Infandous (17 page)

I had to get a chair from the kitchen to reach the box, and since the closet was small and crowded, I had to angle the chair between all the shoes, but I did it. I climbed up on it, and I grabbed the box and took it from the closet and set it on the bed.

There
was
a scarf in the box, right on the top—brown knit, with tassels—but I didn’t like it. As I dug down toward the bottom, looking for another, my fingers brushed a photograph.

I knew it was a photo before I pulled it free from the ski hats and goggles. It had that slick texture, the special coolness that regular paper doesn’t have. It was an old snapshot, folded in half. There was a young man—twenty, maybe, or twenty-five—handsome, with a head full of dark, shoulder-length curls, a mouth full of flashing white teeth. He was dressed in wild, rainbow-colored board shorts and nothing else. His chest was flat and strong and summer tan. His left arm held up a bottle of Corona, as if toasting the cameraman. His other arm disappeared into the crease of the folded picture.

It didn’t make sense. I knew this guy. Not the way he was in the photo—not with long hair, not in those crazy shorts. But I knew him, just the same. Slowly, full of dread, suddenly cold enough that all the scarves in the world couldn’t have made me warm, I unfolded the picture, smoothing out the crimped line where it had been bent. There was Felix’s other hand, wrapped around a slender, unmarked waist. Her breasts were barely contained in triangles of bright yellow fabric. And there was the riot of her hair—goldish-reddish, wavy, and gorgeous.

There she was—before the stretch marks, before the disappointment, before her parents disowned her, and before the shitty apartments. There she was, frozen in that apex summer—my mother.

The Handless Maiden

Once there was a man who was married to the most beautiful woman in the world. Each time he touched her, her beauty vibrated through him like a bell. She bore to him a daughter, but with the birth came his wife’s lifeblood, and yet she was beautiful even in death. The man mourned her deeply and resolved that he would not love again, not until he met a woman whose beauty could rival that of his wife.

Largely he ignored his daughter, for she reminded him of what he had lost. Years passed and with them the girl’s childhood. When her father looked at her at last, he saw not his daughter but a woman whose beauty did indeed match his lost wife’s.

And so he approached her and took her by the hand and led her to his bed. But the girl was horrified that her own father could wish to touch her in such a way, and she fled.

He followed her deep into the forest and caressed her hair, speaking lover’s words instead of a father’s. Again the girl refused, and this time the man brought forth a knife. If he could not enter her flesh one way, he would enter it another. So that she might never embrace another man, just as he would never again embrace her mother, he used that knife to slice off first her left hand and then her right.

Leaving her alone and bleeding on the forest floor, the man returned home. The girl, most certainly, could never walk that path again. Instead, she pushed forward, her wrists weeping blood, and she stumbled through the dark, frightened by everything, but pushing on just the same.

That first dark night in the forest was full of sounds—the cries and calls of animals, the rustle of wind through trees, and far off the rush of a river she could not see. But though fresh blood flowed from her twin wounds, no predators came to feast on her flesh.

In time, dawn streaked the sky red and pink, and the girl looked down to find that her bleeding had ceased. And though all through the long night she had willed herself to die, she found in the light of the new day that hunger stirred inside of her the same as it had the day before, that her body thirsted still, that her bowels and her bladder called her to move her body through its functions.

She struggled to do the things that before had been natural to her, so easy that she had never considered them tasks, at all. From the trees, birds gathered to watch her wrestle with her skirts; from the river, fish burbled to the surface to see her attempt to drink.

And the animals took pity on her, birds dropping fruit that she had no hands to pick, fish splashing with their tails water she feared to drink herself, lest she slip into the river and drown.

On and on she wandered, until at last she came to the far edge of the forest, and there she found a castle on a hill. She stumbled toward it until she was spied by its guards, who took her inside the castle walls and presented her to the king.

He found beauty in her face and, in spite of her mangled arms, he wished to take her as his bride. Waiting women bathed her and wrapped her stumps in fine, soft muslin and dressed her in a wedding gown, yards and yards of white draped silk that she could not lift herself.

Maybe she wished to marry him. Maybe she did not. Perhaps, having denied the advances of one man and finding herself deprived of her arms, she did not wish to risk denying another.

But they were wed.

This is where the story should end—the girl saved, wedded, and bedded. But this is not its ending.

After a time the king went away to war. In his absence, his mother tended to the girl, but she resented his son’s bride and looked with contempt at the stumps of her arms. Conniving, she contrived to break the couple apart and wrote a letter to the girl as if from her son, saying that he wished her gone from the castle by the time he returned, as he tired of his armless wife and wished to take a new bride.

Did the girl believe the letter? Did she mistake the feminine handwriting for that of her husband? Or did she recognize the artifice and decide to leave just the same, yearning to return to the thick, deep forest?

With the help of a serving girl, she cut short the skirt of her dress so she would not trip upon it, and she slipped into men’s boots, which the maid tied with double knots. She had her hair shorn close to keep it from falling into her eyes, and she shouldered a pack that did not lace, full of provisions for her journey.

And this time, when she entered the forest, it was not with the intention of walking through it but rather of making it her home.

Some say that when the birds saw her return, they passed their wings across her arms and her hands regrew as if by magic. Others like to think that the fat orange fish splashed healing water on her stumps and by a miracle she once again had hands.

And some stories tell us that once her hands—her lovely white hands—had been restored, so too was her love with her husband-king, and they lived together ever after in the castle.

But it may be that the handless maiden wandered in that forest for the rest of her days. Perhaps she learned to be clever with her stumps and her teeth and her toes. It could be that she and the other forest creatures formed an understanding, that the magpie brought her pretty things and that the friendly fish splashed water in her mouth to sustain her and that though she was not restored to what she once had been, perhaps she at last found a home of her own.

Fifteen

At the shop, Jordan is waiting for me—that’s all he’s doing—sitting in my chair behind the cash register, feet kicked up, my sticker and a closed laptop the only things on the counter.

“I like your art,” he says when I push through the Dutch door.

“Thanks,” I say, but my voice is cool. My loyalties are clear.

“I want to use some of it for the shop,” he says. “I think it would be cool to display one of your sculptures in the shop, and some of your images would make cool decals. For the boards.”

I don’t know what to say to this, how to react, but immediately I suspect ulterior motives. It can’t be a coincidence that he suddenly is looking for new images for the shop just a few days after the whole thing went down with our moms.

So I shrug and indicate with a lift of my chin that he should get out of my seat.

He ignores me and flips open the laptop and types something.

“Do you mind?” I say.

“I think your stuff could really appeal to the locals,” he goes on. “You know, local board shop, local artist …”

“You really want to get back with my mom, huh?”

Jordan looks up. His expression is unreadable. “Not everything’s about sex, Seph.”

I feel like he’s trying to chasten me, and I don’t buy it. Everything is about sex.

Then he angles the laptop so that I can see the screen. At first it doesn’t make sense. It’s Joaquin’s page, but Jordan is logged into it. And there are Joaquin’s terrible poems and links to the images I’ve uploaded of my stuff—my wolves, my handless maiden, my Sleeping Beauty, and my mermaids.

“
You?
”

He nods, looking kind of embarrassed. “I like your art,” he says again. “I’m a fan.”

It’s one of those moments when the things you thought you knew lose focus and come back together in a different order, with new meaning. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced this particular sensation, and I still don’t like it.

“Have you been fucking with me?”

He shakes his head, earnestly. “No way. I found your stuff online, and I was just trying to … encourage you. But this new thing”—he taps the sticker—“I think it’s really salable.”

I remember the way he stared at it, how he seemed surprised to see it there.

“This town is a fucking fishbowl,” I mutter. “And no one is who you think they are.” I look at Jordan again. “Why Joaquin?”

He shrugs, all little boy now. “Is that how you pronounce it? Sounds even cooler that way.”

I can’t help myself. I laugh.

He grins too, and I have to admit that it’s nice to see his smile again.

“Your newest poem is about my mom.” It’s not a question.

He nods.

“And you shaped it like a
diamond?
”

He shakes his head. “It was supposed to be a surfboard.”

I stop myself from saying what I’m thinking—
lame
—but I literally have to bite my lip.

So here we are, still Seph and Jordan, but now we’re this other thing too, these other people—me, the artist, and Jordan too is more than I thought he was. He’s Jordan; he’s Joaquin. He’s a shaper of boards, a fan of my art, a lover of my mother. And a shitty poet too.

“What do you say? Wanna make some boards with me?”

It’s one thing to slap my stickers around town. It would be another to see my image on his boards—and to sell the boards, for money. It kind of scares me, this idea, but it thrills me too.

Still, I have to ask, again, “Are you sure this isn’t about my mom?”

He sighs. “Seph, I fucked up with your mom. And I need to grow a fucking set of balls with mine. But
this …
”—he taps on the sticker—“is something else. It’s your own thing. Nothing to do with Rebecca. How about it?”

His laptop has Photoshop, and I have my memory stick in my backpack. We open the image, and I watch as he reverses it so that it won’t be backward when we apply it to the board. Then he presses Print, and I hear the whirring sound of the printer. There it is—my sticker, in reverse, freshly copied onto decal paper. We wait about fifteen minutes while it dries.

Venice Beach smiles on us, and no one comes into the shop.

“Okay, it’s ready.” Jordan cuts the decal free from the rest of the paper. We go together into the back room. The board he was working on yesterday is still on the table, and he measures the tip from side to side and positions the decal where he thinks it should be.

“Okay?” he asks.

I nod.

He presses it facedown onto the surfboard, a few inches under the board’s tip, and measures again before he takes a spoon and rubs it, in smooth, firm strokes, to transfer the image. Then, carefully, he pulls back the paper.

There it is—my shadow image, permanently affixed to a Riley Wilson original. The whole process reminds me of those temporary tattoos I used to get from junk machines at the pizza parlor, the kind you have to get wet and then press against your skin for thirty seconds.

“I’ll glass the board,” Jordan says. “And then we’ll see if anyone wants to buy the thing.”

***

The next day is our summer school “midterm.” I fail it, of course, miserably. Crandall runs the Scantrons during our fifteen-minute break and hands them back to us before the end of class. There’s mine, with a big red
F
and the words “See me after class.”

“Well, you’re not doing real hot in here, little lady.” He’s been flipping through his grade book. I see my name next to a list of zeros and
F
s.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

He looks up at me, and for a second I consider the possibility that his looks might be deceiving, that he might be more than a third-rate teacher on a first-rate power trip. But then his gaze slips—just for a second—to my chest.

I say nothing.

“Do you have a tutor? Can you afford one?”

I shake my head slowly. I have a feeling I know where this is going.

“I could help you out,” he said. “Maybe you could still pass.”

Yes. Service with a smile.

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s possible that he’s just a dedicated teacher who wants to help a flailing student. I suppose he might have my best interests at heart. I think about it—about taking him up on his offer, about letting him help me out.

“You know,” he says, “I went to school with your mom.”

I push back my chair. I stand. And then I speak. “Fuck you, Crandall.”

I’m to the door before he finds his words, and when he does, I let them blur into sounds as I thrust through the doo rway and out into the blinding midday sun.

Sixteen

The first wolf board sells within a week, so Jordan decides to make more. Lots more.

We’ve moved the sculpture into the store, and Jordan has lit it so that it throws its wolfy shadow on the wall between the rows of boards. I have a stack of stickers by the register, and I make sure to give a couple of them to anyone who comes in.