Kate Maxlow
“I’m afraid you’re disappearing,” the doctor says. He is about 50 years old with distinguished gray sideburns that I ache to scrub off with a pumice stone. But that would require me to get a pumice stone. I add it to the mental list: get a pumice stone.
He smiles sadly and waves his perfectly visible arm toward the door, indicating that his allotted three minutes for me have also disappeared. “There are lollipops at the front desk,” he whispers and then winks.
I ask if they are medicinal lollipops.
“Heavens, no,” he responds. “They’re not even good for you. But that shouldn’t matter for you. Much. Anymore.” He clicks his pen six times and I try to decrypt his message, but remember I never learned Morse Code. I steal his pen and write down on my arm: Learn Morse Code. He shrieks, because my right arm was the first thing to disappear, so to him, his pen is just floating of its own accord. He has already forgotten that I am in the room with him.
I tell him he shrieks like a little girl. Then I sweep out of the small exam room as regally as possible for someone missing a right hand, a left cheekbone, and both buttocks.
As I glide past the young receptionist, she calls out, “Do you need a follow-up…?”
Without looking back, I yell at her to learn Morse Code before it’s too late.
Several crepe myrtle trees loiter outside the doctor’s office, each with blossoms the deep burgundy of the first scraped knee. Two of the smaller crepe myrtles snigger at me, but the larger simply holds out her branches. I crawl into them and hug her tightly. She tells me how every season, men come and prune her down to nubs, and then she grows back bigger and fuller and more burgundy than anyone thought possible.
I tell her that’s a nice story, but I am not being pruned to nubs because someone wants me to be more than my current self—I am disappearing, one body part a day, and per the medical establishment, there is nothing to be done. She calls the wind to come brush my hair, which it does while cooing gently as my tears fall past my missing left cheekbone.
Several people walk past. The wind and I catalogue them: a twenty-something young man wearing earbuds and chanting, “Bruh, bruh, bruh.” A pregnant woman in her thirties whose hands cradle her belly. A harried mother in her forties, clutching the hand of a wiggling, pigtailed preschooler. The only one who sees me is the preschooler.
“That woman has no butt!” the child yells, pointing at me with her one free arm, flapping it as if she might fly up into the tree with me, where she will learn the secrets to not having a butt. Alas, her mother drags her along without even acknowledging the preschooler’s cries, and I choke back a sob that this poor young girl will never know the secrets to disappearing, at least, not until her own doctor’s appointment when she is 51.
In a sudden flurry of inspiration, I call my own child, a son who had never worn pigtails but did scream about strangers’ butts in his youth. At 34, he now designs eco-friendly packaging for mass-produced products and sometimes remembers to answer his phone. I taught him all the geometry, but he taught himself the benefits of cardboard versus plastic.
Today is one of those lottery-winning days. When he answers, I tell him that I am disappearing.
“Mom? What?” he asks. “I can barely hear you!”
I repeat, louder, that I am disappearing, that the doctor says there’s nothing to be done about it, that his father hasn’t even noticed and doesn’t think I need a cheekbone implant because he doesn’t want to dip into our retirement savings, which I swear he measures in asymptotes because we can never quite reach whatever mythical goal he has set for us—
“What?” my son yells again. “Are you in a wind tunnel?”
I hang up. The crepe myrtle sighs in understanding. She starts to tell me about her own reproductive issues and the difficulty with root suckers.
I climb down from the tree, carefully. I’m already missing one hand and can’t hold anyone else’s problems, not today. The wind tousles my hair and reassures me that I can forgo trying to figure out how to style it curly because it will also disappear soon.
The next day, I wake up and find every other toenail missing. In confirmation, I wander into a nail salon and sit in a chair, but no one sees me. I eventually get up and steal a lollipop from the front desk on my way out.
The next day: Earlobes.
One thigh.
Left ankle.
I try to do my own research on the mysterious ailment of disappearing one body part at a time, but discover that no research exists. All I find are copious ads for pills to combat disappearing erections.
Single nostril.
My friends go to Cabo, where they laugh when the waiters flirt with them. I stay home; I know anyone who flirts with a woman missing a thigh and a nostril is only in it for the tips, and I have a retirement fund to think about.
I think about the crepe myrtle being pruned, and I learn Morse Code in defiance. I list this new skill at my yearly evaluation meeting, but my boss forgets to come. I ask myself some questions, pretend to think about the answers, and award myself an Exceeds Expectations in Existential Despair. Then I set a goal for myself: get a pumice stone.
One day in June, my husband compliments my dress. He says it’s his favorite, even though it is brand new and droops oddly because I am missing a shoulder. When I lament the shoulder, he nods and says, “I see,” but he doesn’t. I buy him reading glasses so he can stop holding his menus at an arm’s length and therefore not risk hyper-extending his working shoulders.
I plant crepe myrtle seeds but they don’t grow. Should have gone with the root suckers.
My son comes over for dinner every Sunday, wolfs down rotisserie chicken, and shows me a picture of his yoga instructor. I raise the one eyebrow I have left.
They get married.
I sew some sequins on a burlap sack and dip my head in red wine for that effortlessly flushed look.
As we dance the mother-son dance, my son looks at his new husband, which means he does not see my tears spell out, in dots and dashes: I was once your everything.
I suck on a lollipop at the reception while my husband does the chicken dance. His toast, the one that I wrote, earns a standing ovation.
I pay the caterer, who doesn’t question a check simply floating his way.
When everyone goes outside to wave goodbye to my son and his new husband, I stand near the back of the crowd, next to a crepe myrtle tree. I fiddle with and stare at the sequins on my burlap sack, so it comes as a shock when the wind rushes from my one remaining lung and giant arms encircle me. Then he runs back to the limo and drives off to his new life.
On the ground, at the foot of the crepe myrtle tree, I see a rock and pick it up. It looks just like a pumice stone.
Tomorrow, I will plant root suckers.
KATE MAXLOW is a recovering school district administrator who writes across multiple genres because she is easily bored. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Maudlin House, BULL, Bright Flash Literary Review, and more. She lives in Virginia with her family and writes curriculum by day and fiction by night. She can be found at https://katemaxlowauthor.com/kate-maxlow or on BlueSky at @katemaxlow.bsky.social.