Memory, p.2
Memory, page 2
Two 20-something men out running. And still turning heads, Cage thought complacently. Sure, he was engaged, and Ryan was married and committed to monogamy. A thought that still made him laugh. But it was nice to know that they were still worth looking at. Some days, working at Oregon Public Broadcasting made him feel like he’d turned invisible — and how that could happen to a Black man who stood 6-foot-2 and bench pressed 250, he didn’t know.
“You getting out of shape, there, bro?” he teased, when they got back to the Goose Hollow apartment. Which wasn’t true. He’d set a brisk pace. Ryan wasn’t as strong as he was and — in spite of his repeated assertions to the contrary — not quite as broad through the shoulders. But he was probably faster, quicker. “We need to go for a run three or four times per week.”
Ryan nodded, took a deep breath and let it out. “Thanks,” he said sincerely. “I needed that.”
“Come over for dinner tomorrow night and we can talk,” he invited.
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “I’ll ask Teresa. But maybe not to talk? Just to be? To have fun?”
Cage nodded slowly. “I could use a night like that myself.”
Ryan nodded and jogged back to his car parked outside the newsroom, leaving Cage looking after him with concern. Ryan headed home to drop off the car, and then walked to Reed, sweats and all. As Cage said, they’d smelled worse in the classrooms at Reed College.
“They what?” University President Andrew McShane said incredulously to his interim VP for Student Affairs, who at least had the balls to come to him and tell him face-to-face, not through an email or over the phone. That was good; if he wanted to strangle him before the conversation was over, he could.
Steve Planck smiled briefly. “It was...,” he trailed off, and shook his head. “I tried to find Ryan so he could add his perspective to the memo, but he disappeared.”
McShane looked at the clock. “He’s got class at Reed tonight,” he said absently. Then he frowned. “He missed the Zoom meeting?”
“Apparently,” Planck said. “Will said he sent out an SOS to Cage. Cage let Will know that he had Ryan and was taking him for a run. I remember when most problems could be improved by going for a run.”
McShane grunted. He’d never been an athlete particularly. Blessed with good genes, he was tall, and even pushing 60, he had a fit, strong body. And it wasn’t from clean living. But he could remember when most of his problems could be improved by using a flogger on a willing sub. COVID had put a damper on that release for his stress as president; now his outlets seemed to be sarcasm and Ryan Matthews, God help them all.
“So, you still want me to chair your Innovation Task Force?” Planck asked. He nodded at the memo laying out the committee’s actions and decision. “Because that looks like I’ve fucked up student development big time. The first thing those fuckers did was try to throw me under the bus. When Ryan stopped them from doing that — with Will’s help — they tried to expel Will from the university for ‘defamation.’ And Ryan went off. I thought it was staged at first, but Will doesn’t seem think so. And then they called him a pederast — or you a pederast, I’m still not sure what that term means exactly. Ryan said I needed to do a workshop on the word and historical concept with all of student government because he was tired of hearing it. The committee adopted his recommendations. Then he walked out.”
Plank closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can see why Ryan said Student Affairs doesn’t care if we make megalomaniacs and sociopaths out of our student leaders as long as we get control of their money. I’m not sure he’s wrong.”
McShane regarded the younger man. A Black man surviving in Student Affairs under Benjamin Davis? How had he even managed it?
“Ryan told me I needed to look at employment stats for the Student Affairs division before I passed judgment on you,” he said finally. “So I did. Turnover in every unit but yours was 10 times higher than the university norm — and I’m not exaggerating. Yours has been actually stable, more so than would be expected in a student development unit. You also represent most of the diversity in the whole division. Without your diversity, Student Affairs is almost completely white. We might have realized earlier that we had a bigger problem if we’d looked more closely.”
“Lucy Zhao and me,” he agreed, referring to the housing director who now was in charge of all student services. Another person who barely survived Davis. “No one to talk to about it. Couldn’t go over his head, not to the old president; he wouldn’t listen. Chain of command, he barked. HR? Not their bailiwick. Affirmative Action? I had no standing, because he hadn’t fired me. And the others wouldn’t file complaints, because they were job hunting and afraid Davis would retaliate — justifiably afraid. We’re not part of any union. Davis destroyed careers of some good people. He destroyed lives. And then? When a crisis hit? He couldn’t step up and do the job.”
“And people died,” McShane said bitterly. “And that description is exactly why I want you to chair the task force. So that it won’t happen again. I think it is happening, in small ways at least, throughout the university. We’re so focused on hierarchy and chain of command that people are ground to bits, and no one even notices. Dr. Michelle Stewart? You know her?”
Planck nodded.
“She told me what it would take to reach out and compliment a colleague in another department on an article that intersected her field of study,” McShane said. He summarized the conversation.
Planck just shook his head. “We’re not that bad,” he said. “We have regular luncheons, invite faculty, do some cross-fertilization. But our training retreats? As you found out with Chief Wilson, they quickly became indoctrination sessions into the Student Affairs way of doing things.”
“Not just here,” McShane said.
“No,” Planck agreed. “But particularly bad here, thanks to an ambitious administrator who failed the biggest challenges of our time.”
McShane decided he liked the man. The Ryan Matthews stamp of approval, he thought with a laugh. Which reminded him of the mess that bastard dumped in his lap.
“So, what do we do about this?” he gestured to the memo on his desk.
“Punt?” Planck said. “Or from my neighborhood, kick the can down the road?”
“In my neighborhood, too,” McShane said.
Planck smiled politely. “Look, we’re two weeks out from the end of the term. Take it under advisement. Ask Cinder to do her investigation. Task the Faculty Senate into working with her. Their presiding officer, Roger Bellamy, is good with students. He can work with her, and it will go well. She’s respected among the students.”
“And truly? It’s just Cinder?” McShane asked curiously. She was the newly elected chair of the Student Senate. And apparently, she used only one name. That was about all he knew about her.
He nodded. “Don’t know the story,” he said. “But it’s her legal name.”
“Interesting,” McShane said. “Let’s invite her, Bellamy, you and Ryan to breakfast one day next week, and get acquainted. Steering committee for the task force.”
“Breakfast? Ryan?” Planck asked and laughed.
“Maybe not on a day he’s got a Reed class that night,” McShane admitted. “That’s just mean.”
“Seeing that we’re having this frank conversation, the whole pederast thing has me flummoxed,” Planck said. He walked to the window and looked out so that he didn’t have to look at McShane. “It came out of the Honors College, of all places. From Professor McGee? And Eugene Cathcart carried it to student government and to Davis. It’s like athlete’s foot in a bad gym — it won’t go away.”
McShane looked at his back. Damn it, he was usually the one who stood at that window and looked out. “That’s probably what set Ryan off today,” he agreed. “McGee was part of a pedophile ring 20 years ago — probably started before then actually. But 20 years ago, Ryan was one of his victims. His own grandparents were part of the ring. They used drugs, and hypnosis of all things, to fog his memories. It’s a horrific story, that’s been kept out of the public eye — mostly. You could google and get pieces of it, if you knew how to look. Ryan’s grandparents were murdered near the end of winter term; then McGee showed up at my place and threatened Ryan’s son with a butcher knife. All those blocked memories of his have started leaking back into his consciousness these last 10 months. So, to imply he was abusing Will’s trust? Or that he had been, or is, a willing participant in a pedophilic relationship? I’d guess he reached his limit.”
Steve Planck had turned around and stared at him open-mouthed. “What the fuck?”
McShane laughed, without any amusement. “Ryan Matthews runs on intuition and close observation of people,” he said. “He can’t trust his memories. Doesn’t trust his past. As the Honors Dean said in the meeting last week, he’s very astute about people. He picks up on things that the rest of us wouldn’t because he had to. He learned it as a child to avoid the abuse. And then? As a teen, he learned he didn’t need to figure out the oddities of the past if he could just predict the present closely enough. So of course, he fit in among all those social anarchists at EWN. First safe home he’d ever had.”
“Damn it,” Planck said. “I may have made some missteps there, too.”
McShane shook his head. “He seems to think highly of you,” he said. “Last winter I came to trust his judgment and that of all EWN student leadership. Odd as that sounds, it was even odder to experience. I’m comfortable in a hierarchy, especially because I’m likely to be running it.” The two men shared tight grins, because Planck was the same, just younger. “That crew? Someday I’d like to see an org chart for EWN, although I have my doubts one exists. Have you ever observed one of their Zoom editor meetings?”
Planck shook his head mutely.
“You should. In fact, I’ll require you to in preparation for this task force,” McShane said. “But last winter? I didn’t know who I could trust among the administration, and we were in deep trouble. It kept getting worse. But EWN produced. They had ideas, solutions. And good God, they think fast and creatively. Outside the box? I don’t think they recognize a box exists.”
McShane thought back to the COVID crisis, then the white supremacist takeover of their own Campus Security that resulted in bombs being placed in the EWN newsroom, a crazed sociopath as VP for Student Affairs. He shook his head. “Anyway, Ryan Matthews said to give you a chance. So, you got one.”
Planck nodded slowly. “Not sure I deserve one,” he said. “Honestly? I was worried the rumors might be true, and I was worried about Will. Because that is one innocent young man.”
“Not anymore,” McShane said, grimly. “Your former boss saw to that. So, delay deciding on Will’s case? Pending reorganization of the Judicial Code Committee?” he said, returning to business.
“Then make the decision over the summer when no one will be around to squawk about it,” Planck said pragmatically.
“EWN runs year-round now,” McShane said morosely.
Planck laughed.
“And the student body president?” McShane asked. “Is there any precedent in requiring him to resign?”
Planck grimaced. “Not here, not that I recall,” he said. “I’ll put out some calls to other campuses. You can expel him for a term, though. He’d have to surrender the position then for at least a term.”
McShane nodded. He’d have to think about that.
“Thanks for delivering this in person,” McShane said. “Speaks well of you.”
Planck looked at him with a half-smile. “Georgia?”
McShane laughed. “It only creeps out when I’m stressed or tired.”
“Well, maybe we did play kick the can down the same road, then,” Planck said.
He left, closing the door behind him. Carol came in to say goodnight, and McShane decided he’d had enough for one day. Maybe he’d get a walk in himself tonight.
At 9 p.m. he timed the walk to intersect with Ryan’s route home. Ryan glanced up at him as he trudged toward his house. McShane fell in step. “Planck brought the memo of the results over in person,” he said conversationally. “You were right. I can work with him. That took guts.”
Ryan nodded. “He tell you I lost it?”
“He thought you staged it to make a point at first,” McShane said. “I wouldn’t sweat it.”
Ryan walked farther. “I don’t know why it set me off so badly,” he admitted.
“Don’t you? McGee planted that term in Cathcart’s mind, who then spread it throughout student government and to Davis himself,” he said. “And every time you heard it; more shadowy memories of McGee leaked out of that memory vault of yours. And then some sociopathic fucker suggests you’re doing that to your students, who are adults not children, but still? The notion that you might be requiring sexual submission from your students? And you wonder why it pushed your buttons today?”
Ryan laughed, and if there was a half-sob to it, McShane didn’t point it out. “Well, if you put it that way.”
They walked silently until they almost reached Ryan’s home. “You did well,” McShane said. “And you even made it to class tonight. Who can ask for more?”
“Missed Zoom,” Ryan observed. “Need to check with Will before the newscast.”
He smiled at the older man, who was turning around to walk back. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I guess I needed the walk and talk.”
“We all do on occasion,” McShane said.
Chapter 3
9:30 P.M., THURSDAY, June 3, 2021, Matthews’ home in SE Portland — Ryan still felt like shit when he let himself into the bungalow he shared with his wife, Teresa, and their 3-year-old son. The bungalow still had all the original wood trim, and he and Teresa were gradually stripping it and refinishing it. Teresa, more than him, because he was a klutz with tools, but he was learning. Someone had painted each room a different color with the unifying dark wood trim. He’d planned to repaint it white before they moved in, but Teresa loved the colors. She said it reminded her of Mexico. So, the colors had stayed. The entry way had a light sage green paint. The living room was pale blue. Ryan started to de-stress with the familiar environment.
“How did the Judicial Code Committee hearing go?” Teresa asked as he tossed his jacket on a chair and went to the kitchen to rummage for sandwich makings.
Apparently, Rafael was already in bed. Damn, he’d missed reading to his son at bedtime. Again.
“Ryan?” she asked, a bit of accent to how she said his name. He liked the sound of his name on her lips. He always had.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. He made a turkey sandwich, put it on a plate and took it to the table to eat it. As a single guy, he would have eaten it standing up in the kitchen. Being married changed a lot of things, small and large.
“But maybe you need to?” she said.
“Why? Did someone call you? Did Ruby? ‘Teresa, your husband is losing it, he’s not doing well, you need to talk to him?’” he said, almost savagely. He put the sandwich down. “I need to call EWN. I missed the Zoom call.”
“I do not need someone to call and tell me to talk to my husband,” Teresa said, hands on her hips, glaring at him. “Most certainly I do not need your Ruby — Abigail McShane — to tell me! I can look at you and say, ‘my husband has had a bad day’ all on my own.”
She turned away from him, saw his jacket and picked it up to put in the closet.
“I can pick up after myself,” Ryan said coldly. “Fuck.” He took the jacket from her and hung it up. Then he found his phone and sent a text to Will, not trusting himself to talk to anyone. He’d already hurt Teresa with that jab about Abigail. And calling her by the name she’d been known in the kink world? Shit. Way to rub Teresa’s nose in ancient history.
Will sent back a text: We’re good.
He put the phone away, keeping his back to Teresa so she couldn’t see his face. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Sorry doesn’t work, Ryan,” Teresa said firmly. “You are off-kilter about something, and you are taking it out on me. And that is not OK.”
He nodded but didn’t turn to face her.
She slid her arms around him from behind and pressed her face against his back. She held him tightly, saying nothing more.
His eyes burned with tears, and he choked them back. He should talk to her, he knew. She was his best listener. But he couldn’t. He was afraid he would break. She didn’t need that. Hell, she’d already had to call McShane a week ago to pull him out of a flashback. He was disintegrating; he knew it. He didn’t want the pieces to splash all over her.
He was so broken.
“Come to bed, love,” she said gently.
He shuddered. “Teresa,” he began.
“No,” she said. “I was wrong. You don’t need to talk, not yet. You need to love me. Come to bed. I promise it will be fine.”
He swallowed. He wanted to turn and run. To leave this woman before he damaged her — damaged her further — with his flashbacks and leaking memories, with all of his scars, literal and figurative. She deserved better. Deserved someone whole.
“Come,” she said.
He hesitated, but when she took his hand and pulled him upstairs, he didn’t resist.
“Love me,” she said, standing in the middle of their bedroom. “Ryan? Make love to me.”
He looked at this woman he loved and then he closed his eyes. She was so strong. And she loved him. It showed in her face. But it also showed in all the small ways she cared for him, the way she teased him. And when he’d been laid up — with whip lashes across his back from a whacko from his past — she’d cared for EWN, simply because she knew how much the newsroom meant to him. A fierce, passionate woman in this petite package with the brown hair she despaired of controlling. Her body was rounding out with pregnancy, and he delighted in each change. He’d not been there for Rafael’s birth.
Another way he’d fucked up, he thought with despair.
