Chasing Bliss (39 page)

“Oh God, Chase! No!” Bliss started crying, and Dee grabbed her and went to J.T.

“You got this?” J.T. asked.

Chase nodded. “I got it.”

“All right then,” he said, and he guided the women downstairs.

Cyrus smiled at Chase. It had none of the bravado and craziness of his recent grinning; this one
was one of the saddest smiles Chase had ever seen. “Ready for your story?”

Chase sat on the arm of the sofa a safe distance away from him. “No, but I’ll let you have your
last request, Cyrus.”

“Thanks. I’m about to tell you exactly why I’ve had such a love-hate relationship with you for
your entire life. I think it’s only fair to warn you, though, that it may make you crazier than you
already are. You
do
know you’re crazy, don’t you?”

Chase nodded and pulled his gloves up on his hands, still holding his razor. “Yeah, I know.” He
looked at Cyrus and knew his eyes were glittering. “Go ahead, Cyrus. Shatter me.”

“Why are you crying?”

Chase hadn’t even realized he was, but he didn’t bother to wipe the tears away. “I don’t want
to kill you, Cyrus.”

“Why not? I deserve it.”

“Yeah, you do, but you’re my brother.”

Cyrus shook his head. “Corey was your brother, Chase. You and me got a different type of
relation.”

Chase’s heart tripped over itself, and he frowned. “Fuck you talkin’ about, Cyrus?”

Cyrus stared at him, but he seemed a bit removed, as if he was looking into the past. It was a
moment before he spoke again. “You know, I got almost fifteen years on you, Chase. Things were
really different before you was born. My life with Mama wasn’t the same as yours or Corey’s.
Neither of y’all even knew Mama until she’d halfway gotten her shit together.”

Chase had no idea where he was going with his story, but he wasn’t gonna sit there and let Cyrus
talk shit about his mother. His mother was sacred; she’d died in his arms. “Don’t talk about Mama,
Cyrus. I mean it. I ain’t gonna allow it.”

Cyrus kept going like Chase hadn’t said anything at all. “When Mama was fourteen, she met
a nigga named Wendell Baxter. He was twenty-six years old, fuckin’ around with a little girl like
that. Wendell didn’t give a shit how young she was. He just wanted to know if she could turn a
trick. Wendell found our mother, Francie, fresh off a bus from St. Louis at the Port Authority. She’d
run away from home because her father was touching her in places he shouldn’t have, and nobody
believed her. Wendell got her and turned her little young ass right on out.”

Chase stared at Cyrus. “You’re a fuckin’ liar, Cyrus. Mama wasn’t no hooker.”

“She
was,
Chase. I’m tellin’ the truth. Why do you think we don’t have any family? We
do
. We
just don’t know ‘em because of the way Francie handled her business. Can I go on?”

Chase shook his head, but Cyrus kept talking.

“Francie got pregnant with me pretty quick. I don’t even think she really knew who my father
was, but she blamed it on Wendell, and he didn’t argue her down since he might have been. After
all, he was her pimp. She had me when she was fifteen.”

Chase put his fingers on his temples. “Shut up, Cyrus. It’s not true.”

Cyrus smiled that sad smile. “It is true—every word. I remember being real young—like five or
six—and all types of men coming in and out of our apartment, usin’ Francie and leavin’. Sometimes
I’d wake up in the middle of the night and see and hear Wendell beatin’ her ass. He did that on the
regular. I remember those days real well, ‘cause that was right before Francie had what I like to call
her ‘breakdown’ and turned into another motherfucker on me overnight.”

Chase twirled the razor in his hand, getting angrier by the second. He watched Cyrus carefully
and knew in his heart he was probably telling the truth—or at least the truth as he believed it to be.
“What breakdown? Mama ain’t never had no breakdown.”

Cyrus sighed and leaned forward. He looked at Chase with a great deal of patience and went
on. “Breakdown is just a better way of sayin’ Francie got strung out on heroin and stopped givin’
a shit about anything that was important, including me.”

Chase stood up and put his hands over his ears. “Shut up, Cyrus!”

Cyrus didn’t bat an eye. He just talked louder. “Take your hands down, Chase! You need to hear
this shit. I know it hurts, but you gotta be a man and listen, okay?”

Chase took his hands down. His lips trembled. “Mama wasn’t no dope addict.”

Cyrus’s sad smile returned. “
She was
, Chase. Don’t you remember all the needle marks on
her?”

Chase
did not
want to hear it. He narrowed his eyes at Cyrus. “Mama was a diabetic.”

Cyrus actually laughed. “Come on, Chase! Diabetics have equipment—boxes of syringes, alco
hol pads, and guess what…insulin! They have to keep the insulin in the fridge, Chase. You never
seen none of that shit in Francie’s house. She was a heroin abuser for eight years, and the only
reason she quit was because she got pregnant with
you
.”

Chase shook his head in disbelief and returned to his seat. “Mama used heroin while she was
pregnant with me?”

Cyrus nodded. “Until she was pregnant enough to show, and then she found Jesus.”

Chase stared at him. “Are you telling me this because you think that’s what made me the way I
am? ‘Cause she took heroin when she was pregnant with me?”

Cyrus shook his head, and then he smiled. “Nah. This is the reason I think you’re the way you
are. I don’t believe Francie was wrapped too tight. She did a lot of crazy shit, and she had a lot
of flaws. Francie used to talk to herself so loud I’d think she was singin’ or somethin’. She’d hurt
herself too. She’d burn her fingers with a cigarette lighter, cut her thighs with a razor, and shit like
that. Sometimes she’d just slap herself. I used to watch her with my mouth hangin’ open. I used to
think maybe it was the heroin, but I ain’t never seen another addict act quite like that.”

Chase felt cold.
Oh my God. I am crazy…because of my mama? Crazy does run in families.
He
shuddered and closed his eyes. “Jesus, Cyrus. Please stop.” But Cyrus was right. He didn’t
want
to
hear it, but he
needed
to know.

“That was light shit, Chase. Now I’m gonna tell you somethin’ that’s
really
gonna fuck you
up. This is the part that may make you crazier. It’s the reason why I love you, but I hate the day
you were born. If you want, you can go ahead and kill me after this, but know that it wasn’t my
fault.”

Chase stood back up. “Take it to the grave, Cyrus. I don’t want to hear any more.” Chase felt like
he didn’t even know Francie. This person Cyrus was talking about was not his mother. He looked
at Cyrus coldly. He wanted to cut his throat so he’d just shut the fuck up, the lying bastard.

“Francie was a hooker for a long time, and she didn’t just do it to keep Wendell happy or for
the money. She was probably just as addicted to sex as she was to heroin. Business dried up when
she started lookin’ like what she was. Wendell used to try and force her to kick, and she’d always
go right back. When I was twelve, I had a real good friend named Russell. Mama sent me to get
cigarettes, and while I was gone, she fucked Russell in my bed. She did shit like that sometimes,
but usually not when she was on heroin by itself. That only happened when she mixed it with other
stuff, even if it was just liquor. I woke up one night, and she was on me like a jockey—”

Chase dropped his razor and covered his head with his arms. He fell to his knees, screaming. “I
don’t wanna hear any more!
Please, Cyrus! Don’t tell me that! I don’t want to know that!”

Cyrus sat there and watched him scream. He made no attempt to go for Chase’s razor.

Chase took his arms down and backed away from him. He stopped screaming, but tears were
coursing down his cheeks so hard he could barely see.

Cyrus smiled at him. “It’s the worst thing in the world, isn’t it, Chase? It’s a deep, dark, greasy,
slimy secret—somethin’ to make you finish goin’ crazy, right?”

“
You’re a liar, Cyrus!”
Chase screamed at him.

Cyrus laughed softly. “Yeah, maybe, but not about this. Francie wouldn’t come in my room
often, but she came. I can’t think of a another man she had anything to do with during that time.
If she did sleep with somebody else, I didn’t see him. So that makes me a little more than your
brother, Chase, doesn’t it?”

Chase snatched his razor up off the floor and leapt at Cyrus like a lion on a gazelle. He knocked
him off the stool at the breakfast bar and brought his razor down. It slid across Cyrus’s cheek,
exposing blood and torn flesh.

Cyrus screamed laughter.

“Shut up! Shut up, you fuckin’ lying bastard! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
Chase slashed at him
furiously and blood few hitting the walls, spraying the furniture, coating Chase like paint. He was
screaming at the top of his lungs, slashing at Cyrus until his arm was tired. Then he finally got up,
exhausted, crying, and shaking uncontrollably. Chase crawled to the farthest corner of the room
and dropped his razor. He curled himself into a ball and was still.

Epilogue

C
hase stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, watching the snow fall. It was
Christmas Eve, and he would have thought all that peace on Earth, goodwill toward men
stuff would have sent him in a downward spiral, right back to the blackness he’d stayed in for two
months after Cyrus “died.” But surprisingly, he wasn’t upset. Instead, he was happy—happy and
grateful. The corners of his handsome mouth turned up into a small smile of contentment. He’d
finally found happiness; he’d found Bliss. He’d asked her once if she could live up to her name,
and she had…ten times over.

Chase thought Bliss would bounce after what went down between him and Cyrus, and he would
have understood if she had. It was awfully heavy stuff to deal with, too heavy for Chase himself
to handle. He remembered that night a lot more vividly than he cared to. J.T. had put Bliss and
Dee in a cab to Dee’s place, and he’d come back upstairs after the screaming stopped—only it
was Chase’s screaming and not Cyrus’s.
His
screaming had stopped
way
before Chase’s. J.T. just
silently picked Chase up in a fireman’s carry and put him to bed. When Chase woke up much,
much, later, the place was pristine, Cyrus was gone forever, and his wife was in his bed.

Chase and J.T. never spoke about that evening. There was really no need to. They’d been
friends for a long time, and they loved each other like brothers, but Chase didn’t want J.T. to know
what Cyrus had told him before he took his life. There was only one person in the world he’d told
about that, and that was Bliss. He only told her because she had a right to know; she was his wife,
and she was pregnant with his baby. She listened to the whole sordid story without judgment, and
when he was finished, she looked him in the eye and told him she loved him—for better or for
worse—and she meant it.

Chase turned his head and looked at her. She looked happy too. They’d traded up, gotten rid of
the loft, and bought a chic and stylish apartment on the Upper West Side. Right now, they had a full
house: Bliss’s parents, her brother and sister and their families, Tasha, J.T., and Dee. To Chase’s
surprise, Dee had brought a date. Not so much to his surprise, J.T. and Tasha were seeing each
other, without claiming they were actually seeing each other.

Bliss caught his eye from across the room. She smiled at him warmly and made her way across the room to
him and handed him one of their babies; she gave him Corey and kept Hope to herself. Chase looked down at
his son and missed his baby brother poignantly. Losing Corey hurt him deeply every day. He guessed that was
Cyrus’s legacy to him—to make him hurt forever. Funny…he didn’t miss Cyrus at all. He didn’t even miss him
enough to ask J.T. what he did with the body, and he didn’t really care. Cyrus was gone, and he was free.

Bliss smiled up at him, and she was like the sun. “What are you thinking about, standing over
here by yourself, being so quiet?”

Chase kissed the top of Corey’s head and smiled back. “I was thinkin’ about how much I love
you and our kids, just standin’ here being grateful. I don’t have to go searchin’ for happiness
anymore ‘cause I got it right here. Thanks, Bliss.”

Bliss kissed him, and their babies giggled and squealed. “You don’t have to thank me for loving you, Chase. I’m
your wife. I always will.”

Chase smiled. “Merry Christmas, Bliss.”

“Merry Christmas.”

He kissed his wife, appreciating her for what and who she was. She’d shown him that there was
always light after darkness—that there was hope and love…and Bliss.