Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“Hard to believe, Gene.”

“I really don’t.”

I waited.

“You know why?” he continued after a silence. “Because I don’t believe people love each other for a lifetime. That’s just bullshit. Everybody knows it’s bullshit. That isn’t what scares me.”

“Okay. What scares you?”

“I don’t think she loves Pete.”

He wanted to turn back to the safe trampled ground. We needed another push — our last breakthrough was four months old. “Now that is bullshit,” I said.

Gene seemed delighted. He said nothing, and grinned at me.

“Gene, you’ve done a very good job of trying to convince me you’re the better parent, and that’s okay. It’s natural that parents compete about who’s better to the kids, but this is a low blow. Of course she loves Pete.”

Gene continued to grin. There was malice in it, too. I was thrilled. He was silent for a while, the smile twisting into a frown. When he responded at last, it was a blunt challenge: “How do you know?”

“How do I know?”

“You’ve never met Cathy or Pete.”

“That’s right. All I know is what you’ve told me.”

“You’re on her side,” Gene said. He looked right at me, pointing a finger. “You don’t believe a mother could not love her child. That’s your problem. That’s why you can’t help me. You think it’s always the father’s fault. Well, if it weren’t for me, Pete would be a very fucked-up kid. He’d have no friends, he’d be too shy to talk in class and his teachers wouldn’t know how smart he is.”

“Is Pete smart?” I asked, curious.

My question left him open-mouthed. He had his trunks on, fists up, feet dancing, jabbing me with lefts and rights while I was chatting at a tea party. “You know he’s smart.”

“I do? You’ve never said.”

“Of course I’ve told you he’s smart.”

“No you haven’t. I assume Pete is smart. But you’ve never mentioned it.” His hands were down. “Cathy’s a good mother,” I punched.

He stared at me, dazed.

“Or I should say, she’s a good enough mother. And you’re a good enough father.”

“Good enough?” Gene said. “What does that mean?” He was disappointed by the grade I had given him as a father.

“A good enough parent is a term a psychologist invented to deal with the fact that even though all parents make mistakes and expose children to their neurosis most of them do little real harm. To raise a healthy child, it isn’t necessary to be cheery and always loving or always consistent. You just have to be good enough. Both of you are good enough. And Pete is doing fine.”

“How do you know?” Gene demanded. “How do you know we’re not beating the shit out of him? How do you know what we really do?”

“Okay,” I said. “Either you’re good enough parents or you’re an exceptional liar. Not only inventive, but you have great endurance.”

Gene sulked. I waited. Gene turned away from me.

I said, “Why does it annoy you I think Cathy loves Pete?”

“It doesn’t. I just don’t agree. I live with her. I see her with Pete. You don’t.”

“Okay. If I’m so wrong, why does it annoy you?”

“Because you’re my doctor. You should be on my side. And you’re not. You think mothers are always right.”

[This may seem to be an extraordinary statement. If anything, I had erred on the side of defending Gene against his mother and wife. His complaint is really against his own rationalizations for Carol and Cathy; projecting them onto me permits him to fight them. Since I had abandoned transference, I wasn’t pleased.]

“That’s bullshit, Gene,” I said.

His eyes returned to me — to study the stranger I had become.

“I think Cathy is blaming you for the choices she made about her life. I think she’s being unfair and unloving to you and you know that’s what I think. But I’m not going to let you escape from confronting her about what really bothers you with a fantasy.”

“What fantasy?”

“You’re angry at her that she doesn’t love you and you’re too scared to say so, but it doesn’t scare you to say it using Pete as a stand-in for yourself. That’s not fair to your son. And it’s not fair to Cathy.”

“You’re saying it’s easier for me to say she’s a lousy mother than she’s …” he trailed off.

“An emasculating, guilt-inducing, passive wife,” I finished for him matter-of-factly.

For a moment, he was quiet. Then Gene laughed. Loud and thoroughly. He broke off to ask, almost coughing, “What did you say?”

“An emasculating, guilt-inducing, passive wife. She made choices. She decided to have Pete, marry you and drop out of college. She regrets them. But they were her choices. You didn’t bully her—”

Gene raised a hand to stop me. “I’m not innocent,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I–I mean, I immediately offered to marry her and I talked about how much I wanted a kid—”

I cut him off, shouting: “I’m sick and tired of you always being on the side of mothers! You never think it’s their fault. It’s always the father who’s the bad guy.”

Gene grinned. “Okay, okay.” He nodded. “I get it.”

“Let’s cut the crap, Gene. She wants to blame you. You don’t want to be blamed. Tell her to change her life. Have a little guts, will you? We’ve analyzed you to death. You know why you’re scared to confront her. Your mother and father never confronted each other about their problems and when they did their marriage ended bitterly.”

Gene concentrated on this observation, staring at it so deeply he fell in and lost himself. “Maybe if they had talked when they were young … Maybe they would have stayed—”

“No,” I interrupted.

“What?”

“Stop looking for guarantees. There aren’t any. If you drop your solicitous husband act and be yourself with Cathy, maybe she’ll leave you. I don’t know. You’re a coward, Gene. It’s as simple as that. Other people are just as scared, just as confused, just as vulnerable. You’re not more sensitive than anyone else. You’re a coward.”

“I’m not—” Gene shifted his eyes away from the windows to look in a direction he always avoided: the door. “I mean, there’s no—” He stopped.

“What!” I shouted.

“I’m not gonna take this.”

“Then don’t.”

He stared at me, opened his lips, shut them. He took a long breath through his nostrils and stood up. I worried he would lose his nerve. At last, in response to a mysterious inner cue, he turned on his heels and walked out.

Two days later, Diane and I appeared in Juvenile Court to plead that our temporary custody of Albert (which had been in effect for nearly six months since his release from the hospital) continue in place of his sentence for three years in juvenile prison for raping and sodomizing his niece. It was May 2, 1989. We were petitioning Judge Martina Torres, who had found him guilty a week earlier. The timing was right because the new wing to house him and others was finished. During his trial — which coincided with construction of the dorms — he and three other boys had been sleeping on cots in Room A; two counselors stayed in Room B to supervise and care for the boys on evenings and weekends.

Albert, no longer on any drug, stood between Diane and me in Judge Torres’s chambers. He was nervous, shifting back and forth on his feet, head moving side to side. When I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging look, I was startled by his eyes. They were full of feeling. Anger, helplessness, and despair swirled in a storm of pain too turbulent for encouragement to becalm. How could the judge look at those eyes and not pity him? But we didn’t rely solely on the law’s keen vision into Albert’s emotions. Instead, Albert had been dressed for respectability in a blue blazer, white shirt, chinos, loafers, and a cheerful yellow tie that Diane had picked out for him.