The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [94]
“And you want me to use a Ouija board?”
“Maybe something even more stupid,” Suzanne admitted, her eyes like slits, as if she was thinking very hard about ridiculous things, as if ridiculous things did not naturally come to her.
“That makes sense,” Buster admitted. “That’s not bad.”
“You help me,” Suzanne said, gesturing toward the story which Buster had obliterated with a red pen until it was unclear what belonged to Suzanne and what belonged to Buster. “It’d be nice if I could help you, too.”
She kissed him on the lips, quickly, the taste of mayonnaise and ketchup on her breath, and then she rolled away from him before he could respond. He watched her, pumping her arms, swinging them like precise machinery, as she moved toward the rear lights of other cars.
Buster walked into the living room, where Annie was reading a book from their parents’ limited collection, a how-to manual for overthrowing governments.
“I think I have an idea,” Buster said, immediately feeling embarrassed. He could not decide if he was embarrassed for saying this out loud or the fact that this was the first time he could remember ever saying it.
“What is your idea?” Annie said.
“We kill ourselves.”
“Terrible idea,” Annie replied.
“Not really kill ourselves. We pretend to kill ourselves. To make Mom and Dad come out of hiding.”
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Annie said, then added, “that’s not a good idea, Buster.”
“Why not?”
“If they really are dead—” she began.
“But you don’t think they’re dead,” he interrupted with enthusiasm.
“I don’t,” Annie admitted.
“I don’t either. So why don’t we try this?”
“Because if we pretend to kill ourselves, we’ll be fucking up our lives for the sole purpose of finding our parents, who willfully let us think that they were violently killed. Does that sound healthy to you?”
“They want us to do something,” Buster told her. “I can feel it. I’m certain of this. They are hiding somewhere, waiting for us to take the next step and make this thing happen.”
“We don’t do this, remember? We don’t let them run our lives anymore,” Annie replied, her body now electric with anger. “They are hurting us, Buster. And if they are hurting us on purpose, to make us do what they want, then I want them to stay disappeared forever. I don’t want them near me.” As soon as she finished the last sentence, she slumped back onto the sofa, her anger replaced by a sadness that left Buster temporarily mute.
They would forever come to this impasse. Buster wanted to believe that his parents still loved them, that they had planned all of this as a way to save their children from falling apart, to make them strong. Annie, however, was certain that their parents had created something just for themselves, and that they did not care what pain they caused in service of this idea.
“I’m sorry, Buster,” Annie told him. “I won’t let them do this to us.” She returned her gaze to the book.
“This is something,” Buster said, and he immediately had no idea what he meant. So he said it again, louder, until Annie dropped the book and stared at him. “This is something,” Buster said again, but there was no force behind it. He thought of his parents in some kind of cell, the cinder block walls leaving chalky residue on their hands. He thought of them huddled together at night, waiting for their children to unlock the clues they had hurriedly left for them, to free them from the awful thing they had themselves created. Annie stood and pulled Buster into an awkward embrace. “It’s something, goddamn it,” Buster said. “We are in it, and it’s happening, and even if we do nothing, we will still be in it.” Annie held him tightly and said, “They fucked us up, Buster.”
“They didn’t mean to,” he replied.
“But they did,” she said.
Buster sat in his room, Annie asleep next door, the air moving through the vents of the house sounding exactly like his parents’ breathing. He had been working on something, a book maybe, and he said the