Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“I can’t go,” Mimi Stein said. “You know I can’t travel.”

“Of course not!” her husband squeaked, outraged. He smiled at me and pressed the table once with his index finger, as if making a selection on a vending machine. “Well, I’m sorry,” is what slid out of him. “Best of luck. I’m sure you’ll win.”

“I lied,” I called out, tossing the truth onto the table. I wanted it back when I saw how they reacted. The mouse face lost its humorous grin; Mr. Stein’s small mouth pursed as he tasted the bitter flavor of my betrayal. Mrs. Stein leaned back, retracted her chin, and studied me as if I had just entered the room. I rushed on, hoping to soften their reaction. “There aren’t any other tournaments. There’s just a borough champion. We’ll never leave Manhattan. We probably won’t even win the class tournament. Everybody thinks 4–6 will cream us.”

“Joseph,” Mrs. Stein said in a deep tone, almost a man’s register. “Go to your room.”

“No,” he moaned. Not so much as a protest, but as a pained recognition of the approach of disaster.

“You know you get too upset,” she added. “We have to have this out with Rafael.” She pronounced it the way I disliked — RAY-FEE-EL.

I was terrified. He gets too upset about what? Have what out? What were they going to do to me? Run, I urged myself. But I was paralyzed.

“This is very serious,” Mr. Stein said, also having lowered his voice at least one scale.

Mrs. Stein stood up and touched Joseph’s arm. “Go to your room.”

Joseph pushed his chair back abruptly, its feet squealing on the linoleum. To my ears the sound was a shriek. Don’t leave me alone with them, I pleaded. But no words came out. (I’m not sure I ever truly forgave Joseph for leaving, silly as that sounds.) He grabbed his glasses and rushed out.

Run! I begged myself. But I couldn’t move.

“Liars can’t be trusted,” Mr. Stein said. He opened his hands to me, as if he were helpless. “Isn’t that so? How can you trust a person who lies?”

“Leave him alone,” Joseph wailed from the distance of his room. It was a ghostly cry. I felt doomed by the futile tone of his plea.

“I didn’t mean anything!” My throat closed on the words, sounding shame and fear, not protest. “I just wanted you to allow Joseph—”

“You didn’t mean anything?” Mr. Stein said in an utterly cold tone. His small eyes, the once bright twinkling eyes of a cartoon mouse, were unreflective now. They had the black color of disdain. “I wonder what you did mean? What else are you lying about? What did you really plan to be doing when these games were supposedly played?”

“Nothing! I only lied about the championships!”

Mr. Stein frowned with disgust. He waved a hand at me. “When are these games supposed to happen?” he asked as if this were my last chance.

“We play right after school.” I looked at them and felt sure I was going to be killed. Literally. There was no voice of reason, under my fright, assuring me I was perfectly safe from harm. I was convinced I had to plead for my life. “In the north yard!” I added this detail, hoping it would help.

“Why hasn’t the teacher written us a note about this?” Mrs. Stein asked her husband. She was still on her feet. In that puffy pink housecoat she was too enormous a blockade to circumvent. “She always writes notes. I’m sick of her notes. But about this? Staying after school, who knows how late, she writes nothing?”

“Maybe there is no tournament.” Mr. Stein grabbed hold of my wrist. His fingers felt as if they were made of steel. I had to struggle not to cry out. He didn’t appear to strain. His eyebrow — malignant and solitary — lifted, but otherwise he was expressionless while increasing the pressure on my arm, the same arm that had been broken. “Tell me what you were really up to. What did you plan to do with Joseph?”

I tried to pull away. I couldn’t answer. My panic left no air in my lungs to power the words. Anyway, I didn’t believe it would help to say anything. Unless I could get free and run home, I was doomed.

“You have nothing to say!” Mr. Stein demanded and squeezed harder. My bone felt ready to collapse.

“Where is your father really?” Mrs. Stein said. Her voice came from an unidentified location. She was probably behind me. I had been drawn closer to the mouse’s face. I was fully occupied by Mr. Stein’s small black eyes and hovering half of a brow. “He’s somewhere in South America, Joseph tells me,” Mrs. Stein’s interrogation continued. “For this long? And what does he do down there?”

“He’s a writer,” Mr. Stein said. He was suddenly thoughtful. “We’re going to talk to your mother and get to the bottom of this.” He stood up and pulled me out of the chair.

Cool air passed through me, right through me, as if I were suddenly incorporeal. I was going to be free. I could breathe. I was going to survive. We were going home and I would be safe with my mother.

Mr. Stein dragged me all the way up two flights of stairs. He didn’t release his handcuff — the skin on my wrist felt raw by then — even when Ruth answered the door.

For a moment Mr. Stein didn’t say anything, surprised by Ruth. My mother must have looked odd to him. I had become accustomed to the slovenliness of her appearance. She was wearing one of my father’s Brooks Brothers shirts. She wore them wrinkled, usually with nothing else on but panties, since the shirts trailed down to her knees. Thankfully, to answer the door she had pulled on a pair of chinos, also belonging to my father. These clothes were spattered with paint because she was redoing our apartment room by room, usually during the night. Often I found her in the morning asleep in a chair or on the couch, the brushes resting on the lips of opened cans nearby. Apparently she drifted off while taking a break. She had decided to use a different color for each room. In the case of the master bedroom she changed her mind twice, from faint pink to bright yellow and finally to light gray.

For a moment, we three looked at each other in silent confusion.

“Rafe?” she asked me in an uncertain tone.

I made one more great effort and yanked to be free of Mr. Stein. He let go. I touched the bruised spot. It felt as if my bone had been softened. I hurried into the apartment and stood behind my mother. The back of the blue Brooks Brothers shirt she had on was torn. Exposed by the billowing opening of the tear, I saw a line of gray paint crossing vertically on the bare skin of her skinny back. Where it intersected her spine, the bone rippled the line, so that it seemed alive. How had she painted a line on her own back?

“I wasn’t lying!” I said or something like it, forgetting that I had lied somewhat. I meant I wasn’t lying overall, that my intentions had been honest, that I was in fact a good person.

My mother dropped her arm around my shoulder. Her hand snaked around to my cheek and softly, but insistently, pulled the skin taut, distorting my mouth. “He lies a lot,” she said to Mr. Stein. Her tone was loving, not critical or disappointed. Her fingertips tugged at my cheek. I could easily have spoken despite their spidery hold on my face, but they communicated her wish that I keep quiet. “He’s very imaginative. I’m afraid my whole family is. I used to tell lies all the time. Fantastic lies. They were really my way of making myself more interesting. He’s probably told you all kinds of things about why his father is away. He misses him and I think he may be a little bit angry, so he makes up stories about why his Daddy can’t come home. The truth is he’s a reporter for the New York Times. He’s on assignment in Latin America, and he’s constantly moving around so there’s no point in our joining him down there. We don’t know when we’ll see him next. It’s hard on Rafe.”