What He's Been Missing (30 page)

Read What He's Been Missing Online

Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: What He's Been Missing
2.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Yeah. I'll see you later.”
 
Later at Bacchanalia looked more like earlier at Fado.
I went home and changed into a short black minidress I'd been saving for months. I'd freeze my ass off in the December cold, but it would be worth it when Ian saw my legs out. Before I left, I rolled a clumsy joint with the marijuana and set it out on the coffee table beside the couch. “Here's hoping,” I said, winking at it.
I stepped into Bacchanalia like applause was certain. I was sure Ian had gotten there early and had a bouquet of red roses waiting for me. There were flowers, but no Ian.
A waitress with green eyes and a bouncy ponytail led me to the table Ian had reserved. There was a beautiful arrangement of flowers sitting in my seat.
I picked them up and smelled them before placing them on the table.
“Would you like something to drink while you wait for Mr. Dupree?” the waitress asked.
“No. I'm sure he'll be here any minute.”
Minutes went by. The tables around me started changing courses. I began to look odd sitting there alone.
The waitress came back with water and a new question.
“Perhaps a glass of dessert wine? Sweet for your birthday?” she asked suggestively.
“Sure,” I agreed. I was beginning to get anxious and wanted to settle my nerves.
The tables around me were moving onto their third course. The couple sitting beside me asked if I would take their picture. I looked at my watch a few times.
Soon my wine was almost gone.
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 8:47pm
Hey Babe. I'm at the restaurant waiting for you
Where are you?
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 9:13pm
Hello? What's going on? Still here waiting . . . My bday
will be over in a few hours. Hurry.
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 9:36pm
What's up?
The waitress came over and asked very politely if I was expecting my guest any time soon and if I wanted to order anything. Hidden in her tone was a rush to turn the table over to another reservation. “I won't charge you for the wine,” she said sympathetically. “And the flowers were on the house. Your date told us it was your birthday.” She smiled and signaled for the waiter to come and pour me another glass.
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 9:50pm
I am leaving here soon. What's going on?
When I finished the second glass of wine, there was nothing to do but leave. The waitress had probably told the wait staff about my situation and they were all giving me the injured-baby-bird-on-the-side-of-the-road face. I plunked down a twenty on the table and smiled my way out to my car.
As soon as I put the key into the ignition, Ian wrote back.
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:05pm
I have a situation. I'm sorry.
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:06pm
Sorry about?
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:27pm
I can't come.
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:28pm
Can't or won't?
I sat in the car and waited another ten minutes for a response.
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:39pm
She called me.
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:40pm
And? Just say what's going on.
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:50pm
It's your birthday. I just feel like such an asshole.
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:51pm
I can't do this anymore. I can't hurt two people.
 
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 10:52pm
What two people? Ian, what the fuck is going on? Just
say it.
 
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 11:00pm
I can't keep hurting her. She's my wife.
His words stung me to tears, the tears I should've started crying hours ago.
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 11:05pm
Then who am I? Are you hurting me?
The woman you said you loved?
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 11:06pm
Don't do that. This is hard for me. I didn't mean to
hurt anyone. Maybe I was just being selfish. I made a
mistake.
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 11:08pm
You said you were sure.
 
TO: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 11:15pm
You said you loved me. I can't believe this.
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 11:50pm
We're having a baby. She just told me today. We've
been at the house talking. We're going to try to work
it out. We have to.
I felt flattened. Beat by age-old wisdom. Ian was my best friend. But he was also someone else's husband. And now he was acting like it.
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 12:01am
I know you hate me. But I didn't mean to hurt you. I
just can't not try. This is my family. I have to be here.
I'm so sorry.
 
FROM: IAN DUPREE
TIME: 12:03am
I'll come get my things in the morning.
11
Driving Off Into the Sunset
#Losing . . . At sunrise, Ian showed up in my bedroom doorway with his bag packed and over his shoulder.
I was sitting in the middle of the bed, Indian style, with my laptop in front of my legs, trying to get Journey on the line. She wasn't there. I didn't know what to say to him.
He didn't seem to know what to say to me. He looked over at the window at the sun's rays coming through the blinds.
We listened for a while like two people expecting birds to chirp and to hear children hollering at one another as they walked to the bus stop. There was silence, though. No distractions from our reality.
“You want to go to breakfast?” Ian asked with a struggle for normalcy in his voice.
“No.”
“OK.” He sounded glad that I'd turned him down. “I left your key on the counter in the kitchen.”
“OK.” I was so desperately angry that I couldn't say anything else. That I couldn't fight this. But there was no reason to make him stay. I'd hate myself if I did. I'd hate him if he did.
We listened for the birds and children. Still silence.
“Rachel—”
I put my hand up to stop him. I didn't want to hear my name. This was difficult enough. Salt on my wounds. I couldn't hear my name from his mouth. That would just be like I was trying to make everything OK. Like I was pretending this wasn't what it was. Or like I thought he owed me some explanation. “Don't. Just go.”
Ian looked down at his bag. “I didn't mean to hurt—”
“Don't!” I glowered at him.
“You're my best—” His voice was cracking the same way Xavier's had when he was at my threshold.
“Ian, stop it!” I said just as Journey took my Skype call. Her face popped up on the laptop screen. Ian couldn't see her, though. “Nothing you can say is going to change what's going to happen.”
“But I didn't mean to—”
“You didn't do anything without me. We both did it. Everything. Our relationship. How else was this supposed to end up? How was anyone else going to survive in our lives with us the way we were? This had to happen.” I started crying. “And I'm not sad that it happened. I'm sad that now things have to change. That they won't be like they were. But I know they shouldn't be.”
“We can still—”
“No, we can't.”
Ian exhaled and I knew what he was about to say.
“Don't say it,” I said. “Don't say you love me. Just go. Go and be a good father. Be a good husband. Be a good man. Do what you promised you were going to do.”
He sniffled and pushed his hands into his pocket. There would be no hug. No promise of tomorrow. This was the end of our good-bye.
I looked back at the blinds. The sun's rays were half gold and crimson. It looked like slivers of terra-cotta royal roses were spilling into the room.
When I looked back at the doorway, Ian was gone. I heard the front door slam.
I fell over on the bed and cried underneath the red and gold glow.
“You OK?” Journey asked after a while.
I curled up next to the laptop and turned her face to mine. My tears had fallen so quickly, there was a puddle of tears sinking into the sheet below my face.
“I tried,” I said. “I had to.”
“You're just a woman,” Journey said. “You ain't perfect. Don't be too hard on yourself.”
“I cried all last night.” I wiped my tears and whispered into the laptop like someone else was there with me and could hear me. “And I don't think it was over Ian. It was over what we'd done. How much time we'd wasted. I keep feeling like I've lost so much.”
“You can't charge your brain for listening to your heart.”
“The crazy thing is that my heart wasn't so sad that Ian was going. My brain didn't understand it, but my heart was fine. It was kind of thinking about something else.”
“What?”
“Xavier. I wished he was with me.”
“Where is he now?”
“Back in Chicago, I'm sure,” I said. “I told him to go away. He's not the type to stick around where he's not wanted. I guess Tante Heru counted on that in any man.” I looked down at the sheet. The tears were just a wet spot now.
“You could call him.”
“I hurt him. I don't think there's any coming back from that.”
 
Bird called on a cold December morning to tell me that he couldn't think of anything else to do to the truck. He sounded sad. Told me to come by the shop with something to hang from the rearview window.
“Isn't she beautiful?” Bird said when I got to the shop and found the red truck pulled out front like it was on display for everyone driving by to see. It was so shiny and bold. It looked like someone had opened a can of candy apple red paint and just dumped it on the hood. The white seats inside looked like they'd never been touched and never should be.
“She?”
“Yeah. The truck is a she. Every car is a she.”
“Why?”
“Because she'll always have her hand in your pocket, but you won't care, because she'll always look so good on your arm.” Bird popped out his left arm like he might if he was escorting a woman into a room or hanging it out of the window of a car.
I laughed so hard for the first time since Ian had left my place. I hadn't heard from him. I hadn't heard from Xavier either.
“What you gonna do with the truck?”
“I don't know yet. Maybe I'll drive it,” I said, knowing this would entertain Bird. I'd taken a cab to the shop and planned to drive back home.
“Whoooo! You're a woman after my heart. Now you know that every man everywhere you go is going to ask you about this here truck. Won't be able to let you drive by without stopping you.”
“Really?”
“This truck is about to be like sugar in front of a baby.” He patted the hood softly and blew the truck a kiss. “The best gift in the world. That's why I wanted to have it ready for you by Christmas. Figured it would be the only thing you needed under your tree.”
“It's perfect,” I said.
Bird took me around the truck and showed me all the bells and whistles he'd included. He sounded like he was describing a woman he loved or a dream he wanted so badly to revisit.
Once he was finished and we were sitting in the front seat—me behind the steering wheel and him in the passenger's side with a grin, I almost wanted to give him the truck. But I knew it had to come home with me. I'd decided that I couldn't give the truck back to Chauncey Billups.
“So what you got to hang from the mirror?” Bird asked. “My father used to say you don't own a car until you hang one thing, and one thing only, from the rearview mirror. It's like naming your baby.”
I pulled a thin golden necklace from my pocket. An oval-shaped locket with ivy engraved over the top hung from it. I handed it to Bird.
“What's this?” He opened the charm.
On the left side was a picture of my father and King that I'd taken with my first Polaroid camera on the front steps of Grammy Annie-Lou's house in Social Circle. The truck was to my right in the grass when I'd taken the photo. Still new and glistening. A promise. The tires filled with air and ready to go anywhere. You couldn't see the truck in the little picture, but I knew it was there.
“It's my father and my dog,” I explained to Bird of the picture in the left frame.
“What's going here?” He pointed to the empty right frame.
“There is something there,” I said. “It's my baby.”
Bird didn't asked me anything else. He took the locket and slid it over the rearview mirror.
“That's fine travelin' company, Ms. Lady,” he said soberly. “You ain't never going to be lost with these kinds of passengers.”
We watched the locket dangle for a minute and find its place.
“Just promise me one thing,” Bird asked.
“What?”
“Don't leave this locket hanging from the mirror. Somebody's bound to crack the window to get at it. And then I'm gonna have to go to jail, because I'm going to find that person and put my hands on him.”
“You're so crazy,” I said, laughing. “How about this—I'll keep it in the glove compartment?”
“Yeah, because I didn't want to ruin the moment, but you might want to just get a palm tree air freshener or something to hang from the rearview window,” Bird said, getting out of the car and walking around to my window. “You have to be careful in this truck. Can't leave it just anywhere. Can't take it just anywhere. And don't stop at any red lights in the hood.”
“I know. I know.”
“Might want to keep it in a garage through the winter. Paint's still new.”
“I know,” I said. “Hey, what are you doing for the holidays?”
“Going on a three-week cruise to Alaska. Christmas and New Year's.”
“Really? A cruise? I didn't peg you for the kind of man who'd enjoy being on a boat that long.”
“Got me a new girlfriend. She ain't never been nowhere, so I put a little money in her bank account and told her to take her man someplace nice.”
“That's wonderful,” I said. “I'm sure you two will have a great time.”
“We will. She's the kind of woman who will make sure of it. What about you? What you getting into? I'm sure you'll be at the mayor's ball or the White House by New Year's Eve.”
“Don't be too sure,” I said. “I'll probably be doing the same thing I did last year.”
“Well, don't break too many hearts out there, pretty lady,” Bird said.
“I'm sure I won't.”

Other books

Maternity Leave by Trish Felice Cohen
Flowers by Scott Nicholson
In the Eye of the Beholder by Jeffrey Archer
El Legado de Judas by Francesc Miralles y Joan Bruna
People Will Talk by Carol Rose
A Question of Murder by Jessica Fletcher
Babel No More by Michael Erard
The Deep Beneath by Natalie Wright
Frostborn: The Iron Tower by Jonathan Moeller
Pirate's Price by Aubrey Ross