The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [132]
“I cannot imagine how that factors into my decision.”
“And the children?”
“We have obtained residence for them at a hospital in Alaska, one that specializes in such unique cases. The children will be separated, to dissuade any collective hysteria, and treated with scientific methods that are beyond your capabilities.”
“But they’re children,” Annie said, as if Mr. Marbury had forgotten this. “They are your children.”
“Children are not guaranteed the luxuries of family, Ms. Wells,” he said. “If people are unable to exist within the parameters that have been created for them, they lose any claim to titles like son and daughter.”
Annie felt the heat radiating within her body, her heart an engine of combustion so powerful that she threatened to crack open and fill the entire house with her fury. Annie, who eschewed using her own personal history to inform her performance, simply allowed her actions to come directly from the material at hand: these parents, so certain of their infallibility, terrified of their children’s capabilities, sought to erase any evidence of discord in their lives. These were not her parents; she had no desire to create such a flimsy lie. They were only the people that they were, standing in front of her. And they were deserving of punishment.
Annie’s hands curled into fists, her nails digging into her own skin, and she struck out at Mr. Marbury, sending him crashing to the floor with the force of her blows. She pounded him into unconsciousness and then, his legs spasming uncontrollably, she ran out of the study, leaving Mrs. Marbury frozen to her spot on the floor, unable to step toward her downed husband.
Lucy ended the scene and Annie immediately ran back into the room to check on Stephen, who played Mr. Marbury. “Did I hurt you?” she asked him and he rose unsteadily to his feet. “You hurt me just the right amount,” he said, “but I’d rather not do too many takes of it.”
Lucy beamed, staring directly at Annie. “That was perfect,” she said. “That was exactly what I needed from you.”
Annie turned to head back to her dressing room, avoiding Lucy’s gaze. As she walked past the crew, she clenched and unclenched her fists, admiring the ease with which her character could welcome disaster into her life.
Annie called Buster. “How is the movie business?” he asked her. She said it was fine, that she was deep enough into the movie that she was operating on instinct, which was when she knew things were working. “How is the novel?” she asked. He told her that he had sent it to his agent, who was shocked to find out that he was still alive, still writing. “He thinks it could be big,” Buster told his sister, and she could hear the excitement in his voice, his desire to show her that he was in a good place, that they had both made it to the other side of their unhappiness.
“I think he’s right,” she told him.
“And Suzanne just sold a story to the Missouri Review. She wants to frame the acceptance letter.”
It struck Annie that Buster was on such solid ground, having always been the most fragile of the Fangs, that he had surpassed her. She had always taken care of him, protected him from the worst of the chaos, and now he was happy and in love and she was in a frozen place, still trying to figure out how her own body worked.
“Can I ask you something?” she said. Buster was open to any question from her. “Do you think you made the right decision with Suzanne?”
“That seems like a strange question to be asking me,” Buster answered.
“I just mean, at first, didn’t it seem like a crazy thing to do? Because you hardly knew her? Because you are who you are? Because of just about everything that came before this?”
“Actually, it seemed like a good idea, but I was terrified of it. I feel like I’ve always done things that were profoundly bad ideas, and it’s always ended exactly how you’d expect. That comes from Mom and Dad, I think. With the art, they pushed us into circumstances that we already knew were bad ideas. That was the whole point. So they taught us to walk straight into that