Alexandre Vidal Porto - Sergio Y.

The episode put me in a bad mood, and I slept poorly for several days.

I wondered if the process of arriving at this “revelation” he had mentioned could really have been triggered by one of our conversations. If so, which one?

I admired Sergio Y’s intelligence. I would have liked to have continued to have him as a patient. His abandoning treatment saddened me greatly as a doctor. But the perfect is the enemy of the good. As a friend of mine liked to say: that’s life in the big city. Things do not necessarily happen the way we want them to.

Years later, Sergio Y. no longer occupied my thoughts much, but neither had he completely disappeared from them. In my professional bookkeeping, Sergio Y. was a net capital loss.

Things only began to change one summer afternoon when I went to the shopping center to look at shoes and decided to make a quick stop at the supermarket first.

I noticed her presence immediately and had the impression she had also noticed mine. We were both waiting for the lone clerk to finish waiting on a lady who was buying buffalo mozzarella.

I wanted to look at her, but instead I decided to turn to the cheeses and avoid that woman, with her black hair pulled back and diamond earrings so big that even I, who am not particularly aware of jewelry, noticed them. Staring at the cheeses, I thought of how obviously she exhibited her wealth. There she was: the female embodiment of a category of people I know very well from my practice.

She asked the clerk for a piece of Parmesan cheese, which she pointed at with her outstretched finger. While waiting for her order, she looked my way, came nearer and spoke:

“Dr. Armando?” she said as if she knew me. “It’s Tereza Yacoubian, Sergio’s mother. He was a patient of yours a few years back.”

At first I didn’t understand what she was saying. It took me a couple seconds to retrieve Sergio’s name from my memory. I greeted her almost mechanically.

“Nice to meet you, how do you do?”

“I’m fine, thank you,’’ she replied, looking up at me. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, but from the time Sergio was in therapy with you, I’ve always wanted to tell you something that I’ve never had the opportunity to say. We have mutual friends, but you know how crazy life in São Paulo can be. We live in the same city, but we might as well live in separate countries.”

“That’s true,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

I found the whole situation strange, but since Tereza had approached me and was being friendly, I was confident that what she had to say to me would be nice. In fact, at that moment, I was glad that coincidence had put me in touch with the mother of my former patient, who I had not heard from in years.

“You helped my son so much. I don’t know how to thank you for all the good you’ve done Sergio. That’s why I took the liberty. You were very good for my son. I wanted to thank you. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. Thank you so much, really.”

I did not expect those remarks, and much less that they should end with an expression of gratitude. It made me blush, but I liked hearing it.

“I thank you, Tereza. I’m glad to know I was able to help. Sergio is a very intelligent boy. How is he doing? What is he doing?” I asked, trying to be friendly.

“He’s happy. He moved to New York a month after he stopped his treatment with you. He’s been living there ever since. It’s been almost four years. He’s changed completely. If you ran into him, you wouldn’t recognize him. He graduated from culinary school in June. He’s crazy about cooking. This cheese I’m buying is for a recipe he sent me. His father is opening a little restaurant for him so he can gain experience. It’s tiny, only eight tables. Earlier today, he called to tell me he finally got his liquor license… ”

“He’s opened a restaurant? What a surprise! Does it have a name yet?”

“Yes, it’s called Angelus,” she said.

“Angelus? That’s different… Is it in Manhattan?”

“Yes. On Hudson Street, almost at the corner of Charles. Do you know where that is?”

“More or less. It’s in the West Village, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I know where it is. So, Sergio is okay and happy?”

“He’s doing great. I don’t think he could be any better. And a lot of that happiness he owes to you. As a mother, I also owe a lot to you. I only hope I can repay you some day.”

“Please send him my regards. I have a daughter doing her MBA in New York. She’s graduating next year. Tell him when I go to her graduation ceremony, I’ll pay a visit to his restaurant.” The clerk had Tereza’s order ready and was patiently waiting for our conversation to end.

“I’ll tell him. I’m sure he’ll love to know that I ran into you in the supermarket.”

We parted ways with a hesitant handshake that evolved into a kiss on the cheek.

I asked the clerk for two hundred grams of curd cheese. While he removed the cheese from the window, I basked in the good news I had just received regarding Sergio and his restaurant.

Sergio’s father was a well-known businessman. He ran a family chain of appliance stores with locations throughout Brazil. Sergio could live well wherever he pleased, and he could choose to do whatever he wanted. But, as the only son of Salomão Yacoubian, one might expect him to be living in São Paulo, fulfilling his destiny in the family business.

Apparently, due to life’s vagaries, he had not yet fulfilled that destiny. He had studied cooking and was about to open a restaurant in New York, all with his parents’ support. Who could have foreseen this? I for one would never have guessed it. I was surprised. Learning about his situation and his progress was by far the best news I had heard that day.

Sergio might become famous one day. He would appear in magazines and documentaries. People would make reservations three months in advance to sit at one of the few tables in his restaurant in the West Village.

I think this is what I wanted for him.

He could, however, turn into yet another failed little rich boy, whose life went nowhere. The restaurant could fail, he could change his mind, he could open another business and it too could fail. Laila Shops would give him a business card and an allowance, and that would be that. He would go on with his life without major consequences for him or anyone else.

During therapy, his interest in the culinary arts never came up. For me, the image of Sergio as a chef, a restaurant owner, was almost an implausible one, one which I would have to get used to. But the truth was that I did not have enough information to judge his decision. What I had were impressions. I could not gauge the strength of his will.

However, regardless of his reasons for doing so, it was clear Sergio had decided to take his destiny into his own hands. At least for now, he would not be selling stoves, would not be filling the role of presumptive heir to a chain of stores where thousands of Brazilians bought their flat-screen televisions in forty-eight installments.

For this, it seems, he needed to leave São Paulo. At least for a while. He had charted his own life strategy, which now he was living out. Apparently, he was happy.

Even if partially so, Sergio’s happiness had been credited to me by his own mother. What I felt at that moment was a sense of pride and satisfaction.

Nearly four years after our last session, that was all I knew about him. Right then and there, in my mind, I discharged Sergio Y. He entered my huge gallery of satisfied clients.

Finally, I could forget him.

The meeting with Tereza Yacoubian had cheered me up. I felt gratified. What is more, I even liked her perfume. I left the supermarket and, in a spirit of general satisfaction, I went to a shoe store and bought some moccasins I had been eyeing, but that had seemed too expensive before I had met the mother of my satisfied patient.