What hes been missing, p.5
What He's Been Missing, page 5
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 limped—for no reason other than that I thought I should—to 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 be—if 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.
“Very nice, Mr. I Need a New Car Every Year,” I teased.
“You’re damn skippy! I work too hard dealing with these bad-ass college students to be driving around in something old. I’ll take riding in luxury from here to there, please. What, the black man can’t have new things?”
“Nothing wrong with old things,” Bird said, appearing from behind me with the invoice in hand. “You know what they say about old cars? When the world comes to an end—you know, we drop them bombs on one another and we’re all burned to smithereens—two things will be left: roaches and old cars. Built tough.” Bird knocked on the hood of the Ford and then extended his hand to Ian. The oil and cuts and whatever on his hand were the perfect contrast to Ian’s paws that had hardly managed any upsets aside from a paper cut while grading essays. “I’m Bird, this beautiful lady’s mechanic.”
“I’m Ian—this crazy lady’s friend.” Ian tightened his jawline. I guessed he was trying to seem bigger.
“Ian? The brother who’s getting married? Congrats, man!” The handshake turned into a brotherly grip with Ian cutting his eyes at me.
“Oh, Rachel is talking about me?”
“I was just telling Bird how excited I am for you,” I said.
“No worries, man,” Bird said. “Most people don’t know it, but the garage is just like a barbershop at times. Me and Miss Lady talk about a little bit of everything. And sometimes a lot of nothing.”
Bird and his muscular arms were flirting with me again and my eyes were flirting back.
“Sure,” Ian interrupted, poking his head between us—me and the arms. “Hey, ‘Miss Lady,’ can I talk to you in private for a minute?” he asked. “Bird, it’ll only take a moment, then she’s all yours and you two can talk about whatever you like.”
Bird nodded and Ian pulled me into the parking lot.
“Talk about desperate,” Ian said, after pulling me halfway across the parking lot.
“He’s not desperate,” I said. “He’s just country.”
Bird was still standing in front of the truck waving at me.
“I wasn’t talking about him!”
“What?” I looked at Ian. “I am not desperate! According to you, I’m dating someone. Right?”
“What?”
“That’s what you told Scarlet.”
“Oh, that was nothing. She was trying to hook you up with some dude.”
“And?”
“And I knew you wouldn’t like him, so I told her you were dating someone.”
“How could you be so sure I wouldn’t like him?” I asked.
“He’s a plastic surgeon. One of Scarlet’s dad’s golf buddies. Has his own practice.” Ian was trying so hard to make all of these traits sound uninteresting.
“And? Sounds like prince charming to me!”
“You don’t like those types of guys,” he said. “He’s too successful for you.”
(If I’d had a burning poker, Ian would be missing an eye right now. )
“What the fuck is that bullshit supposed to mean?”
“Whoa!” Ian threw up his hands. “Don’t shank a brother in the West End now. I didn’t mean it however you took it.”
“There aren’t too many ways to mean it and take it,” I pointed out.
“You know what you do with types like that,” Ian said. “Like that last guy, the doctor from Morehouse . . . What was his name? Prescott? The one who was all ‘doctors without borders’ and ‘try to save the world’?”
“Preston Alcott,” I answered.
Ian stepped back and smiled before we started laughing. There was no need to retell the story. I fell hard for Preston Alcott on the first date. He had a fast car, and like Tracy Chapman, I wanted a ticket to anywhere he went. He knew fine art, fine food, history, politics. He was rich. Had manicured hands. Good teeth. Great bones. Curly hair (I’m country, so I like curly hair—whatever). He wasn’t like anything I knew. A lot of men in Atlanta have money now. A lot of men in Atlanta drive Bentleys and live in penthouses. But Preston didn’t do it like it was new. Like it mattered to him. He was just prime rib. And he liked me! Now, I admit that I slept with him on the first date—but it wasn’t for naught. The next morning, before he drove me home, he asked me out again. He was going to the mayor’s ball and wanted me to be his date. I nearly died. Nearly fainted and just died. I was a long way from Chauncey and that pickup truck. Of course I said yes. The only problem was that while Preston had been asleep, I’d gone through his house (just a little detective work to see if he really was who he’d claimed to be) and found pictures of his former fiancée. She was a pretty thing. A long neck and cherry-shaped eyes. What bothered me, though—and I suppose I was looking because Preston had called me “thick” in bed—was that she couldn’t have been over a size 0. Her arms looked like golf clubs. Her fingers, cocktail straws. And there Preston was, sliding a huge rock on one of those straws in a picture he’d stashed in his desk drawer. I wanted a huge rock! I looked down at my chubby fingers and thus began the craziness. I had ten days to lose twenty pounds for the mayor’s ball. I’d make my grand, high-society debut on the arms of The Dr. Preston Alcott! Krista suggested I try this lemonade and cayenne pepper diet. It was ridiculous, had me dreaming of cheeseburgers and fried eggs all week, but I kept Preston in my mind and I did it. I lost the twenty pounds in ten days, and the morning of the dance, I was model gaunt and could fit into a size 6. I shimmied into Preston’s arms and thought I was Halle Berry. Until the middle of the night. Then I was feeling lightheaded. Then I fainted.
“That situation is in the past,” I protested the memory of Preston looking so embarrassed as he helped get me onto a gurney in the middle of the dance floor at the mayor’s ball. “It was just too much pressure to be perfect.”
“Pressure you placed on yourself,” Ian said.
“Men like Preston expect that. They want you to be perfect,” I said.
“I (You) hate them,” Ian and I said together.
“So what am I supposed to do? Be single for the rest of my life?” I asked.
“No, you got me!” Ian answered. “And I’m a doctor, too!”
“Yeah, right! And where have you been anyway? I haven’t heard from you since the big proposal at the hotel weeks ago.”
“Scarlet has had me everywhere,” Ian said. “Dinners. The engagement party—”
“Engagement party? You didn’t invite me?”
“Oh, it was small. Just some folks at her parents’ house.”
“That was fast,” I said.
“Yeah, seems like everything is moving pretty quickly.” Ian’s face went nervous. He seemed to drift away. “My Scarlet sure knows what she wants.”
“Do you?”
“I’m fine!” He raised his voice as he refocused on me. “No need to revisit what happened at the hotel. It was just nerves. I love Scarlet. And I’m ready to get married.”
“Being ready to get married is no reason to marry someone.”
“Are we going to do this? Are you really going to force me to have this conversation in front of”—he turned and pointed at the sign over the shop—“Big Bird’s Auto Body?”
“Well, you—”
“I’m in love! I’m getting married.”
“OK!” I held up my hands in surrender.
“And . . . speaking of the wedding . . .” Ian smiled at me.
“I wasn’t talking about the wedding. No one was talking about any wedding,” I said. I knew this was coming. But Ian knew my rule: I don’t plan friends’ weddings. No mixing business with pleasure; it always goes wrong.
“Come on, Rach! You know I have to ask.”
“And you know my rule.” I started walking back to the garage.
“I know, and I told Scarlet, but why can’t you at least talk to her about it?” He grabbed my arm.
“About what?”
“About planning our wedding,” Ian said.
“I can’t. I won’t,” I said.
“Won’t?” Ian followed me closer to the garage. “That sounds like more than principles.”
“Ian, I just don’t do that.”
“It’s all Scarlet is talking about. She’s telling everyone my best friend is planning the wedding.”
“What? She’s telling people that? You need to tell her I’m not doing it.”
“I think it’ll come off better if she hears it from you. If I say it, she’ll think it’s because you don’t like her—”
“Well, I—”
“But if you say it, she’ll know it’s not personal.” He made it sound so simple, but I knew better.
“This is a setup,” I said.
“How about over dinner tonight? My treat. Parish at eight?” He pulled the keys from his pocket like it was a done deal.
“Parish? Tonight? I can’t!”
“You can’t?” Ian frowned in disbelief. “Why?”
“Because I—I—”
“You what?”
“I have a date!”
“Whatever!” Ian laughed like he expected me to join in. “A date? There’s no way!”
“No way?”
“You tell me everything. I would know.”
“Well, maybe right now you don’t know,” I teased like we were in a school yard.
“Why wouldn’t I know?” Ian stepped in close to me like a bouncer.
“Because . . . because I just made the date.”
“You just made a date?” Ian smirked.
“Yeah!”
“With?”
I looked around and there was Bird still grinning at me from the red truck.
“Him!” I pointed to Bird.
“Him?” Ian looked at Bird.
Bird waved.
“Fine,” Ian said. “If that’s what you want. Fine. How about tomorrow? Lunch?”
“Lunch? That’s our lunch. We always go alone. No one else,” I said.
“Just this one time,” he said. “So you can tell Scarlet about your rule, and she can get it out of her head and we can be done with it.”
I exhaled as I watched Bird cleaning a tool he was holding at his waist.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Great! Same place as always?”
“Same place,” I said. “Same time.”
“Good. I’ll tell Scar,” Ian said, taking out his phone as he started walking back to his car. “And have a good time”—he pointed at the sign—“Big Bird.”
