Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (35 page)

Unfortunately, thanks to my natural affinity with psychoanalytic thinking, I soaked up Dr. Halston’s analysis like a thirsty fanatic lost in the desert. What it meant to me emotionally was quite simple: I was an untamed beast whose life history was a fantasy. I had a new reason, a better reason, to keep my story secret. It was made up.

I resented my uncle more than ever. He had lured the loathsome creature in me out of its lair and gave it a club to kill my father. I said so to Halston. He, in turn, explained the concept of projection, and once again, there was no villain in the world but me. My ruthless uncle was just another dark face of Rafe’s, another monster from my subconscious. I was the whole world: I had swallowed reality and everything was born from me: God and Satan, love and death, truth and lies.

It was hardly a surprise, then, that Sandy was infatuated with me. I seemed, even to myself, to have become quite irresistible, in a dreadful sort of way. She called me every night that week and, much to Julie’s astonished and, I hoped, also jealous eyes, openly took me to bed with her the next Friday. That was how Sandy announced our affair to her roommates. The following morning we came to breakfast together, her arm draped around my bare shoulders—I was wearing only my underpants. I said in a friendly voice, “Hi Julie,” to my cousin’s grave expression.

Kathy, smoking a joint, hunched over the
New York Times,
looked up. “This is definitely heavy,” she said in a mumble.

“Sandy,” Julie said, nodding toward the hallway, “I have to talk to you.”

“About me and Rafe?” Sandy said, letting go of me. She moved to the coffee pot. “You want some?” she asked me.

“Yep,” I said and sat down. Kathy offered me the joint. I sucked in the harsh smoke and felt truly and beautifully evil. I had had intercourse three times that night, quadrupling my lifetime experience in a few hours. Sandy had taken me into her mouth, I had used my tongue the way I knew how to use my hand, I had rolled her nipples between my teeth, licked the soft tissue of her inner thighs and kissed the firm cheeks of her ass. I was brimming with self-hatred, but it was a supremely confident self-hatred. I may not be a genius, I thought, but I’m a genius at living.

Julie didn’t answer Sandy. She stared at me—I grinned back—with a hopeless and rather sad expression. Sandy poured coffee for us, handing me a mug. She sat down, rubbed my shoulder lovingly for a moment before reaching for the milk carton. “Go ahead,” she said, glancing at Julie.

Julie sighed. “I think we should talk about this alone.”

“If it’s about me and Rafe then he should be part of it,” Sandy said.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I don’t think it’s okay,” Sandy said.

“I don’t have a problem with what
Rafe
is doing,” Julie said, surprising all of us with her angry, pointed tone.

“What does that mean?” Sandy asked, pushing her chair away from me to face Julie. The raspy sound it made on the floor lent an ominous sound to her question.

“Of course Rafe is going to like …” Julie shook her head, irritated and embarrassed. “I mean, I can’t hold him responsible …” Again, she couldn’t finish the thought.

“Responsible for what?” Sandy leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, coffee mug dangling between her legs. Her pose was like a construction worker’s on a break.

“He’s a
teenager!
” Julie said as if that settled everything.

“Not in bed,” Sandy said and laughed with pleasure.

Kathy giggled, then lowered her eyes.

“It’s not funny,” Julie said.

“You wouldn’t have a problem about this if I were a man,” Sandy said.

“Of course I would. Everybody would. Especially you. You’d be screaming about what a pig you are.”

Sandy shook her head, turned away from Julie, put her coffee cup on the table and said to Kathy, “I don’t get it. I don’t know what this is about.”

“Look,” Julie said. “I’m responsible for Rafe. He’s sixteen years old. Look at him. He’s dropped out of the math program, he’s sitting in his shorts smoking a joint. This is crazy. This is just irresponsible. That’s all. You can tell yourself all kinds of stories, but what it amounts to—”Julie abruptly cut off her speech and slammed an open cabinet door shut. Its bang made us all jump. She shouted at Sandy, “God damn it! This isn’t what we’re fighting for!”

“You’re not my baby-sitter,” I said.

Julie, concentrating on her friend, glanced at me as if she had forgotten I was there. She was fully dressed, in the same leotard and jeans she wore to the demonstration the previous week. She looked more beautiful than ever, almost a different species than Sandy. Despite my odd state of mind, I understood that her concern for me was genuine—whether or not my hope that it was motivated by jealousy was right. It was obvious Julie cared about my welfare in a way Sandy did not, or ever would.

“I’m okay,” I said to her in an intimate tone, wishing that the others weren’t there. I felt, at that moment, that if we were alone, I would have had the strength to tell her the truth, that I loved her, had loved her since the day she had tried to defend me from my mother’s scolding about the hunt for the
Afikomen,
that I knew she possessed something almost no one did: an unselfish heart. I could measure the breadth of its generosity against the narrowness of my own.

“I’m not angry at you, Rafe,” she said softly.

“This is fucked up,” Sandy said. She stood up and got between me and Julie. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk and deal with this.”

They left. Kathy passed me the joint. Looked down at her paper while I took a couple of hits. She raised her eyes when I passed it back and said, “The Vietcong are amazing, you know?”

I agreed.

I felt alone. Increasingly, as I absorbed Dr. Halston’s interpretation, that was how I experienced life. Not the quaking terror of a self without boundaries, but claustrophobic behind the walls he had built. Since everything was really happening inside me, the real world had lost its frightening quality, its ability to trigger panic. That was good, but unfortunately, it had also lost its promise of redemption. By the time Julie and Sandy returned, I didn’t care what they had said to each other, or felt impelled to act by the revelation that I was still deeply in love with Julie. One was unimportant, the other hopeless. I liked having sex with Sandy, and if Julie had managed to put a stop to it (she had failed) I would have been angry, but without much conviction, since other than the sex, I really didn’t want to go on spending time with Sandy. When Sandy took me to her room after the walk, and somewhat gleefully told me of Julie’s “bougie and fucked-up reaction to our liberated relationship,” how she had “forced Julie to confront the contradictions inside her head,” all I felt was despair that more people had become a victim of my evil machinations. Why were they all so helpless against me, whether they were dull or successful, Latin or Jew, adult or youth, Communist or capitalist? Was it a world of fools? Was that what my mother had really meant, that being crazy is knowing, really knowing, just how easily humanity can be manipulated and therefore, how hopeless it is to try and save them?

I believe it was then, or sometime during those weeks, that I first thought of adopting my mother’s solution and killing myself. Her method didn’t appeal to me. I learned of her self-immolation from Dr. Halston. I had known of the fact of her suicide for a few years, but not much about the details. He told them to me in a rather cold voice—her actions were, after all, something of a professional rebuke. He wanted to know why I asked, but I didn’t tell him. I had no secrets from him and I was glad to have one. By then I had come to the conclusion that keeping secrets was part of my genetic makeup. The night I heard the full story of her suicide from Halston, I wondered why the images of Ruth, putting up her sign, pouring gasoline over her wild hair, staring at the crowds with her green eyes, and lighting a match, didn’t move me, either to horror or pity. Because I didn’t think she was wrong or foolish or mad to have done it, except for her choice of dying. Too painful, for one thing. And not damning enough. Her statement,
THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD WILL END,
was too easy to dismiss.

I found a nearly full bottle of Seconal in my uncle’s bathroom. There were more than enough to kill me. I stole it, convinced he would be less suspicious of it disappearing, given the confusion of three residences, the mansion, this temporary one, and his pied-à-terre in Manhattan, than if I merely took some of the pills. Besides, I wanted to be sure to die. I knew institutionalization would follow a failure and that was more horrible to me than life or death. I began writing my farewell statement. It would take a few days, since I planned a full confession as well as messages and apologies to Bernie, my father, Julie, my grandparents …

That caused me to wonder about Jacinta and Pepín, with a pang of loss. I was alone. Uncle, as usual, was in Manhattan, Richard and Kate had fed me and gone to bed, I had smoked a joint, written the first page of my suicide note, and there was nothing to stop me from picking up the phone, dialing long-distance information and calling them. Of course, my uncle would see it on the bill at the end of the month, but I would be dead by then.

I hesitated for an hour, crept down the hall to check that the servants were asleep, and then made my bold move, sneaking into Uncle’s empty bedroom to use his phone. My heart was pounding. Why was I so nervous, I wondered, since I planned to end the world’s ability to punish or reward me? I had to will myself through the enervating terror of dialing, my voice trembling as I asked the operator for the number. My fingers barely had the strength to write them down. I felt as if I were going to lose consciousness as I rotated the dial and waited through six long rings before I heard my grandfather’s sleepy voice answer, in Spanish,
“Hola?”

“Hello,” I said in a croak.

“Jello,” he said, alarmed now, waking up. “Who’s calling?”

Hearing his old, sad voice, I was scared to talk to him. I cleared my throat of all the cowardly obstructions. “Is Jacinta there?” I asked, my intonations odd, either deeper or higher than normal, fluctuating wildly on the scale.

“What?”

“Is Jacinta Neruda there?” I asked in a grave voice.

There was silence. A long, strange silence. Finally, he said in a suspicious tone, “Who is this?” The words were separated. They reminded me of an actor I had seen playing Hamlet’s Ghost. He spoke all his lines as slowly and morosely as a death march.

“Remember me,”
came into my head.

“I’m a friend.” I could think of nothing better. I put my finger on one of the white buttons, ready to cut the line.

“A friend?”

“Yes. May I speak with her?”

Another strange silence. I had a wild thought: maybe he was tracing the call. That was so absurd I wondered if I were really a lunatic.

“I’m her husband,” my grandfather said at last. “Do you know me?” he asked. He was up to something. He wasn’t skilled enough to prevent me from hearing the calculation in each response and question, but I couldn’t imagine what was the point of fencing with me. Why not just put her on? I didn’t consider telling him my name. I was sure he would hang up on me. I should have called during the daytime. Probably he would have been out.

“No, sir. I only need a moment of her time. It’s not an emergency. I have some information for her.”

“You better tell it to me.” He coughed. “I’m her husband. You can tell me.”

“This is—uh,” I was stuck. I couldn’t believe he was being so difficult. “I can’t.”

“I’m sorry.” He coughed again. “My wife …”

I put my finger on the button. I would call during the day tomorrow and get her.

“… my wife,” he continued softly, embarrassed, “passed away last year.”

I cut the line. I held the dead receiver to my ear and pressed the button down firmly, as if erasing what he had said. But no matter how long I pressed, keeping the white button hidden in its black hole, she was still gone, gone without my noticing.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE
The Cure

O
N
A
PRIL
23
RD
, 1968,
THREE MONTHS INTO MY THERAPY WITH
D
R.
Halston, I had almost finished my suicide note. I was stuck on the last paragraph, my farewell to Julie. I wanted to apologize to her, reassure her that she had done all she could, and yet also prevent anyone from concluding my judgment of the world was wrong. I found the right words during lunch period and finished my written farewell. I would have my last session with Halston, my last meal alone, and take the pills after Richard and Kate were in bed. They would find me in the morning, certainly beyond any chance of rescue.

The car my uncle sent to take me to Dr. Halston was waiting at four. The driver was excited. He was listening to WINS, an all-news radio station, and immediately told me the news. Columbia radicals, black and white, had seized Hamilton Hall and were holding at least one administrator hostage, demanding the university sever all research and recruiting programs tied to the military and the Vietnam War and that plans for the infamous gym be canceled. There was, as always, a lot of confusion about who was doing what and an expectation of immediate violence. There were reports that some students were also being held hostage—totally false—and I used those rumors to get the driver to take me to Manhattan. He insisted he check with his dispatcher. I told him to explain that my cousin was probably caught in the middle of this situation and that my uncle would want me to come to the city and help him make sure our people were okay. The dispatcher, excited by the melodramatic picture I painted of a captured relative, agreed to the change in destination.

We reached Columbia around five. I had no plan. I was drawn to the site as if it held a promise of something great. I was rewarded. The staid building was alive. Students jammed the windows above colorful and outrageous banners they had draped over the grave stone facade. And facing them were not police, but more students, and adults too, a few arguing, but most encouraging them. I saw two middle-aged women put supplies into buckets that the radicals pulled up while the crowd cheered. The spectacle delighted me.