The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [84]
“That brings me to your second option.”
“What is it?” Buster asked.
“You let them stay missing,” Hobart continued. “They are alive, and they have constructed this bizarre little stunt and they didn’t even tell their son and daughter about it. They want you to think, obviously, that they really are dead. So do it.”
Annie looked over at Buster, who would not meet her gaze. The thought of giving up seemed as impossible as the prospect of actually finding her parents. But she kept imagining that moment, when she ruined what her parents had made, the looks of disbelief on their faces, and it made her heart beat faster.
“I used to tell all my students, not just Caleb and Camille, but any artist that showed some sliver of promise, that they had to devote themselves to their work. They had to remove all obstructions to making the fantastic thing that needed to exist. I would tell them that kids kill art.”
Annie and Buster both winced at the phrase, one they had heard their father recite any time the two of them had complicated one of the Fang projects.
“And I meant it,” Hobart continued. “It’s why I never married, never got involved with anyone at all. And your parents realized that they would have to find some way to overcome this theory of mine, some construction that would disprove it. So they intertwined their family and their art so tightly that it was impossible to untangle it. They made you two into their art. It was amazing, really. And then time passed, and maybe it’s because I never really built on my earlier successes, perhaps I was just jealous of them, but I found it was impossible for me to see any Fang art without feeling this horrible sense of dread, that something irreparable was being done to the two of you. And Caleb understood this, my reserved judgments about their work; so pretty soon he stopped writing to me, cut off all communication, and kept right on with their vision. Your parents were right. They beat me by completely inverting my theory. Kids don’t kill art. Art kills kids.”
Annie felt something electric travel up and down her body. Hobart looked at her as if he felt responsible for their entire lives, a sadness she could not entirely comprehend.
“That’s not fair,” Annie said, unable to stop herself from siding with her parents, no matter how much she might agree with Hobart. She did not want Hobart’s pity or perhaps she didn’t want it to come so easily.
“We’re still alive,” Buster added, and Hobart held up his hands in surrender.
“Yes, that’s true,” Hobart said, looking sadly at the two of them.
“So we just let them disappear?” Annie asked. “We let them get away with it?”
“You’re thinking about this in a way that makes you angry at your parents for not including you in this, for letting you think that they really are dead.”
“How else can we think about it?” Buster asked.
“That maybe your parents finally miscalculated,” Hobart said. “They have, however inadvertently, untangled the threads of family and art. You two are free.”
Neither Annie nor Buster made the slightest sign of movement. Annie waited for Hobart to continue, still struggling to accept how much sense he was making.
“You don’t have to follow your parents all over the country, hiding in plain sight, putting your lives on hold until their latest action can be revealed to the world. They forgot to keep you tied to them, and now you don’t have to follow them. Does that not seem like a good thing?”
“It’s hard to think like that,” Annie admitted.
“I imagine that’s true,” Hobart said, “after a lifetime of living otherwise.”
“I don’t know if I want to think like that,” Buster said.
“What do you two really want if you do find your parents? What would be achieved?”
Annie, who had surprisingly never spent a single session with a psychiatrist, began to get the intense feeling that she was in therapy. She did not care for it in the least. And there went her fingers, long and slender, transforming themselves once again into tiny sledgehammer fists. She struggled for an answer to Hobart’s