You Exist Too Much. Zaina Arafat

Nour had responded. “Girl!” She’d been insulted by the question, the uncertainty it revealed. But not me. Not that day. Wearing my uncle’s baggy trousers, I enjoyed occupying blurred lines. Ambiguity was an unsettling yet exhilarating space.

      As we walked back toward the Church of the Nativity I looked at my mother and smiled, desperate for her to smile back. But she withheld. She offered only a freshly disconcerting look, scrunching up her forehead so that lines appeared, her cheekbones protruding, her mouth forming a terrifying expression of indifference. At the time, I couldn’t quite place the source of it. Had she noticed my contentment? Did it scare her?

      Only now, years later, do I think I understand. It was in that moment that she first realized: I wasn’t like her. The trousers were a demarcation line, one that separated me from my mother and her lineage.

      I wonder sometimes if that day was the start of something. Whether it’s when I began this habit of constant seeking, of endlessly striving to earn my way back, a pattern that would send me on a misguided and self-destructive quest for love. I communicated something to my mother as I stood there smiling in a pair of men’s pants, a message I didn’t know I was sending her. She has always known first what I have yet to discover, has always seen it before I could.

      Look at me, I wanted to say to her then. Please don’t look away.

       1

      I WOKE UP ALONE ONE MORNING WHEN I WAS TWENTY-SIX. Anna had left for the day. Her side was already made, to the extent that half a bed can be: the comforter pulled up over her pillow, sheets crumpled underneath. She’d opened the curtains before leaving, knowing I liked to be woken by sunlight. She was always finding solutions for things I preferred to simply complain about. Though it was finally bright out, I felt the usual pang of dread. “Your death hour,” my best friend, Renata, liked to call it. “Seems normal.”

      I looked at the cat clock that Anna had brought with her when she moved in, the calico tail twitching: it was nine fifteen. Early, given that I’d spun a double set the night before and taken a lot of tequila shots to stay fueled. Anna had an afternoon class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, meaning she’d still be at the café beneath our building. I then reached to the surface of the nightstand for my grad school acceptance letter. I’d gotten into an MFA program for writing in the Midwest. It was the deadline to send in my decision.

      I lay there for a few moments willing myself to get up before finally tossing off the sheets and swinging my legs off the bed in one swift motion. I pressed my feet to the cold hardwood and walked to the kitchen, which was an extension of the same room, only the flooring different, linoleum instead of wood. I touched my hand to the silver coffeepot—still relatively warm. Anna must’ve just left; I had only just missed her. Lately I’d been trying to make a point of waking up earlier. Renata had suggested it a few weeks ago: “Maybe your girlfriend would like to see you in daylight, from time to time? Wouldn’t that help things?”

      I dropped a piece of bread into the toaster, then sat down at the kitchen table and opened my laptop. It purred to life, the cursor unfreezing. I typed g in the address field and the rest of the url filled in. The screen turned to white as an hourglass twirled. When my inbox appeared, my eyes descended to the chain I wanted, mine and the professor’s. I had written to her the day before; we were arranging to see each other one last time before I left New York. Her name wasn’t illuminated—no response yet.

      I clicked refresh, as though an email would appear in that split second. I refreshed my inbox a few more times before emptying my spam. I was about to close my laptop when a text from my mother flashed across the top of the screen:

       On train to NYC. Staying two nights.

      Stress washed over me, the familiar lump forming in my throat. I ran my fingers through my hair until a few strands came away into the palm of my hand. I heard the spring of the toaster, but no longer felt hungry. My mother lived in D.C. and regularly came to the city without warning. “You don’t own New York,” she’d say whenever I requested advance notice or logistical details, which I’d since learned not to do. Any attempt to get a firm date from her, some degree of commitment, made her uncomfortable and irritable, as did any reaction to her arrival that fell short of sheer delight. “And no one’s asking you to even see me,” she’d say. True, but the onslaught of her presence was impossible to resist, the promise of days spent shopping, the alluring sound of r’s rolling off her tongue, the smell of her perfume lingering long after she would leave.

      I began to type a series of questions—Where will you be staying? For how long?—then deleted them. I took a deep breath and responded, Can’t wait to see you.

      Downstairs, the café beneath our building was full, the window seat taken. I glanced around and spotted Anna hunched over a tiny round table near the back. She wore a red plaid shirt buttoned all the way to the top and a black Patagonia fleece vest unzipped, her knuckles pressed against her cheek and her bangs combed back, making her look a little like Luke Perry or the lead singer of a boy band. Handsome pretty, I would call her, and she liked that, each time beaming with pride. She looked up and saw me, her eyes brightening as I ordered a coffee from the barista. I smiled back, but as I walked toward her carefully, trying not to spill, I felt guilt, which almost instantly morphed into shame. “Hey,” I said, taking the chair across from her, my attention caught by a community bulletin board with tabulated flyers, the middle teeth all ripped off. “I see Brokeback’s at our spot again.”

      A woman wearing cowhide chaps and cowboy boots sat with a mug steaming in front of her. The sight of her always made me uncomfortable, and my discomfort usually disappointed Anna. “Yep,” she said, forcing a laugh. Then she leaned forward and kissed me. The experience was new enough that I still felt a wave of exhilaration at the ability to kiss a woman in public, as though what we were doing was illicit, two high schoolers smoking pot on the football field. I kissed back and pulled her closer for a second kiss when the first had ended, overcompensating. Anna reached across and pressed her thumb to the side of my mouth. “You’ve got a little . . .”

      “Oops,” I said, wiping away a dried bit of drool. “I meant to wash my face.” I realized that I hadn’t combed my hair, either, and was still wearing the T-shirt I’d slept in. “You look pretty rough yourself,” I said, grinning with contentment. “Tired?”

      After climbing into bed the night before, I’d woken her up the way I knew she liked, pressing my nose against her neck and breathing deeply until the vibration roused her. I then switched up our usual roles, pulling myself on top of her while at the same time scooting her beneath me. I could tell she’d been wanting me to initiate sex more often; she’d made several underhanded, Mrs. Roper–like comments about how rarely I did so. With our drastically different schedules, sex had gone from being an every-other-night thing to a weekend thing to a never thing.

      “I am,” she said. “Worth it, though.”

      She touched my leg with the toe of her shoe. I felt tenderness for her in that moment. I could tell that she was getting tired of our asymmetry. We’d been together on and off for four years, and by now she was beginning to resent the way I treated her, the decreasingly little effort I made, the fewer gestures of affection, the amount of time I spent elsewhere. I resented her for offering no resistance, for refusing to say something directly and choosing instead to let passive aggression seep through. She knew me better than anyone—we’d met in eating-disorder treatment; she had seen me at my most vulnerable. But it sometimes seemed like she still couldn’t see through me, still chose to believe in a version of who I was that we both knew no longer existed. And yet, as each other’s first relationship post-recovery, we were desperately clinging, terrified to let go.

      I reached into my bag and pulled out an envelope, my acceptance letter folded up inside. “Well,” I said, tapping its short side on the table. “I signed