Resolve

by Hensley, J. J.

  “How long have we been married?”

  It was Kaitlyn’s turn to catch me off-guard. Her feet were bare and I didn’t hear any footsteps.

  “About a decade. But every day with you is a honeymoon.”

  I could still get away with cheesy comments like that. She’s always had the remarkable ability to not lose her temper with me even when I deserve it—which is pretty often.

  She smiled and walked toward me as I leaned on the rail of the deck and continued, “And would you say that you know me pretty well at this point?”

  I nodded.

  “And has there ever been anything, anything at all, even the slightest hint in my behavior that would lead you to believe that I would let you stew in silence when something is bothering you?”

  I smiled back.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then start talking. And just be grateful that I’m not charging you my standard fee.”

  I took another sip of beer and told her the entire story, including what I didn’t tell Jacob. He didn’t need to know about Lindsay’s advances toward me, but I couldn’t keep that from Kaitlyn. Full disclosure is the only way to have a real marriage. I told her about Lindsay’s office visit, the interview with the police, their suspicions about Steven, and my carelessness in revealing his secret. She listened patiently, didn’t interrupt once, and carried the perfect look of empathy on her face.

  I started to wrap things up by telling her about my plans to see Dean Silo on Monday, and how Jacob was going to try to soften him up before the meeting. I finished my account of the last two days along with my beer.

  Kaitlyn slowly paced the deck as she worked through the details in her mind—the psychologist debating with the wife, trying to agree on what responses to give. A minute passed and then she finalized organizing her rolodex of thoughts on the matter.

  “I assume if Steven files a complaint, the university will be concerned about liability.”

  “Yep.”

  “And if liability is an issue for an organization, the organization will have to demonstrate that it has taken steps to correct the cause of the liability.”

  “Yep.”

  “And you are the cause.”

  “Yep.”

  With a roll of her eyes she asked, “Don’t you get paid to talk to people for a living?”

  “Yep.”

  Another minute passed as she wore out the boards under our feet.

  “And this girl, Lindsay—how old was she?”

  “About twenty-two, I guess.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine going on twenty-five.”

  “Was she good looking?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why would she be hitting on you?”

  I simulated Sigmund’s head tilt.

  “Thanks, sweetie.”

  “Nothing personal, baby, you’re good looking and all, but a girl like that usually has an agenda. Girls who chase after older guys are usually . . . troubled.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, as I looked out into the yard and watched the dog sniff a particularly interesting blade of grass. “She was a good student. I can’t imagine how she would have benefited. Other than the obvious.” I flamboyantly formed my right arm into an “L” shape and flexed a bicep.

  The jab in my diaphragm turned the “L” into a backwards “7” and I found myself thankful that she was taller than Sigmund.

  “Stop it. This is serious.” She stepped up to the rail beside me, and we watched Sigmund make himself comfortable on a part of the hill warmed by the sun. “Silo already hates you. And we’re okay with money, but not to the point that you can be unemployed long.”

  I noticed that a small yellow bird had landed on a tree branch just outside of the fence line. I wondered if it was a finch and made a mental note to go online later to look it up.

  “It will be alright,” I said unconvincingly. “I’ll talk to Silo on Monday and, if necessary, throw myself on the mercy of the court.”

  “And don’t be a smart ass.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “And don’t insult him in any subtle way. Don’t even imply.”

  “Don’t worry. If I insult him I’ll be perfectly up-front about it.”

  The bird flew away, probably sensing the stare of death being sent in my direction.

  “I’m kidding. I’ll be good. Besides, maybe Steven won’t make a formal complaint. Maybe he won’t even be that upset. Hell, I could luck out and he won’t even hear about it.”

  And maybe Sigmund would get nominated to the Supreme Court.

  Mile 6

  To make sure people don’t take shortcuts during the race, electronic timing mats are strategically placed on different parts of the course. We crossed one at the beginning of the race and the timing strips attached to our shoes allowed a computer to start the clock on each of us. The second mat is stretched out across Brighton Road as we make our exit out of West Park. A computer records the times of those of us still running. Our participation will be electronically accounted for in this perspiring roll call to guarantee the integrity of the race.

  Just past the mat, three scaffolds are erected in the middle of the street. On the scaffolds stand the official race photographers. They take still shots with machine-gun speed and make sure to get a photo of every runner. In a few days, the photos will be posted on a website with the word SAMPLE emblazoned across it. People will be able to buy the unscarred photos for a hefty price. I weave around one of the towers and nod to a sniping photographer.

  After being scanned like items at a grocery store and photographed like mafia dons under FBI surveillance, we move past a children’s museum and make a turn toward the Andy Warhol Museum which sits in front of a bridge also named for the famous artist. I have to tick off mile markers and landmarks in this way. If you start thinking about the fact that you have twenty miles to go, the concept is too overwhelming mentally and you’ll never finish.

  Mental, physical, environmental—all of the challenges you face in a marathon can be put into one of those three categories. You can train to overcome the physical. You can do your best to dress right for the environmental. But, conquering the mental aspect is tricky for most people. For some reason it clicked with me from the beginning. The systematic and disciplined way you have to envision things on long runs appealed to me immediately when I took up this hobby. Which is strange considering systematic and disciplined was nowhere in the room when this madness was conceived.

  In a short amount of time, Kaitlyn had vastly improved my life. We bought a small house and quickly adjusted to living together. Both of us felt we were a perfect fit for each other, and for once I loved going home after work. Going to work, on the other hand, still made my stomach tighten; and while I didn’t take any more sick days, I was still looking for a profound idea to present itself.

  One night I was attending an informal group counseling session at a local bar with one of my coworkers (I had started socializing with people again). We were deep into a highly intellectual conversation with our career consultant, Mr. Johnnie Walker Red, when one of us noticed a running shoe commercial on the TV over the bar. There were people jogging—young people, old people, black, white, tall, short. They all looked weirdly happy as they bounced around, bounded over park benches, and laughed while their happy dogs trailed behind.

  One of us, I don’t remember who, slurred, “Wee should start wunning!”

  A voice replied, “Are you kidding? I bet yourr couldn’t wwun a mile!”

  And then a voice lisped, “I . . . I’aam gonna run a marathon! Am you’re gonna do it wit me.”

  I’m pretty sure Johnny W. must have said that last thing.

  I wasn’t anything close to being a runner at the time. I mean I had run when I had to at the police academy or in pursuit of a suspect, but mostly for me it was all about hitting the weights or the heavy bag a few times a week. Running long distances? That was what cars were invented to preve
nt. However, the idea of facing a new challenge somehow resonated with me.

  I started my training over the next few weeks. First, I began by doing what I’d always done with anything new to me. I studied it to death. I mean I studied everything I could about distance running. I gulped down everything on the internet. I gorged on every relevant book in the library. I inhaled every running magazine I could find. I became bilingual: in addition to speaking “Human,” I learned to speak “Runner.”

  I became educated on all of the technical terms and acronyms for every injury and treatment I might possibly encounter. Iliotibial band syndrome = ITBS. Chronic exertional compartment syndrome = CECS. Plantar fasciitis = PF. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, a.k.a. Ibuprophen = NSAIDs. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation = RICE. So if you are hoping to set a PR and have ITBS, CECS, or PF and they can’t be treated with NSAIDs and RICE, then you’re SOL. Got it?

  My coworker had long given up by the time I signed up to run the Marshall University Marathon. I affixed a spreadsheet to the refrigerator and Kaitlyn watched in disbelief as I chalked up my weekly mileage. Each week I added two or three miles to my weekly total. Before I knew it, I was knocking out six-mile runs on my easy days.

  I can’t say exactly why, but this undertaking made absolute sense to me. It was so simple, yet challenging. You move forward, tick off another mile, move forward some more, repeat, repeat, repeat. It changed everything.

  From that point on, when I was handed a thick stack of folders representing new probationers, I found myself thinking, No problem. I can run ten miles. I can handle this. I exhausted myself during the days and slept like a sedated narcoleptic at night. I started to eat better. I drank less alcohol. In short, I became a better man. My body transformed from bulky to lean. Even on the days I didn’t run I lifted weights and crunched my abs into submission.

  The MU race offered me views of the West Virginia portion of the Ohio River Valley along with a mixture of city streets and inviting parks. The major selling point of this small marathon was finishing inside of the university’s football stadium while carrying a football for the last hundred yards. For a first-time marathoner, having your name announced over the stadium speakers and seeing yourself on the jumbo-sized video board in the end zone is well worth the registration fee. Who am I kidding? I would still think it was cool if it were my fiftieth marathon.

  I clocked in at just over four hours, and Kaitlyn was there at the finish line to support me. She handed me a Gatorade and, in her typically cuddly manner, asked me why I didn’t finish with a better time. We exchanged smiles, and then I threw up right next to her feet.

  True love is something you can’t hold in.

  “Dean Silo will see you now,” announced the gargoyle perched at the desk outside the Office of Academic Affairs.

  Ms. Beatrice Holbrook was a cliché, wrapped around a banality, and boxed up into an ugly stereotype. The administrative assistant was the cagey, uptight gatekeeper for Dean Clyde Silo. If it was the dean’s intention to use her to filter out the more trifling problems of staff members and students, the sixty-five-year-old jagged splinter of a woman was perfect for the job. Even if a visitor could possibly withstand her scouring stare, flattened nose, and alien ears, her medieval torture device of a personality was sure to make the strongest of constitutions burst into flames and scatter like a pile of dry ashes.

  The hard wooden chair in the waiting area groaned with appreciation as I got up from it. As uncomfortable as that chair had been for the past half-hour, it seemed a better prospect than having to walk past Beatrice’s desk on my way to Silo’s office. I smoothed out my sport coat and made my way past her lair.

  “Don’t be too long in there. He’s a very busy man and cannot be bothered with frivolities. You understand?”

  I really didn’t have any say in how long this would take, but I was not going to argue the point. And had she just called me a frivolity?

  “I’ll do my best,” I said in my most courteous tone. “How are you today?”

  “See that you do,” she hissed without responding to my question.

  I felt the sudden urge to get a tetanus shot.

  I grabbed the unwieldy iron knob on Silo’s door and passed through the portal. Glancing above the frame as I entered, I half expected to see the words ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE scorched atop the passageway.

  After telling Kaitlyn everything the previous Friday, I busied myself through the weekend on household jobs I had been putting off. It helped my productivity level that watching television wasn’t an option. I made a few attempts at turning on the TV but Lindsay’s murder was on every newscast. Every station was using some file photo the university must have given them. The same photo was in the newspapers as well, only in black and white. She looked a couple of years younger, and her hair was dark brown with a red streak down the left side. She looked more innocent, but there was a hint of rebellion in her eyes. I guessed that the photo was probably from her freshman year when she had it taken for her student ID. She must have decided later that Lindsay—the college woman—was going to be a blonde.

  To take my mind off of everything, and to avoid the temptation to run on my rest day, Sigmund and I spent all of Saturday putting shelves up in the basement and fixing a broken electrical outlet. Kaitlyn worked on potting a bunch of plants, or herbs, or something else, that would eventually be put into her garden.

  An eleven-mile run on Sunday morning made me feel docile, so I shocked my wife by volunteering to go to IKEA with her to look at some furniture for our guest bedroom. I truly hate that place. It’s a maze of random furnishings and knickknacks that sit under large blue signs promising to show you a shortcut out of there. But the shortcuts are nothing more than subterfuges that guide the mice down another path, where two dollar ultramodern shoe horns are on display next to house slippers that look like cartoon frogs. My personal cheese at the end of the corporate labyrinth is in the form of their giant cinnamon rolls that are sold next to the checkout lines. But, even with that incentive, getting me to go into the place usually takes an act of divine intervention. I figured the angrier I got at navigating the maze, and the more I wanted a cinnamon roll, the less I would think about facing the consequences of my error.

  Silo was sitting behind his oversized desk, thumbing through a pile of printouts covered with numbers and littered with Post-it notes. When I released the office door to let it close behind me, the latch produced a violent scrape and agitating clicking noise when it returned to its original position. My shoes double-tapped across the unexpressive walnut floor as my heels and toes held muted, but audible conversations. Ignoring the noises, the head of the Academic Affairs department didn’t look up from the papers until I was standing in front of his desk.

  “Have a seat, Dr. Keller.”

  “Please, it’s Cyprus,” I corrected him while falling into an oversized leather chair that made me feel like a child sinking into a cardboard box packed with Styrofoam peanuts.

  The dean hadn’t bothered to stand or attempt a handshake. I think it made him self-conscious. He was a diminutive, unattractive man, who didn’t do himself any favors by wearing suits much too big for him. Today’s suit looked like something he was either married in decades ago, or that someone else had been buried in. His puppet-like hands peeked out of wrinkled sleeves. Luckily, some attention was drawn away from his elfish stature by the way he attempted to cover a formidable bald spot by combing over a few wisps of hair that were the shade of dirty snow.

  Silo was partially a product of the already screwed-up mentality of the school and his office was legendary for a singular reason. It was in that very room where, just prior to the crash of ’29, the incident occurred when several members of Henry Gadson’s little cult decided to hold an impromptu ceremony in the founder’s office while the school’s founder was out of town. Apparently, one of the more robust ladies involved had been well lubricated by both spirits and a special body oil when she began leanin
g toward and staring into one of the surrounding candles, while reciting some words originally spoken by some guy named Parmenides. It turned out that the ceremonial oil had a disturbing reaction to flames. To their credit, the rest of the nutbag battalion tried to put the poor woman out. But, with their hands and faces besmeared with the same oil, the result was predictable. Nobody actually died during the bonfire of the idiots, but the cult members had seen the light, so to speak, and permanently retreated to their mansions to heal their egos and numerous second-degree burns.

  “Dr. Kasko has filled me in on what transpired last week. I can’t say I’m happy about the situation. You do realize that we cannot have members of our faculty revealing the personal aspects of our students’ lives? Regardless of how you feel about the young man’s sexual orientation, discussing it in public is totally unacceptable.”

  The way I feel about his sexuality? Silo’s words almost shuffled past me in the crowd of verbiage because of the distracting way he spoke. He had the annoying habit of creating a part-slurping and part-smacking sound with his lips and tongue between each sentence. The first time I met him, I wasn’t ready for this maddening tendency, and I instinctively wanted to shield my irises from the piece of gum that was sure to fly out.

  “Wait a second. There seems to be some misunderstanding. I don’t feel any particular way about Steven’s sexual orientation. In fact, if I have any feeling about it whatsoever, it’s in a supportive way. He has the right to be with whomever he chooses as far as I’m concerned.”

  The dean pushed a pair of bifocals up and further exposed an accusing nose.

  Twisting side to side while trying to sit up in my flimsy throne, I explained myself further. “What happened was a complete accident and I was trying to help Steven. The police had the wrong idea about him and Ms. Behram. I certainly didn’t have any malicious intent.”