Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I smiled. A woman asking me to keep a secret. How was that for a change of pace? “In that case, I’m afraid Gene won’t be able to come here.” I felt as if I were mimicking her phony smile of regret, so I cleared my throat and tried to look solemn.

Her eyebrows were way up, her mouth was open. “Really?” she said with so much feeling and emphasis that it was comic.

“If Gene were an adult, it would be different. But he’s a minor and it’s the law that we must have parental consent to treat him. Of course no one outside of his father or you has to be told. And everything he says to me is confidential, including from you and his father. The only way I can make an exception is if there’s a compelling reason to keep it from his father.”

“There is.” She was very earnest now, jaw set, eyebrows in a line, her voice grave. She didn’t seem to have any neutral expressions; they were all violent. “He really really wouldn’t approve. He doesn’t believe in psychiatry.”

“That’s not enough for the law. There would have to be, at least from you, a statement that his father is abusing Gene or threatening him in some way. Is that the case?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No, no, but he wouldn’t allow it. So Gene couldn’t come anyway. So there’s no point in telling him. Anyway, I’m his mother. You have my consent.”

“I’m sorry. If you look at the form you were given — do you have it?”

“What?” She looked down at her purse. “Oh. Yes.”

“Both parents have to sign. It’s the law, as I said before, unless you’re alleging abuse. You’re not, correct?”

She had gone blank. She did have an expressionless expression. She didn’t move or speak.

“If Mr. Kenny,” I continued, “wishes to discuss Gene’s treatment with Dr. Bracken, I’m sure she can allay his anxieties. Gene is unhappy and needs some help. It won’t last forever, there’s no charge, and there’s no social stigma. Besides, outside of his immediate family, no one needs to know.”

“Okay,” she said abruptly. “I’ll tell him and he’ll sign the form. I’ll take care of it.” She was stern and displeased with me, her former pliancy and eagerness now as foreign to her facial terrain as water in a desert. “When should Gene come?”

“Well, how about Monday at four-thirty?”

“And you’ll be his doctor?” Her question was almost a reprimand.

“As I said, I’ll have to consult—”

“I’ll call Dr. Bracken. She’s the one to bother about all this. I shouldn’t bother you.” She stood and said, “Let’s get out of Dr. Neruda’s hair, Gene.”

Gene got to his feet immediately. Carol moved back to him, put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him at me. “Goodbye and thank you, Dr. Neruda,” she said to me in a loud slow beat, obviously prompting Gene to repeat the phrase.

“Thanks,” Gene mumbled.

“Shake Dr. Neruda’s hand,” she prompted.

Head down, Gene offered a limp hand.

“Do you want to shake my hand?” I said. What was I doing?

Carol goggled at me. Gene looked up, directly into my eyes. That was a first. His were shining. He smiled with his version of his mother’s wide mouth; broadly, but not a cartoon. “No,” he said.

“Then let’s skip it,” I said. “See you on Monday.”

Carol’s shoulders went way up. “Okay,” she said, and the shoulders dropped. “Thank you very very very much,” she added in a breathless whoosh.

I bought a sandwich from an all-night deli on Sixth Avenue, came back to our stoop, and ate half while waiting for Susan to finish with her last patient before tossing it. I didn’t have much of an appetite; anyway, the pastrami was dry and fatty. She came out a little after ten and glanced at me, surprised. “I thought you’d gone.”

“I fucked up,” I said.

She locked the door behind her and studied the dark building lovingly, the way a mother might regard her sleeping child. This look was the only pride I ever saw her take in her creation. (It was quite an achievement. People who normally wouldn’t, received first-rate therapy for little or nothing; and she had raised the money to open another clinic in Brooklyn just that month.) When she turned back to me, she hurried down the steps, taking my arm. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

“I had my worst session ever.”

“Tell me.” I reported my reaction to Gene and his mother while we walked north on Fifth to Susan’s loft on Sixteenth Street. I wasn’t anywhere near done by the time we reached her place. She invited me up. I declined, worried I’d disturb her husband, Harry. “He’ll be asleep,” she said. She was right. We sat at the butcher block table near the wall of windows at the front of her loft so our voices wouldn’t disturb Harry — there was only a half wall to seal off the bedroom at the rear.

Susan listened patiently, making no comment during my account of the session. She surprised me with her first question. “Do you usually ask patients to move to the couch so fast?”

I thought about it. “No. Sometimes not for several sessions.”

She nodded as if she had assumed that. “So?”

“I don’t know. He was upset and uncomfortable physically. He really didn’t want to look at me. I thought we’d never get going. He was so preoccupied about avoiding …” I trailed off. I knew she was asking for a deeper meaning, not this surface explanation.

“You were uncomfortable,” she said at last.

“Yes. I was, right from the start.”

“Why?”

I began to describe again those first moments, Gene’s obedient manner and appearance, his oval face, the off-center nose, my musings, about his being Eastern European.

Susan cut me off. “Kenny? You said his name was Kenny?”

“Yeah.”

“That sounds Irish. What’s his mother’s maiden name?”

I opened my briefcase and removed the preliminary interview taken by the NYU intern. “Shoen,” I said with a laugh.

“Sure doesn’t sound Eastern European,” Susan said. “Who did he remind you of? Who do you know who’s Eastern European?”

“Lots of people. My mother’s family, all my friends from Washington Heights. You. Harry.”

“And you,” Susan said. “You’re half — Eastern European.”

Harry appeared at the opening in the half-wall. His hair stood up in the air. He was in underpants and a T-shirt torn at the left armpit.

“Hello, darling,” Susan said.

Harry came over and kissed her sleepily. She slipped a finger into the tear to tickle him. He pulled away. “Not in front of the help,” he said. He studied me and then put a hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“Rafe had a session that worries him,” Susan said.

“Oh yeah?” Harry was a psychiatric social worker who worked with prisoners and their families, fighting a desperate battle against recidivism and the legacy of criminal behavior to their children. He tried to smooth down his hair. “I hope you really fucked up,” Harry said. “Sent the patient screaming to Bellevue.”

“Doesn’t sound serious at all,” Susan said. “In fact I think the patient likes him.”

Harry groaned. “Shit. I knew it. Want some coffee, Mr. Perfectionist?”

“Sure,” I said. The kitchen was open to the breakfast area so he could talk with us while measuring the coffee and filling a kettle.

“I saw him as me,” I said. “The pathetic me. The suicidal me.”

“Maybe,” Susan said. “Okay, so let’s go over it. You think he doesn’t want to move to the couch but he does it like a sullen little boy and you feel what?”

“I hated him.”

Harry laughed. Susan was skeptical. “Hated him?”

“It revolted me. There was something about the way he reacted, as if I were going to do something bad to him and he just resigned himself to it.”