Cross-Country Running Symbol Analysis

There’s a short film looping in my head and, in it, I’m pounding easily along over a hilltop in an interclub event. I’m not even puffing as I overtake him, despite the spurt he puts on. He glances sideways; he sees it’s me. I flash him a surprised-yet-calm smile of recognition, a flutter of the fingers, and pull away. Later, at the picnic, I’ll turn when he approaches, and let that awkward moment stretch out. In some versions, I have a little trouble placing him so that there’s the slightest hesitation before I say his name. Then I ask him how his thesis is going, and watch his face fall.

Any day now, I think as I lie heavy as a stone under the quilt, I’ll go out and buy those shoes.

What do you do in a cross-country run? I have a hazy picture of splashing across streams and jumping fallen logs, slogging up muddy hillsides and crashing down the other side through rugged bush. […] I wonder too if there’s a back-up vehicle, some support staff who tail-gun the runners, just in case you fall into a puddle or a ditch and lie there overwhelmed with the pointlessness of it all, the ludicrous challenge you’ve imposed upon yourself; your foolish desperate need for purpose. I imagine being lifted from the first by kind hands, and given a bottle of Gatorade and a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. Oh, I would give in without even a pretence of fighting spirit if someone offered to drive me to the finish line. Who wouldn’t?

I wander into the study as he talks, my fingers absently, lovingly, grazing the keyboard of the computer. Double-click on the internet icon, go straight to the club site. Last week’s results are posted, and there he is, placed forty-second now. A nagging cold, maybe. Slipping down the ladder into numb mediocrity, driving back to his new Ikea sofa and wonder bleakly whether he should open a couple of those cardboard boxes, pull out the old photos from where he’s hidden them, and then, and then…swallow his pride to pick up the phone. He’ll ring late, sheepish and sad, voice thick with tears. Ask me if I feel like some Thai takeaway, or just a bottle of wine. If we could talk. It seems so possible, so likely I feel my throat tighten in anticipation.

‘Rebecca? Hello?’ My boss is still on the line.
[…]
‘I’ll bring something in for morning tea,’ I say.

So what I’m going to do, I’m thinking, since I have every right to, nothing to do with him, is ring the number and ask about joining. I’m looking for a phone number I can try, and I refresh the screen and start again.

Just two small words again, going off in a blinding flash like a grenade. What they say is: Under-fourteens. I sit staring at them, dully open-mouthed. It’s like being doused with a sheet of muddy water, like a final jarring stumble on wrenched ankles […] Click the icon, close the screen. Windows is shutting down. I almost hear it, the decisive thud as it hits some imagined sill somewhere. I need a shower, and then I need a long cold drink of something at an outdoor table, but first I linger, watching the innocuous sky-blue screen. I’m waiting for the little melody it always plays before it sighs and switches itself off, that melancholy minor-key tune that tells you that whatever you’ve been watching, ready or not, it’s time to roll the credits.