Wraith

Three weeks after her father's death, your wife begins to disappear. Little things: fingernails, moles, the freckled planes of her shoulders smoothing into one blank canvas of skin. Lipstick stains that immediately fade, eyeliner that doesn't take. You are too busy with funeral arrangements to notice at first, and this is something you will hate yourself for later: not paying enough attention to what is happening in your own apartment by the promenade to notice. You make the solemn pilgrimage to Brighton Beach to sit with her family, who have come back to the city to pay their respects. You order enough food from the café down the street to feed an army, sacrifice half your paycheck doing this, and spend the day labeling containers, playing Tetris in the freezer to fit it all, and putting the rest out on the coffee tables for people to pick at. Your wife and her family and their friends, her family and their friends who do not acknowledge you except in the most perfunctory ways, sit in their blacks on the plastic-covered sofas. They talk quietly among themselves in Russian, and you tune out the familiar sounds to give them their privacy, but the language is comforting and wraps you in a cocoon. There is a blown-up posterboard of your father-in-law's face in the corner, and in your father-in-law's armchair your brother-in-law sprawls, throttling the neck of a bottle of whiskey. Your wife is looking at him blankly as he says something, and nods before returning her gaze to the floor. When you get home from the funeral, your wife goes into your bedroom and lies down in the dark. You hold her, but she already feels a million miles from you. You close your eyes against the thought, and before you know it, you are lost to dreams.Three years ago, you and your wife go upstate, stopping in a series of apple orchards not far from the Onondaga Reservation. You buy jugs of cider for the road, you buy fudge in the general store of Beak this is a lie, you know she'll forget or else get overwhelmed by other tasks, but you enjoy the easy fantasy of her imagination. You love how she loves the idea of baking for you, even if she never does it. You maneuver the car through winding roads, and your wife takes pictures of the fall leaves on her phone, catching nothing but a colorful blur, and she marvels at the purple street signs. There's a pair of kids playing in the front yard of a house, and their shrieks of laughter follow you well past the next block. You sometimes forget, the two of you, that there is a life outside the city, and when you get where you're going, Clayton, because you wanted to go as far north as you could without hopping the border into Canada, you sit in lawn chairs by the river, cold creeping up the backs of your necks this close to the water, and she laughs, turns your chin her way so she can press her mouth sweetly to yours, and you think this is all you've wanted in your life, and how lucky are you that you've gotten it.Five weeks after her father, the day after your wife's hand disappears, you go to the emergency room. It disappears midway through dinner as she's handing you a glass of iced tea. You clean the glass from the floor and don't panic. You take time off work. The doctor sighs, flipping through the pages on his clipboard before turning to you and your wife. You grip her remaining hand and grip it hard. He clears his throat before pronouncing the verdict: acute phantasmagoric cardiomyopathy, or Ghost Syndrome. No known cure. Experimental plasma treatments, but no guarantees. Depending on the person, the disappearance can take anywhere from days to years. But if there's one thing all experts can agree on, it's that it's a matter of time for the afflicted. He shakes his head, looks at you in your eyes. I'm sorry for your loss. As if she's already gone. The protest dies in your throat and stays there.Three months ago, your wife is sobbing on the couch. Her father has just been diagnosed, a pang in his throat revealed to be esophageal cancer. You smooth your hand over her dyed hair and curl over the top of her from where she's flung herself into your lap. Your stomach folds in on itself like clean laundry. You say all the right things, promise to be there, and you spend the night researching. You email your boss explaining the situation, you start stockpiling her favorite snacks and drinks in bulk. You leave candied fruit by her desk and sweep the wrappers into the garbage can when she's done. You ask if she wants to talk about it, and she tells you to go away.Eight weeks in, and you're having trouble concentrating. Your chest feels tighter than tight, and your mother begins calling from her chilly Roxbury house to check in because you can't bring yourself to answer any texts asking after your wife. Your mother tries getting your siblings involved, but your sister is in London studying economics and is too busy to worry for you, and your brother is on a long road trip where you know he plans on proposing to his girlfriend. He's told you about it before: the end goal is the Golden Gate Bridge, and when you raised doubts about the romanticism of a place where so many people have shuffled off the mortal coil, he just huffed angrily. Not everyone is so morbid, he snaps. You hope she turns him down.Four years ago, when you propose to your wife, it is winter, near Christmas, and you are saying your goodbyes at Moynihan Train Hall as you get in line for the Boston Amtrak. She turns to leave and you surprise yourself by catching her hand, by getting down on one knee, by brandishing a bent paper clip twisted into a ring, and your heart is pounding through your thorax. You haven't planned this, and you are suddenly terrified she'll say no. You can't imagine life without her, and you don't want to. The line moves around you, agitated, the shape of the scene you make distorting the diorama of transit. You don't care. You look at her face, beaming down at you. She says nothing, not even a proper answer, but she leaves lipstick all over your collar in kissing your neck and she leaves you there, and you see the wire ring wrapped around her finger as she retreats. Butterflies roar in your chest as you look at her back, as you watch her disappear into the revolving doors: the one thing in the world that's yours. You don't sleep on the road. You text her, tell her you love her. She posts a picture of the ring to social media, and her friends ask why you're not there with her — to these comments, you reply, saying you're visiting family. Your wife doesn't respond at all.Five years and five weeks ago, you meet your wife for the first time at a college party. There's a pole in the center and she's got her thighs locked around it, inching toward the ceiling. She drops suddenly to the floor in a dead split, and every man you've ever dated goes quiet inside your mind, even the man you're dating now, the one who has a summer house on Nantucket he calls the Mantucket and laughs with all his straight white teeth marched up inside his mouth like soldiers. He hasn't come with you to the party, he has only invited you to his dorm room after the fact. You bet your wife tastes like cherries, and later, when you stumble into her room, when she pushes you backward onto the bed and kneels between your legs, you want to protest. You want to taste her first. You love cherries. But she shakes her head and licks a long line along your inner thigh. She won't let you touch her, just yet. She spends the night undoing you. She wakes you by kissing your nose.Nine weeks into your new normal, your wife's torso calls it quits. She is now a museum exhibit, a woman dismembered, a Picasso in motion. Your boss calls you to complain about poor work performance. You've missed deadlines because you've been too busy staring the hours away at a screen, and when you're not doing that, you're staring at what remains of your wife. I know it's hard right now, your boss consoles. But if you don't start shaping up, there's not much I can do for you in the long term. You duly agree to shape up, and your boss is pleased. I'm invested in your future here at this company. It would be a shame to have to terminate you. You debate going back to school. You briefly look at master's programs, but you wouldn't even know where to begin or what to study. You look up requirements for fields you're categorically unqualified for: physics, mathematics, food science. You look at your bookshelves, the classics with their covers worn off by the oil in your fingers and by time, and you think of the novel you have mildewing in the drawer. For kicks, you take it out. For kicks, you open a new Word document on your computer. There's something in the fact you can control this one thing. You coax your fingers into typing. You start at the beginning.A year and six months ago, the two of you fight. Your wife goes out to a bar for a work event and comes back sporting a hickey she's tried to hide with pressed powder. But there on her neck close to the curve of her ear is a bruise in the shape of someone's mouth. You cry, you rage, break a vase you actually like, and you threaten to leave. You make a show of packing your suitcase. She breaks down before tearfully saying it'll never happen again, that she's sorry, she's so sorry, and you are so helpless with rage you go with your suitcase onto the fire escape for hours, as evening turns into night, as night turns into a mess of blue over the tops of the other apartment complexes, where you imagine there are couples having the same type of fight. You only go back inside when dawn threatens to break over the skyline, and you are so chilled you think you'll never be warm again. The next morning at breakfast, your wife anxiously flutters around you, sliding Dutch pancakes onto your plate. You stare down at the smiley face she's smeared onto it with raspberry jam, the butter pat nose. If you want to download Tinder, find someone, I won't be upset. I deserve it, she says, eyes scanning you hopefully for some sort of approval. You don't make eye contact as you respond. Why would I do that? I love you.Twelve weeks after your wife's hand disappears, her face is halved by nothingness: the left side of her nose, her mouth where there is half an upturned grimace where a smile should be. The right side is gone, simply gone. She doesn't have feet either by this point, and floats around your apartment. She hasn't gotten around to passing through walls yet, but all the posts on all the Ghost Syndrome support group forums say it's coming. He startles me now, Denise from Cleveland writes. I can't hear his footsteps anymore. It all feels like a bad dream. Olivia from Alaska chimes in: I know what you mean. My son is so barely there I don't know if he's even still around. I'm still too afraid to check his room. Something tells me he wouldn't be there anyways, but I can't make myself go in. Mary from Maryland's Eastern Shore is cynical: What good does denying it do? Better to accept it. Open the door and face it. He's not coming back. You report the comment to the forum admin board and shut the laptop, imagining Olivia reading it, her crumbling face a landslide in motion before taking those first unsteady steps to her son's room, steeling herself before knocking, before opening the door to the empty space, all his mussed sheets and trophies dully gleaming on the shelves (he played hockey). You think of messaging her privately, maybe offering to call. But you stop yourself. You wouldn't even know what to say. As you are pondering this, your wife floats through your office and settles on the fainting couch by the window. The dust motes swirl through the space where her right eye used to be.Two and a half years ago, it is your wedding day. You have a long gown, bell-shaped sleeves, a headband full of metal stars. You and your wife have a first look. When she taps you on the shoulder and you turn around, you can't help it, you burst out laughing. Because there is your wife, in her fire engine red lipstick, in her white gown, and her gown is splattered with paint. There are handprints all over her (her bridesmaids’ hands, you'll come to find out). It is so quintessentially her that you fall in love all over again. And the photos taken are great. Everyone loves them, and during a surprise garter dance she uses her teeth to shimmy the band from around your thigh, bites you under the skirt. You frame most of the pictures, hang them from hooks on the walls so you can pass them every day. You catch your wife staring at them thoughtfully sometimes, worrying her lip. Something wrong? you asked one time. She shook her head. Just unbelievable that this is our life, she replied. At the time you took it as a compliment.Fifteen weeks and she is just a silhouette, a thought hanging in the air. Her legs disappear, and then the other half of her face. You peck out your novel, word by word, overpriced coffee after overpriced coffee. You are fired from your job, and you get a temporary one tutoring children after school. The school is down the street. You trudge there every day and run down your store of initial goodwill with your colleagues. Your wife is just a presence in the room, a thought you obsess over. If the sun hits her just right, she looks whole again for a second before flickering out. You finish your novel. You mail the physical copy to your best friend and stand by for judgment. Two days later without asking you first, she takes the train from Boston, turns up at your door with a suitcase and your favorite takeout, and sets up shop making quarts of butternut squash soup to store in the freezer. When she comes in, she looks around for your wife out of habit. Together, you look for her, for any sign, but there's nothing, and nothing to be done. When you see she can't find her either, you sway for a moment before crumpling to the hardwood. You crash, a satellite knocked back down to earth. You are moaning low, and the sound is alien, is guttural. You are heaving on the floor and there's a wetness on your face so you must be crying. You see your friend has brought fruit. A bag of cherries is on your kitchen table, awaiting consumption. You are crying so loud you can't hear yourself think. You are crying so loud the neighbors must hear you. But there's no shame in the act, at least not in that moment. You are a dead thing now, and these are the sounds dead and dying people make.Life after a person leaves, you discover, is one long after. There's tradition to consider: the death, then after the wake, then after the wake the funeral. There's the year after, the death anniversary you pass every subsequent year, the birthdays of your friends’ children disappearing down a long tapered candle that signals their time, too, will eventually run out. There's the slow silence of your friends after you stop texting, stop responding to their calls, as you vanish into your own desperate solitude. Your best friend from Boston shows your novel to an agent friend of hers, and the agent reaches out, signs you, and sells the book. You dedicate it to the memory of your wife. For Sofia, whom I loved. There are the memories you remember years after, after you thought you'd abandoned such things as memories. There's the moment after you realize you've forgotten the exact shape of your wife's face, the dimple rounding her cheek in happiness, and there's the terrified rush to the box of photos you keep in the back of your closet, the wedding shots you've taken off the walls. Then relief, suddenly: There she is, alive again, and then crushing defeat the moment after you realize she'll never leave the photo's frame. She's frozen in time, her and her paint-splattered dress. Her and her red, red lips.And there's a moment, three years after your wife vanishes, when you're sitting on your favorite bench in Washington Square Park, the one dedicated to a woman named Janet by her husband Pat, the one that reads for the days when we had hours to spit into a glass, and you think, after a long silence in late afternoon, that you see her again, off in the distance. There she is, you know it's her, her in her ratty green peacoat she scored from the Housing Works thrift store. The hope rises from your chest like a balloon, and there's the moment after the distant girl turns and her face is not your wife's but a stranger's, and the words I love you trip backward down your throat, and there's the moment after you look in the mirror one morning to find your face silvering, parts of your nose blotching into nothing, and your fingers winking in and out of the dead air of your living room. There's the moment you realize you're going, and the moment after, when you realize you're gone.