The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [68]
“Great art is difficult,” Caleb said.
“I’m serious, Caleb,” she said. “No more weddings.”
“You don’t want to marry me anymore?” he said, smiling, coaxing the car into first gear with some difficulty.
“Thirty-six marriages,” she said. “It’s enough.”
“Fifty,” Caleb replied. “We agreed on fifty. Fifty Weddings: An Exploration of Love and the Law. Thirty-six Weddings. That sounds awful.”
Camille remembered Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which she had studied in her first art class. She could see the crashing waves off Kanagawa, the tiny people in their boats, completely powerless, endlessly threatened with disaster.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
“Okay,” Caleb said without comprehension, fighting with the gearshift to keep moving forward, unfamiliar with the streets in this town.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated.
The car came to a stop, the sound of metal gears grinding imprecisely. Someone behind them honked their horn and raced around the car, now parked in the middle of the street.
“I’m pregnant,” Camille said once more, hoping that three times would be enough for Caleb to understand.
“Well, what do we do?” Caleb said.
“I have no idea,” Camille answered.
“We have to do something,” Caleb said.
They sat in the car without speaking, the engine running, each of them unsure of every single possibility that presented itself.
“We have no money,” Caleb said.
“I know,” Camille answered.
“Hobart always says, ‘Children kill art.’ He’s told me that a million times,” Caleb continued. He wanted to roll down the window, get some fresh air, but the handle was broken.
“I know,” Camille replied. “I’ve heard him say it.”
“It’s an unfortunate situation at the worst possible time,” Caleb said.
“I know,” Camille said, “but I’m going to have it.”
Caleb put his hands on the wheel and stared at the empty street. Thirty yards ahead of them, the traffic light changed from green to yellow to red and back again. He felt the nausea of nonfulfillment, having carried Camille, ten years his junior, his former student, into possible ruination. He felt certain that he was a failure, every artistic endeavor ending with his own surprise at how little had come from it. Perhaps that was how life worked, the expectation of success after each failure the engine that kept the world turning. Perhaps retrogression was an artistic endeavor in itself. Perhaps he might sink so far that he would find himself, somehow, returned to the surface.
“Okay,” Caleb finally answered.
“What?” Camille said.
“Okay,” Caleb replied. “Let’s do it.”
Camille leaned over and kissed him, softly, a more perfect kiss than any from the thirty-six weddings.
“We should get married,” Caleb said.
Camille reached into the ashtray and found the engagement ring. She put it back on her finger. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” Caleb responded.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll marry you.”
Three months later, they were married for the thirty-seventh time. Four months after that, their child was born, a girl, Annie. Less than a month later, their show, Thirty-Seven Weddings, opened at the Anchor Gallery in San Francisco, the walls covered with the marriage licenses, each expertly forged by Camille, and the amateur, post-ceremony portraits of the happy couple in various states of happiness. An entire wall of the gallery flickered with the looped footage of each one of the weddings, a never-ending reel of ring exchanges and bride-kissing. The final piece of the exhibit, the genuine marriage certificate, was displayed with a photo from the final wedding, Caleb and Camille surrounded by their friends and colleagues, his parents long dead and her family, having long posited that Caleb had brainwashed their daughter, declining the invitation. Hobart Waxman, Caleb’s mentor, had performed the ceremony, a certified minister yet another hidden title on his résumé. “A terrible idea,” Hobart had said after the ceremony, embracing the Fangs, “elegantly rendered.”
A trite concept rendered so awkwardly as to erase any shred of meaning. This was