The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [103]
They were in her bed, the TV still playing some kung-fu movie marathon that had been on the entire time they were having sex. The room echoed with the whiplash sounds of kicks being unleashed, the constant, staccato laughter that was dubbed in English and yet sounded so foreign to his ears. Suzanne wasn’t wearing her glasses and it made her eyes seem dim and unfocused. She looked disappointed, and he wondered if she was upset with him. “You met me at a strange time. I’m glad you did, but I think everything will be better after I do this thing for my parents, for Annie and me. There won’t be this, I don’t know, uncertainty hovering over me.”
Suzanne leaned closer to him and tapped him on the forehead with her finger, a sharp thwack of the tip of her finger glancing off his skin. It made him flinch, but not before registering the odd expression on her face, as though she was trying to decide what kind of person he really was. He held as still as possible, not breathing, hoping that she liked what she saw.
“I remember when you came into the room for our creative writing group,” she began. “I kind of thought you were cute, even with the bruising on your face, and then you started to talk about some kind of ridiculous bubble gum that you liked to chew and then I saw that you were missing a tooth and you seemed so nervous that I immediately realized that you were a very weird person. And that, for some reason, made me more interested in you. And then that girl came and took me outside, and you were standing there, and then you said that you liked my story and I thought that was the nicest thing I’d ever heard. You just showed up and made me happy.”
“You make me happy, too,” he said, though he wished he had said it before she did. He wanted to say it in a way that showed her that he was not just parroting her, but Suzanne smiled at him, and he knew he’d said it well enough.
“You talk as if you think there’s going to be a time in the future when things aren’t completely weird. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, based on your life history. And I guess all I want to tell you is that it isn’t really that big of a deal to me. If this is how strange your life is, that’s okay with me. It’s fun.”
Buster didn’t know how to respond to her, was dumbfounded by her easy kindness, but also by her belief that his instability was “fun.” She was, he began to realize, as weird as he was. Perhaps weirder. If she had been born a Fang, she might have become the focal point of the art, leaving Annie and Buster far behind, of no further use to their parents. And though being face-to-face with someone who possessed a strangeness that could outpace the Fangs should have made him hesitate, he quickly pulled her close to him and let the riotous sounds of children past their bedtimes and unafraid of the darkness, kung-fu masters punching their way through all evils, and the sound of Suzanne’s breathing, so steady that he thought she might be dead asleep, lull him into a state that he imagined was what other people referred to as serenity.
Annie and Buster were carefully boxing up each painting, bubble wrap and cardboard and packing tape creating a sea of detritus in which the siblings seemed to be floating. Holding a sheet of bubble wrap in her hand, Annie twitched slightly, popping one of the plastic pods, a sound like she was snapping her fingers in discovery. Her face flushed with whatever secret knowledge she had acquired and Buster watched the darkness sweep across her face. She tried to speak, but could only stutter, which caused her to grow even angrier. Finally, the bubble wrap going off like fireworks in her tightening fist, she found her voice. “If you think Caleb and Camille had planned all of this,” she said, gesturing toward the paintings, “then doesn’t it seem like they would want to document this?” She spread her arms as if to suggest the frame of their house, everything under this roof, and Buster instantly