Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

Well, the dream always broke before I actually got to the point of describing what I’d be writing about, though it conveniently picked up again around the time I was awarded a Fulbright and a Rhodes and published in the pre-eminent journal on the topic and was called all manner of things from wunderkind to “the discipline’s brightest new star.”

So much for that.

I stood in the elevator on the way up to my thesis advisor’s office, which was oh-so-inconveniently located in the top-floor attic space of the—wait for it—Physics Administration building, devoid of secretaries of any kind, and populated by a professor who wasn’t elderly and white so much as mid-forties and Middle Eastern. I quickly brainstormed.

WHAT TO SAY TO PROFESSOR BURAK

1) An apology. This had to come first, of course, since I’d already canceled three similar meetings and been granted two extensions on the department’s unofficial deadline for formulating a topic.

2) Ask after his wife and kids, natch.

3) Another apology, for not being prepared with the annotated bibliography he no doubt expected at this meeting.

4) A topic.

Number four was the tricky part of the equation. The digital readout above my head reported that I had eight more floors to think of something.

The problem was, there was only so much multitasking I could handle. The Lit Magazine hadn’t been a huge time commitment, and it paled in the face of the hours and hours I was devoting to Rose & Grave every week. (Howard had been right about that.) Add classes and my feeble attempts at a social life, and my table was groaning. I’d been promising myself that I’d dive into my thesis full time next semester, when it was an actual credit in my course load, and—with any luck—after all the Rose & Grave drama had died down.

Because, let’s face it, it was tough to think about a good paper topic when you spent your days deciphering encoded anonymous e-mails, tracking down the owner of a ludicrous nutball website, or wondering if your ersatz friend had been kidnapped by “The Brotherhood of Death.” If Persephone really was our patron goddess, it was time for her to start handing out miracles.

The elevator shuddered to a stop and a bell dinged to signify I’d reached my destination, but it barely registered. Instead, I almost squished my hand trying to keep the doors from closing again, so lost was I in my reverie.

I had found a topic, at last.

I strode into my professor’s office, ebullient.

“Miss Haskel,” he said, gesturing me to a seat. “Have we finally settled on a project?”

“Yes.” I beamed at him. “I would like to write my senior thesis on the permutations of the Persephone myth in modern literature.”

He steepled his hands on the desk and seemed to digest this information. “Interesting. Any particular modern texts in mind?”

Crap. I mentally flipped through my repertoire of possibilities. Would Tess of the d’Urbervilles be too obvious? Too English? Too…well, not modern ?

“I haven’t yet whittled down my main texts,” I said. “There are so many options.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m not sure whether to discuss the ramifications in English literature or maybe study some turn-of-the-century American choices. Or perhaps even focus strictly on texts from the period of the rise of feminism.”

Professor Burak nodded, slowly. “Sounds good. Well, Miss Haskel,” he said, standing, “it looks like you’re off to a good start. I’ll meet you in a month and see how you’ve progressed.”

I also stood. That was it? He reached across the desk to shake my hand, but when I took it, he folded his fingers in an all-too-familiar way and, before I could stop myself, I was doing the countersign. The, um, Rose & Grave countersign.

I couldn’t stifle the shock that registered on my face, which no doubt dug my—no pun intended—grave a little deeper. Dr. Burak was not a patriarch.

He’d been testing me, and I’d failed. Oops.

“Thought as much.” He returned to his seat, and leaned back. “Shall we start again?”

Deny, deny, deny. “Sir?”

“Come now, Miss Haskel. Do you think you’re the first student to come in here mysteriously itching to write a paper on Persephone?” He snorted, rolled over to his bookshelf, and pulled down a stack of bound manuscripts. “Let’s see here. What have we got? ‘Persephone and Demeter in the work of D. H. Lawrence’”—the paper plopped onto the desk—“‘An American Goddess: Pre-Feminist Persephones in My Ántonia and minor works of Willa Cather’”— plop —“‘Don’t Eat the Pomegranate: Rape and Rejuvenation in Harlem Renaissance Poetry’”— plop —“and, lest we forget, no fewer than seven senior projects on the Persephone motifs in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. ” Plop, plop, kathunk .

Busted.

“It’s not that I don’t think it’s a valid field of study, you see,” he said as I stood there, staring stricken at the pile before him. I even recognized some of the writers as patriarchs. “But the field’s a little crowded at the moment. At least, at this particular temple of learning.”

I remained speechless.

“And of course,” he added, “there’s the ongoing issue with not being able to access and vet some of your sources, seeing as they are part of a very, very private collection.”

I regained my tongue and remembered my oaths. “Professor Burak, I don’t know what impression I may have given you earlier, but I assure you I—”

He raised his hand. “Look, I’m in favor of students exploring the traditions that speak most strongly to them. Passion is always a positive when it comes to charting courses of study. But it’s time to start getting creative. It’s been, what, two hundred years?”

One hundred and seventy-seven. But that was none of his business.

“And I know you guys must have many rules and rituals that have origins in any variety of myths. Why the Persephone monomania?”

“Sir, I—”

“Right, right. ‘You have no idea what I’m talking about.’ Of course. I’ve been teaching at this university long enough to know the drill. But that doesn’t change my take on the matter. We in the Literature department have been dealing with this for longer than you’ve been alive, Ms. Haskel. I doubt you’re going to come at this topic from an angle we haven’t seen. Back to the drawing board with you.”

Defeated, I rose, and turned to go. I looked down at the stack of papers on his desk. “Were any of these written by a woman?” I asked him.

He considered. “No. As far as I know, you’re the first woman to try this particular trick. But don’t think that makes it acceptable.”

“So how far does it get me?”

He chuckled. “Another week to come up with a topic.”

Poe had text-messaged me to meet him at the office of the Edison dean at three-thirty, so after a short stint at a library computer terminal confirming that indeed the field of undergraduate Persephonial study was a bit crowded here at Eli, I wandered up that way, still shaken from the smackdown I’d received from my advisor. But seriously, what kind of idiots were we Diggers to think the academic bigwigs at this school wouldn’t eventually catch on to our predilection for a certain myth? From within doth Persephone rot, indeed! Professor Burak hadn’t accused me of trying to cheat my way through my thesis, but the concern was obvious. So now I could add another task to my already overloaded To Do list.

I found Poe loitering outside the Edison College gates, waiting for someone with an Eli College undergrad proximity card to let him in. I swiped my card at the gate and held the door open as he passed through.