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Signing my pen name came with what I would call an unexpected ease. It was unexpected because it was not my actual name, but I had done it so much that it might as well have been. With enough repetition, the muscles will learn an action, no matter what words or meaning we ascribe to it.
Then again, the smell of plantains cooking that wafted in the air around me likely helped settle my body into its rhythm. It offered the sort of familiarity that other actions could borrow from, a veil of legitimacy that anything could hide behind. But the magic that Sr. Agatha was wielding had its limits. The general unease of being back in my old dormitory after so long away lingered in my bones. Her plantains couldn’t tell me if I still belonged in Penhale Hall or if I was imposing in some way. According to my calculations, it was likely the latter. But either way, the temperature in the small kitchen was gradually rising as the heat from the stove seeped into the air as well as the pan. The windows were wide open, but they offered little more than the occasional breeze. Those small bursts of colder air kept the room bearable and kept me from sweating on the books I was signing, but they did nothing for my pounding heart or the lump that I felt forming in my throat.
Around the thirtieth signature, I stopped for a brief break, long enough to call out to Sr. Agatha.. “I wish you had contacted me before you bought these books.”
“Hm?” she hummed, dismissing my thought.
Or she tried to dismiss it, but I wouldn’t let it go. “You could have used my author’s discount. Or I could have just bought them. Penhale would have kept all the revenue.”
She hummed something that sounded like disagreement.
“It would have been a tax write-off for me,” I pointed out as a final counterargument tossed out just to see if it would stick.
It would not. Sr. Agatha would not allow it. “You’re doing enough by signing them all. It will help bring in a crowd to the concession stand.”
I didn’t know enough about those stands to argue with her. Although football games were always big events at Stella Maris, I had managed to avoid most of the hype and the experience by hiding away in my room, but even I was not immune to the allure of freshly grilled burgers sold in stands run by student organizations, dorms, and even academic departments. It was a way to fundraise, but the competition was stiff, and it was hard to stand out.
I looked at the cover of my book again, trying to see it as the beacon Sr. Agatha did, but no matter what angle I stood at, I remained unconvinced. The book had been out for a while, and I suspected everyone who wanted a copy had already gotten one. My signature wasn’t much of a novelty, certainly not enough of one to be persuasive in that context.
“It’s been out for so long, though.” I said, giving voice to my thoughts.
“But with the fellowship, interest is renewed.”
I didn’t believe that. The Murtagh Fellowship had only seemed relevant when it was a PR disaster. Once the angry mob had subsided, the program had slipped out of the popular conscience again, and I went with it.
Despite my hesitation, I went back to signing, and as I scribbled out my pen name, I tried to assure myself that Sr. Agatha would know what she was talking about. She was infinitely wiser than I, and if I squinted, I could faintly see what she was seeing. People went to those concession stands to buy things just for the sake of buying things or because doing so meant supporting campus organizations they had fond memories of. It was really just monetized nostalgia. So maybe my signature could just catch the eye and serve as the catalyst for daydreaming about the past. And maybe my signature could really help someone justify a purchase. With it, they could feel like they had gotten something worthwhile in pursuit of that very specific endorphin rush. They could point to this book and say they bought something of value. The book was critically acclaimed (for whatever reason), and their copy was set apart from others via a signature. My signature. Or my alter ego’s.
And that was what I had wanted when I was back in Chicago: to create a book people felt compelled to buy but never read. Maybe they would gaze at my signature or show it off when people came over to their homes, but they would never actually read this book. It was a book-sized delivery of prestige and respect. So I should have been happy, one would think. And yet, once I had that thing I had been so desperate for, I could finally taste how horrible it really was.
At the fiftieth book, I sighed and gave myself another break. I hadn’t made significant progress, but the end was in sight. Penhale only wanted sixty books for this first football game. With my being in residence, I could always sign more if need be, and I was likely the only person who hoped the need wouldn’t be. But I kept that to myself.
Wordlessly, I shut the book I had just finished signing and turned it over, so the back cover was facing me. The accolades printed there had always made me uneasy, but as I lowered my eyes down the cover, I caught a glimpse of my author's bio, just as haphazardly thrown together as the book itself.
But I couldn’t be faulted for that. It had been a hard thing to write. After all, Judith Hynes was both me and not me.
Hynes was my grandmother’s maiden name, and while it was taken away from me through various patriarchal norms, there really wasn’t anything stopping me from taking it back. It should have still been mine by some standards, but then again, typically when something is yours, you don’t need to seize it like that. Or steal it, by some other terms.
As for Judith, that name just came to me. It felt like it was whispered to me by someone else, someone who was so bad at introducing themselves that the name became the perfect placeholder for any person-shaped hole in my life.
But since I pulled together Judith Hynes, she had taken on a life of her own. And that life was better than mine not because she had any sort of shiny possessions or awards but because she was better than me. Above all, she knew who she was and had carved out a place in the world for herself.
She lived in the suburbs of Chicago, not the city itself, so she drove to the store rather than walking, filling up her trunk with groceries that she was definitely going to cook. Nothing rotted in her fridge. And even if it did, she’d be quick to clean it. She kept her properly furnished and decorated home in order. Her car was a few years old because she was being practical about her finances, but it looked pristine. She kept it clean and always parked it perfectly. And while Judith Hynes still only had the one book under her belt, it wasn’t because she couldn’t write more but because she had better things to do. She just didn’t disclose those things in her author’s biography or in any of the few interviews she did. There was no need to. It wasn’t anyone’s business, and she had nothing to prove.
So it made sense that Judith Hynes wrote such a good book while Mia Vogel fumbled through her twenties. It was just the way each of them was. And as an extension of that, I wasn’t surprised that everyone loved Judith’s work but very surprised that anyone loved Mia’s person. After all, Judith didn’t have a rector who made her plantains; Mia did. Mia was the one who carried a large container of them home with her, snacking on them all the way to the bus stop.
At some point in that relatively long walk, Mia pulled out her phone and checked it for any interesting notifications. There were plenty of junk ones, random pleas for attention from the apps she kept meaning to delete but never got around to it because Mia was not in control of her life even when it came to the small things (unlike Judith who would have never let it get this bad). Really, Mia was looking for a message from a friend that she had been ignoring. She hadn’t meant to ignore said friend, but she was. Even though she knew that she owed Ellie a message, she didn’t have one in mind to send. There were things to discuss, of course. There were things that were happening in Mia’s life, but she didn’t think they would interest Ellie. Or they would lead to Mia ranting about something inconsequential and Ellie would have to put in the emotional labor of comforting her friend who must have seemed more than a bit unstable.
Mia wanted to talk to Ellie like a normal person would, like Judith would, but Mia couldn’t. Mia wasn’t Judith. She only pretended to be.
I wish I could have been Judith, to tell you the truth, or at least more like her. It would have made things easier with Ellie. It would have meant I didn’t need to protect Ellie from myself. To do that, I had to pull away from her. Which did seem counterintuitive because of my aforementioned complicated love for Ellie, but it was out of that love that I tried to spare her the dysfunctions of myself and my life because I thought protection was a part of love. And maybe it is, but I wasn’t some brave knight trying to go out and slay a dragon. There was no dragon, obviously, and I was a coward, also obviously. There was just me and the messes I so often made, and I could make sure that she didn’t fall into them with me.
This was usually the point in the spiral when Ellie would come up behind me, somehow. Or maybe it was obvious how she managed it because when she intervened, we were usually at work. That made it easy for her to find me and embrace me in that shared space we had to commute to daily. And so, she could hold me in check. An opportunity to do so already existed, and she used it.
But that opportunity didn’t exist anymore. Ellie and I didn’t commute to the same office or exist in that same space at the same time anymore. So she wasn’t nearby to wrap her arms around me and insist I tell her what I was thinking. She wasn’t there to try to reason with me. She wasn’t there to show me the ledger of my life and argue that my math was bad.
So it wasn’t just that I would annoy Ellie if I messaged her with something annoying or mundane. It was that I had always annoyed her or weighed her down with my many needs for comfort. And she was finally getting some relief from my presence. She was probably happy I was gone, I thought. Ellie was the nicest person I had ever known, so obviously she wouldn’t say that she didn’t want me around. She’d endure. She would put up with it until I finally left. And I had.
I should have moved on. For her sake. Which meant that I shouldn’t text her, even though I wanted to. Even though I missed her. She would be happier if I didn’t. So instead of texting her, I put the phone away and ate more plantains at the bus stop. When the plantains were gone and the bus still hadn’t arrived, I knew I needed to get myself a car. It would probably make it easier for me to outrun my thoughts and likely help my plantains last longer.