Free The Family Fang: A Novel by Kevin Wilson Page B

going crazy. She didn’t feel crazy, but she was sure that this was not the way that sane people behaved. She heard the front door open and then close. She pressed a washcloth against her face and imagined that she was a giant, remorseless, half-bear, half-man creature. She pounded all of her enemies into the earth, leaving bloodstains in all directions, buzzards circling overhead. She killed everything that needed to be killed, and when she was done, when all had been made, if not right, at least less wrong, she crawled into a cave, dark and deep, and hibernated for months, waiting for a new season to arrive and find her sated. She looked at her own hands; her right hand was purple, swollen, perhaps broken. She could not smash anything without breaking herself.
    She walked back into the kitchen and placed the dishes in the sink. She picked up the phone and dialed Sally’s office number, relieved to be shuttled to her voice mail.
    “Sally,” she said, walking, as always, straight into the sun, “I think I fucked you over again.”

the portrait of a lady, 1988
    artists: caleb and camille fang
    N one of the Fangs could deny it: Buster was beautiful. As he walked to the front of the stage, his evening gown ridiculously sequined, his long, blond curls bouncing with the rhythm of his confident stride, the rest of his family began to realize that he might actually win. As Mr. Fang continued to film the proceedings with his video camera, Mrs. Fang clutched her daughter’s hand and whispered, “He’s going to do it, Annie. Your brother is going to be Little Miss Crimson Clover.” Annie watched Buster, his face paralyzed with happiness, and immediately understood that, for her brother, this was no longer about making an artistic statement. He wanted that crown.
    T wo weeks earlier, Buster had outright refused. “I’m not going to wear a dress,” he said. “It’s an evening gown,” Mrs. Fang told him, “a kind of costume.” Buster, nine years old, was not interested in the subtleties of wordplay. “It’s still a dress,” he said. Mr. Fang, who had recently used a good portion of a grant from the Beuys Foundation to purchase a Panasonic VHS/S-VHS camcorder to replace the one broken by an irate zoo employee, zoomed in on his son’s face, tight with repulsion. “Artists are notoriously difficult,” Mr. Fang said and then Mrs. Fang looked into the camera and told him to please leave the room.
    “Just get Annie to do it,” Buster offered, feeling the inescapable claustrophobia of his parents’ desires. “Annie winning a beauty pageant is not a commentary on gender and objectification and masculine influences on beauty,” Mrs. Fang replied. “Annie winning a beauty pageant is a foregone conclusion, the status quo.” Buster could not argue; his sister could win the Junior Miss category of the Crimson Clover pageant even if she was sobbing uncontrollably and shouting obscenities. She was the beautiful Fang, the one who could insert herself into a situation and gain the attention of anyone, which allowed for the other Fangs to continue their secret actions. So Buster understood that Annie was the beautiful one and Buster was, well, not the beautiful one. He was, well, something else. Whatever he was, he was not the Fang who wore a dress and competed in beauty pageants. Could he please not be that?
    “Buster,” his mother continued, “we have other projects lined up. You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do.”
    “I don’t want to do it,” he said.
    “Okay, fine. I just want to say one thing. We’re a family. We do things that are difficult because we love each other. Remember when I jumped that car with a motorcycle?”
    After plastering a town in Georgia with flyers for a daredevil stunt, Mrs. Fang, in special makeup to look like a ninety-year-old woman, drove a rented motorcycle off a ramp and over a parked car. She barely cleared the car and then wobbled for a few feet before crashing