Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

The night I “drowned”—we did have dinner in his room — and during many more conversations over the following months, I learned that his childhood and adolescence had been a series of cruelties similar to the story of how he was taught to swim. He remembered the details gradually. Part of his adaptation (a copy of neurosis and another proof that his condition qualifies as a disorder) had been to repress the memories. My assumption that his father taunted him about his sexuality had been correct. He was called girlie if he dropped a ball or reacted with pain to a fall — both commonplace taunts. He was savagely teased for being a little fat boy, also a cliché. A less well known sadism to me, although I had intuited this wound, was his father’s snide remarks about the size of his prepubescent penis. A particularly traumatic event occurred when Stick was six. His father observed him walking hand in hand with his closest male friend and forbade him from seeing the boy ever again because, “they were acting like little fags.” (Stick didn’t know what that meant. He found out during adolescence when the implication was especially upsetting.) Although his father slapped his mother on a regular basis, he was rarely hit. Stick recalled two spankings and a vicious punch in the stomach and his father’s most brutal language was always delivered in private. I can’t say the abuse was severe or that unusual for a man of his generation. Perhaps the disguised nature of his father’s sadism, its apparent respectability, was what made Stick’s successful adaptation possible. After Stick admitted to himself he was afraid he was homosexual, he was able to discover he wasn’t, and there followed great relief, a relief that allowed him to give up some of his sadistic impulses, in particular toward his wife and daughter.

I don’t mean to imply that Stick was cured. For one thing, a complete “cure” of emotional conflict seems to me an illusion that blinds itself both to the power of instinct and the real world. Stick was born with an aggressive, selfish nature that cannot be fundamentally altered and we live in a society that, despite its public claims, admires and rewards ruthless individual behavior. What was accomplished was the creation of self-consciousness. Guilt, some might call it, although I believe the result with Stick is closer to the idea implicit in the word responsibility. He came to understand that his resistance to pain and loneliness, his relish of competition, is not shared by many. He learned patience in the face of the simple although annoying truth that most people who are thrown into cold water sink rather than swim.

Halley’s “cure” seemed to proceed, if at all, with the stubbornness of normal therapy. Six months after the fall retreat, by the time Stick severed his end of their metaphorical incest, she had already transferred her fixation to me. Under the guise of reporting what Gene, Jack, Didier (and others) felt about his management, she used to give Stick explicit accounts of her lovemaking. To make clear what has already been implied, since our “games” were satisfying her Electra complex, she stopped that behavior after our first encounter. Nevertheless, in April of 1992, when Stick told her he no longer wanted to hear about her affairs, she was rocked.

She hunted for me immediately, although it was during work hours, something she avoided. (She concealed our intimacy from others, just as she had pretended not to be friendly with her father.) She found me out back, watching the work on the new recreational area. They were laying a full basketball court, putting up a volleyball net on the grass, and carving a true running path for jogging enthusiasts.

I was on the grass, under the new volleyball net, watching as they put down a layer of blacktop for the basketball court. The smell had driven all but the workmen away. Halley appeared in a navy blue suit and high heels. She had to circle around to reach me. Her right foot gave out on the soft earth at the border and she twisted her ankle slightly. She kicked off her shoe angrily, bent over and rubbed. I got up and went to her. “Did you hurt yourself?”

I was astonished when she turned her face to me. There were tears in her black eyes, the first I had ever seen. “You know I’m not all right.” She tried to walk, stumbled because the other foot was still in a high heel shoe. She kicked that one off too. Her stocking feet were getting dirty.

“Here,” I said, putting an arm around her. “I’ll help you onto the grass.”

“You can’t do this,” she said bitterly and I knew she didn’t mean my physical act of charity. “Do what?”

“You know.” She hopped while I held her. We reached the grass and I helped her sit down. She brushed dirt off the bottom of her feet. “Get my shoes,” she said, glancing up. She squinted against the tears. Her mouth was tight as if she were also fighting unhappy words. “I’m going to quit. If he thinks I won’t, he’s kidding himself.”

I fetched her shoes. She checked the heel of the one she had twisted. It was all right. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her.

“He—” she nodded at the top floor of the Glass Tower, “he doesn’t want to hear my, quote unquote gossip, anymore.” She stared at the machine while it rolled over steaming tar. Perhaps inspired, she shut her eyes, squeezing back the tears. “He doesn’t even know I’ve already stopped telling him.”

“Yes he does.”

She frowned at my interruption and ignored it. “He said if I have anything to tell him I should do it in the Friday marketing meeting.” She played one of her notes of feeling. There was a sad chord to its bitterness. “Fuck him. I can get another job like that.” She snapped her fingers.

“Why don’t you?”

She raised her head, slowly, eyes clearing. She pursed her lips, stretched her legs, and thought for a while. When she settled her gaze on me, she had regained her self-possession: a pretty young woman taking a break from the office to flirt casually with a co-worker. “The Great White Father says I’m in love with you,” she smiled at me sweetly.

“But we know that’s impossible, right?”

Her innocent, charming smile didn’t fade when she answered, “I told him he’s scared of you.”

“That was probably the most provocative thing you could say to him.”

Her smile disappeared. “He hates me,” she commented. She leaned back on her hands, looking up at the sky.

“No,” I said. “He just doesn’t love you. He’s not capable of love.”

She called to the blue air, “It’s the same thing.”

“Where would you like to work?” I asked.

She coughed. “I — uh—” She coughed again and then couldn’t stop. I suspected her suppressed tears were the cause. She leaned forward and I pounded her back twice. She got them under control. “You know Mom’s quit drinking before,” she gasped out as they ended.

“Not the same,” I said.

“Why?” she asked, elongating the word like a child playing at keeping a conversation going.

“I bet she never admitted she was an alcoholic. She just did it on her own, right? For a week or two? This time she’s been on the wagon for four months.”

Halley didn’t answer. She watched me, her black eyes big and solemn.

“She has your father’s support — instead of teasing her, undermining her resolve,” I continued.

“I called Edgar,” she blurted out.

“Good,” I said. “He’ll help you find work that’s worthy of your talents.”

“I’m going to fuck him,” she informed me without rancor or challenge, merely a promise.

“From what I know of men like Edgar that’ll probably speed up the process. Although he’d help you anyway.”