excerpt from Lindsey Drager’s “The Two-Body Problem”

I accept the position in spring. When they call, they tell me I was the unanimous vote.

It was you or no one, the department chair says. And no one didn’t want the position, she adds, and laughs.

Okay, I say, then sign the papers, graduate with my doctorate, move across the country. Okay, I say, and then it is autumn and I find myself on campus, the newest member of the Department of Longing: Assistant Professor of Grief.

Because I am small in stature—I am young, a woman—they give me a tiny office that is full of someone else’s things. Are you sure this office isn’t occupied? I ask, reading the notes that adorn the desk and wall. FAILING BODIES CONFERENCE IN JUNE, one says. LEARNING TO UNREAD CLASS PROPOSAL, says another. TALK ON GHOSTS. DEFINE NARRATIVE NEGATION.

No, says the department chair. Nope—it’s unoccupied. Just try to work around all this. That’s sort of our motto—don’t overwork, work around. She stares at me and I blink a few times. Right! she says and tries to smile. I get the sense she wants to touch me, perhaps to show support. She looks at my shoulder as though she is requesting to land a hand there. Right, she says nodding. She sighs loudly and then she leaves, so that I am left alone except for everything that occupies the office that feels nothing like mine.

I am the department’s only Assistant Professor of Grief. The position is new, developed as a response to student demand. At our first faculty meeting of the term, I sit down next to a man who looks like he needs consoling and introduce myself. He tells me he is an Associate Professor of Fear. Our department has four scholars working in Fear because departments never have a single Fear faculty member—it is required that they be hired in units. This creates stress on the Dean, who must always be thinking in pairs when approving the budget for such lines. This also means the Professors of Fear get paid less, but because our school is private, no one knows.

The Associate Professor of Fear asks how I am settling in. Part of me is not convinced this is the beginning of the term. It feels like yesterday I was still applying to jobs, wrapping up my PhD, debating new theories on Sacrifice Studies with my partner over coffee. But that must have been months ago, I think.

Things are fine, I tell him. I ask how he’s been, but he ignores my question.

I just know . . . he looks down at his hands. Well, being a woman and young. Sometimes. Well, the authority question. I just know—from hearing others—it can be an issue. Being a woman. And young.

I nod to him and try to read his face, which displays an emotion somewhere between concern, torment, and angst. I think: Of course he studies Fear.

Fluctuat nec mergitur, I tell him. He stares at me. Latin, I say. She is tossed by the waves but does not sink.

. . .