The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [102]
“I think it’s a great idea,” Buster said. “We just want to find a way to showcase the fact that my mother was a talented artist in her own right, in her own medium.”
“That’s what we want as well,” Mrs. Pringle replied. “To honor her memory.” This made Buster flinch and he thought about clarifying the fact that his parents were simply missing, not dead, not officially dead, but he kept his mouth shut.
“My son wants to talk to you about the details,” she said. “I just wanted to make the offer. I still own the place. I still make the final decisions. And I still think, though I am old and I’m not as connected to the art world as I used to be, that something strange is always better than something beautiful.”
“Something can be both,” Buster reminded her.
“Sometimes,” she admitted, and then she handed the phone over to her son.
When Annie came home from the grocery store, Buster became a tidal wave, the story washing over her with such force that, when Buster finished speaking, he was panting for breath. “This is it, Annie,” he told her. “It’s happening.” Annie smiled, her teeth so perfect and white that it seemed to Buster as though she was in a commercial for a medically impossible formula of toothpaste. “I wish,” she said. “Goddamn, I just wish I could see Caleb’s face when he finds out about these paintings. I would pay any amount of money to see that.” Buster wanted to tell her that their father more than likely knew about the paintings already, but he understood that they were coming at this thing from different angles, and he did not want to spoil her happiness. What did it matter, their motivations, as long as it ended with the Fangs, all four of them, in the same room?
“Let me come with you,” Suzanne asked Buster once he had told her about the gallery opening in San Francisco, only a few weeks away. The two of them were in her tiny apartment in a government-housing complex, which seemed one busted water main away from being condemned. At all hours, Buster could hear children running up and down the hallways, the walls little more than a sheet of fabric hanging on a line.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” Buster admitted. He imagined the four Fangs, Annie and Buster and Caleb and Camille, rejoined, angry and relieved and unsure of how to proceed. And then he imagined Suzanne, roller-skating around and around the four of them. Was it that he didn’t want to expose her to the Fangs or was it that he didn’t want to expose the Fangs to her? Was it that he simply needed to be alone when the important thing happened? He had no idea. He tried to think of all the people in his life as chemicals, the uncertainty of mixing them together, the potential for explosions and scarring. However, it seemed the most likely explanation was that he simply liked having Suzanne to himself, away from the possibility of chaos. Whatever the reason, however much he might want her close to him when his parents returned, he could not allow her to come.
“I wouldn’t just tag along,” she said. “I could be useful. You think your parents are going to reappear at the opening, right, make a big spectacle? But Annie thinks they’ll come incognito and then try to disappear again? Either way, they’re calling the shots. But they don’t know me. I could set up a stakeout or something, be watching from a building across the street. We could have walkie-talkies, and I could use binoculars, and when I saw them, I could let you know so you’d be ready. I could be your tactical advantage,” she said, her pupils dilating with the excitement of her imagined spy games. She was, Buster realized, someone his parents would probably love, the way she so quickly adjusted to the weirdness around her.
“I just don’t think it’s a great idea. It’s not how I want you to meet my parents,” he told her, as if there was some version of reality where Buster would bring Suzanne to his parents’ house and they would all have iced tea on the porch and play cards and talk about horse racing. He could not figure out why,