Infandous by Elana K. Arnold Page B

cares, not really.
    ***
    And at home, even before I push open the bedroom door to see the still-made bed, I know I am alone. If I stand very still and listen, I can hear them downstairs. The rhythm of their bodies, the rocking of her hips, the cleaving of her tail into legs and sea-deep wetness and warmth.
    The shadow on the wall is mine. It must be, because no one else is here.

Eight
    The next day I leave early for summer school, before my mother comes back upstairs. I don’t leave a note. And that night when she gets home from work, she texts me rather than knocking on the door of the storage room—where I’ve been from the moment Crandall released us. I text back that I’m not hungry.
    R u mad?
    I stare at her words on the screen, sifting through my emotions to see if the word mad matches any of them.
    No .
    A moment later she writes, I love u.
    U 2.
    It’s so upside down , isn’t it? That’s how it feels to me. I mess with that image awhile, a mermaid floating tail-up in the sky, like a constellation, her hair a ribbon of gold reaching almost down to the top of a cityscape, her long copper tail too big to even fit entirely in the picture, disappearing into the uppermost edge of my notebook. I smear pastels to make the dreamlike sky, the wave of hair. The silhouette of the city is rough in charcoal.
    The problem with mermaids—one of them, anyway—is that they can’t have sex. Not human sex, anyway—a mermaid doesn’t have a vagina. What does she have? One tail, not two legs, no cleft, no hidden female potential. I imagine what a mermaid would have to go through to have sex—ripping her tail in two to create a space between, the act more violent than any hymen tearing. And self-inflicted. A choice. Irrevocable.
    My phone makes a little sound that alerts me when someone had posted something new to my web page. The screen on my shitty phone is too shitty to really see anything, so I flip open my computer and log on. It is a message from that new follower, Joaquin. Is this you? he has written. And he’s attached a photo. I click it open; there is my baby pie, my INFANDOUS , framed by the coffee shop window.
    An artist’s work is like her fingerprint.
    Joaquin knows my art. Does that mean he knows me?
    It must mean that he’s a local too. I imagine him wandering the streets of Venice, coming upon my baby pie. The composition of the photo is actually really interesting—the way the front half of the pie is washed out, overexposed, and the back half, with one of the jutting legs, recedes into shadow.
    Who’s asking? I respond to his post.
    His answer comes back right away, as if he has been waiting. Just me.
    Of course this doesn’t help at all because I don’t know who “me” is. And what is he asking? If the art is mine? Or if I am the baby inside?
    I write back, Yes.
    I would know you anywhere , he writes back, and honestly this guy is starting to creep me out.
    What are you, some kind of stalker?
    No, just a lover of art.
    I type Thanks and close the tab.
    ***
    Upstairs I find that my mom has made a salad and mac and cheese—the real stuff, not from a box. There’s even half a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table. Screw top—nothing she’d ever buy. But after a day so long and hot and shitty, it’s not very hard for me to avoid thinking about who did. Or to avoid dwelling on how things must have gone if they didn’t even manage to finish it. The meal feels like an apology dinner even though she hasn’t done anything wrong. Still, she feels sheepish, I can tell, which makes me feel bad because I hate it when she feels bad.
    I take an extra big helping of the pasta even though I’m not really hungry and make a big deal about how good it is. We eat for a while in silence. She’s lit a candle, a squat yellow one, and it flickers between us. I hold up my glass and watch the candle flicker through the candy-pink wine. Through the liquid the flame looks grotesque, hellish. Or maybe that’s