Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (42 page)

“How did Don react to your coming here?” I hadn’t asked before. When Carol phoned to say her husband had signed the consent form, she commented, unasked, that Don still didn’t believe in psychotherapy but was willing to allow it if the school thought it would help Gene. Since she wasn’t my patient I didn’t probe. At least, that’s what I told myself.

On hearing the question, Gene froze, legs rigid, arms at his side, a frightened quiescence. “What?” His standard first defense, pretending not to have heard.

Instinctively, I sensed the truth. My intuition about the meaning of Gene’s reaction was complete, fitting perfectly into the puzzle of his history and personality. I sensed that Carol had lied to me, never informed her husband, forged Don’s signature, and made Gene a partner in the deception. My guess should have excited me. It didn’t; I was dismayed. But how could I feel good? I ought to have, I
must
have known this might be a key question and yet I had asked, telling myself it was neutral, an exit, not an entrance. Could I drop it? Review both my stumbling on it and the likelihood of my intuition being correct? I checked the clock: five minutes to go. So what? I could run over—I had a half-hour gap anyway and I didn’t believe in cutting off productive time. Out of fear, I was spinning my wheels, and that also bothered me. Gene lay still, hardly breathing, playing possum.

There was no way I could simply let it pass. “Your mother said Don wasn’t going to approve of your coming here,” I said. I didn’t want to appear to be trapping him, although I might be. “How did he react?”

“I dunno,” Gene said quickly and looked at his watch, something he never did.

“We have time,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

“He didn’t say anything to you about your being in therapy?”

“No,” Gene said easily. He took a relaxed breath. “He’s never said anything to me about it.”

And I knew why. At least I felt sure; but of course I could be wrong. Anyway, to make the accusation was dangerous, whether I was correct or not.

“Does he ask you what we talk about?”

“No,” Gene said, relaxed.

“So you’ve never discussed it?”

“Nope.”

“How about your mother?”

“Oh yeah. She always asks what we talk about.”

“Do you tell her?”

He nodded.

“You know you don’t have to discuss our sessions with her if you don’t want?”

“Yeah,” he was sarcastic. “Thanks. I know.”

I let him go. I had twenty-five minutes free. I had a problem; I was rattled. I wanted to run up one flight and interrupt Susan’s group. Glancing at the master schedule, I noted she was working with family members of alcoholics and drug addicts, shocking them, no doubt, out of their illusions about themselves as victims, waving her gangly arms, her broad forehead wrinkling sternly. Later, she would support them, when they took their first frightened steps toward independence. I wondered what it was like for Harry when he made love to her, exciting that skinny contraption of energy and strength? I laughed, knowing this meant I was feeling truly needy and inadequate.

I called my cousin Julie at her office. She had been appointed as the artistic director of the West End Forum, one of the most prestigious off-Broadway theaters in New York. Her assistant put me through when I said it was urgent, although she was in a meeting.

“Rafe?” she asked.

“I love you,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

I laughed. “You should be the shrink. Are you free tonight?”

“First preview. Wanna come?”

“If I can talk to you at some point.”

“Definitely. Although after the performance I may need you to treat the cast and playwright first.”

“After I treat them, you’ll close in one night.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I should go into plastic surgery.”

“Oh, so you want to be in show business too.”

“No, I just think I should only be treating the surface of things.”

“What does Susan say?”

“I don’t want to ask her.”

“But I thought she’s your teacher, your trainer, or whatever.”

“I have to be more phallic. Time to grow up. So I want to ask your opinion. That’s my version of maturity.”

She laughed. “Boy, are you in trouble.”

“Boy is right. I’ve got patients till nine.”

“You can see the second act.”

I don’t remember the play. The second female lead came offstage screaming at the male lead after curtain, but Julie and the playwright seemed pleased with the performance. After they had a brief conference, I got Julie to myself for a late dinner in a Japanese restaurant next door to the theater.

I told her about Gene and my dilemma. “I’m convinced the mother never informed his father.”

“You mean …” Julie had cut her shimmering black hair short, but she still reached for the missing mass from time to time, and ended up teasing the bristles at her temples. She did this for a moment before finishing, “You mean she forged his signature?”

“I guess. The important thing is that she’s told Gene to keep it a secret from me.”

“Wait a minute. I can’t
get
over this. This woman is so scared of her husband, she forged his name—”

“That’s not important—”

“What’s she scared of? Does he hit her?”

“No. Much worse. He ignores her.”

Julie frowned. I noticed for the first time—it was too dark in the theater—that her eyeliner was iridescent blue. She was dressed in a black silk man’s shirt and tight black jeans. She had a man’s haircut, lipstick very red—her appearance was eccentric. Was it some sort of dress code for theater people? Julie had worked as the artistic director of a regional theater in the Midwest while I did my residency. When she came to New York for this new job a year ago, she dressed like a hippie—worn jeans, work-shirts, hair long, usually no makeup. I wondered (and noticed that I wondered) whether this new style was a lesbian costume. In the Village I had seen this look on lesbian couples; for that matter, her former hippie appearance also fit their dress code. The playwright was a lesbian. That was the subject of her play and she told me it was autobiographical. There had been a lot of physical affection between the artistic director and the author. I’m a sick person, I thought and fell further into despair.

“Hitting her would really be better?” Julie asked while I spiraled down.

“That’s not my problem. Gene can’t keep that secret from me. It’s a terrible burden.”

“So confront her.”

“She shouldn’t exist!” I cried out.

Julie laughed. “What does that mean?”

“She’s not there. In therapy, the patient and me, that’s the only reality. I can’t go outside, step into his real life, without weakening the transference. If I call the mother, whether she denies it or not, I’m diminishing Gene, making him a child, a bystander, when I want to shore up his ego. Build it really. He doesn’t have one. He’s a creature of his parents.”

Julie peeled off a pink sliver of ginger and chewed it thoughtfully. “Gotta tell you the truth, Rafe.”

“No you don’t.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying. You’re making me feel stupid. Why can’t you just call the father to chat about the therapy? If he knows, the conversation will seem innocent. If he doesn’t, you’ve exposed the situation without—”

“I’m the parent now,” I interrupted.

Julie winced. “Don’t be angry at me.”

“I’m not. I’m angry at myself.”

“What for? You haven’t done anything.”

“Look. I’m the parent now. Gene needs to deal with these things with me, reenact these dynamics with me so he can learn to master them. If Gene had decided to lie to his father, that wouldn’t be a problem even if he were lying to me about it. That would become part of the process. But this is being done by an outsider. I know it, and—” I stopped. The answer was simple. It violated my book training, but Susan would approve. I resisted the temptation to phone her immediately to ask permission. No, I would just do it. Next session with Gene, first thing. If I was wrong, so be it.

Julie sipped green tea. She nodded at me over her cup to continue.

“I’ve got it,” I said. “Thanks.”

“What is it? What’s the answer?”

“I’m going to ask you something. I don’t want you to be angry at me. Just remember I’m upset.”

“Ask me something? What is it?”

“Are you a lesbian?”

Julie put down her cup. She made a sound. Her big eyes opened. “Rafe,” she said, as if calling for help.

I reached for the hand that had held the tea mug. It was warm and smooth. Her fingers grabbed me tight. “I’m in love with you,” I told her.

“I love you too,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I mean I want to possess you.”

She blanched. Her pupils dilated as she looked directly into my eyes. “But…”

“But?”

“We’re …” She shrugged.

“Cousins.”

“Isn’t that … ?” she looked down.

“A taboo,” I said. “Yes, maybe that’s the reason I want you so much.” Julie frowned at this unpleasant thought and I was encouraged. I pulled on her hand and she looked up, confused and excited. I was full of hope. “Or maybe,” I said, taking the chance at last, “or maybe you’re the only woman on earth for me.”

C
HAPTER
T
HREE
Breakthrough

T
WO DAYS LATER, WHEN
G
ENE NEXT APPEARED IN MY OFFICE,
I
HAD
reason to be thankful to him. Julie and I had become lovers and I was happy, happier than I had ever been. My life seemed complete or as complete as I had any right to expect. I was doing work I enjoyed and I was in love. Happiness, Freud said, is a childhood wish fulfilled: I had wished to be a healer and for Julie to love me. Perhaps both were mine.

I resisted the temptation to tell Susan of my dilemma with Gene and my intended solution. (I didn’t immediately tell her about Julie, either.) I knew my frank declaration to Julie and my going it alone on Gene’s therapy were related events and so I felt, in a magical way, that my success with Gene on this issue would affect my love life. I was quite nervous while Gene untied his Keds and lay back on the couch.

“Gene, before we start, there’s something I want to talk about. We’ve never talked much about therapy, I mean its ground rules. This is your time. This is your place. And it’s a safe place for you. I may push you to talk about things you’d rather not. It may seem, at times, as though I’m making you feel things you’d rather not. And I’m not perfect. I make mistakes, but no matter what is said here, it stays here. This is a safe place for you. I won’t repeat things you say to anyone, especially not to your mother or your father. Because you’re a minor your mother had to bring you here and I met with her, but with adults that doesn’t happen. Some adults see therapists for years and their friends and relatives don’t even know they’re in psychotherapy. Some therapists tell their patients not to discuss what goes on in sessions with anyone. I don’t. That’s your decision. I don’t believe I should make that decision for you. Now I have a problem. It’s a simple problem in one way. In another, it’s not. My problem is, I don’t believe your mother did what I asked her to that time we all met. I don’t believe she told your father you were coming here. I don’t believe she showed him the consent form or got him to sign.” Gene’s legs were up, of course, and his thick eyebrows were down. “Now that doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’m satisfied that your father wouldn’t object to your seeing me. I don’t feel his consent is necessary and whether she lied or not won’t change anything about your coming here. But—and it’s a big but—I don’t like that your mother has put you in the position of lying to me.
If you
want to lie to me about something, that’s okay.”

Gene laughed, skeptically.

“I mean it. I don’t think there’s any reason for you to lie to me about anything. If you want to lie to me, that’s between you and me and we can work it out. But keeping a secret for someone else is not okay. It’s unfair to you.”

“She doesn’t mean to do anything bad,” Gene said plaintively. “She was scared if Dad found out, I …” He trailed off. His legs slid down and he turned a little in my direction. His voice was soft and childish. “She was just trying to help me.”

So my intuition was right. I was thrilled. I felt, irrationally, that I had a right to my work and my love, had been granted the title and deed to my own happiness. I suppressed my elation, of course. I was in mid-session, very much at the heart of Gene’s problem. “What is she scared of, Gene?”

“That he’d get angry at me.”

“Angry at you for seeing a therapist?”

“No. Yes. No. I mean, angry that I’m sick.”

Thanks to this new confidence in me, we made rapid progress that week. Gene brought up memories of his father’s intolerance of illness when he was a boy. The stories were typical of a neurotic’s: the meaning for Gene was out of proportion to the facts.

Within a few sessions we arrived at the key memory: one afternoon Gene had a sore throat after school. He thought he was in kindergarten or first grade, his age roughly six or seven. His father had a big job on the Upper West Side, building shelves for a gallery owner—thus this carpentry job was more than a way of earning a living, it was a backdoor contact he hoped would help get him a show. Gene wanted to go home. Don wouldn’t postpone returning with Gene to the job; he had promised the gallery owner to be finished by the weekend and it was Friday. He phoned Carol, but she insisted she couldn’t get off early. Don coaxed Gene uptown, buying him a toy, dosing him with Bufferin, interrupting his work to buy him pizza and an orange soda. (I had to dig for these details from Gene; what he wanted to remember was his father’s impatience and neglect.)

The most poignant aspect of the anecdote was its climax. By six o’clock, when the gallery owner came home, Gene felt feverish and nauseous. Afraid to interrupt his father, Gene had been suffering silently in a corner, choking on the sawdust, forlornly staring at an art book of Bosch’s visions of hell. He watched his father greet the owner and nervously show off the nearly completed shelves. The man wasn’t satisfied. There weren’t enough tall deep shelves for the art books. Don tried to explain that he could easily remedy this insufficiency, but the gallery owner complained that the two extra days it would take meant he couldn’t have a brunch on Sunday he had planned for a brilliant new painter visiting from Brazil. Don, in Gene’s memory, was seen for the first time as weak: apologizing, fawning, insecure, no longer the masterful artisan, but a fearful sycophant. Don promised he would work all night to repair his error.