The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [60]
“No, no, no, no, no,” Mr. Guess screamed, jumping out of his seat and awkwardly climbing onto the stage. The audience began to boo and cheer in equal measure, though Buster wasn’t sure if it was directed at the kiss or their principal, who was now pulling the Fangs apart, pushing them to opposite ends of the stage, grunting obscenities. Annie looked over at Buster and smiled. Buster only shrugged and then the curtain fell, not to rise again this night. And thus ended the story, though somewhat premature, of Juliet and her Romeo. More woe, of course, would follow.
Six months later, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Buster and Annie sat at an otherwise empty table and finished the glasses of wine left by people old enough to be nonplussed by free alcohol. Their parents were talking to the MCA curator and a gaggle of museum patrons. “I wish we could have stayed at home,” Buster said and his sister, stone-cold sober after seven glasses of wine, said, “It’s like bringing those sharecroppers from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men to the Museum of Modern Art for Walker Evans’s opening. It’s like, hey guys, here’s the source of your shame, framed and much larger than you remembered it.” In the main room of the exhibit, which the Fang children refused to enter, the entirety of the play flickered against a huge screen. Despite their best efforts, they could not avoid the amplified sound of their own voices, Shakespeare’s lines echoing in their heads. “Overrated melodrama,” Annie muttered. “Why must I be a teenager in love? Give me a break,” Buster added. Teenagers killed themselves all the time, the two of them agreed. They stared at their parents and decided that the real miracle was how the two of them, A and B, had kept themselves alive this long.
Mr. Delano, drunk and happy, suddenly appeared at their table and fell into an adjacent seat. “Children,” he shouted, and then began to snicker. Annie and Buster had not seen Mr. Delano since the night of the performance; he had been fired as soon as the curtain fell and he emptied his apartment and left town before the end of the next day. “Children,” Mr. Delano said again, now composed, though his face was still frighteningly red. “How I have missed you.”
“What are you doing here, Mr. Delano?” Buster asked.
“I wouldn’t have missed the opening,” Mr. Delano responded. “After all, none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for me.”
Annie took the glass of wine out of Mr. Delano’s hand and replaced it with an empty one. She pushed a plate of shrimp toast in front of him, but he seemed not to notice.
“Mr. Delano,” Buster asked, “what are you doing here?”
“Your parents invited me,” Mr. Delano said. “They said it was the least they could do after I got fired for putting on such a forward-thinking production.”
“I’m sorry you lost your job,” Annie told him. “That wasn’t right.”
“I knew what I was getting into, my dear,” Mr. Delano said. “I told your parents many times when we were preparing this whole thing that only difficult art is worthwhile, something that leaves behind scorched earth after it takes off.”
Annie and Buster felt their bodies levitate, a sickness entering their systems.
“What?” Annie asked.
“What?” Mr. Delano asked, the drunken blush leaving his face.
“What do you mean,” Annie said, speaking through her gritted teeth, “when you were preparing this whole thing?”
Mr. Delano tilted his empty glass to his lips, his face suddenly ashen. Buster and Annie scooted their chairs so that their knees were touching Mr. Delano’s, the sharpness of their bones digging into his skin. The Fang children, when angered, could make the coiled threat of their bodies crystal-clear.