Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  He nodded. I settled into the wing chair. Gene remained in his pose. It was an uncomfortable position he couldn’t maintain for long.

  I decided to unveil the mystery of my suggesting the couch. That was one of Susan’s lessons—don’t build unnecessary walls between patient and doctor. “I prefer it when people are willing to lie on the couch,” I said. “That way I can listen to you without having to think about my own face—whether I should smile or frown or look blank. That takes away from the time I should be spending listening to you. And you’re free to let your thoughts wander. It frees both of us to concentrate on you and not on our manners. But if you don’t feel comfortable we can work with you sitting up. I see several people who hate the idea of the couch and we’ve done fine.”

  For a moment he remained frozen in that awkward twist. Then he allowed his head to fall back and his arm returned to his side. His knees straightened a little.

  “So you’re staying on the couch?” I asked.

  He shrugged. Shrugging while lying down is difficult but he could move his skinny shoulders as expressively as his eyebrows. I was trying to elicit something positive or negative from him, a clear statement of personal preference. His passive behavior and suppressed anger at his own obedience is a common pattern; I hoped to learn whether that was typical of all his relationships or a defense mounted for this situation.

  “So, Gene, do you want to stay on the couch?”

  “I guess.” That was a barely audible murmur.

  “Do you want to be here at all? Or is it entirely your mother’s idea?”

  Another silence. His fear of answering was palpable. “I don’t know,” he said at last. He seemed relieved to have come up with this temporizing response.

  “Guess,” I said.

  “Guess?” he asked, his adolescent huskiness breaking up into a child’s trill.

  “Yeah. Take a guess. Do you want to be here?”

  “I had to,” he complained. “One Room told my Mom I had to.”

  “So it’s not your mother’s idea?”

  He shrugged.

  “And you don’t want to be here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I waited.

  He waited. Then he complained, “How can I know until afterwards?”

  “You can’t know whether you want to be here until after you’ve come and gone?”

  Again, Gene tried to twist to see me. He could only accomplish that by raising himself but he didn’t feel that rebellious. He gave up, letting his head lie sideways, mouth in a pout.

  “What do you mean?” he said, back to a mumble.

  “You said you can’t know whether you want to be here until afterwards.” I paused. I was about to push this beyond my formal training. Susan wouldn’t mind, but, strange as it might seem after her success with me, I wasn’t comfortable with her bolder methods. “I don’t believe you,” I said mildly.

  “It’s true,” he said sadly. “I don’t know if I like something until …” He trailed off, sighed, and then added, “Sometimes for a long time.”

  I had my answer, in a way. He was passive about everything. Well, I thought, brushing aside my transitory dislike, this is an easy case. Well identify his feelings and with that recognition a gradual confidence in expressing them and insisting on their acknowledgment will relieve his depression and anxiety.

  “I think you’re confusing two things,” I said. “Not wanting to be here is a feeling; knowing whether you’re right not to want to be here is a judgment.”

  Gene shut his eyes. He drew up his legs. Turned sideways on the couch, that put him in a fetal position. His left hand drew close to his chest. I peered at it and discovered what I expected to: his thumb was hidden inside his fist. He was fighting an urge to suck it.

  “I want to know what you feel, Gene. I’m not worried about whether you’re right or wrong to feel it. That’s something you can decide, or maybe the world can decide. Personally, I don’t think there is any right or wrong when it comes to feelings. Actions, yes. Not feelings. Our job is to help you know what you feel.”

  Gene opened his eyes. He brought the fist with the hidden thumb up to his chin. “I didn’t want to come,” he said, his voice trembling. He paused, hardly breathing. What did he expect from me? Shouting? Violence?

  “So you don’t want to be here?”

  He nodded. His fist covered his mouth now, the entombed thumb centered on the lips. Was he pushing them in and out as before? That was a sucking motion. Freud would have his diagnosis by now. He’d grab a helmet and flashlight and move resolutely back into the cave of time to illuminate the story of Gene’s breast-feeding—and, I knew uneasily, he might be right to go on that quest.

  “Do you want to be on the couch?”

  He shook his head, moaning a little. He had regressed dramatically and it happened again: I didn’t like him. Why was he so undefended? I felt an urge to shout at him to sit up and act like a man. Fight me, I thought, staring at the ball he had made himself into.

  “Then why are you lying on it?”

  He shook his head and moaned again.

  “Gene, I don’t know what that sound you’re making means.”

  He moaned some more, head still shaking no.

  I lost it again. “If you don’t talk to me, I’ll have to end the session.” There was sweat at my temples. I was literally hot from emotion. I was shamed by all these blunders, but I couldn’t seem to stop making them.

  His moaning ceased at my scolding, of course. He dropped his fist to his stomach and covered it with the other hand. His face looked sweet and innocent. “Sorry,” he said in a low, contrite voice. Thanks to my mistake I had lost ground.

  I should end the session, I thought. “If you—” I sighed, tried to settle down. “If you didn’t want to get on the couch, why did you?”

  “I thought you wouldn’t like me,” he answered clearly.

  “Why do you care if I like you?”

  His thick eyebrows did their dance, up in amazement, down in a frown. I suspected this was a mimicked expression. Mother? Father? Probably mother. He added a shrug and said, “You’re the doctor.”

  “If I told you to jump off a building, or I wouldn’t like you, would you do it?”

  “Yes,” he said immediately and rolled onto his back. He stretched out, growing before my eyes into adolescence. “I like being on the couch,” he said. His innocent expression, the Picasso baby face, seemed to evaporate. His eyes narrowed; his full lips pouted.

  “Is that how it works with everybody?”

  “What?” he said—snapped it actually, in a loud irritated tone, very much the fifteen-year-old.

  “Do you want everybody to like you?”

  “Do I want everybody to like me?” he repeated musingly. “No,” he said, finally. “But almost everybody.”

  “And would you jump off a building for almost everybody?”

  “Yes,” he said and smiled at the ceiling. It was a becoming smile, his wide mouth generously displaying an array of white teeth.

  “Do you like being so accommodating?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like being someone who would jump off a building to get people to like you?”

  “Yes,” he said. He grinned. He was in full rebellion, goading me. The changes were rapid. He moved up and down the scale of maturity like a virtuoso playing the piano. There had to be more to his mystery than simple passive-aggression or an oral fixation. “What made the school think you should come here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Come on, Gene,” I snapped. What was that? I had once again lost control of the dialogue. “Is it your grades?” I added, trying to recover.

  “We don’t get grades.”

  The One Room School was a failed experiment from today’s point of view in education, a sixties anomaly—open classrooms, no tests, teaching through projects rather than rote learning. I knew that and had my own opinion of their methods, but the therapis
t’s view of the world isn’t necessarily the patient’s. I wanted Gene to describe his landscape. “What do you get?”

  “Pass, fail. So I guess it’s a grade. They say it isn’t. You know …” He sighed.

  I knew. To an adolescent, adults remain hypocrites no matter how hard they try not to be. “Are you failing your courses?”

  He nodded. “I guess. We haven’t gotten a report for the fall yet. I didn’t finish two of my projects. That’s how you pass. I was supposed to write a play for English and I messed up the biology field project. I’m bored, that’s all. I could do them, but I don’t have any energy.”

  He was too comfortable with this subject. “What does your father do?”

  “What?” Startled, his right leg came up.

  “What kind of work does your father do?”

  “He’s a …” Gene hesitated. “He’s a photographer.”

  “For newspapers? For advertising?”

  “No.” That was said firmly. “He’s an artist.” Gene gave the word a slight English accent.

  “Un huh.” There was something here. I waited.

  “That’s not how he earns a living,” Gene said.

  The phrase sounded borrowed. Maybe this was his father talking. “Oh?” I said.

  “He earns a living as a carpenter.” Gene warmed to this subject. “Well, more than a carpenter. He designs what he builds.”

  “Yes?” I sounded interested, since he was. “What sorts of things? Cabinets?”

  “All kinds of stuff. You know, like, people will want their kitchens built, you know loft people need their kitchens built, ’cause usually … because it was industrial space.”

  Another borrowed phrase. Nevertheless, for the first time Gene was talking effortlessly. I asked more questions and he was glad to give me details. I let him ramble and enjoy the memories. He used to be picked up from grade school on his father’s lunch break, and he helped during the afternoons, measuring, hammering, sawing wood, cutting Formica, taking pleasure in being his Daddy’s assistant. His mother’s full-time work for a textbook publisher had meant his father often took care of Gene during the week, bringing him to class in the morning and covering the afternoons, until he was old enough to be on his own after school.

  “When was that? When did you start coming home alone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said impatiently. Gene didn’t want to change the subject from descriptions of his father’s jobs. “I didn’t go home for a long time. I went to where Daddy was working, even when I was old enough to walk alone. I remember he had a job in Brooklyn—”

  I interrupted. “But you don’t go to his jobs now?”

  “Well … no. Dad doesn’t do that much design and building anymore.”

  “He’s concentrating on his photography?”

  “He has a show.”

  “A show?”

  “An exhibition. In a very important gallery.” Gene said the words—“very important”—as if they were themselves very important words. He seemed to stop breathing afterwards, lying still.

  “Is this his first show?”

  “No.” Angry. “He has a lotta shows.”

  “A lot?”

  Gene grunted. He didn’t want to talk about this.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Well … he had a show every week in The Garage.”

  “The garage?”

  “Yeah, with his friends. After the Times came, then there were lots of other shows.”

  “Whose garage is it?”

  “What?”

  “You said—”

  Gene cackled. He twisted his head. “Not a garage.” He was amused and contemptuous. “The Garage. You know.”

  “I don’t know anything about the art world. You’ll have to explain.”

  He wasn’t enthusiastic, but he certainly did explain, in a programmed formal tone. He impersonated his father to tell me at length about the dilapidated car repair shop on Houston Street that he and other artists of various kinds had taken over to exhibit their work—somewhat illegally, it seemed; in any case, there had been a squabble that ended with their being thrown out. Gene detoured into the internecine arguments among the sculptors, painters, photographers and the like, using a grown-up’s language and affecting a cynical attitude. He went so far afield I had to interrupt to return to the main road. “You said something about a gallery?”

  “Bullshot,” Gene said.

  I was taken aback. “Is that the name of the gallery?” I asked skeptically.

  “Yeah,” Gene said impatiently. “The Bullshot.”

  “I don’t know anything about the art world. That’s an important gallery?”

  “The most prestigious gallery for new artists in New York,” Gene said solemnly. Still Father talking. He paused. He added, remembering another of his father’s comments, “And New York is the center of the art world.”

  “So this is a very important show for your father?”

  “Yes,” Gene said, sadly.

  “Is there an opening night?”

  “Yeah.” Gene was impatient. “Is it time for me to go?”

  Ah. The opening was a source of tension. “We have more time. And when is your father’s opening?”

  “What? Oh. No. The opening was two months ago.”

  I was surprised. It must have gone badly. “How did it go?”

  Gene recited angrily: “It was a sellout. Dad got a rave in the Times and in the Voice. Now he’s one of the most important photographers in the country.” He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at the ceiling.

  He’s jealous of his father’s photography work, I thought, excited. Its success represents abandonment. [Obviously, there was also an Oedipal theme in Gene’s reaction. And I was interested in the ego psychology involved: Gene identified with the carpenter-father; when he lost that role model, he regressed to childhood. However, in those days I was enthralled by Susan’s psychological bias, the loss of object and its emotion of grief and abandonment, rather than the deeper drive to conquer the father, or that his father’s transformation into an artistic success threatened Gene’s ego. I believed then that the various schools of theory were contradictory choices, not colors of the palette. I was a long way from understanding how combining them can paint a three-dimensional portrait.]

  For the first time, I felt in control. “Okay, Gene,” I said. “Our time’s almost up. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I think it would be good if you could come here three times a week. How about Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? Would that work?”

  There was a silence. The hidden thumb rose to his chin. “Three times a week?” he asked meekly.

  “Is that a problem? You could come after school on your way home.” My suggestion of a time was deliberate. I knew he missed the afternoons he used to spend with his father; the therapy’s transference would be helped by associating it with them. If that seems like manipulation to non-professionals, I agree. It is manipulation, but not wrongheaded or malicious. For the therapy to work, we needed to replace the comfort and strength those childhood hours gave Gene. Indeed, the hope was that the therapy’s afternoon care would be superior, a relationship Gene could eventually discard voluntarily, rather than something whose loss he resented and mourned, leaving him weak and helpless.

  “I guess. For how long?”

  “An hour.”

  “No …” The hidden thumb rose higher. “Uh … How long do I have to keep coming here?”

  “That’s something you’ll decide with your therapist.”

  “You’re not my …” he hesitated. “You’re not going to be … it?”

  I had made too many mistakes with him. I was glad to have had a little insight into his dysfunction but I couldn’t recommend myself to be his doctor. In fact, I felt I had work to do with Susan about my inappropriate reaction to Gene. “Well, this was a preliminary interview. I’ll discuss with Susan Bracken—she’s my boss—who’s best to see you. And you also get a vote. If you don’t like th
e therapist we pick, you can tell us.”

  “Can’t you?” Gene sounded frightened. His lips pushed in and out. “Can’t you be it?”

  “I might be able to.” I knew I ought to ask him if he wanted me to be his therapist, but I didn’t. My reluctance, it seemed to me, was another proof I shouldn’t. “Why don’t you put your sneakers on and get your mother? Come back and we’ll all discuss it.”

  Gene obeyed silently. He moved slowly, as if his muscles were exhausted and sore. That, I had noticed, isn’t unusual when a patient has had a productive session. It’s hard work, exercising our heaviest emotions. At least I hadn’t totally failed.

  I was curious to meet Gene’s mother, the forgotten object, as it were, of our session. I saw immediately that he had learned his meek mannerisms from her. Her head appeared at the edge of the plasterboard door—so flimsy a sound insulator we kept a white noise machine on all the time in what we laughingly called the waiting room, really a converted closet. They took their time before coming in; presumably Gene gave her a thorough report. Her hair was much curlier than Gene’s and a different color, an unnatural reddish brown. Dyed to cover premature graying, I decided. They had the same big dark eyes. Hers were bright and eager to please. Her mouth was wide like Gene’s, but the lips were thin. They shared the aquiline nose, although hers was perfectly centered.

  “Hello?” her head said and then more of her appeared as I got up. They shuffled in together, Gene almost hiding behind her. She moved in sideways toward the couch, then sideways toward the desk, a silly maneuver of indirection. She was skinny, with a girlish figure, and her shoulders, like Gene’s, were broad and bony. She hung her head between them, somewhat like the submissive approach of a friendly dog. “I’m Carol, Gene’s mother,” she said. Her voice was a pleasant surprise, deep, mellifluous, and confident.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said and shook her hand. It was limp and soft, begging to be taken care of. I let go quickly.

  “Gene enjoyed talking to you, Doctor. We’re both grateful you spent so much time with him.”

  I gestured for her to sit. “Gene, why don’t you pull up that folding chair?” I sat down. Gene obeyed with excessive haste. Carol perched on the edge of her chair, eyebrows up, expectant. Her facial expressions were cartoonish, exaggerating the feeling she wanted to express; they left an impression of disingenuousness. This family just wasn’t my cup of tea. I experienced a moment of inner despair, a weakness of mine that a good Self-Psychologist would have wanted to investigate, that I can best summarize as a feeling of fraudulence and hopelessness. I felt I had no business trying to be a healer, that I simply wasn’t compassionate or smart enough for the job. I had been analyzed, however, and I knew what had triggered this feeling: first, that I hadn’t immediately corrected the many mistakes I made in the session, and second, that I was in the process of lying—the truth was that Gene had already been assigned to me. Covering up mistakes and telling lies were bad for my Self. “I think Gene would benefit from coming here three times a week, say Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, probably after school if that fits into his schedule.”