Alexandra Kleeman, in her story, You, Disappearing, depicts a futuristic world awaiting the apocalypse, which is anything like its portrayal on celluloid; it is calm, almost “polite,” as slowly, things disappear. The story chronicles a young woman’s loss of her relationship with her partner; Kleeman juxtaposes the loss of the relationship with the loss of the world as one knows it. While the two are completely opposite people, the narrator and her partner have shared a happy life that has come to an end, along with the world as they knew it. The story is filled with evocative and powerful imagery that expresses the profundity of losing a partner.
You, Disappearing | Summary
The story begins with the narrator discovering that her cat, Cookie, is missing. While she should be calling the Bureau of Disappearances, she calls her former partner instead and tells him that Cookie is missing. They briefly talk about Cookie, and neither says that they wish they could be there. They hang up. The narrator does not call him back immediately, fearing that he won’t pick up her call anymore.
The narrator describes the impending apocalypse as “graceful”; it is slow and manifests as the disappearance of one thing at a time. It is unlike how people perceive the apocalypse and prepare for it. Things “popped out of existence, like they had forgotten all about themselves”. The narrator says that the way this apocalypse obliterated things was “cute”; it was almost funny.
The narrator thinks about visiting the Ferris Wheel before it vanishes. She wanted to be the last one to visit it, but that would be too tedious, so she left the house with two apples in a plastic bag. Someone on the road shouted a “blurry” word at her, which might have been a taunt earlier. She notices seagulls on the boardwalk and thinks about how they were made to survive even in a world that was slowly fading away. The Ferris wheel behind them didn’t seem as big as the first time the narrator had seen it. The narrator sits on the lowermost car and swings, trying to move it, but it isn’t any fun. She observes that the apocalypse destroys not only objects but also memories. She wants to forget her partner first, rather than him forgetting her. She pretends to be angry sometimes at the fact that her partner was so afraid of forgetting that he moved out of the apartment.
When things first started disappearing, the narrator and her partner made it look funny, made sound effects for them, and made each other laugh. Gradually, it became a sad affair because too many things disappeared. The narrator describes how her partner kept everything going even when things were disappearing, while she herself is the opposite kind of person. The day the news called the apocalypse the “Disapocalypse, which was irreversible, the narrator got home and cried. When her partner got home, she wept on his shirt and asked why he had been away so long, to which he replied that he would rather be at work and build something in the final days than stay at home.
The narrator stands on the walking path next to the highway and eats the last apple, thinking about how the bench has disappeared and so have the people. She thinks that she once thought that she would be with her partner infinitely, but now that there is a finite amount of time, she isn’t so sure anymore. When they fought over how to use the time, the narrator’s partner got over it first. The narrator goes home, lines up all of Cookie’s belongings, and waits to watch them disappear.
The narrator notes that things are not disappearing in an orderly fashion but randomly. She sits on the floor of her brother’s living room and notes that she has already called her partner once today and is thinking about a reason to call him again. She calls him to ask him if he remembers Cookie, which he does. She asks what he remembers, to which he says that the narrator picked him up because he bit her. She tells him that she has his number memorized, and he says that’s good. Then they hang up. She misses him more now than when she lost him; she notes that they were both playing a game called “Are We Going to Make It?”, even if he didn’t know it yet. When she calls him again, the line disconnects. She then dials the Bureau of Disappearance and describes him. She notes that after the announcement on the news, people either cared more or cared less. They either tried surviving by collecting essentials or decided to live out their final days working.
In her brother’s master bedroom, the narrator makes the bed every day to “be a good guest”. She sleeps with lights on to remain as awake as possible; she wishes she loved the woman on the disappearance hotline so she could hear her voice anytime. She sees her reflection in the window as the light stays on and knows that in the silence, other things are vanishing too. She wonders how she would know she was vanishing if there was no one to see her.
A woman in Nebraska claimed to have had contact with the disappeared; one could tell her about the disappeared, and she would go to a well built by her grandfather and shout that information, hearing whispers from the other side. The voices from the other side are happy and miss the ones on this side. They keep living normal lives, waiting for things on this side to disappear so their world can feel whole again.
You, Disappearing | Analysis
In You, Disappearing by Alexandra Kleeman, the narrator is coming to terms with the loss of her relationship as the world is ending simultaneously. The narrator and her partner are complete opposites in their responses to the same; her partner believes in living out the days by working and filling their time, while the narrator believes that they must strive to survive in the face of such a situation. The narrator wanted to cling to whatever they had for the rest of the day, while her partner believed in resuming normal life.
Waiting is a very profound theme in the story, where the narrator is not only waiting to come to terms with the loss of a relationship but is also waiting as things vanish slowly and the world comes to an end. Her internal conflict is almost palpable as she reaches for the telephone and finds excuses to call him. Not only is the loss of the relationship incredibly painful, as is evoked through the various instances of the past but it is rendered even more so because of the knowledge that the world is slowly ending. There is an aching sense of loss and an inability to mourn it. The narrator thinks about all the disappearances: Cookie, her belongings, the bench, parts of the Ferris wheel, and ultimately herself. Kleeman illustrates the transcendence of everything, including human relationships, in her story.
You, Disappearing | Character Sketch
The Narrator
The unnamed narrator mourns the loss of her partner, and through her tone, it is evident that she misses him acutely. She keeps finding reasons to call him and is afraid that one day he will forget her and not pick up anymore. She shared a good life with him, but he has since moved out of the apartment. She slowly waits as she tries to come to terms with the world ending and everything slowly disappearing from the world as she knows it.
The Partner
The narrator’s former partner is an architect and has lived with her since their “grad” days. He is quite the opposite of her when it comes to dealing with the apocalypse; he believes in resuming life to normalcy and filling out one’s days buried in work, while the narrator would like to survive and make use of whatever time they had left together. In this sense, they are quite opposites of each other.
You, Disappearing | Literary Devices
- Situational Irony: Kleeman employs situational irony in the creation of the apocalypse. While most representations of the apocalypse are violent and destructive, the narrator describes it, however, as “graceful” and polite,” which initially seemed funny. However, the steady nature of the destruction makes it all the more painful as things and the world they once knew are slowly disappearing.
You, Disappearing by Alexandra Kleeman is an ode to loss—of relationships, identities, or anything one holds dear to them. It follows the narrator’s stream of consciousness as she describes the slow disappearance of things from the world while coming to terms with the loss of her relationship. The tone of the story is palpably somber, as her feelings clearly reflect how she misses her former partner. The excruciating waiting for things to wholly end so one can start again is a theme present throughout the story.