MY ADVISOR HADwanted to have a call before I turned in my next chapter, so after I’d worked on weaving a few more quotes and examples throughout, I emailed her to set up a time. To my surprise, she got back to me right away withNow works for me.
Dr.Nilsson was intimidating as hell. She’d taught that first-year bibliography class we all had to take, and had a reputation for taking absolutely no shit. I’d seen her glance at her watch while you were rambling around a point. I’d seen some of the most articulate scholars I knew—people who made me feel like an imposter, like there’d been some mix-up in the mail system and someone had sent Billy Madison to grad school—start stammering and going red in the face as they lost the thread of their argument under her withering stare. Her expertise was in Virginia Woolf, and our final project had been a scavenger hunt around the university library to find answers to all these esotericquestions about Woolf texts, like how many copies of this were in existence or what edition contained this annotation or where were the original letters she wrote to this person housed.
I’d barely eked out the B-minus I needed in the class to keep my GPA up, but she had once written on a response paper of mine that it wasfreewheelingin a way that seemed like a compliment. So when I was searching the department for someone—anyone—who might be willing to let me study true crime for my dissertation, she’d come to mind.
“Dr.Nilsson, hi,” I said, adjusting my earbuds to make sure the mic part was close enough to my mouth. The longer I’d known Dr.Nilsson, the more I suspected that some of herwhat are you talking aboutfaces in class were due to hearing difficulties rather than just her being difficult. “It’s Phoebe Walsh.”
“Phoebe,” she said in her cool, cutting voice. “I understand you have another chapter for me. What did you want to discuss?”
This was what she did every time, without fail. She asked me for a call, and then immediately put me on the spot, as though I’d asked for it. This set me up beautifully for inevitably disappointing her with my inarticulate and ill-thought-out questions. I could almost hear her thinking,Why did she call for a meeting if she wasn’t prepared?
“Well,” I said, searching for something that hopefully sounded reasonably intelligent. “I really focus on Bugliosi’s book in this one—remember, he was the prosecutor in the Manson trial. But I didn’t know if I should weave in my analysis of the Gacy book, the one written by his defense lawyer, to contrast their approaches. Or if I should include more from the book by the prosecutor in the Avery case. That one editorializes so muchmore, it’s wild, but I guess that’s what happens when Nancy Grace writes your foreword—”
“I’ll have to read it,” Dr.Nilsson said, cutting me off. “And then I can give you more feedback on your approach.”
It took all my strength not to sayThat’s exactly why I didn’t need this call in the first place.Instead, I just clicked “send” on the email with the draft attached. “Okay,” I said. “Sounds good. You should have the draft in your inbox.”
“Excellent,” she said, but she already sounded distracted. “Now let’s talk about your job application materials. What do you have ready—your CV, your teaching philosophy, sample student syllabi and assignments...?”
How much did I haveready? None of it. I had a Russian nesting doll of folders on my computer for classes I’d taught, and could dig through those for my best syllabi and assignments, hopefully the ones that were the least plagiarized from other people who’d taught the course before me. I had a CV that I used when submitting to conferences, but it needed some work to get it ready for the job market. I didn’t even want to think about writing a teaching philosophy. Those scared the hell out of me.
Outside, I heard the rumble of Sam’s truck. I’d only been here a few days, but already the sound of his comings and goings felt familiar, if unpredictable. I looked through the blinds to see him hauling a truly unnecessary amount of bagged ice into his house. Interesting.
I must’ve been silent for too long, because Dr.Nilsson cut in impatiently. “Youareplanning to go on the market for next year?”
“Yeah,” I said, letting the blinds drop. “I mean, yes. I hope to. A job’s always good, right?”
I’d forgotten for a moment that of all Dr.Nilsson’s trulybrilliant qualities, a sense of humor wasn’t one of them. “Do you have geographic limitations?”
These were all the questions I knew were coming at the end of my six-year time in the academic cocoon. I’d had that entire time to think about them, I supposed. But now my mind went blank—my only brother was in Florida, my mother and her new husband had moved to Georgia, I’d been living in North Carolina for the last five years to go to grad school. Did I feel an attachment to any of those places?
“Not really,” I said. “No.”
Something about Dr.Nilsson’s questioning made me feel restless, and I went to check the mail just for something to do while we talked. The oppressive humidity assaulted me the minute I stepped outside. Sam was already back in his house, presumably dumping all that ice into coolers. I tried not to think of Jeffrey Dahmer, but at this point it was a reflex.
My other neighbor’s cat—or what I assumed was her cat, since it had been in her driveway the night I’d arrived—was now lying across the Spanish tile of my front step, as if trying to keep cool. I almost stopped to say hello before remembering I was still on the phone, and would probably sound insane. Still, I tried to give her a little nod of acknowledgment, stepping over the cat and shutting the door behind me so it didn’t go inside.
“Remind me,” Dr.Nilsson continued, “whether you have anyone in your life?”
Considering that a cat was the first strange creature who’d inspired true friendliness since I got here, I was inclined to sayno. And then I realized Dr.Nilsson meant whether I had anyoneromanticallyin my life, which was more ahell no.
“Not right now.”
“Good.” It was the first time I heard her sound truly pleased the entire call. “Keep your options open. It’s the best way to ensure you have a high chance of landing somewhere.”
“Definitely,” I said absently. Everything in my dad’s mailbox was junk. Coupons, an urgent notice about his car insurance that I could tell was just an ad, and a local circular that featured a front-page story about a kid who’d won a statewide songwriting contest.
“So you’re moving on to the next section?” Dr.Nilsson prompted. “This is where you’ll discuss Capote more, if I remember your proposal.”
The cat was still stretched across the front step. She tilted her head back and squinted up at me as I approached the door, almost as if she wanted some attention.
“That’s right,” I said, kneeling down to give her a tentative scratch under her chin. I had no way of knowing how feral this cat was—whether she was a stray or a domesticated outside cat or a neighborhood mascot. She was small, not quite a kitten but maybe an adolescent cat, and black with white paws and a white underside, like a little tuxedo. “There will be a whole chapter focusing more onIn Cold Bloodand how close Capote got to Perry and Dick, how that relationship influenced his narrative and the true crime genre as a whole. Then I’m going to have a chapter about Ann Rule’s book about Ted Bundy,The Stranger Beside Me, where she describes the time she worked with Bundy at a Seattle crisis clinic. It’s interesting actually, because—”
“I’m glad to hear you have a plan,” Dr.Nilsson said. “I received your latest chapter in my inbox, and you can expect mynotes in the next week. And if you wanted to send me your draft application materials, I’d be happy to take a look.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
It was a generous offer. I had several friends whose advisors were looking over their job stuff for them, but in most cases it was because they’d worked together for years. In many cases, it was because their research was tied together—they’d coauthored a paper, or presented at a conference, or the professor had introduced them to some professional contact or another.