My lover didn’t disappear all at once. On Friday, I walked home from work and she kissed me at the door, smelling like cardamom. The sky spilled lavender ink.
“Look, my pinky finger is missing,” she said, holding up her right hand.
Gone. No stub or trace. Her tone was full of anticipation. Her face, ecstatic.
“Strange,” I said. “Want to get that checked out?”
“No, it doesn’t hurt. I don’t even remember what it felt like anymore.”
She put her remaining pinky to her lips, quieting my questions. Shhhhh. She tugged me down the hallway into our bedroom, where she kissed the rest of my body. I trembled with yearning, forgetting all about her finger.
After lovemaking, she sat up in bed and sang an aria about a maiden lost at sea. Her sweet voice brimmed with emotion. The maiden traded her soul to save her fisherman father after a treacherous storm. My lover wanted to be a soprano, but gave up training when her father fell ill.
Afterwards, we ate chicken curry in the kitchen. The tune spun in my head. One summer day we had stood outside the coliseum in Rome, clasping hands when thunder halted La Traviata. We kissed in the warm rain, oblivious to the drenching of our sequined gowns. Time slipped away, happiness trailing at our fingertips.
Every week another piece of my lover disappeared. Her hand went next, then an elbow, followed by her arm, her ankle, her knee, her breasts. The parts never reappeared.
She never complained or cried. She went about cooking dinner and humming like she had misplaced a silk scarf, one she once loved but could live without. She wore a loose floral robe with a tie, not bothering to hide the transformation.
I asked a friend studying nursing about her condition. Impossible, she said, try antidepressants. But she’s not depressed, I protested. If anyone was depressed, it was me. I couldn’t bear to lose her.
When she couldn’t lift food to her mouth, I cradled her in my arms and spooned yogurt, like a mother nursing her child. She smiled with gratitude. I knew this couldn’t continue forever. Who could carry on without a body?
I begged her to fight the change, to hold on to what we had. I needed her. She shook her head, refusing my pleas. She had accepted her fate like the maiden without despair. She used to tease me about clinging to the past. Her eyes looked out the window, into the lilac sky, into the future.
Her voice was the last to disappear. She sang other ballads, always tragedies about someone dying, leaving another behind. Somehow, she managed to exude contentment, seemingly at peace with a bargain she had made with an unseen god. I couldn’t see her face so I tried to decipher the lyrics as if they could unlock the mystery. Where was the lost maiden stranded and could I rescue her? If only I could unwind the sorrowful songs, then perhaps I could stop her unraveling.
After she was gone, I warmed chicken curry on the stovetop and played operas on the Victrola record player at dinnertime. Even though I couldn’t see her anymore, I sensed her presence nearby. Sometimes I felt a light touch at the nape of my neck. I wondered how long she could linger, if she would stay with me as long as I could hear the music. A soft hum. The sweet scent of cardamom filling the kitchen with the solace of love. I swore I heard her soft whisper, promising it was all possible.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Jen Soong grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Northern California. An alum of Tin House and VONA, her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Audacity, Black Warrior Review, Witness, and Waxwing. She received her MFA in creative writing from UC Davis. Her memoir-in-progress is a reckoning of myth and migration. Find her work at jensoong.com.