going off to college. She's too smart to be around here with you. But there's still the matter of what you owe me.” Chauncey's eyes left me. He looked down at his pocket. He slid his right hand into his right pocket and pulled out the keys to the Ford. He threw them to my father and that was that. Chauncey obeyed the old-school code and never spoke to me again. My father parked the pickup behind Grammy Annie-Lou's house and never once moved it. Grass and wild onions grew high up under the hood and soon it seemed to be eaten alive by the earth. Our old dog, King, the world's only fat German Shepard, slept under the bed in back.
At my father's funeral last year, Grammy Annie-Lou handed me a piece of folded-up napkin paper. My father had written his will in blue ink on the inside. He owned three things and gave them all to me: a set of tools, King, and the old red Ford. I left the tools and King in Social Circle, but a few months ago, I had the truck hauled to Atlanta with dreams of fixing it up and maybe even giving it back to Chauncey. My father's words were spoken in sadness and tradition and no pickup could ever make up for what that experience did to me . . . to all three of us. And it wasn't all Chauncey's fault. I think my father realized both of those things at some point. But he couldn't return the truck. And Chauncey wouldn't have taken it anyway, back then.
For the last three months, Bird, the owner of the West End auto body shop where the tow truck driver suggested I deliver the Ford, had been working on it, rebuilding everything under that hood that had rotted during all that time out in the yard, making big plans for the red candy paint exterior and bigger plans for the white leather seats and sound system.
“Gonna need to send off for those valves. Can't use what they got at the store. New stuff is crap. Can't put new stuff on an old thing,” Bird said, after explaining a list of problems he was having with the engine he'd just finished rebuilding. As usual, the point of the speech was that he needed more parts and more time and more money. He was so particular about everything with the truck, excited about getting it back to its original condition with its original parts.
“And how much are these valves and such going to cost me?” I asked Bird. We were standing in front of the truck in the shop's garage. He'd just finished rolling out from underneath the hood and had some kind of black oil zigzagging down his forehead. He wasn't in shape but had the arms of a man who lifted many heavy things. Looking at him, it was hard not to imagine what those things might beâif maybe I could be one. Maybe it was the tattoos all over his arms. Or his tight T-shirts that showed every mark of hard work on his chest. The seemingly endless reserve of sweat that glistened over his arms whenever I saw him.
“How much you got, Miss Lady?” Bird leaned against the hood and crossed his legs. When he moved like that, it reminded me of Chauncey and the country-boy flirtation he'd used to get me into that truck. Bird tried the same thing. Every week when I stopped by Bird's Auto on Tuesday during my lunch break, he'd lean against the truck with his two gold chains hanging from his neck and ask me out. I wasn't fool enough to fall for his advances. It wasn't anything to take to heart. He was a “cat caller,” meaning he'd make a call at any cat . . . any cat.
“Depends on how much you need,” I said, matching his tone. It was just our play.
“All that money you got,” he said, looking me over from heel to head, “ain't nothing to you. What you got, a million in the bank?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it's not truck-fixing money either way.”
“Hum . . .” Bird reached out and pinched my elbow. “When you gonna let me take you out, Miss Lady? You so pretty.”
“Come on. You ask me that every week.”
“And every week you turn me down.”
“So why do you keep asking?”
“ 'Cause you keep coming back.” Bird pinched my elbow again and wiped the last little trickle of grease from his forehead with his elbow. “Real question is, why you keep saying no?”
“Because, Mr. Bird, I don't mix business with pleasure. And I'm a woman of my word.”
Bird chuckled and went inside to get a printout of my invoice from his receptionist. I chuckled, too, and turned to get a look at my real car waiting in the parking lot outside the garage. Ian had just pulled up beside it and was stepping out of his car.
“Ian? What are you doing here?” I looked at my watch. “Is it Wednesday?”
“No, it's not Wednesday,” he said, stopping in front of me. “Just wanted to see you. Stopped by the office and Krista said you were over here in the hood.” He looked over my shoulder at the truck. “Man, I can't believe you're really fixing that old thing up. I thought you were joking.”
“No, I was serious. I'll be on the road in no time.”
“Yeah, sitting on the side of the road while you call AAA to come pick you up,” he said with a smirk. Ian lectured on Tuesdays, so he was wearing his standard young professor attire: a shirt and tie with a thick retro cardigan with leather patches on the sleeves; jeans; and a paperboy hat. Last year, one of his students took a picture of him lecturing and e-mailed it to a local newspaper that deemed Ian the “sexiest professor in Atlanta” in a special edition of the newspaper. Ian pretended that he hated the idea, but that didn't stop him from collecting at least ten copies and stashing them in his office.
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