by Zaina Arafat
Three weeks earlier, the professor had written to tell me she was four and a half months pregnant with her second child. After reading her note, I put my head on my desk and cried. I continued to cry for two weeks: on the subway into the city, at the taco truck outside the club, inside the DJ booth. I was used to feeling envy when it came to pregnancy. It’s something I’ve looked forward to since I was seven, after a day spent with a pregnant friend of my mother’s who I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. I cried tears of jealousy the whole car ride home, and my mother promised me I’d have a turn one day. “You’re just too young right now,” she’d said as I buried my face in stuffed animals. But I wasn’t prepared for the unbearable pain I would feel when it was a woman I fancied myself in love with. Nothing highlighted the one-sidedness of our relationship more than having no idea she was midway through her second trimester, thinking instead that she was falling for me. How stupid was I to believe she could’ve cared about me in some way, in any way at all, that I was anything more than just a fleeting thought, an email in her inbox, an occasional lunch date. Every time I pictured her with her husband, whom I’d only seen in a thumbnail-size photo I’d found online, my stomach turned metallic and I felt I was choking. Maybe it was the subtext, the one my shattered ego invented, that taunted, I have what you don’t have. You pathetic thing, don’t you see I’m so much more than you?
I’d heard those words before. But I knew the professor would never think such mean-spirited thoughts, even if I chose to hear them. It was shameful to expect her to care about me enough to condescend.
I called Renata, my go-to support for this sort of thing, forgetting that she was in an especially self-righteous, not-taking-any-shit mood, as her own relationship was faltering. She and Thomas, her boyfriend of five years, were on break, his choice, which meant all of her frustration with him got transposed onto me. We were planning a trip to Joshua Tree at the end of May to celebrate her graduation from med school, a trip that was also partly intended to get her mind off Thomas while he “mulled things over” and decided if he wanted to commit. Though everyone else advised her to move on—it was their second break, the first time came after he’d slept with someone else—I’d told her he was worth waiting for. Maybe I was overcompensating for how our friendship had begun: with an unwanted advance and subsequent rejection. But in truth, I’d been hearing about Thomas since college, his Sigma Chi days. I knew that she had stuck with him through much worse.
Fed up with the professor and her precursors, Renata sighed into the phone when I gave her the update. “Unbelievable,” she said. “How dare she get pregnant by her husband without asking you!”
I hung up immediately—it wasn’t the time for sarcasm. I was experiencing the same pain I’d felt at the end of three years with Kate. As I lay in bed feeling shattered, my phone buzzed with a call from Anna. “Oh good,” she said, “you’re awake.”
It was two in the afternoon. Her passive aggression seethed. She was growing tired of my “profession.” Being a DJ entailed sleeping until some disconcerting hour of the day, drinking my first coffee while everyone else was enjoying happy hour cocktails, and then leaving for work as Anna returned home for the evening. It also entailed an unexpected loneliness, one that tugged at me like a dog that needed to be fed. On the early-morning F train from the Lower East Side back to South Slope, I’d scroll through pictures of friends clustered together in both familiar and exotic locations, announcements of new relationships and engagements. I craved a normal social life, a normal life, or at least a job that didn’t completely preclude me from having one.
But the sting of alienation was outweighed by the ecstasy of performance, its unrelenting command of attention. What I enjoyed most about spinning records was the feeling of being in control, of being responsible for everyone’s good time. Me, and alcohol. I loved keeping the crowd on the verge: fading the bass in and out, speeding up the rhythm and then slowing down just before the crescendo, saving the explosive tracks until the very end. Sometimes, I would catch eyes with someone—woman, man, I was open to either—and we would chat after the set, before heading to the back room for a hurried and furtive encounter that was at once empowering and exhilarating. In the time that each lasted, which varied in proportion to the amount of liquor consumed, my mind would have respite from both Anna and from the professor, or whomever it was that particular season. I’d emerge afterward and return to the booth feeling pleased with myself, prideful if not actually confident, and at the very least soothed, the obsessive thoughts momentarily suppressed, with a sneaking suspicion that there was more to me than this.
I tried to keep these sessions minimally invasive, so that I could emerge from them unruffled and return home undetected. But there were occasional slips. “You smell like sex,” Anna said one night when I crept into bed at four a.m., too tired to shower. My stomach flipped. I laughed off her comment and blamed it on an especially packed and sweaty night at the club. She appeared convinced at the time, or at least temporarily placated.
“Want to meet for lunch?” Anna asked.
We met at a diner near our apartment, a well-lit place that was always empty yet managed to stay in business. We sat across from each other in sea-foam vinyl seats. “You seem off,” she said. Melted cheese dripped from her panini. “Is something going on?”
I looked up at the ceiling lamp suspended above us. I wanted to tell her the truth, so she would know what I was feeling, in the hope that she would comfort me, or berate me, or leave me. That way I could at least transfer my pain onto something that made sense, something real. After all, the professor did seem fabricated. Perhaps, to the extent that I’d cobbled together the pieces I had, she was. Though like the “Orient,” I chose to believe she was an idea with some corresponding reality; she was more than simulacra.
I rushed to think of a response that wouldn’t betray my heartache. “I looked up flights,” I said. “Visiting next year is going to get pricey.”
We hadn’t yet discussed how our relationship would survive my move to the Midwest. When my acceptance letter arrived, Anna had panicked and offered to transfer out of Columbia Law to come along. I couldn’t let her uproot her entire life, I’d told her, and give up such a great opportunity. But more than that, I knew: grad school offered a natural and guided transition out, less traumatic than a breakup, smoothly delivering me into a new life.
“Yes, I’m aware that flying costs money,” she said. My once-endearing naiveté had become annoying. “I’m surprised you’ve only now realized this.”
“I’m just worried,” I said. “I’m thinking of not going. I’m not sure we can afford a long-distance relationship.”
“Is this a nutritionist situation?” she asked.
“What? I haven’t thought about her since—”
“Not her specifically,” Anna clarified. “I mean, are you obsessed with someone new?”
“Are you being serious?”
“Really, I’m asking. You sound completely irrational right now, so it would make sense.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“Because if you are, I hope you’ve learned by now that those people aren’t real? And that they’ll never love you back?”
I closed my eyes and waited for the surge of anger to subside. She had no idea what the professor and I shared, how intense our connection was, that she could never compete. I took a deep breath before responding. “I obviously know that,” I said. “I’m not delusional. I wouldn’t jeopardize what we have for someone I hardly know.”
And yet there I was, less than a month later, ready to do just that for a married woman approaching her third trimester.
“Well, then I’m sure we would find a way to work around the distance,” she said, sounding at once sad and hopeful. “I could borrow mileage from my parents or something. Maybe I’ll find a job out there.” She smiled, touching her fingers to mine. “We could live in a little farmhouse.”
Where do
you live? I was typing out directions when it dawned on me. The professor was just being practical. Considerate, at best. Where do you live? as in, “How can we choose a coffee shop that’s convenient for both of us?” I nearly laughed out loud; she had no idea the distance I would’ve traveled for her. That I would risk an actual relationship for just the idea of her.
“Next to the Pavilion Theater,” I responded, adding, “the corner of Thirteenth and Eighth,” just in case. Even though I was ambivalent—my conscience was finally kicking in this time—I was still hopeful.
•
A week later, I went by the club to pick up my final paycheck. The owner was sitting at the bar with a notebook and calculator, drinking coffee and filling out the ledger with numbers from the night before. “So you’re on to better things,” he said. “Probably for the best. Stay in this job too long and it’ll kill you.”
“It already has,” I called out as the door swung shut behind me, the check clenched between my fingers.
The next morning, a day after her med school graduation, Renata and I flew to California for our Joshua Tree trip. We would stay with her parents for a night in Santa Monica before trekking into the desert. The timing of the trip couldn’t have been worse; the tension with Anna had felt like clouds waiting to burst open. On the few evenings when we were both at home we barely spoke. Instead we watched television or read in separate rooms. When I’d ask what she felt like having for dinner she’d tell me she’d already ordered takeout for herself. “Did it occur to you that I might want something, too?” I once asked.
“Not really.” She shrugged. “You rarely seem to want what I want.”
Leaving when things were that bad felt irresponsible and unsettling. But at the same time, I was happy to escape, if only for a week. Anna was still asleep when I left for the airport, and I decided not to wake her. I wanted to avoid any guilting remarks about me flitting off for a week when I was moving away for good in just a few months, and why did it always seem like I was pushing her away?
I felt increasingly uncomfortable as the plane hurtled down the runway, the unresolved tension coating my stomach. The moment we landed at LAX, I switched my phone back on and called her. She didn’t answer, so I left a voice mail, then hung up and sent her a text: You okay? An hour went by and still no response. Later that evening, I realized that I still hadn’t heard from her. I texted again. I called a second time. I kept calling, again and again. Nothing.
“Weird,” I said to Renata. “Anna’s not answering.”
“Maybe she’s busy,” Renata responded. “She does exist outside of your relationship, you know.”
I forgave Renata her misplaced annoyance. She had put up with me panicking about nearly everything for years. “Your worries are like water,” she often said. “The moment one flows out, another floods in to fill the space.”
By the next day, an amorphous ball of anxiety had formed in my stomach, made up of concern for Anna’s well-being and fear that something else was wrong. For the sake of the trip I tried not to let my worry show. Plus, I didn’t want to exhaust Renata’s patience this early on. I had other anxieties that would need to be addressed, mostly pertaining to the professor. I was still critiquing her academic analysis of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Renata kept pronouncing the title in an exaggerated French accent anytime it came up, followed by a dramatic flip of her hair. “Do you think she’s trying to tell you something? Maybe she wants you to be her Marquise de Merteuil?”
We were packing snacks for the desert when my phone finally pinged. I jumped to check it: an email from Anna.
As I read, relief quickly gave way to fear. “It’s a good thing I don’t trust you,” she had written. “Because if I did, I wouldn’t have had a reason to search for confirmation.”
My stomach dropped. Her letter continued, “What I saw was worse than I expected. I feel like I’ve been living in a fantasy for years.”
My laptop. I’d left it at home. And my password was saved. In my emails, Anna had found the proof she’d been looking for: throughout the four years we’d been together, I had actively longed for others. I’d formed relationships that resembled courtship more than friendship, some that lingered in the realm of inappropriate emotional connection, others that led to sex with strangers as a means of distraction. “Now you’ll no longer have to deal with any reality that comes with us, and you can live happily ever after with your obsessions. Though I’m amazed to see how unrealistic they’ve become. A married pregnant straight woman—you’ve really outdone yourself with this one!”
My first concern was that Anna had written the professor from my account and said something crazy or revealing, as a means of revenge. I had enough sense to know that she wouldn’t do such a thing, and that I was incredibly selfish for worrying about myself right then. I tried desperately to recall each illicit correspondence that existed among my emails. I was almost certain there was no trace of the club encounters—they had all cropped up spontaneously, and I’d kept in touch with none of them. Still, what Anna had found was bad enough.
“I’m devastated that you could be so careless with my heart,” she wrote, and I shuddered. It was exactly how I felt my own heart had been treated throughout my life—carelessly, callously. “I want you to really sift through your issues and face them, and feel a fraction of the torture I feel as a result of this.”
The last line was the hardest to read, the one that made my throat burn: “Maybe one day you’ll learn you can’t treat people with such disregard. Even yourself.”
Finally, Anna had mustered the resistance I’d been craving. It was at once frightening and attractive: never had I wanted her more. I felt my body go cold, and for a moment I thought I was going to be sick. “What’s the matter?” Renata asked.
I handed her the phone and watched her deflate while reading the email. “Well, there you go,” she said. “Again.”
For a moment I was pissed. She was my friend, after all, not Anna’s. Then I remembered what she’d been through with Thomas. How he’d lied to her, how she’d found out in the most humiliating way, walking in on him with his high school girlfriend. I knew I had managed to let her down, too.
She handed back my phone. I stared at Anna’s email. I had never felt so exposed—I wanted to take back every vulnerability I’d ever shown her, every moment that I had asked for comfort. “What do I do?” I asked Renata. The question was genuine; I truly had no idea.
“I mean, what can you do? We’re here, she’s there. And she’s seen everything.”
I got up from the table and called Anna. It rang and rang, and still no answer. Fear soaked up every other emotion. I told Renata I needed to change my return flight and leave the next day. I had to get home and deal with this.
“I will seriously kill you if you do that.”
“But what if there’s still a chance to fix things?”
“You do need to fix things,” she said. “But it’s not the relationship that’s broken.”
I looked down at my phone and reread the email. I began typing a response. “Please,” I wrote. I didn’t know what else to say, any attempt to defend myself felt shameful and useless. “I have no idea what I’ve been doing.” I really didn’t: it was as though I’d been sleepwalking, going through the motions without any control.
For the rest of the trip I checked my email compulsively. “I wanna throw your phone in a dune,” Renata said. In the times when we were out of range, we talked. Renata suggested that I’d set myself up to get caught. “Isn’t that essentially what you’ve been asking for, by being so reckless?”
She had a point. Why, after all, would I leave my laptop out in the open, as though inviting Anna in? Hadn’t I wanted for things to end? I must’ve known what I was doing was wrong, that I was hurting her, and yet I couldn’t stop myself. I needed something to stop me, Renata said as we hiked, if only for a chance to redeem myself.
But I knew that my reasons for sabotage went beyond that. Besides, this co
uldn’t be me, this deceitful woman I’d woken up to find. It couldn’t.
•
All of Anna’s stuff was gone from our apartment by the time I got back to New York. The cabinets were half empty, her closet shelves bare, the stark ceramic of the bathroom sink visible for the first time in months. I was simultaneously shocked and impressed that she’d had the strength and resolve to actually move out. I stood in the doorframe feeling alone and afraid, and dreading the days until the lease ended in August, too far away—it was only the beginning of June.
My laptop sat inconspicuously on the kitchen table. I lifted the screen and it brightened. Anna had left it on; the browser was still open to my inbox. Now that I was alone, without Renata’s input, I reread Anna’s email. It felt even worse reading it in our apartment, imagining her sitting at the same kitchen table, the humiliation she must’ve felt. The walls were practically radiating with her hurt. I searched for the professor’s last note. I began to describe what happened, hoping that communicating my pain would somehow alleviate it. I then remembered that I’d never mentioned Anna to her, and I didn’t have the energy to do so now, to recount the entire story, especially since much of it actually involved her, though of course she had no idea. I stopped midsentence, an emptiness swelling inside me. For the first time in a while, the thought of the professor didn’t send me reeling into fantasies. Without the security of a relationship, longing felt less safe. It felt lonely.