Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“I see. Well, you must have some pretty terrible secrets.”

“I’ll say,” I said in my new goofy voice and laughed again. Too loud. Have to watch the laughter.

“I envy you.”

That surprised me.

“I don’t envy your feeling bad. But my life hasn’t been that interesting. Very little worth keeping secret.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together as if finished with a job. “Well. I guess we’re stuck. I’m afraid that if you don’t want to be treated that means you’re sick and you’ll have to stay here. I hoped we could talk and you could go home. You could come here a few times a week to talk about these secrets — which would stay secrets — and go on with the things in life you enjoy.”

Oreos, masturbation, spare ribs.

“I’m always going to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t want you to stay here. I don’t believe you’re really very sick. I don’t think you belong in a psychiatric hospital. I’m sure you have worries and problems. We all do, especially when we’re sixteen years old. But I think it’s a tragedy you want to be treated like a hopeless mental case. Don’t you?”

I shrugged. That wasn’t something I dared think through.

“Do you want to stay here?”

“No.”

“The only way to avoid it is to test me.”

“Test?”

“Test whether you trust me to keep your secrets.”

I nodded.

He waited a long time before saying anything more. The wait was painful. I saw my mother with her blackened eyes, wasted by her stay in the hospital.

At last he broke the silence. “What were you thinking in the homeroom before you felt like not doing anything but sitting quietly?”

Fear swelled in my throat, like food rising, but without nausea. It pressed up, untangling my tongue. “I was thinking,” my cartoon character said in a fast mumble. It was Bugs Bunny talking, I realized. “I was thinking, Doc, that I’m not a genius.”

“Ah!” Dr. Halston nodded vigorously. “You see, I knew we had something in common. I’m not a genius either.”

I laughed, laughed very hard. I couldn’t stop and then I was shaking and sobbing, sobbing so hard I was amazed. I didn’t feel sad at all, and that was confusing. But, on the other hand, my personality didn’t leak out with the tears.

Halston did nothing. He waited until it was over, then handed me a box of tissues. I blew my nose. I felt looser, less fragile. I put the wad of paper in an empty wastebasket. It was as heavy and as black as his glasses.

“Is not being a genius one of your secrets?” he asked when I returned to my chair.

“You bet, Doc.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t call me Doc.”

“Sorry.”

“But you can if you want. I’m not a parent or a principal. You don’t have to obey me.”

I didn’t believe him so I said nothing. I had given up lying. It was the truth or silence.

“Is not being a genius a secret from everyone?”

“Yep.”

“But especially from certain people?”

“Yep.”

“Especially from your uncle?”

“Bingo.”

“What would happen if he found out you aren’t a genius?”

I thought that through. I had a lot of choices. I picked the one I believed would most impress him. “It would cost me two hundred million dollars.”

“Well, that’s a good reason to keep it secret.”

“I’ll say.”

“Any other reason?”

“He wouldn’t love me anymore.”

Halston nodded. “Which reason is more important?”

“Important?”

“What are you more frightened of, losing his money or his love?”

I said nothing.

“Is that a secret too?”

“Everything is a secret.”

“Well, I already know the big one, right?”

I said nothing.

“I see. I don’t know the big secret. All right. But it’s an important secret, right?”

I nodded.

“So, you’ve already decided to test me, why not make it a thorough test?”

“I want to go home,” I said.

“We have another five minutes. That’s what we’re going to do, spend an hour talking every day, provided you continue to be willing to be well. You’ll come here after school and you’ll test me. You’ll see whether, as you go back to living your life, anybody gets wind of your secrets from me. But you have to keep telling me or you won’t be testing me and also you won’t get well.”

I nodded.

“So, for today, one last question. What bothers you more, losing your uncle’s money or his love?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Guess?”

“Take a guess. It’s not a test. There’s no right or wrong answer.”

“Sure there is.”

“Yes? What’s the right answer?”

“His love.”

“Then I would suppose your answer is the money.”

I smiled. Halston smiled back. He glanced at the clock on his desk. “Okay. I’m going to let you go and call your uncle in here to tell him about your seeing me every afternoon. He’ll ask me what’s wrong and I’ll tell him you had a panic attack, that as long as you and I can talk freely without him butting in, you’ll be all right. He won’t like that, but he’ll accept it. Remember Rafe, what we say here belongs to us. I don’t want you telling people my secrets either. Understood?”

I nodded. He stood up. I did too.

“I like you, Rafe,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy our talks.”

Uncle spent thirty minutes with him. A long, long time it seemed to me. Halston had probably cracked, giving in to whatever Bernie might demand. But the look on Uncle’s face as he emerged was too confused and harassed for that to have happened. And he dropped the false tenderness, treating me with the real anger I knew he felt. “Come on,” he said. “He says you can walk without help.”

I tried skipping — not too obviously — to the car. Bugs Bunny’s voice helped me talk; why not hop like him? Bernie glanced at my strange movements, but they were quick, so he didn’t complain. In the car, Bernie grumbled, “He says you can go to school tomorrow.”

I thought the doctor was crazy, but I said nothing.

“And then you’ll go to him for an hour. We’ll do that every day, except the weekends, until you’re …” Bernie looked away. There was a long silence as we passed a shopping strip on Northern Boulevard. I forgot about Uncle and watched the world. I noticed things that I must have driven past hundreds of times without really looking. I spotted a Dairy Queen. I remembered how much I loved Brown Bonnets as a child — soft vanilla ice cream dipped in a hot chocolate sauce that instantly hardened into a molded shell. I wished I could have one now, but I would never dream of asking Uncle for something as pointless as ice cream.

“Dr. Halston wants me to call Dr. Jericho and withdraw you from the Columbia group. He says that’s what you want.” Uncle shifted, leaned toward me. At the heart of his powerful features were eyes that looked wounded and confused. “Is that right? You don’t want to go anymore?”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to go to Julie’s. And it bothered me that Halston had specifically excluded the “genius program” activity. Wasn’t that an indirect betrayal of the secret I had given him?

Bernie looked away. “If you didn’t like Dr. Jericho and the others, why didn’t you just tell me? I don’t blame you. When I read the Times article I thought those kids sounded like creeps.”

Another silence.

“We’ll have to cancel your tennis lessons or move them to another time,” he said. “Cancel,” I said.

“Oh, so you can talk.” He leaned back and grumbled, “I hope this isn’t a mistake.” After another long silence, he sighed and said, “I don’t want to spoil you like my kids.”