Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  I passed into a medium-sized room that appeared to be a 19th century library. The bellhop held the door for me and left, shutting it behind him. Every inch of wall space was covered by built-in mahogany shelves filled with green or red leather-bound books. In a leather wing chair at the far end of the room sat Theodore Copley. Beside him, on a low wood coffee table with brass fittings, was a silver tray with a black Wedgwood coffee pot and two matching cups and saucers. He stood to greet me. His appearance, having seen his daughter, was a surprise. His hair was much lighter than hers, almost blond, moussed straight back off a small forehead. And he was big, nearly six feet and broad-shouldered. His cheeks had the haggard look of a dedicated exerciser. His skin was fair. Deep lines ran across his forehead, radiated from the corners of his eyes and trailed down his starved profile. Only his eyes were dark, like his daughter’s, sharing her solemnity and brilliance. His double-breasted suit had the natural fit of hand-tailoring and the dense look of fine cloth.

  He was cordial, offering a strong hand that waited for mine to let go, and gestured to the coffee. I declined. “We had a big lunch,” Copley said. He puffed out his cheeks to indicate he was stuffed. He was all muscle and bone and I doubted he had really eaten a lot. When he inflated his cheeks they were so elastic he reminded me of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet. I wondered if he had once been fat. He reached for the Wedgwood cup. “We had steak. I haven’t eaten red meat in years and I don’t think I will ever again. Leaves me feeling groggy.”

  “Thank you for seeing me on short notice.”

  “Well, I was pretty curious when Edgar said you were Gene’s psychiatrist. I didn’t know he was seeing anyone.”

  I was convinced that was a lie. His eyes shifted away from me as he said it, although they hadn’t wavered until then, not when he sat or reached for the coffee. Also, he crossed his legs and put his hands together, both gestures of self-protection.

  “I saw your daughter yesterday. Or I tried to.”

  He raised his brow as if that were news, but he didn’t say it was, and his eyes stayed on me, a faint smile on his closed lips.

  “I thought maybe Gene told her he had been in therapy and she told you.”

  He shook his head. He glanced down, lifted the sharp crease in his charcoal gray pants and said, “She wouldn’t tell me something like that.” He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and refilled his cup. “They had a love affair,” he said and his eyes were on me, unexpectedly, since he was pouring. He didn’t miss the target and he knew, without looking, when he needed to stop. “Daughters don’t gossip about their love lives with their Daddies.” He put the pot down and leaned back with his filled cup. He shrugged. “At least mine doesn’t.” He sipped. “How can I help you, Doctor?”

  “Well, obviously, I failed with Gene. I feel responsible—” I smiled and paused. I had caught him by surprise, evidently. His cup was in midair, stopped en route back to the saucer on the table. He studied me with absolute concentration. He appeared to be physically frozen, as if his brain was so busy thinking it couldn’t bother with anything else. “I am responsible, I should say. I treated Gene, off and on, over a fifteen-year span and he destroyed himself. Basically, I want to check over the crash site. Figure out what I did wrong. I know it’s unorthodox and an intrusion, an unfair intrusion on you and your daughter, but you were both important to Gene and knew him well. I hoped you might help me figure out where I went wrong.”

  He remained stuck for another moment. Then he released a gust of air through his wide thin lips. Not his daughter’s complicated expression of noise; his was closer to a horse’s neigh and communicated a single clear message: scornful dismissal. “I’m sorry,” he shook his head, no longer frozen in position. The cup went back to the saucer. He sat straight in the chair, a hand skimming over his tie, flattening it against his white shirt. “I apologize. It’s none of my business.”

  “What’s none of your business?”

  “How you evaluate yourself. I have about a half an hour before my next meeting, but I’ll be glad to answer your questions about Gene. Edgar told me of your fine reputation. In fact, I think I recognize you. He said you’ve been on television a fair amount. I watch way too much television. Very bad habit.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your help. But please, go back a moment and tell me what you were thinking when you said it was none of your business how I evaluate myself.”

  “Well, I don’t know very much about psychiatry. I took Psych 101 like everyone else, but I don’t see how you can be blamed for Gene’s suicide. I mean, in the end, we” using his index finger, he poked himself on the lapel of his suit, “each of us are respons ible for our own will to live. I don’t see how you can give that will to someone. In fact, if anything, I’m probably more responsible for Gene’s suicide than you.” Copley turned away, showing me his profile. His chin lifted and he studied one of the rows of leather-bound books. He brought a hand to his eyebrows, rubbed them thoughtfully, and dropped it to join his other hand. He locked the fingers together and—to my horror—cracked his knuckles. It was exactly the gesture Gene had adopted in the latter years of his therapy. An imitated mannerism, just as he had once imitated his mother, mimicking someone he perceived as powerful. And the hair, the moussed hair, I realized—that too Gene had copied. Copley, meanwhile, spoke to the leather-bound books. “I mean unintentionally, of course. I fired him because he …” he slid his fingers together again and I winced ahead of the sound. This time, when he flexed, none came. “… Well, he burned out. He flamed out and he got real arrogant too. Demanded promotions and raises even though he lost control of production. I pushed him over the edge when I fired him.” Copley calmly moved off the books, his gaze returning to me. He brought a hand to his moussed hair, to smooth what was already flattened. “I’m sorry Gene killed himself. But I don’t regret firing him. I would do it again. You can’t save a drowning man if he’s in so great a panic he’ll take you with him.”

  I didn’t say anything, returning his stare. I considered carefully, and as literally as possible for a psychiatrist, the merit of his remarkably frank speech. Stick must have interpreted my silence as confusion (perhaps it was) or as offended sensibility. He shrugged. Another wan smile played on his lips. “I’m sorry to sound ruthless,” he continued. “I was a certified lifeguard as a teenager and I remember the instructor’s little rhyme about what to do if a big man, a grown man, is drowning. ‘Throw,’” he tossed an imaginary sphere onto the library’s Keshan rug, “‘Don’t go.’” He wagged a scolding finger. “I’m sure you could talk to everyone who knew Gene, find out everything there is to find out, and, in the end, the answer lies in whatever happens at the mysterious moment when life is created. Something was left out when they assembled Gene. There was a bug in the programming.”

  After I thanked Copley and left, I told myself to give up. And yet I wandered from the St. Regis into a bookstore, the old Scribner’s on Fifth Avenue, now swallowed by a national chain. I asked if they had anything on lifesaving.

  “You mean CPR?” the clerk asked.

  “I mean being a lifeguard,” I said.

  We climbed narrow stairs to a small balcony at the front where they kept sports books. Nothing. Check at the library, the clerk suggested.

  Feeling more and more amused by my foolish pedantry, I found a phone booth and called the YMCA near the clinic in Riverdale where we took our resident patients for swimming lessons. (Inner-city kids—Albert, for example—often don’t know how.) I asked for Jim Gagliardi, one of the instructors.

  “What’s up, Rafe?” Jim’s voice echoed in the tiled acoustics of the indoor pool.

  “If I say to you, ‘Throw—Don’t go,’ does that remind you of something?”

  “You’ve got it wrong.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah, you mean for lifeguard training? It’s, ‘Reach or Throw—Don’t

  “I left out Reach.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said with a laugh. “Hope nobody
drowned.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  First Interview

  COPLEY DIDN‘T LIKE IT MUCH. HIS TONE WAS GRUFF WHEN I REACHED HIM at his office in Tarrytown the following day. But he agreed to persuade Halley to see me again.

  “I can’t promise you she’ll be happy about it,” he said. I noted, however, that he was sure she would do it. We arranged I should call her in an hour.

  I got through right away. Jeff, her secretary, said with pleasant efficiency, “Good morning, Dr. Neruda. Please hold for Ms. Copley.”

  “Hello.” She was on immediately, hurrying to deal with me. “I don’t have any time this week. How about lunch next Tuesday?” I was impressed by the neutrality of her tone. As if relations between us were a perfect blank.

  I wanted to know how much pressure they were feeling to accede to Edgar’s request to be helpful. “I’m only in New York until Friday,” I said. “Are you free in the evening? We could have dinner.”

  “Dinner,” she repeated dully. I was sure she wished she could complain about my impertinence. “I’ll be at Edgar’s benefit tonight. Are you going?”

  I was amused by this probe. “He invited me, but I don’t have a tux.”

  “That’s not much of an excuse. Edgar could get one for you.”

  “Probably. But we wouldn’t have much time to talk. Besides, your date would be annoyed.”

  “Daddy is my date. He wouldn’t care. And we could go for coffee afterwards.” She was almost flirtatious.

  “No, I’m really too shy and awkward at big events. How about tomorrow night?”

  Her tone shifted, slipping from playful to cool without a lurch. “I’ll have to let you know in the morning. I’m not sure if I’m free.”

  “When should I call you tomorrow?”

  “Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll call you?”

  “I’ll be in and out. Best thing is for me to call you.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “All right. Call at eleven. Bye,” she hung up without waiting for my farewell.

  The next morning Jeff had instructions for me. “Dr. Neruda, Ms. Copley asked if you could meet her at seven outside her gym. She loves her workouts.” The lilt of his mocking aside suggested he might be gay; and its informality was the first sign something had changed since yesterday. “Then you’ll have dinner. Her gym is on the Upper West Side.”

  “In the city?”

  “Yes, we’re both reverse commuters.” Jeff’s friendliness was becoming fulsome. “Do you have a favorite restaurant?”

  “No, I’ll leave that to you. Why don’t you pick a place?”

  “Oh, I think she’ll do the picking,” he commented.

  I arrived at her gym forty-five minutes early. The Workout occupies two floors of a five-story office building; tall windows on three sides aren’t dressed, exposing its huffing and puffing clients to Broadway. I didn’t wait on the street. I entered, said I was interested in becoming a member, and asked for a tour. I listened patiently to my guide’s enthusiastic talk about The Workout’s personal trainers, no-nonsense atmosphere (“This isn’t a singles club”), and up-to-date equipment that wouldn’t leave you permanently crippled as other health clubs were liable to. I asked to see these modern marvels. We passed many complicated machines before coming upon Halley at the treadmill. She was listening to a bright yellow Walkman’s earphones, her dark eyes fixed on the scurrying pedestrians below her.

  “Oh, there’s someone I know,” I said to my guide, leaving him, and moving beside Halley.

  She wore white shorts and a gray T-shirt. Its sleeves were rolled up, exposing her shoulders. I have always found the crook of a woman’s shoulder and the curve that begins the shape of her breast particularly alluring. Hers was completely exposed, olive skin glistening with perspiration. Most of the side of her bra was also visible. I stepped directly in front of her. A dark wedge of sweat bled between her breasts. As I suspected on our first meeting, beneath her business jacket she had concealed an impressive display.

  When she recognized me, I waved. She blinked. For a moment, she couldn’t decide whether to allow this interruption. I smiled and crossed my arms, signaling I had no intention of going. She pressed a button on the treadmill. Its motor shifted, and her pace slowed. She removed the earphones with both hands. I enjoyed that sight: her arms raised, holding the black arch aloft as if it were an electronic halo.

  “You’re early,” she said, neither playful nor annoyed. Her deep voice wasn’t struggling hard for air.

  I turned toward my puzzled guide. “Thank you. I’ll stop by the front desk on the way out.”

  “Sure,” he said. “We have a twenty percent discount this month,” he added as he left.

  “I told him I was interested in becoming a member.”

  “But you don’t live in New York,” she said. She put the black halo around her neck.

  I smiled. “That’s true.”

  She didn’t return my smile. Her black eyes evaluated me for a moment. Her full lips opened as if to speak. Instead, she released one of her complicated exhalations of feelings and checked her dual-time-zone watch. “I need another ten minutes on this and a half hour to get dressed.” She hit a button on the machine, quickened her pace, and replaced the earphones. She stared through me while she ran, as if I were one of the pedestrians below.

  I couldn’t hold that indifferent gaze. I lowered my eyes and noticed her fine legs. Often being short costs elegance. Not for Halley. And she was very fit. There was virtually no jiggle to her shapely thighs. Gene had praised this body to the skies and that was no delusion.

  “I’ll wait outside,” I said, although I knew she couldn’t hear me. Walking away, I felt compelled to look back. I did so at the head of the stairs. From that angle, the tall windows were made opaque by the reflection of the ceiling’s light. For her as well: she watched her towering image run at Broadway. I looked at the gleaming glass facing me. I saw a frail picture of myself in retreat.

  She took longer than promised, appearing at seven-fifteen. Her hair was damp, combed back and gathered into a ponytail. She wore white jeans and a thin black cotton sweater; her small feet were bare inside black penny loafers. The eyeliner of her work makeup endured; otherwise, her face was unadorned, lips pale, forehead shiny. The message was clear: this is not a date. “There’s a pretty good Japanese restaurant three blocks from here,” she said. “Nothing fancy. After last night, I feel like something light.”

  “Good idea.” We began the walk. “I’m sorry to be so nosy, but—”

  “You’re thorough and conscientious,” Halley finished my sentence. “I searched for you in Nexis.”

  “Nexis?”

  She paused. This forced me to stop and look her way. Without makeup or the armor of formal clothing, she was as small and sweet as a little girl. A little girl with large breasts. “You don’t know what Nexis is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a database library you can search and retrieve with a modem and computer.” She resumed walking. I followed suit. “It’s got every word in newspapers and magazines going back to the sixties. I read a profile of you in Vanity Fair. Are you doing a book about Gene?”

  “I’m considering it.”

  “He told me he was seeing a famous psychiatrist, but he never told me your name.”

  We had to stop at the corner for the light. I watched her impassive profile. “Did you love him?”

  The light turned green. She stepped off the curb. “No,” she said softly and crossed the street.

  I was left behind, struck dumb on the corner. I had to trot to catch up. Before I could ask her another question, she said, “You’re a child psychiatrist.”

  I nodded.

  “How come you were treating Gene?”

  “I saw a few adult patients,” I lied.

  “Here we are,” she said, gesturing to an open door and passing through a beaded curtain. She couldn’t have known the magic of her choice. I noted the theater a few doors a
way. It was the same place. I had eaten in this modest Japanese restaurant. Almost fifteen years before, Julie and I had gone there for a late dinner. It was the day I discovered Gene’s mother had lied to me and the night I worked up the courage to tell Julie she was the love of my life. I was embarrassed by the reflection that, in trendy New York, this restaurant had done a better job of maintaining relationships than I.

  Halley concentrated on the menu, not speaking until she had decided. When she closed it firmly, she found that I was staring at her. What she saw in my eyes was undiluted admiration for her beauty and honesty. Hers was blank and indifferent. “Why didn’t you take better care of him?” She asked this question with no hint of the anger and bitterness it implied.

  “I took the best care of him I know how.”

  “Are you going to be honest in your book?”

  “Yes. You know, Gene told me you said you were in love with him.”

  “Right,” she nodded, as if that required no elaboration.

  “So you lied?”

  “I always say that when a man says he loves me. Either I tell him I love him or I stop seeing him. I wanted to keep seeing Gene.”

  “Why do you tell men you love them if you don’t?”

  “I don’t believe in love. I think when people say they’re in love, they’re making it up. You know, convincing themselves. Just because I can’t fool myself is no reason to be mean to the other person. I act like I’m in love. I do the same things people who think they’re in love do, so it’s not really a lie. Anyway, it’s no more of a lie than when they say it to me.” She nodded at a hovering waiter. “Are you ready to order?”

  She asked for green tea, miso soup, and two pieces of crab sushi, not enough to make a meal. “That’s all?” I asked.

  “I only eat what I really love. Just a little of what I really love is plenty.”