Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“Curse?” I waited. “Yeah, he uses bad words.”

Bad words, indeed. “What bad words?”

Gene snorted. “You know …” His legs moved up and down. He shifted his torso also, squirming. He wanted out of this: it was so much more comfortable in his fantasy of a mother protecting him from dangerous chemicals.

“Tell me anyway.”

“He says — shit.”

“That’s it?”

“You know.” Gene moaned. He turned toward the back of the couch, hiding.

“Does it embarrass you to repeat them?”

No answer. I waited. Gene talked to the cushions in a monotone, “He says, shit, fuck, motherfucker, asshole.”

“To you?”

“Not often.” Gene’s voice was low. “He says it more to himself. ‘I’m an asshole,’ he says. ‘That motherfucker wants me to fail.’ Dad thinks his friends want him to fail. He always—”

“What does he say to you when he’s angry at you?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“How is that stupid?”

“No. He says to me, ‘Don’t be stupid.’” Gene didn’t laugh at my mistake. Am I feeling stupid? I wondered. Pay closer attention, I wrote in my notes.

“Does he call you a motherfucker?” I asked. Talk about a loaded question, I thought to myself.

“No,” Gene said. “He once called me a stupid shit.”

“What about?”

“Huh?”

“When did he call you a stupid shit?”

“I don’t remember when. I was a kid. I don’t know how old.”

The resistance was, for Gene, quite strong. “I mean, what provoked Don to call you a stupid shit?”

“Oh. I dropped a box of nails in an elevator.” At last Gene shifted onto his back, no longer speaking to the cushions. “You know, an open one in a loft building. They all spilled down to the bottom.” Gene wasn’t happy about this memory, of course, but there didn’t seem to be much tension. His legs had relaxed, his face was smooth. I noted that the incident recalled involved the good father, the loving carpenter.

[With some amusement, I see now, looking over my notes from that session, that I jotted down: “Good father — Jesus. Photographer — Satan?” Since Gene’s father was raised Catholic and his mother Episcopalian, presumably I was considering the symbolic quality of the good father as carpenter. I hope professionals will forgive me for my disorganized and pretentious thinking — I was twenty-five after all.]

“Did Don get angry at you about handling his camera or being in his darkroom?”

“No way.” Gene’s defensive annoyance had returned. He brought up both legs and hugged his knees.

“Why not?”

Gene yawned. More tension. He let go of his legs and they flopped on the couch. “I never touched him.”

“Him?”

“Them. I never touched them.”

“You said, him.”

“No, I didn’t.”

To this day the beauty of a Freudian slip never fails to amaze and delight. I feel it’s his most elegant and profound observation. If that had been Freud’s only accomplishment he would deserve to be honored. Gene never touched him, the photographer, the real father hidden in his darkroom.

“What do you think would have happened if you had touched Don’s camera?”

“He would have told me to leave it alone.”

“Leave it alone?”

“Not touch it.” Gene was angry. His tone was grim, and he was fidgeting, rubbing his face, feet restless.

“Has your mother ever touched his camera?”

“No,” Gene said.

“Never?”

Gene shook his head. “She’s scared shell break them.”

“So he’s never gotten angry at her either?”

“He gets angry at her. Just not about his stuff. We don’t mess with it.”

I was ready to wind this down. There was so much material here, including the phallic implications, it was pathetic and almost funny. Gene and his mother abandoned every night by Don, disappearing with his long lenses that they couldn’t “touch” into a darkroom with toxic fluids, living in so much fear of his anger if they intruded that neither dared to test it. Besides, Gene had had enough of this troubling exploration. He was exhausted and still resisted mightily. He had done plenty of digging for one session. I tried what I thought — here with a beautifully unconscious move of my own — was a safe way out for both of us.

“How did Don react to your coming here?” I hadn’t asked before. When Carol phoned to say her husband had signed the consent form, she commented, unasked, that Don still didn’t believe in psychotherapy but was willing to allow it if the school thought it would help Gene. Since she wasn’t my patient I didn’t probe. At least, that’s what I told myself.

On hearing the question, Gene froze, legs rigid, arms at his side, a frightened quiescence. “What?” His standard first defense, pretending not to have heard.

Instinctively, I sensed the truth. My intuition about the meaning of Gene’s reaction was complete, fitting perfectly into the puzzle of his history and personality. I sensed that Carol had lied to me, never informed her husband, forged Don’s signature, and made Gene a partner in the deception. My guess should have excited me. It didn’t; I was dismayed. But how could I feel good? I ought to have, I must have known this might be a key question and yet I had asked, telling myself it was neutral, an exit, not an entrance. Could I drop it? Review both my stumbling on it and the likelihood of my intuition being correct? I checked the clock: five minutes to go. So what? I could run over — I had a half-hour gap anyway and I didn’t believe in cutting off productive time. Out of fear, I was spinning my wheels, and that also bothered me. Gene lay still, hardly breathing, playing possum.

There was no way I could simply let it pass. “Your mother said Don wasn’t going to approve of your coming here,” I said. I didn’t want to appear to be trapping him, although I might be. “How did he react?”

“I dunno,” Gene said quickly and looked at his watch, something he never did.

“We have time,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

“He didn’t say anything to you about your being in therapy?”

“No,” Gene said easily. He took a relaxed breath. “He’s never said anything to me about it.”

And I knew why. At least I felt sure; but of course I could be wrong. Anyway, to make the accusation was dangerous, whether I was correct or not.

“Does he ask you what we talk about?”

“No,” Gene said, relaxed.

“So you’ve never discussed it?”

“Nope.”

“How about your mother?”

“Oh yeah. She always asks what we talk about.”

“Do you tell her?”

He nodded.

“You know you don’t have to discuss our sessions with her if you don’t want?”

“Yeah,” he was sarcastic. “Thanks. I know.”

I let him go. I had twenty-five minutes free. I had a problem; I was rattled. I wanted to run up one flight and interrupt Susan’s group. Glancing at the master schedule, I noted she was working with family members of alcoholics and drug addicts, shocking them, no doubt, out of their illusions about themselves as victims, waving her gangly arms, her broad forehead wrinkling sternly. Later, she would support them, when they took their first frightened steps toward independence. I wondered what it was like for Harry when he made love to her, exciting that skinny contraption of energy and strength? I laughed, knowing this meant I was feeling truly needy and inadequate.

I called my cousin Julie at her office. She had been appointed as the artistic director of the West End Forum, one of the most prestigious off-Broadway theaters in New York. Her assistant put me through when I said it was urgent, although she was in a meeting.