Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (39 page)

His thick eyebrows did their dance, up in amazement, down in a frown. I suspected this was a mimicked expression. Mother? Father? Probably mother. He added a shrug and said, “You’re the doctor.”

“If I told you to jump off a building, or I wouldn’t like you, would you do it?”

“Yes,” he said immediately and rolled onto his back. He stretched out, growing before my eyes into adolescence. “I like being on the couch,” he said. His innocent expression, the Picasso baby face, seemed to evaporate. His eyes narrowed; his full lips pouted.

“Is that how it works with everybody?”

“What?” he said—snapped it actually, in a loud irritated tone, very much the fifteen-year-old.

“Do you want everybody to like you?”

“Do I want everybody to like me?” he repeated musingly. “No,” he said, finally. “But almost everybody.”

“And would you jump off a building for almost everybody?”

“Yes,” he said and smiled at the ceiling. It was a becoming smile, his wide mouth generously displaying an array of white teeth.

“Do you like being so accommodating?”

“What?”

“Do you like being someone who would jump off a building to get people to like you?”

“Yes,” he said. He grinned. He was in full rebellion, goading me. The changes were rapid. He moved up and down the scale of maturity like a virtuoso playing the piano. There had to be more to his mystery than simple passive-aggression or an oral fixation. “What made the school think you should come here?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Come on, Gene,” I snapped. What was that? I had once again lost control of the dialogue. “Is it your grades?” I added, trying to recover.

“We don’t get grades.”

The One Room School was a failed experiment from today’s point of view in education, a sixties anomaly—open classrooms, no tests, teaching through projects rather than rote learning. I knew that and had my own opinion of their methods, but the therapist’s view of the world isn’t necessarily the patient’s. I wanted Gene to describe his landscape. “What do you
get?”

“Pass, fail. So I guess it’s a grade. They say it isn’t. You know …” He sighed.

I knew. To an adolescent, adults remain hypocrites no matter how hard they try not to be. “Are you failing your courses?”

He nodded. “I guess. We haven’t gotten a report for the fall yet. I didn’t finish two of my projects. That’s how you pass. I was supposed to write a play for English and I messed up the biology field project. I’m bored, that’s all. I could do them, but I don’t have any energy.”

He was too comfortable with this subject. “What does your father do?”

“What?” Startled, his right leg came up.

“What kind of work does your father do?”

“He’s a …” Gene hesitated. “He’s a photographer.”

“For newspapers? For advertising?”

“No.” That was said firmly. “He’s an artist.” Gene gave the word a slight English accent.

“Un huh.” There was something here. I waited.

“That’s not how he earns a living,” Gene said.

The phrase sounded borrowed. Maybe this was his father talking. “Oh?” I said.

“He earns a living as a carpenter.” Gene warmed to this subject. “Well, more than a carpenter. He designs what he builds.”

“Yes?” I sounded interested, since he was. “What sorts of things? Cabinets?”

“All kinds of stuff. You know, like, people will want their kitchens built, you know loft people need their kitchens built, ’cause usually … because it was industrial space.”

Another borrowed phrase. Nevertheless, for the first time Gene was talking effortlessly. I asked more questions and he was glad to give me details. I let him ramble and enjoy the memories. He used to be picked up from grade school on his father’s lunch break, and he helped during the afternoons, measuring, hammering, sawing wood, cutting Formica, taking pleasure in being his Daddy’s assistant. His mother’s full-time work for a textbook publisher had meant his father often took care of Gene during the week, bringing him to class in the morning and covering the afternoons, until he was old enough to be on his own after school.

“When was that? When did you start coming home alone?”

“I don’t know,” he said impatiently. Gene didn’t want to change the subject from descriptions of his father’s jobs. “I didn’t go home for a long time. I went to where Daddy was working, even when I was old enough to walk alone. I remember he had a job in Brooklyn—”

I interrupted. “But you don’t go to his jobs now?”

“Well … no. Dad doesn’t do that much design and building anymore.”

“He’s concentrating on his photography?”

“He has a show.”

“A show?”

“An exhibition. In a very important gallery.” Gene said the words—“very important”—as if they were themselves very important words. He seemed to stop breathing afterwards, lying still.

“Is this his first show?”

“No.” Angry. “He has a lotta shows.”

“A lot?”

Gene grunted. He didn’t want to talk about this.

“How many?” I asked.

“Well … he had a show every week in The Garage.”

“The garage?”

“Yeah, with his friends. After the
Times
came, then there were lots of other shows.”

“Whose garage is it?”

“What?”

“You said—”

Gene cackled. He twisted his head. “Not a garage.” He was amused and contemptuous.
“The
Garage. You know.”

“I don’t know anything about the art world. You’ll have to explain.”

He wasn’t enthusiastic, but he certainly did explain, in a programmed formal tone. He impersonated his father to tell me at length about the dilapidated car repair shop on Houston Street that he and other artists of various kinds had taken over to exhibit their work—somewhat illegally, it seemed; in any case, there had been a squabble that ended with their being thrown out. Gene detoured into the internecine arguments among the sculptors, painters, photographers and the like, using a grown-up’s language and affecting a cynical attitude. He went so far afield I had to interrupt to return to the main road. “You said something about a gallery?”

“Bullshot,” Gene said.

I was taken aback. “Is that the name of the gallery?” I asked skeptically.

“Yeah,” Gene said impatiently.
“The
Bullshot.”

“I don’t know anything about the art world. That’s an important gallery?”

“The most prestigious gallery for new artists in New York,” Gene said solemnly. Still Father talking. He paused. He added, remembering another of his father’s comments, “And New York is the center of the art world.”

“So this is a very important show for your father?”

“Yes,” Gene said, sadly.

“Is there an opening night?”

“Yeah.” Gene was impatient. “Is it time for me to go?”

Ah. The opening was a source of tension. “We have more time. And when is your father’s opening?”

“What? Oh. No. The opening was two months ago.”

I was surprised. It must have gone badly. “How did it go?”

Gene recited angrily: “It was a sellout. Dad got a rave in the
Times
and in the
Voice.
Now he’s one of the most important photographers in the country.” He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at the ceiling.

He’s jealous of his father’s photography work, I thought, excited. Its success represents abandonment. [Obviously, there was also an Oedipal theme in Gene’s reaction. And I was interested in the ego psychology involved: Gene identified with the carpenter-father; when he lost that role model, he regressed to childhood. However, in those days I was enthralled by Susan’s psychological bias, the loss of object and its emotion of grief and abandonment, rather than the deeper drive to conquer the father, or that his father’s transformation into an artistic success threatened Gene’s ego. I believed then that the various schools of theory were contradictory choices, not colors of the palette. I was a long way from understanding how combining them can paint a three-dimensional portrait.]

For the first time, I felt in control. “Okay, Gene,” I said. “Our time’s almost up. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I think it would be good if you could come here three times a week. How about Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? Would that work?”

There was a silence. The hidden thumb rose to his chin. “Three times a week?” he asked meekly.

“Is that a problem? You could come after school on your way home.” My suggestion of a time was deliberate. I knew he missed the afternoons he used to spend with his father; the therapy’s transference would be helped by associating it with them. If that seems like manipulation to non-professionals, I agree. It
is
manipulation, but not wrongheaded or malicious. For the therapy to work, we needed to replace the comfort and strength those childhood hours gave Gene. Indeed, the hope was that the therapy’s afternoon care would be superior, a relationship Gene could eventually discard voluntarily, rather than something whose loss he resented and mourned, leaving him weak and helpless.

“I guess. For how long?”

“An hour.”

“No …” The hidden thumb rose higher. “Uh … How long do I have to keep coming here?”

“That’s something you’ll decide with your therapist.”

“You’re not my …” he hesitated. “You’re not going to be … it?”

I had made too many mistakes with him. I was glad to have had a little insight into his dysfunction but I couldn’t recommend myself to be his doctor. In fact, I felt I had work to do with Susan about my inappropriate reaction to Gene. “Well, this was a preliminary interview. I’ll discuss with Susan Bracken—she’s my boss—who’s best to see you. And you also get a vote. If you don’t like the therapist we pick, you can tell us.”

“Can’t you?” Gene sounded frightened. His lips pushed in and out. “Can’t you be it?”

“I might be able to.” I knew I ought to ask him if he wanted me to be his therapist, but I didn’t. My reluctance, it seemed to me, was another proof I shouldn’t. “Why don’t you put your sneakers on and get your mother? Come back and we’ll all discuss it.”

Gene obeyed silently. He moved slowly, as if his muscles were exhausted and sore. That, I had noticed, isn’t unusual when a patient has had a productive session. It’s hard work, exercising our heaviest emotions. At least I hadn’t totally failed.

I was curious to meet Gene’s mother, the forgotten object, as it were, of our session. I saw immediately that he had learned his meek mannerisms from her. Her head appeared at the edge of the plasterboard door—so flimsy a sound insulator we kept a white noise machine on all the time in what we laughingly called the waiting room, really a converted closet. They took their time before coming in; presumably Gene gave her a thorough report. Her hair was much curlier than Gene’s and a different color, an unnatural reddish brown. Dyed to cover premature graying, I decided. They had the same big dark eyes. Hers were bright and eager to please. Her mouth was wide like Gene’s, but the lips were thin. They shared the aquiline nose, although hers was perfectly centered.

“Hello?” her head said and then more of her appeared as I got up. They shuffled in together, Gene almost hiding behind her. She moved in sideways toward the couch, then sideways toward the desk, a silly maneuver of indirection. She was skinny, with a girlish figure, and her shoulders, like Gene’s, were broad and bony. She hung her head between them, somewhat like the submissive approach of a friendly dog. “I’m Carol, Gene’s mother,” she said. Her voice was a pleasant surprise, deep, mellifluous, and confident.

“Nice to meet you,” I said and shook her hand. It was limp and soft, begging to be taken care of. I let go quickly.

“Gene enjoyed talking to you, Doctor. We’re both grateful you spent so much time with him.”

I gestured for her to sit. “Gene, why don’t you pull up that folding chair?” I sat down. Gene obeyed with excessive haste. Carol perched on the edge of her chair, eyebrows up, expectant. Her facial expressions were cartoonish, exaggerating the feeling she wanted to express; they left an impression of disingenuousness. This family just wasn’t my cup of tea. I experienced a moment of inner despair, a weakness of mine that a good Self-Psychologist would have wanted to investigate, that I can best summarize as a feeling of fraudulence and hopelessness. I felt I had no business trying to be a healer, that I simply wasn’t compassionate or smart enough for the job. I had been analyzed, however, and I knew what had triggered this feeling: first, that I hadn’t immediately corrected the many mistakes I made in the session, and second, that I was in the process of lying—the truth was that Gene had already been assigned to me. Covering up mistakes and telling lies were bad for my Self. “I think Gene would benefit from coming here three times a week, say Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, probably after school if that fits into his schedule.”

Carol nodded her agreement throughout my speech, well before I was done, bobbing her head like a doll with a spring for a neck. It was annoying, conveying a blind desire to please rather than genuine agreement. “Great, okay, that’ll be fine,” she said all at once when I paused.

“I’ll discuss with Dr. Bracken who should be his therapist and then Gene could meet—” I stopped because Carol had her hand up, like a student eager to be called on.

“Gene told me he really wants you to be his doctor,” she smiled at me regretfully, head cocked to one side, as if to say—What can you do? In fact, she was making a demand. Here was the source of his passive-aggression. “Of course it’s not up to us. I explained that to Gene. After all we’re not paying, and I’m sure you’re very busy, but don’t you think it’s a good idea for him to have a doctor he likes?” Gene stared straight down at the floor, embarrassed. She grimaced helplessly as if she were also embarrassed.

“It’s more than a good idea,” I said. “It’s necessary.”

Carol nodded and smiled approvingly at me. She glanced at Gene. He still had his head down. “You see,” she said to him. “I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

“But Gene hasn’t met any of the other therapists. He might like someone else even better.”

Carol’s eyebrows came down to frown, her wide mouth shrank into a pout. “He couldn’t like anyone better than you,” she said. “He was completely comfortable with you.”