Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  “Rafe?” Stick knocked on the bleached wood of his desk. “Hello? I lost you there.”

  “I’m sorry.” Get your head up: hold that gaze. “What were you saying?”

  “Did you get a chance to form an opinion of Jack Truman at the barbecue—I saw you talked a little.” Stick smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “You can’t blame me, Rafe. You’ve done such wonders downstairs, I’m tempted to move you to the Glass Tower.”

  “His wife is worried about their son,” I said. “She’s getting bad advice from her pediatrician.”

  “Really?” Stick lowered his chin, pinched his nose with his fingers, then stroked his eyebrows, finally locking his hands together. He leaned back. “Something you can help with?”

  “Um …” I was having trouble concentrating—all the beloved theories were dancing upside down in my head and I found the view of their ungainly thighs and flipped skirts grotesque. “It’s simple really. The boy just needs an adequate reading tutor, mostly to calm the mother down.” I cleared my throat, shifting to the edge of my chair, which was designed to keep the sitter angled slightly back, passive compared to the straight up-and-down look of Stick across the desk. “My guess is Jack’s withdrawing from the family because he’s got a crush on Halley. One possibility is that Amy Truman is blowing this up into a crisis to call her wayward husband back home. Another is that the boy has intuited the marital trouble and this is his distress signal.” I waited for Stick to react. When he failed to, I continued, “But dealing with the child’s reading block directly will suffice. For a family dysfunction, it’s pretty routine. And Jack’s tough. He won’t come apart when Halley dumps him.”

  Stick cracked his knuckles. I winced. “She’s close to dumping him?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” I said and stood up. I had to gain height on him, and freedom of movement.

  “You’re going?” Stick asked.

  I moved aimlessly toward his windows. The parking lot was full below. Theodore Copley was in charge of every life down there. Not as a matter of objective fact. But that’s what he must feel as he watched them arrive, docking at his desire, looking up as they entered his house of worship. He was a very little Westchester god to the world, but, all the same, from the perspective of this window he was God. “I feel restless, that’s all.”

  “You want to go for a swim?” he asked. “I’m going to the gym after our meeting.”

  I watched a Federal Express van pause at the security gate on its way out. “I don’t swim,” I said, a silly lie, a private form of rejection, told because I wanted so badly to disassociate myself from him and everything he did.

  “No kidding.” Stick swiveled in my direction. “How did that happen? Didn’t you go to summer camp?”

  “I was a poor kid. I grew up in the city.”

  “But you were a ward of your uncle, right? He was a friend of Edgar’s father? Wasn’t he—”

  I interrupted, “—Not until I was a teenager. Uncle didn’t want me to go to a regular camp. Mostly I took advanced courses offered to bright high school kids during the summer. You know, at colleges.”

  “So you never learned?”

  “I’m a little frightened of the water,” I said. “Don’t want to go back to the womb, I guess.” I shrugged, smiled at Stick, and returned to my chair.

  “You know how my father taught me to swim?” Stick asked. I shook my head. “We vacationed in a cabin in Maine, on a pond. A lake really, at least in size. A large pond. He told me he was going to teach me. He rowed me to the center of Walker Pond, where it was very deep. He took off my little life jacket and threw me in.” Stick watched for my reaction as if he were the shrink and I the patient.

  But that makes no sense. I am the doctor, I reminded myself. Perhaps I should look in my wallet, show my identification, call an ambulance, put him in a straitjacket and order electroshock. We could jolt those self-confident brain cells, make them misfire, and cure him of his efficiency.

  “Why are you smiling?” Stick asked.

  “What happened?” I asked. “When he threw you in, I mean.”

  “He rowed away. I don’t know how far. Far enough. He said, ‘You’d better swim, boy, or you’ll drown.’ He didn’t have to say that. It was pretty obvious.”

  “What happened?”

  “I swam. I started to go under and I gulped some water, but I swam.”

  Certainly I could institutionalize him for this. They wouldn’t question my rationale: I’m admitting this patient for his overdeveloped will to live. I covered my face with both hands and rubbed. The skin tingled. I uncovered my face and asked Stick, “Did you believe him?”

  “Believe him about what?”

  “That he would let you drown?”

  “The pond was muddy. If I went under I’m not sure he could have saved me. I remember there was some story about a twelve-year-old kid who got a cramp in deep water and—I think it was his father and his uncle … Anyway, two grown men couldn’t find him, although they were right nearby. We all knew that story.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was six.”

  “So you believed him?”

  Stick laughed. “Hey, I was in a panic. I didn’t think about it. I just swam. He was right. He said I knew how, that I just had to do it.” He watched me and waited. I was silent. Finally, he got to the point. First, however, he moved his eyes away from mine, staring down as he picked off something from his pants. “I guess nowadays that would be called child abuse.”

  “Are you asking me if I think it’s child abuse?”

  Stick, without raising his eyes, nodded—a remarkably shy and boyish manner for him to display.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, my professional opinion is that the risk was out of proportion to the gain.”

  Stick didn’t laugh. He spoke softly, “I think he did me a favor. I was a mama’s boy. She let me get away with murder. If I complained about anything, I was given aspirin, tucked into bed, brought hot chocolate, and she’d read me stories—”

  I interrupted, “You were an only child, of course.”

  “That’s obvious?” he asked.

  “Oh sure. Why didn’t she have more children?”

  “There were complications at my birth. Cord was around my neck and I was breech. We both almost died. She couldn’t have any more children after me.”

  The story of every god: the terrible, unique birth that ravages. And its glorious product: the cherished creature snatched from death and forever invulnerable.

  Stick locked his fingers together and flexed out. No cracking sound, thank goodness. “Anyway, she pampered me. I was turning into a little scaredy-cat. Father saved me from what she was doing to me. Who knows? If he didn’t give me a shock, she might have turned me into a fag. Isn’t that what happens to a mama’s boy? He made me strong. I know you don’t approve, but I think throwing me into the water saved my life.”

  “Well, he certainly put your life at issue.”

  Stick leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands out, staring right at me. “Look, I’m not down on what you do. I have to admit I thought it was all bullshit, but you’re no fake. You can help people. I’m really interested in your opinion. Would you call what my father did child abuse?”

  “Of course it’s child abuse. That’s not what’s interesting about the story.”

  “No kidding.” Stick smiled, delighted. “What’s interesting?”

  “Your strength, your will not merely to survive, but to triumph. I don’t mean to offend you, but psychologically, your family dynamic is rather ordinary—and I could have guessed it from your personality. In fact, I’m sure there were many other earlier and probably more damaging incidents with your father that you don’t remember—”

  He interrupted, his voice harsh. “Come on. You don’t know that.”

  “I know because you didn’t expect him to save you. That’s quite an extraordinary assumption for a six-year-old boy to make.”

  Stick’s,
brows twitched. I waited for him to dispute me. When he didn’t, I continued, “The reason you remember that story, apart from the fact that you nearly died, of course …” I smiled and Stick chuckled. We were becoming buddies. “The reason you remember is that it was the day you first triumphed over your sadistic father.”

  Stick cocked his head, turning an ear to me as if hard of hearing. “Sadistic?”

  “Oh yes. You had a pretty clear choice, didn’t you? You could be the sickly incompetent baby to please your weak mother or you could copy your brutal father. You figured out that being your father was a better deal. Tell me, I’m curious, when was the first time you saw him hit your mother?”

  Stick didn’t move, not a muscle, head still cocked, ear to the ground, the pose of a waiting hunter. He breathed through his nose. When he spoke, his lips hardly moved. He said, “She told you?”

  “Who’s she?”

  He made a noise. “My wife, of course.”

  “Nobody told me, Stick. You like to hurt people. You think that’s love. You think it toughens people up. You think it’s being a man. That doesn’t come from watching cartoon shows, although there are people who will tell you it does. You may have seen your father hit your mother only once. Maybe the rest of the time all he did was yell or show disdain. Maybe he liked to scold her. Whatever the details, you couldn’t be who you are and not have a cruel father.”

  “I’m disappointed.” Stick finally changed position. He leaned back, glancing at his phone, and then came at me, head up, eyes glazed with indifference. “I guess I’m someone who can’t be helped by what you fellows do.”

  I answered in a loud, friendly tone. “I’m surprised.”

  “Well …” Stick pressed two buttons on his phone, sending a message. “I’ve never been much of a fan of psychiatry.”

  “No, no,” I stood up. “I should get going. I’m sure you have calls to make before you go for your daily swim. You enjoy that, don’t you? Swimming two miles a day? What I meant was, I’m surprised you feel you need help.”

  I had confused him, made him self-aware. For a moment, he was frozen in my headlights, mouth open, eyes dull. “What?” he said, as if waking from a dream.

  “I said, I’m surprised you feel you need help.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I feel good.”

  “Do you?” I leaned my hands on his antique table, a lawyer bearing down on the witness. “The son you loved died young, your wife is an alcoholic, your daughter is obsessed with you and can’t make a life for herself, you don’t seem to have friends—just employees and business contacts. No one could blame you for feeling you need to talk about your isolation, about the terribly high price you’ve had to pay for being strong.”

  When I began the speech, mentioning Mike’s death, I hit a nerve. His right arm waved, as if brushing a fly off. His eyes changed, lids closing halfway. His thin ungenerous lips, so different from his daughter’s, disappeared altogether. He was seething, although I’m sure a casual observer would have thought it an exaggeration to say so. I straightened when finished with presenting the evidence and said softly, “I can find someone, someone you’ll feel comfortable with, someone discreet, of course, with whom you can talk.”

  Here was the test. Surely he would explode. I couldn’t expect him to burst into tears, but its mirror image—rage—was the human reaction. Certainly, now he would let go, and show me the boy’s panic, abandoned in the muddy pond, flailing his little arms to keep his head above water.

  Stick rubbed his eyebrows thoughtfully. He inhaled, pinched his nose with two fingers, let out a long stream of air, and then opened a hand to me. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you talk to Jack Truman and help his kid out? Maybe Jack should talk to someone too—I know my daughter can be overpowering. Even to me. I can’t restrain her. Anyway, I’m sure the Trumans will get more out of a therapist than I would.” He pressed the floor button. The door whooshed open. “Thanks, Rafe, for the good work. Oh,” he wagged a finger, “by the way, I read your memo. You can go ahead with the recreation area improvements. As you know, I’m a believer in exercise.” He winked at me, pleased by the ironic follow-up that had occurred to him: “A healthy mind in a healthy body, right Doctor?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Surrender

  “HELLO!” JEFF, HALLEY’S ASSISTANT, CALLED AS I PASSED HER OFFICE. I waved, but didn’t go in. I had already stopped to chat with Laura, Stick’s secretary, on my way out of that disastrous interview and didn’t feel up to more pleasantries. I did notice, however, that Halley’s inner door was open, so I shouted, “Jack Truman this way?”

  “Around the corner,” Jeff answered. “Second door on the right, Dr. Neruda.”

  Father and daughter weren’t unsettled, but obviously I was. Why bother to let her know my destination? Playing the part of the jealous lover? What was the point now?

  I found Jack standing behind his seated secretary, reading over a letter she had typed. He looked up and grinned at me. “Hi there,” he said. “Slumming?”

  “Do you have a few minutes? Stick suggested I see you.”

  I might as well have shot him between the eyes. I had forgotten my joke at the barbecue that if I showed my face in his office he was in trouble. He stammered, “You’re here to—you want to see me?”

  “Nothing important. I can come back. I need your advice. I’ll call you—”

  “No, no. Come in. You got this straight, Kelly?” he mumbled to his secretary, waving me in without listening to her reply. He met me at the door to his inner office, taking my elbow. He maintained the grip all the way to the chair opposite his desk, presumably guiding me, although he seemed to want the physical contact, as if by hanging on he was in control of me. He also put his face too close, smiling so hard I wondered if the lines he was making around his mouth would be permanent. Once he put me where he wanted me, he retraced his steps to shut the door, talking in a loud cheerful tone for the benefit of his assistant, “Well, this is a pleasant surprise. But I’m happy to help. Always wanted to be a doctor myself.” The door was shut and he maneuvered toward the desk. He kept up the noisy banter, “I heard about fixing up a rec area out back. That’ll be terrific—”

  I interrupted, “Okay, Jack, she can’t hear us now.” He was halfway down to his chair. He hung in midair for a moment and then fell the rest of the way. Its cushion sighed.

  “I apologize for my abrupt entrance. I should have phoned. Stick has nothing to do with my being here. It was my idea. Your wife, Amy—I don’t know if she told you—”

  “She thought you were great!” Jack eagerly leaned toward me, stomach pressed against the edge of his desk, chest arched over the top. He framed my face with his large hands, centering it as the target for his praise. He had the build of a football player—chunky legs, thick neck—and the jowls of a man who enjoys beer and red meat. “She said she bugged you for advice about little Billy’s reading problem—I guess that happens to doctors all the time, right? You’re trying to relax on a holiday and people want free advice. Seriously, she was grateful. Said you were really helpful. But it’s nothing. I keep telling her, Billy’s got my lousy genes. I was the last in my class to read.”

  I noticed a pair of bamboo fishing poles resting in the corner. On a shelf nearby there was a teak wood box with brass fittings that I guessed housed lures. “Fly-fishing?” I asked, gesturing to the wall. “Yeah … You fly-fish?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, but I know someone who does. Those are handcrafted rods, right? Very expensive?”

  “Yeah, I splurged …” He was embarrassed. “They’re collectibles, actually. Hand-made by these great characters. Weird old guys. Cost a bundle. Amy might want to talk to you about how I prioritize my spending.” He winked at me. We were also becoming buddies. “I brought them in to show off to a client who’s a fly fisher. Great guy. I’m seeing him for lunch.”

  “Ever take Billy along on a fishing trip?”

  Jack swallowed. “Guess I should,
huh?” he asked meekly. “I was waiting until he was a little older. That wrong?”

  Is this what it’s like for Dr. Joyce Brothers? I wondered. Everywhere she goes, she’s the maven, no topic beyond her expert generalization. “I was just curious,” I said.

  “No, seriously, what do you think? I feel guilty when I take off for the weekend and leave him behind.”

  “Take him when you think he’d enjoy it, I guess. I don’t know. Seems like a good bonding thing for a father and son. Just don’t throw him in the river for bait.”

  Jack’s wide nose twitched. “We don’t use live bait. That’s why it’s called fly-fishing.”

  “I was joking,” I said.

  “I knew that,” he said, nodding.

  “Amy told me your pediatrician has recommended Ritalin for Billy. That seems excessive for a reading problem.”

  “Un huh,” he nodded vigorously.

  I waited for him to add something. His nods slowed. He remained silent and showily attentive, like a prep school boy in the headmaster’s office, waiting for advice he intended to agree to enthusiastically and then ignore. I noticed a plastic name plate resting against the back of his phone. MR. TRUMAN was in white letters against a black background and below it the joke—The Jack Stops Here. I pointed to it. “That’s cute.”

  “Salesman humor,” he said. He shrugged.

  “So … ?” I smiled. “Is that all there is to it? He’s not reading at age eight?”

  “He reads a little. But he’s way behind the other kids. He’s lazy. That’s all I think it is. Doesn’t like reading, so he doesn’t work at it. Our doctor didn’t say he definitely needed this, uh …”

  “Ritalin.”

  “Right. He just said it was an option if Billy’s problem was, you know, that he couldn’t pay attention. That’s what the school says. He’s disruptive—”

  “Disruptive?” I said, straightening with a start, as if he had sent an electric shock through my chair.