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“What are you, five? You hurt his feelings last night, and he was jealous. He might be upset, but you have to talk it through. Now, hang up the phone, blast Meat Loaf with the windows down, and relax. Call Rex when you get to Detroit. Okay?”
“Yes, mother,” I say.
“God, you’re so lucky I even speak to you.”
“I know I am,” I tell her.
I DID try Rex when I got to Detroit, but he didn’t answer and I didn’t leave a message. I called him this morning too—no answer. I texted Ginger. Called twice, no answer. Told you he’s mad.
She wrote back. Sometimes ppl have lives & its not all abt YOU. Xoxo.
I know she’s right, but I can’t concentrate. My paper this morning went pretty well anyway, though, and I got some good questions that’ll be useful if I want to try and turn the piece into an article down the line. It’s been the usual sideshow of macho academic posturing, panels claiming to name the next turn in analysis, and badly concealed anxiety. Everyone’s trying to make a good impression and pretend they don’t care what anyone thinks. Everyone’s trying to look like the smartest one in the room while acting like what they’re saying is totally obvious. I hate conferences.
I’ve been looking forward to the last panel of the day, at least, because Maggie Shill, a nineteenth-century Americanist whose work I’ve always really admired, is going to be giving a paper about gilded age architecture and its influence on literary aesthetics of the time. Professor Shill teaches at Temple now, but she was hired after I left, so I’ve never worked with her. Her first book totally blew me away, though.
I slide into a seat just as the moderator is introducing the panel. I make a habit of never arriving to panels early and never sitting directly next to anyone so I can avoid any awkward small talk with other people in the audience who only ever want to know what you’re working on and whether you’re more successful than they are. The room’s crowded, though, so I have to sit right next to a woman in an ill-fitting skirt suit who looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here.
“Sorry,” I say as I accidentally brush up against her shoulder while I get myself situated.
“No problem,” she says, and smiles at me.
When the first panelist gets up, she immediately begins to ramble on about how panels are designed to stifle thoughts and make ideas digestible and prepackaged; that’s why they’re called panels, like the containing squares in a comic book.
“Is that Maggie Shill?” I ask the woman next to me. I’ve never seen her speak, but the other panelists are a man and a woman who looks Latina.
“Oh yeah,” the woman says, sounding embarrassed.
I’m shocked. This rambling mess is Maggie Shill.
“As I completed my paper,” Professor Shill is saying, “I realized that it wouldn’t do the world any good—no good at all.”
“Oh Jesus,” the woman next to me mutters.
“What’s the deal?” I ask. “Her work is so good?”
The woman scrunches down in her seat like she’s trying to avoid being seen.
“She’s totally losing it,” she says. She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “She’s my dissertation director, and—” She looks left and right to make sure no one’s listening. “—she told me that she was too busy to write her paper so she was just going to wing it. I don’t have any idea what she’s doing, but I’m supposed to have drinks with her after this. Maybe I’ll be struck by lightning instead.”
Up at the podium, Professor Shill is still talking, her tone manic, her gestures wild. She’s talking about interdisciplinarity and the role of the humanities, but saying nothing about the topic her paper was supposed to be about. Finally, she starts talking about how being a mentor is all she ever wanted and how her graduate students make it all worth it. The woman next to me slides down farther.
“Oh my god, this is not good,” she says.
“So, she has no paper?” I confirm.
“Nope,” the woman says. “It’s so fucked-up. I was on the same flight as her coming here and when we got in last night she went to the hotel bar to meet some friends and got wasted. I saw her staggering around the lobby at, like, midnight, flirting with some business-looking guy. Then before the panel she grabbed me and told me to come to her talk and we’d have drinks to celebrate after. What was I supposed to say?”
Professor Shill is now denouncing the conference itself, claiming that she had the idea for the conference theme years ago and no one listened to her, but now no one will acknowledge her role. She sounds nuts.
“Dude, she’s lost it,” I say. Man, talk about disillusioned. I can’t believe this is the same Maggie Shill whose work I’ve read all these years.
