Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I opened my eyes. She was right. I hadn’t liked being surprised about the Brown Bonnet. I smiled.

“But you’re not so smart. You know why? Because nobody is. Not even Freud. You aren’t smart enough to figure out why you testified against your father.”

I felt odd. For the first time, a little scared. What was there to be scared of? I was dead, really. I was furious and unhappy to be alive, but what could scare me?

“Think about it. What changed from when you arrived in Spain to when you decided to leave? What was new? It’s right here.” She tapped the folder, still on the floor, with her foot. “It’s not in your letter, it’s in Halston’s family history. Under the heading of siblings. It’s important to know, as I’m sure you found out from your reading, it’s important to know if a patient is an only child, and also what order.”

I stopped thinking. I shut my eyes and saw nothing, no past, present or future. I prayed for her to leave.

“Do you have a half-brother or a half-sister?”

I opened my eyes. The room was glazed pink for a moment before clearing to its hospital fluorescence.

“You don’t know and neither does Halston. Okay,” she bent over, got the folder, and stood up, straightening her white smock. “I’m going. But ask yourself, who did you send into exile? Your father or that sibling?”

The horror for me, at this revelation, was that I had forgotten completely about Carmelita’s pregnancy. Until Susan mentioned it, I would have said I was an only child. And, more shocking than that, I wanted to argue about it. I wanted to say: How do we know that child was ever born?

Susan moved toward the door and then, apparently irritated beyond all reason, turned back. “You blame yourself for all the world’s problems. You make yourself into the greatest villain in the history of the world, full of terrible feelings and fantasies. But the one, perfectly natural, unpleasant feeling, your sibling rivalry, that, oh no, not that, that you don’t remember, that you don’t even notice.” If someone had come in they might have assumed, from her passion and my passivity, that she was the patient and I the doctor. “You’re not a terrible person, Rafe. You’re not so great either. Here’s the awful secret, the thing you’ve been keeping even from yourself: you’re just like everybody else and there’s no escape from that. Not even suicide.” She waited for this to sink in and then she laughed. “I should be defrocked,” she said and walked out.

I was ready for her when she appeared next, late the following morning, bringing my lunch.

“You’re lying,” I said, while she maneuvered the tray’s legs so the boiled chicken, peas and mashed potatoes would levitate above my chest.

She untied my right hand and offered the spoon. I took it. “No kidding. What about?”

“You do think you can treat me. That’s just a lame trick.”

“No, you’re wrong.” She pushed the left side of her messy hair out and it stayed there again, signaling for something. A cab? A hairdresser? She was big and odd, like a clown. “I told them today to assign somebody else. You’ll be seeing Dr. Blaustein this afternoon. He’s very good.”

“You’re lying,” I said, my mouth full of peas. One of them fell onto my neck.

“That’s why I’m here. To tell you I’m out. Didn’t want you to think it had anything to do with our talk yesterday. It’s not your fault. You’ve read about countertransference, haven’t you?”

I shook my head no. She explained it. That the doctor’s personality and history could interact harmfully with the patient flabbergasted me. I ate less and less while she expounded on this theme.

“Well,” she said, standing up. “I’ll call the nurse and she’ll clear your meal. You know,” she moved to the other side of the bed and untied my other hand, “I don’t think we need these restraints.” She looked at me with an encouraging smile, her head hanging low between her broad shoulders. Her hunched posture was another habit born out of self-consciousness about her height.

“Do you think Halston did a bad job with me?”

“Horrendous,” she said with utter conviction. I had no idea at the time how outrageous this statement was, a complete violation of ethics and sensible procedure. It was also, I believe, a brilliant stroke, the very quality that makes Susan a gifted therapist. “And, on top of that, since he had treated your mother, he should never have treated you. There’s no excuse for it.”

“Why? Because she killed herself?”

“No. Because he wasn’t listening to you, only to you. He had heard another side. He had years of impressions and judgments about key events in your life that hadn’t come from you. There was no way for him to give what you told him proper weight. He was prejudiced before you walked into his office. And there was the relationship to your uncle, to someone who had given him so much money. He couldn’t be open to receive your signals without a lot of interference.”

I must have fallen into a trance thinking hard back to every session, every exchange with Halston. I was startled when Susan said, “What are you thinking?”

She had sat down again, elbows on her knees, hair still askew, peering at me with her small, shy and yet intent eyes.

“I’m thinking something you won’t like,” I said.

“Big deal.”

“Big deal?”

“Lookit. You gotta do me a favor.” She straightened, locking her fingers together, and stretching her long skinny arms. “You gotta stop paying attention to what everybody else thinks.” Done with her body-yawn, she sat up, head back, allowing herself to be tall. “You’re carrying too big a load. To hell with what the rest of us think. So — what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking, if Halston was a bad doctor, why didn’t I see it?”

Susan smiled. “Beautiful. He does a bad job and it’s your fault. You know what that is? That’s pride. Yeah, I know, you think it’s modesty, you think it’s being tough-minded, hard on yourself. It’s grandiose. You were upset and confused. You were vulnerable. You didn’t have a chance in hell with Halston. No one would.” Susan shook her fist at me. “Don’t you get it? You’re a kid. You’ve been nothing but a kid your whole life. You haven’t had a chance with any of these people, from your mother to your uncle. Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re smart.” She gestured to the dismal room, the barred window, my untied restraints. From the hall I heard the almost perpetual moan of a seventeen-year-old schizophrenic. “Look where it’s got you.”

I felt like crying. My head was still broken by the drugs and everything hurt, keenly, unrelentingly. “Please,” I said. Susan leaned forward and said softly, “What?”

“Please. I need you to be my …” I was about to sob so I stopped, shut my eyes, forced the emotion down, and sighed. When I opened them, Susan was rubbing her forehead. The violence of her motion left streaks on her flat brow. She was uneasy. “Please help me,” I finished the thought.

Susan stared at me solemnly. I pleaded for rescue with my eyes. I was no longer sure what I had turned my back on. What had I wanted to die to avoid? There were double images for everything: my mother the lunatic, my mother the prophet; my uncle the barbaric king, my uncle the lonely patriarch; my father the revolutionary, my father the coward; my nation, the richest and most free, my nation, greedy and murderous. Was there really a different truth, a life I had lived and never known?

Susan looked down at the backs of her hands. Like the rest of her, they were long and bony. She turned them over, as if studying her palms. She had parted the index and middle fingers from the ring and pinky, making V’s, the silly and mysterious Cohen sign. She closed and opened them like scissors and glanced at me.