by Amy Lane
Chase’s laugh held no humor whatsoever. “Mercy, I had to slit my fucking wrist to be able to say it myself, don’t you get that?”
“Why? What’s so bad about being gay that you had to do all this other shit—you had to lie to me, and to yourself and… fuck, even to the guy you had on a string—”
“I never lied to him,” Chase said softly. “Me, you—yeah. I never lied to him.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Chase swallowed. “It’s supposed to explain why I had to pick him over you.”
“I almost don’t care about that now. I just really want to know about the lie!”
Chase cringed. “Mercy, that shit, the reason I had to lie, it was private—”
“We were gonna get married! Don’t you think I get a guest pass?”
Chase winced and thought randomly of that picture of Ethan spitting in his asshole on the Internet. Yeah. So much less intrusive than conversations like this.
“My mom killed herself—did I ever tell you that?”
Mercy’s face went white, and she used one arm on the little end table to lower herself to the love seat. “No.”
It hurt. It hurt to say. Almost but not quite as much as he’d imagined. In his head, he was back, the little kid in front of the red door, just like when he’d been with Doc. But Doc had made him open the door, and made him face what was inside. Tommy knew what was inside, and now he had to tell Mercy, he had to, because she deserved the truth.
“She killed herself,” Chase whispered, and it hurt his throat. “She slit her wrists, and bled out into the tub, and I found her, and I spent hours locked in the bathroom with her while Victor, the guy you invited to Christmas dinner, screamed at me that if I wasn’t such a little faggot pussy, she would be okay.” He felt queasy, saying that to someone. He felt queasy talking about it to Doc or Tommy, and saying it to Mercy? It violated everything in him. He thought maybe Mercy would be the last person he’d tell, and then remembered Donnie and Kevin and Dex and Kane and all the people who had visited him when he’d been in the loony bin, and that maybe he owed it to them not to draw lines like that anymore. Wonderful. He never knew he’d have to be this strong.
“That’s horrible,” she whispered, and he nodded and struggled for words to put that moment, that terrible, distant moment, into context for where they were right now.
“You see, I had this idea. The perfect wife, the perfect future, the perfect me—and if I could make that future true, it wouldn’t be my fault.”
Mercy frowned at him, puzzled. “What wouldn’t be your fault?”
“That she killed herself. It wouldn’t be my fault if I could have the perfect, you know?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, sitting back and rubbing her face like it was cold. “Chase, how could you think—”
“But you see, I did. I did. And it sort of all boiled down to this one word. If I wasn’t this one word, then it wouldn’t be my fault. It wouldn’t be my fault, and it sounded so grown-up. And you and me living together was a lot better than the shitty apartment I had after high school. But mostly it was just grown-up. I wanted grown-up and pretty, and….” He grimaced, not sure if she could hear this yet. “You were so pretty. You were. And you were nice. And I loved you so much. I still do. If anyone on the planet could have made that picture come true for me, Mercy, it would have been you. But….” He trailed off and took a breath, meaning to finish the sentence because he was trying not to be a coward anymore, but Mercy finished for him. Maybe Mercy needed to finish for him, for her own good.
“But I’m not the one you needed.”
“No.”
“Tommy is.”
Chase nodded. “Yeah.”
“Besides the boy thing,” and she laughed, like realizing this was stupid, “is there anything else about him?”
He doesn’t take my shit. He’s not always nice. He’s wounded and he needs me.
“No.” Some truths really were best unspoken. He’d tell Doc, he might even tell Tommy. But he wouldn’t say that shit to her. Dex was right—cruelty wasn’t his style.
She looked up at him, her face ravaged and pale. “I’m pregnant, Chase.”
His vision honest-to-fuck went black.
His knees went out, and he found himself sitting down on the floor, wondering if that red door in his head was going to fill up with water again and how he was going to manage to keep breathing if it did.
“I… I was going to have an abortion. I walked in here absolutely sure I hated you that much, that I couldn’t carry your baby in my body. I actually willed it to die, this last month, I was so mad. Do you hate me for that?”
“How could I?” His lips were bloodless. “How could I?”
“I don’t hate you that much anymore. I don’t.”
“I don’t see why,” he muttered, his mind going blank at the absolute levels of pain this could bring.
“’Cause you were hurt,” she whispered. “You were hurt and I didn’t see it. You were talking about a pretty future, and you wanted it because it would make you something. I did the same thing. And… and I must have felt you slipping away, Chase. I must have. Because I fucked with your condoms—isn’t that awful?”
Chase felt his lips twist. He could remember that night, the change in the brand. And he’d already been so far away.
“Yeah,” he said in wonder. “It’s awful. But that’s okay.” For a moment he was giddy, absolutely giddy with relief. Doc, Tommy, they’d been telling him he’d done some shitty things but that didn’t make him a shitty person. But Mercy had done a shitty thing, too, and he still thought she was an okay person. Maybe life really was doing your best and hoping that weighed in.
“So I made this baby, but I can’t get rid of it—”
“We made this baby,” he said through a dry throat. “We.”
Mercy passed her hand over her eyes. “But… but Chase—”
“I let you hope, Mercy. I told you that future was for us. If I hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t have done this. We made it. We made this baby.”
Mercy started to cry harder. “Well, we may have made it, but I can’t raise it.”
Chase closed his eyes. He’d seen this coming. He had. “You can’t…?”
“I can’t kill it, Chase, but I can’t raise it, either. I’d look at it, and every day I’d see that future you dreamed. It was so pretty. I loved that future so much. And it was a lie, and I’m still so mad at you for that lie. I can’t raise that lie, have it eat at my table, have it love me and only me, you understand? Even if I helped make that lie, I can’t do it.”
“God.”
“I looked into some adoption agencies, and they don’t have to know for a couple of months. But….” She swallowed, and then stood and walked over to him, bending down to put her soft little hands on his face.
“You wanted a pretty future, Chase. I get that. I wanted it too.” She was sitting in a chair about a foot from him, and then she knelt on the floor suddenly, grabbed his hand, the one lying cold across his thigh, and shoved it, palm first, against her stomach. “Here’s a pretty future too. You’re not an evil fucker; it took me a little while to remember that, but you’re not. Do you want this future, or do we give it to someone else?”
Chase was crying again, but he couldn’t even be mad at himself for it. “Of course I want it!” he snapped bitterly, his hand convulsing against Mercy’s smooth skin, the warm, slight rounding in her ordinarily flat belly. “But Mercy….” He pulled the hand away and showed her the inside of his left wrist. “The scars aren’t even healed.”
She rubbed her thumb against the scar softly. “Yeah. I hear that. But you got yourself a man, a place to stay. You sure as shit are not your old man. You got a future. You’ve got money—lots of it. I sold the fucking car, moved into my folks’; I haven’t touched a penny. I don’t want the money, Chase. You gave too fucking much of your soul for that money. It’ll get you through school, it’ll
last you ’til you find a job, especially if you’ve got someone to help with the bills. It’ll help you raise your child. You ready to do that? Can you own this, or do we give it away?”
Chase met her eyes and swallowed. He thought of someone helpless, depending on him, and a part of him panicked and a part of him screamed, and a part of him yearned. “I want it,” he confessed. “Of course I want it. But I’m afraid, Mercy. I always was a coward—you know that now. And I just stopped the screaming in my own head, and I’m not sure if that’s gonna come back and drown out a baby, because that wouldn’t be fair. So can I talk to some people?”
“Your man?” she asked, half-angry, and he nodded.
“Yeah. But my shrink, and Donnie’s mom.” He half laughed. “Because you know who I’m going to be running to for help.”
Mercy nodded. “Yeah, I know. Okay, Chase. You talk. You get better. You think. But not too long. I need to go start making plans by March, because I’m due in May. So you let me know before then.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper. “I got the same cell phone, but here’s my parents’ phone. They’re under strict orders not to hang up on you if you call.”
Chase sighed, having to ask the question. Her parents were pretty traditional, third-generation Mexican immigrants. “Your folks okay with you?”
She shrugged. “They hate your gay ass, but they don’t blame me so much. They don’t get about the baby, though. They think I’ll just keep it, but—”
“You’ve got a whole different future,” he said softly. “You deserve a whole different future. I… I love you, Mercy. For no other reason than you’re even letting me think about this. Because you forgave me just enough to let me know, even if I don’t take it.”
She nodded and wiped her cheek with her hand. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, her voice shaking. “I am. You scared me so bad. But I don’t think I can see you much until the baby is born, okay? It just hurts too much to know you’re not mine.”
She bent and dropped a kiss on his forehead and then determinedly stalked out, grabbing her purse and striding through the door to the little “family room” with the single vision of getting the fuck out of there.
Chase briefly thought about going after her, of stopping to comfort her, because he knew she was going to cry and he hated that she would cry alone. Then he realized, truly realized, that holding her when she cried was not something he was allowed to do anymore.
So he sat in the room for another few minutes and did his crying alone, too.
Bicycle
THE boy in the living room was not really a boy. He was a man in his early twenties, with dark hair, long canines, and a fierce grin. He was holding an infant against his chest and dancing gently while an acoustic version of Foo Fighters’ “Statues” played in the background. The baby wasn’t screaming, just fussing a little, and the blond boy, the tall one with the rangy baseball player’s body, was in the kitchen, frantically mixing formula into a bottle before the fussing got louder.
“Daddy Chase!” called the dark-haired young man. “Hurry up! Baby’s not waiting!”
“I’m doing my best, Tommy!” Chase said, laughing a little. He looked happy. Tired and a little bit frantic, but happy. Tommy, holding the baby and singing softly, looked luminous.
CHASE told Tommy first.
It was hard, because Doc came in to make sure he was okay, and he wasn’t, but he was tired of just spilling his insides out for no other purpose than to make them shiny and clean. He wanted to talk to Tommy. As much as he’d shared with Doc, as much as the guy had come to mean to him, this news was for Tommy. Doc would go home to his wife, but Tommy would have to live with what Chase had done, and it was only fair.
So Tommy walked through the door and Chase was sitting on the bed with both knees drawn up to his chest, feeling like he needed to invest in one of those big padded armor suits like they wore in The Hurt Locker for defusing bombs.
“What’d we talk about in therapy today?” Tommy tried to joke. “Have you gotten to the point where you reenact the porn, because I’ve been looking forward to that!”
Chase was proud of himself. He actually managed a half smile.
“Sit down,” he said softly. “I’ve got news, and it’s sort of something we haven’t talked about and… God. It’s like a cosmic fucking joke, actually.”
Tommy didn’t sit on the chair anymore. He sat up on the bed across from Chase, one leg folded and the other dangling down to the floor.
“Hit me with it,” he said pragmatically, nodding his head. “In fact, tell it like a joke—it’ll make it easier. Like, ‘Didja hear about the porn star who….’”
Chase cracked a half smile. God love Tommy. That picture in his head suddenly felt so real. “Okay,” Chase said, “this one’s fuckin’ hysterical. You’re gonna laugh yourself to San Francisco while you find another guy without so much fuckin’ baggage—prepare yourself.”
Tommy reached out and grabbed his hand. “Hit me.”
“Didja hear about the porn star who knocked up his girlfriend before he tried to kill himself?” Tommy’s mouth fell open in surprise and Chase kept going. “She’s so deluded she actually thinks he’s a better bet to raise the kid, and if he doesn’t, she’s giving it up for adoption.”
Tommy’s hand, bony and uncomfortable, tightened on Chase’s, and Chase could hardly look at his face, but he could hardly look away either. That smile—that manic Loki smile—dawned slowly, so slowly that for a horrible heartbeat Chase didn’t know which way it was going.
“We’re gonna be daddies?”
Chase laughed helplessly. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Tommy nodded like that last part didn’t mean shit. “We’re gonna be daddies.”
“Tommy, I’m still in a mental institution.” Because he felt like that needed emphasizing.
Tommy shrugged. What, didn’t all daddies go to the fucking funny farm before they became stellar goddamned parents? “We’re going to be daddies!” he said happily, and Chase tried to inflict some reality on the situation.
“Tommy, I’m not even sure I can do this! I’m a mess. I’ve got maybe one good role model in my life, and all I really know about her is that she gave me cookies when I was a kid. What makes you think I can say yes?”
Tommy’s expression grew suddenly fierce and stubborn. “Fuck that!” he snapped, and when Chase recoiled a little, Tommy stood up and started pacing, because he did his best thinking when he was moving.
“I’m serious, Chase. Fuck that. Fuck the ‘I’m crazy’ bullshit, fuck the ‘I don’t know how to do this’ bullshit. Fuck the whole thing about the world scaring you shitless. I get it, and now I don’t give a shit.” He stopped for a second, as though remembering he really was talking to a mental patient, and revised. “Okay, I do give a shit, but you need to stop that crap right now. You’re not letting that get in the way. You’re not letting the shit you’re afraid of fuck this up for us.”
“Us?”
Tommy whirled, his Loki-bright eyes suddenly so hopeful it hurt. “What, Chase—you think you’re the only one with pretty pictures of a future in your head? For the last year, my pretty pictures have been you and me, and, yes, sometime in the future, a kid. And then you reminded me, almost when we met, that we’d made choices that made that maybe not so easy, you know? Because who’s going to give a kid to a couple of gay porn stars, right? Well, now someone is dying to give us a child.” Tommy’s eyes grew brighter, and he unashamedly wiped his hand across his cheek. “And not just any baby. A baby who’s going to look like you.”
Tommy suddenly stopped pacing and walked up to Chase then, his hands out beseechingly. “Don’t you know how beautiful you are? The pretty, yeah, you know that or you wouldn’t have gotten paid, right? But… but you. This baby is going to look like you.” Tommy wiped his cheek again and got close enough to pull Chase’s head against his lower chest. “Please, Chase… God, please. Please tell me we can
keep this fucking gift from heaven that’s going to look like you.”
Chase nodded, tucked in against Tommy’s body. “I’ll try,” he murmured. “I’ll try.”
Neither of them mentioned the fact that it was the same vow he’d uttered before he’d slit his wrist. Maybe that’s what do-overs were for.
“SO, ARE you going to take the baby?” Doc asked, his voice neutral, and Chase shot him an annoyed look.
“I’m in a mental institution.”
“Well yes, but only for two more days. Tommy’s right: this baby is an opportunity for you, one that gay men don’t always get.”
Chase glared at him, knitting so serenely in his little chair, looking so smug like he knew Chase was going to be all okay. Was Chase the only one who had doubts about that?
“You’ve been listening to me for a month and a half, you know how fucked up I am!”
Doc put down his knitting, and that was always a bad sign.
“I’ve been listening to you get healthy for a month and a half, Chase. You continue to point out that you stopped. Midway through a very well-thought-out suicide attempt, you stopped what you were doing and revised your plan, very thoroughly and considering every angle. Well I’m letting you go home, and I am not immediately worried about any more attempts on your life. I don’t see you as a threat to yourself or anyone else. And you have a relationship waiting for you that, as far as I can see, saved your life. If Tommy wants this baby, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
“But… but… but I’m fucked up!” Jesus! Was he the only sane person in the fucking loony bin?
“So is the rest of the planet, Chase. I could understand if you didn’t want this baby. I could understand if you didn’t have a way to support it. I could understand if you hadn’t worked so hard to be healthy. But you want this child—anybody can see it. Why would you give up this opportunity to somebody else?”