The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [61]
“Your parents didn’t tell you?” Mr. Delano asked.
Buster and Annie shook their heads.
“This,” Mr. Delano said, gesturing toward the room filled to overflowing with the Fangs’ latest piece, “was all planned well in advance. Your parents approached me when Annie was selected to play Juliet. I loved the idea. You may not believe it, but when I was a young man in New York, I was at the forefront of the avant-garde movement in American theater. I got arrested for eating broken glass and spitting blood into the audience during an Off-Broadway performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. Your parents are geniuses. I was happy to help.”
“What about Coby Reid?” Buster asked. “How did you know he’d drop out of the performance?”
“Your parents took care of him,” Mr. Delano said.
Annie and Buster made simultaneous faces of shock and Mr. Delano corrected himself. “No, no, goodness no. They paid Coby five hundred dollars to drop out of the play. He simply wouldn’t show up on opening night. The car crash was Coby’s own bad luck.”
“They did all this to us,” Annie said, “for art.”
“For art,” Mr. Delano shouted, raising his empty glass over his head.
“They used us,” Buster said.
“No, Buster, that’s unfair. Your parents withheld certain information in order to get the best performance possible from you. Think of your parents as directors; they control the circumstances and make all the independent pieces come together to create something beautiful that would otherwise not exist. They directed you so skillfully that you didn’t even know they were doing it.”
“Fuck you, Mr. Delano,” Annie said.
“Children,” Mr. Delano cried.
“Fuck you, Mr. Delano,” Buster said.
Annie and Buster, still holding wineglasses, unable to put them down, left their former drama teacher and walked into the crowd of people that surrounded their parents, pushing their way to the center.
“A and B,” Mr. Fang said when he noticed the children standing in front of him. “The stars of the evening,” Mrs. Fang said. Buster and Annie, knowing each other’s desires without having to speak, slammed the wineglasses against their parents’ heads, shards falling to the floor, their parents’ mouths gaping, perfect Os of confusion.
“We’ve always done whatever you asked us to do,” Annie said, her whole body shaking. “We did what you said and we never asked why. We just did it. For you.”
“If you’d told us what was happening,” Buster continued, “we still would have done it.”
“We’re finished with you,” Annie said, and the Fang children walked softly into the main exhibit room as the shocked audience, unclear as to whether this was some sort of artistic performance or simple assault, made way with haste.
Their hands dripping blood, their own and their parents’, granules of glass under their skin, Annie and Buster watched themselves on the screen, two children so unwilling to follow their parents’ decree that they would rather end it all as spectacularly as their limited means would allow.
Chapter Seven
When Annie awoke the next morning, Buster asleep in his room, she was in possession of a terrific happiness. Of course, she hadn’t really done anything of note to warrant this happiness. She’d wasted two hours at the movie theater, sneaking mini bottles of bourbon throughout the film, but Buster had done enough for both of them. He’d left the house, misaligned face and all, met with a group of students, and talked about the thing that made him special. As a result, the two of them had ended the day happier than when they’d woken up, and she could not remember the last time that had happened. It was a small thing, perhaps, but there it was.
Annie slipped out of bed, still fully clothed from the day before, and grabbed the pile of stories that Buster had picked up at the community college. She leafed through them until she found Suzanne’s story and then she walked to the other end of the house, into the kitchen, far enough away from Buster that she could get to work on the unenviable task of keeping her brother from falling in love with this strange girl. It had once been