• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 554 0

without fail, Caleb and Camille had won a MacArthur Genius grant when Buster was ten years old, a windfall so great that it was exactly like winning the lottery. His parents, however, simply kept on as if nothing had changed, perhaps occasionally buying more expensive props for their pieces. The thought that his parents had given some of that money to Annie made Buster happy, because it showed that his family, fractured as it was, might someday heal. It also showed him that, if he played his cards right, there would be a wad of cash for him when he moved on to the thing that was next.

Annie’s roommate, Beatrice, a lesbian who helped run a complicated, illegal-sounding mail-order pornography company, answered the phone. “Is Annie there?” he asked. “She’s right here,” Beatrice said. “How come you haven’t sent me the thirty dollars like I told you?”

“I don’t have that kind of money,” Buster replied. How to explain that he had the money in a sealed envelope under his bed, too radioactive to deliver, its intentions seeping through the floor and into the ground, tainting the water supply.

“If you sent me that money,” she said, as she always did, “I could send you something wonderful.”

“Is Annie there?” Buster asked again.

“Fine,” Beatrice said. “Hang on.”

Annie answered the phone and she and Buster talked about the usual things. Annie’s auditions (“I got a callback for the TV movie about a bank robbery gone wrong. I get to try and talk some sense into the stupid bank robber before the smart one catches on and beats the shit out of me”). Buster’s stories (“Then they realize that one of the grenades is missing its pin. Oh, man, you can guess what happens next”). Annie’s dreams of being a movie star (“I don’t want to be some kind of huge movie star. I just want people to see me in a movie and remember that they saw me in some other movie and that I was good in it”). Buster’s sudden dreams of being a writer (“I don’t think Mom and Dad would read any of it”).

“We’re going to do incredible things, Buster,” Annie would always tell him. “People will remember Caleb and Camille only as the parents of Buster and Annie Fang.”

“They still haven’t performed since you left,” Buster said, unable to hide the worry in his voice.

“That can only be a good thing, Buster,” Annie said.

“It’s easy for you to say that,” Buster replied. “You’re in California. I’m right here.”

“Soon you can leave too,” she said. “Soon you can come with me to L.A. and we’ll never have to go back.”

“Never?” Buster asked.

“Never ever,” Annie said.

In the supermarket, Buster’s father, mid-sentence, did an awkward dance across the floor, tumbled into a display of spaghetti sauce, and sprawled on the ground, looking not unlike a murder victim as he lay there, stunned. Buster, his mother in another aisle, froze, unsure of how to proceed. They had not discussed this in advance. His father’s right hand was bleeding in a way that suggested a need for stitches. People were coming to Caleb’s aid, shouts were echoing through the aisles. Buster quickly slid to the floor, the knees of his jeans darkening, and began to frantically scoop handfuls of the sauce into his mouth.

“No, no no,” his father whispered, still grimacing in pain. Buster felt the shame burn across his face, and he began to rethink the situation. Now a crowd was beginning to form around them. Buster shouted, “I saw the whole thing. We’ll sue. We’ll sue the pants off this place.” Buster’s father grabbed him by his T-shirt and used it to awkwardly sit up. “I just fell, Buster,” his father said. “That’s it. I just fell.” Buster hung his head, refused to look at the people surrounding the two of them, and waited for someone else to restore order. In his mouth was the tiniest grit of glass from the broken jars. He let it rest on his tongue for a few seconds and then swallowed it.

Later, in the car, Buster and his father sitting on dozens of plastic shopping bags to keep the seats clean, his father shook his head. His cut hand, not nearly as bad as it seemed when covered in tomato sauce, was wrapped in napkins.