Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I discovered something extraordinary the next day at school. I discovered that if I was silent through my classes, ate lunch alone, talked to no one during study hall or the movements from room to room, nobody minded. I found this so delightful I went to the bathroom to laugh about it in private. A couple of my teachers glanced in my direction when they asked their toughest questions and were puzzled not to see my hand up, but after a few such looks, they gave up. My friends — they were really jock teammates or nerd peers — spoke to me, asking whether I had been sick. I nodded, smiled, moved on, and no one remarked that I actually spent eight hours without saying a single word. It was hilarious to me. I hadn’t been crazy to think I didn’t exist. I really didn’t.

I told Halston in a torrent of words. I detailed how I managed each encounter as a mute. In my excitement, I didn’t notice that my Bugs Bunny voice was gone. He listened, chin propped on his right hand, smiling as if he also thoroughly enjoyed the joke. “And even with your sitting and doing nothing,” he said, after my account was done, “nobody noticed you aren’t a genius.”

There was something nasty about that remark. I couldn’t identify what. “Right,” I said and retracted into my protective silence.

He waited patiently. When it was clear I would volunteer no more, he asked, “How did your uncle react to my conference with him?”

I shrugged. “He doesn’t want me to be spoiled.”

“What does that mean?”

“He doesn’t want me to get lazy.”

“What did you feel about that?”

I shrugged.

“Nothing? You didn’t think anything? Or is that another secret?”

“No. I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

I waited. All I remembered was the Dairy Queen. “I wanted some ice cream.”

“Pardon me?”

“Ice cream. I wanted a Brown Bonnet at the Dairy Queen.”

“Un huh. What made you think of ice cream?”

I thought he was being fairly stupid. This trying to keep me talking no matter how insipid the subject was silly. “I have no idea,” I said.

“You sound angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“When was the last time you had a …” he hesitated and gestured for me to help.

“A Brown Bonnet?” I said.

“Yes. When was the last time you had a Brown Bonnet?”

“You know,” I said without thinking, “you’re being pretty stupid.” I don’t recall if I brought my hand to my mouth, shocked at my rude if honest remark, but I certainly felt as if I should.

“Well, I warned you. I’m not a genius. But you don’t have to be a genius to remember when was the last time you had a Brown — what was it? Derby?”

I laughed. He really was a stupid man. “Bonnet,” I corrected him. “I used to have them when I was a kid. I guess the last time I had one was in Washington Heights.”

“With your mother?”

In the middle distance, appearing at the edge of his mahogany desk, I saw it: that hot, nauseating day in Tampa, my arm in a cast, my father flirting with the Dairy Queen employee, and the slow-motion fall of my Brown Bonnet, smashing on bleached concrete.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, waking me from the trance of memory.

“I broke my arm.” Halston nodded, almost as if he knew already. “I broke my arm in Tampa, visiting my grandparents. My father was away and when he came to get me at the hospital—” I caught myself. “Hospital? Was it a hospital?”

“Maybe it was a hospital. You were leaving a kind of hospital with your uncle. Perhaps that’s why you remembered your father taking you from a hospital to buy you a Brown Hat.”

I waved at the fog that had appeared, covering my vision of that day. I was forgetting something important. I tried to seize that image for examination, but it dissolved and I could remember nothing other than the chocolate shell shattering, ice cream oozing. I slapped my thigh. “I don’t remember.”

“It’ll come,” Halston said. “So. We have only a little more time and you haven’t told me any secrets. What’s the big one? Why don’t we start at the top?”

By now I was aware that he hadn’t been a fool to ask why I wanted a Brown Bonnet. I lurched from contempt for his intelligence to awe at his insight. He could not only read me when I lied, he could see things about me even I didn’t know. That was unique in my experience; and my ignorance of myself was also a revelation.

“Well …?” Halston asked. “Why don’t we get the big secret out of the way?”

Maybe he could see through me, but maybe not. Maybe not to the darkest corner.

Halston smiled. “Doesn’t have to be the big one. How about just any secret?”

“I jerk off,” I said fast.

He nodded, bored. “Often?”

“At least once a day. Sometimes twice.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

I laughed.

“Is that another stupid question?”

I thought about it. “No,” I admitted.

“Well?”

“Usually. Sometimes, I don’t know … I feel …”

“Dirty?”

“No. Bored.”

Now he was interested. “You masturbate when you’re bored or you’re bored by masturbating?”

“Both,” I said.

“Bored? Or lonely?”

“I’m never lonely.”

“You’re never lonely?”

“I like being alone.”

“I see. When you masturbate, whom do you think about?”

I said nothing.

“Is that a secret?”

“I think about women.”

“Women or girls?”

“Women.”

“Women you know?”

“Uh huh.” I was excited. This was like a hide-and-seek game. Only I wasn’t sure if I was hiding from him or me. Whom did I really think about? The fantasies were a kaleidoscope of women, with only one pattern that was distressing — if my suspicion about the flash of that forbidden image was correct.

“Such as?”

I said nothing.

“Did I tell your secret to anyone?”

“No,” I said. I had decided removing me from Dr. Jericho’s program wasn’t really a betrayal. I wanted to complain about it anyway, but I didn’t, because I was also grateful.

“Is it your aunt? Do you think about her?”

I smiled, deeply amused by both the idea and the fact that Halston had made this guess.

“I see, I’m wrong again. Why don’t you tell me? You know I’m not a genius. If we wait for me to guess right, it could take years.”

“I think about my cousin sometimes.”

“Your uncle’s daughter?”

“No. My cousin Julie. She’s my uncle’s brother’s daughter.”

“Also a first cousin?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a secret? That you have fantasies about her?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Our time’s up. I’ll see you tomorrow. If you remember anything about the ice cream, let me know then.” He smiled. “That’s your homework.”

That night my uncle came home early for diner, a rare occurrence during the week. My aunt and I usually ate at different times, more to avoid each other than because of our schedules, so it was an exceptionally rare event for all three of us to eat together.

I was feeling pretty good after my day at school and my talk with Halston. I saw the beauty and logic of his plan. It took less effort lying when there was at least one person to tell the truth to. Besides, I wasn’t really lying except by omission, thanks to the muteness. I also had an idea of what I could do to cure myself, thanks to what I thought was Halston’s pointed questions about my sexual fantasies. I was a virgin — that was my problem. I loved women and had done nothing about it. That would make anyone nuts.

Claire, the middle-aged black woman who cooked and served me alone when there was no company, gave us a simple meal of lamb chops, asparagus, and mashed potatoes. When she left, Uncle asked, “How was school?”