Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“Well, I didn’t understand what was going on, but, you know, she rubbed up against me and you know …” I trailed off.

“I don’t,” he said and continued to gaze at me with an intense, cold expression.

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“Forget that I knew your mother.”

I smirked. “That’s a little hard.”

“For the purpose of giving me information about her. I’m sure that’s not too difficult. You said she rubbed up against you and …” He gestured for me to continue.

I looked away. “You know … She came.”

“She came?”

“I don’t know what to say!” I was infuriated by his coyness. What was the point of embarrassing me?

“You’re saying that she rubbed up against you until she had an orgasm?”

“Right.” I continued to avert my eyes. I was sad for her and angry that he had needlessly forced me to repeat her sin. “I mean, when I had sex with Sandy—”

“Pardon me?” Halston interrupted. His tone was full of feeling. He sounded outraged.

“I forgot to tell you. I mean, we didn’t get to it.” I looked at him boldly, proud of myself. “I lost my virginity on Saturday.”

“Rafael,” Halston leaned over his desk toward me. He usually called me Rafe. “What kind of game is this?”

“Game?” Now I felt I was in trouble. I hadn’t been quick enough before, but my senses came alive to the fact that something was wrong.

“You come in here and say you’re going to tell me your big secret and that turns out to be something everybody knows.”

“What? What do you mean, everyone?”

“Anyone who knows your story. Your uncle has custody of you. Isn’t it true that your entire family knows this story? Everyone you know is aware that you testified in court about the passport and your father’s politics.”

I was confused. For a moment, I couldn’t see how he was wrong, although I was sure he was, and also I didn’t understand why he was angry. “I guess.”

“And then you casually drop these bombs. That your mother bothered you in bed and that you lost your virginity to your cousin. You say those things as if they aren’t secrets.”

“I didn’t lose my virginity to Julie. I did it with Sandy. Her friend.”

Halston waved his hand, dismissing the fact. “When did your mother bother you?”

“After my father left, before she — you know, before she went crazy and got arrested at the U.N.” I understood now, understood the misunderstanding, and I was frightened. “She never told you?” I asked plaintively. Another blocked memory was unstuck for me: Ruth pretending to be catatonic and whispering to me that Halston was a fool. I was in danger. All my senses told me so: I wanted to run. But where?

“Forget about what you think your mother told me. Let’s pretend I never met her. Tell me what you think she did in the bed with you?”

Think. He used the skeptical word think. “It was nothing.”

“Nothing? You said before she had an orgasm.”

“I don’t know for sure. I was a kid.”

“Why did you say she had an orgasm if you weren’t sure?”

I was exposed. Part of me, the chess player in me, cursed my brain for having left myself so undefended. I couldn’t contest him. We had come so far; and I thought we had made the journey together, abandoning the usual lies and tactics. I appealed to him to stop trying to defeat me. “Look, don’t you understand why what I did to my father is a big secret? I’ve been living with my uncle because he thinks I hate my Dad and that I hate my mother, but I don’t, I just wanted his money. I wanted to live well and I was angry at my Dad. He never did anything bad to me. It’s a secret, a real secret. You can’t tell anyone.”

“Why? What would happen if everyone knew?”

“A son who lies about his father? Who lies to his uncle?”

“What lies?”

“That I want him to be my father. That I love him.”

“You’ve told him that?”

I nodded. Surely he must see, he had to understand. How could he have listened to the story of my life and not comprehend what I had done?

“Did you tell your uncle what your mother did with you in bed?”

“No!” I was appalled.

“No? Not even that night when your mother was arrested and you wanted him to take you with him?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t it have been another reason for him to pity you and rescue you?”

“It isn’t a lie.”

“I didn’t say it was a lie.”

“But you think I’m lying?”

“Why do you think I don’t believe you?”

“I don’t. I don’t think anything. Look, all she did was hug me close and rock back and forth and she … I didn’t really understand until I was with Sandy and I realized what Mom was doing.”

“I see. So you realized only this Saturday what happened years before?”

“No. I just understood it better.”

“If you didn’t think what your mother did was so wrong, why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?”

I held my head in both hands, rubbing my forehead, trying to reason it out. I wasn’t used to talking about the past. Its pictures were clear in my mind. Without words, without their labels and their judgments, what had happened was simple. Only the words changed what they meant, that’s the way it seemed to me: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“I thought maybe my uncle found out, maybe he knew from you.” That wasn’t true. The instant I said it, I realized I never had such a thought. I simply didn’t think much about whether anyone else knew. I didn’t want to remember it had happened, and with my mother dead, to speak of it was merely cruel. Cruel and shameful.

“I see.” Halston glanced at the clock, pulled his thick glasses off with his left hand and rubbed his eyes with the right. “Your father had left. Your mother wasn’t talking, writing things on paper and she painted your room.”

He was believing me. I nodded eagerly and helped. “She never finished painting it. That’s why I had to stay in her bed every night.”

Halston put his glasses back on. “How many nights?”

“I don’t know. A month. Two months. I can’t remember.”

“And every night she rubbed against you?”

“No, no. A few times.” I remembered the first time, the gentle passage of air through my room. “Actually the first time was in my bed.”

“She came into your bed. Your father was away—”

“It was the night he sent his letter. I think it was that night.”

“What letter?”

“The letter explaining why he wasn’t coming back to live with us.”

“You slept in your mother’s bed for a month or maybe two and a few times she rubbed up against you and made sounds?”

“She moaned. And moved around. You know, like she was excited.”

“And you understood that she was having an orgasm?”

“I didn’t know what an orgasm was. How could I understand?”

“Then how did you know she wasn’t crying?”

“What are you saying!”

“Calm down. I’m only asking questions. Sit in your chair.”

I hadn’t realized I was out of it. I wasn’t standing, actually. I was perched on the chair’s edge. I sat back, stiff with anger. “What are you trying to tell me? That it didn’t happen?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything. I don’t know what happened. Only you know. But you don’t seem to be sure. You seem to have made up your mind on Saturday when you had sex with this other girl. I just want to help you to be sure. I think it’s important for you to know what you feel and what you think happened.”

I looked at the edge of his desk, at the carved mahogany lip and tried to project the past. What was there? A dark room, waking from sleep, her legs capturing me, rocking, low moans, her trembling. Were they sobs? Had I misunderstood?