Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (65 page)

“Not really. But when you called, you went out of your way to say she’s going to the convention and then you come in saying you’re in love. Even Dr. Watson could figure that out.”

“Jesus. Yeah, I’m worried it’s too obvious. Cathy is definitely suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?”

“Of me and Halley.”

“I thought you said you weren’t having an affair.”

“I kissed her,” he said in a rush, an embarrassed confession; and yet with a sly, proud grin.

“You kissed her. And what did she do?” I gestured for him to elaborate.

“Well, she didn’t slap me.” He breathed in deeply and held it.

“Did you expect her to?”

He frowned at me. Finally he released the air. “No. I don’t know. I was scared to touch her. I’d been thinking about doing it for weeks. I was watching her lips while she talked about the convention … They’re big, you know, especially when she puts on a lot of lipstick. I wasn’t even sure if I thought they were beautiful. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. And I lost track of what she was saying. She stopped talking. She looked at me with a smile, as if she knew what I was thinking, and said, ‘Hello? Are you there?’ And I didn’t care about anything. Not Cathy, or little Pete. Or even me. I don’t even remember deciding to kiss her. Suddenly, I was just doing it. Right there in the new conference room. Right next to a wall of glass. Anyone in the parking lot could have seen us. I didn’t even think about that.”

He was entranced by the memory. I waited while he replayed the kiss, sighing softly, crossing his legs, briefly touching his lips as if hers were still lingering. “She kissed me back,” he said at last. “You know, she responded. Her mouth opened—” he caught himself and laughed. “I really opened wide. It was like being in high school—you know, French kissing.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It was. It was great.” He looked at me, straight out, unafraid and defenseless, a curious child. “Am I terrible?”

“For enjoying a kiss?”

“Come on. You know where this is going. Isn’t adultery a mortal sin?”

“I’m sorry, Gene. I’m not a priest.”

“What happens if I fall in love?”

“You said you are in love.”

“I’m infatuated. What happens if we do it and she still wants me?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a soothsayer either. Anyway, isn’t that the wrong question? What happens if you do it and you still want her?”

“I don’t think I’ll stop at anything. I don’t think even Petey would stop me.”

“What has Pete got to do with it?”

“Huh? Come on, aren’t you carrying this shrink act too far? Pete’s got everything to do with why I’m married.”

“Not Cathy?”

“I’m not still married because of my great marriage, that’s for sure.”

“You’d leave if it weren’t for Pete?”

“You know that.”

But I didn’t. I knew nothing of the kind. “Gene, what are we doing?”

His legs were stilled. His newly confident eyes lowered. “What?”

“Are we resuming therapy? Are you planning to come here regularly?”

“Can’t I?” he asked with the old, familiar plaintiveness.

“Do you want to?”

“I’m in a crisis.”

“Does that mean you want to?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes!” His irritation slipped out, and his eyes dropped to the floor.

“Your schedule allows it?”

“Well, Dragon’s done and …” He stopped and drifted off into deep thought.

I waited and had my own reverie. I didn’t want to resume our sessions. Gene didn’t need my service. Sure, he could use a good therapist—or even a mediocre one—to sort out his marriage conflicts; so could Cathy, for that matter. But this person sitting opposite was a well man in relative terms. To be blunt: I hadn’t become a psychiatrist to treat husbands who longed for sex with younger, more beautiful women than their wives, who stayed in marriages believing it was for the sake of their children. These might be unattractive, reprehensible feelings, but they don’t qualify as mental illness. And be honest, I argued to myself, you don’t want him as a patient. You didn’t miss these sessions.

“I’m scared,” Gene said softly. He lifted himself, straightening in the chair, and lifted his eyes as well, to look at me sadly.

“Of what?” I asked, also softly.

“I feel like I’m out of control.”

“You are.”

His mouth opened, ready to answer, and then shut.

“You’ve fought all your life to control yourself. To control your anger, to control your natural desire to be recognized for your work, to be satisfied romantically, to be loved and appreciated. You controlled yourself as a child because your parents wouldn’t let you
be
uncontrolled. You controlled yourself as a husband because you were frightened Cathy wouldn’t love you if you were sexual. You controlled yourself with Stick because you were afraid he wouldn’t accept you as ambitious. You’re letting go of all that control. You’ve been gradually letting go for a couple of years, and now you’re almost free.”

“So why am I scared?”

“It’s called neurosis. It’s an irrational fear, but of course it isn’t irrational to you. You were more frightened of what would happen if you announced your desires to people, than of not getting what you want. It doesn’t make common sense, since you have nothing to lose by asking for what you want if the alternative is not to ask at all. The worst that can happen by asking is that someone will say no. But it made sense to you because it isn’t the no that you’re afraid of.”

Gene smiled to himself. He asked in a low voice, “What am I afraid of?”

“You’re afraid of yourself. Of how you’ll feel when you ask and are told no. You’re afraid of your anger and your sadness at rejection. And you’re also afraid of how you’ll feel if you ask and are told yes. By not trying, you’re able never to fail. You asked Stick for more responsibility and he’s given it to you. What if you fail? By not asking you were avoiding testing yourself. It made you miserable, but it kept you safe. By not asking Cathy to love you, you were lonely, but at least you didn’t risk hearing she doesn’t. By not making yourself available to other women you protected yourself from falling in love. There’s a logic to neurosis and it’s been your friend since you were a child, since that day you threw up on the gallery owner’s book, and probably long before that, when you found your parents making love.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember? When you walked in on them making love?”

“Of course I remember. But what do you mean about—?” I
mean,”
he laughed, “what did it mean to me?”

“They were embarrassed and upset—”

Gene interrupted. “Dad yelled, right?”

“That’s what you told me.”

“And Mom scolded me the next morning. Told me never to come in without knocking.”

“And why did you go to their room?”

“I needed something, right? Medicine? Wasn’t I sick?”

“That’s not what you told me years ago.”

“What did I say?”

“You had a dream about a spider. You woke up. You were alone. It was dark.” I waited.

“I was scared,” he said.

“You didn’t say you were scared. Maybe you were. But you said you were lonely and you wanted company.”

Tears formed. He swallowed, squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them with the tips of his fingers to conceal his emotion. When he uncovered, he nodded and looked grim, but composed. “That’s right.”

“You felt alone,” I said. “And after they kicked you out, you felt their love for you was a sham, that nobody needed you, that the world was having a party, a secret passionate celebration, to which you were not invited.”

“It can’t be that simple,” Gene said.

How curious and yet proud is the human animal: looking for answers that, when found, are a disappointment. “I don’t think it’s simple, Gene. It’s quite complicated. I don’t mean that if all that had ever happened to you was one incident of interrupting your parents making love, you would be the same person. I don’t even mean that everyone would have reacted the way you did. You have a natural timidity, a gentleness that is easily shocked and offended. It’s made you a good father and a loyal employee. It made you a loving son, a very loving son to parents who, frankly, weren’t all that loving to you. And it wasn’t just those two incidents. There were hundreds of them, reinforcing each other. We’ve just isolated the archetypes, symbols of your life experience. And they didn’t really stop you. Here you are, working to change. You’ve been brave. Much braver than people who have no trouble shouting for what they want, who can hardly keep still for one second if they aren’t satisfied.”

Gene put a hand on his moussed hair. He touched the smooth surface, combing back what was already combed. The gesture, a new one, gave an impression of self-containment, of calmness. When it was completed, he said quietly, “Thank you.”

“So,” I smiled at him. “What are we doing, Gene? Are we resuming therapy?”

“I want to stop.” He said this easily and simply and then seemed to hold his breath with dread anticipation, as if the ceiling might collapse on him. I nodded and waited. He exhaled. “But I’m scared to.” He cleared his throat. “You tell me. Do I need this?”

“People always need to talk honestly with someone about their life. Before this hiatus that’s how you used our sessions. Frankly, I can’t spare the time for that. I’m under a lot of pressure at the clinic and I’m working on a new book. I care about you, Gene, and I want things to go well for you. I’d like you to resolve the problems in your marriage, one way or the other. I hope you’ll continue to insist on what’s due you at work and keep on challenging yourself. But you’re acting on those desires. If anything goes wrong, if you need to talk about something in particular, I’m here, any hour of the day or night. I believe we should have a few more sessions, just to wind down. If you’d like to continue seeing someone regularly I can recommend—”

“No,” he interrupted, gently but firmly. “You’re right. It’s time to grow up. I should be out there on my own.” We agreed to have three more sessions and then terminate.

I saw him next after the Computer Show. Black Dragon was well-received. Orders were not what they had hoped; but they weren’t for their rivals either. The recession was hitting computers hard. The machine was a technical triumph, however, and that was to Gene’s credit. He and Halley made love every night during the trip. Gene said it was the most passionate and exciting sex of his life. He found her fascinating and spent most of the session telling me stories about her life: her brief career in Hollywood trying to be an actress got some attention but he mostly talked about a trauma that particularly fascinated Gene—the death of her younger brother five years ago in a skiing accident. He knew about it vaguely because Stick took a week’s leave for the funeral, although Copley had never discussed the tragedy with Gene. He was moved by her love for her brother and her grief. She told Gene he was the only person she had been able to talk to about her brother’s death. She praised him for his empathy and said he was the first man who truly understood her. She openly admitted she wanted him to leave his wife and marry her. Halley said she was so in love that she would accept him on any terms, but she hoped for a full commitment.

He went home confidently, albeit with a grim determination, prepared to confront Cathy with the truth. He didn’t go through with it, however. He claimed he was thwarted by the surprising warmth of her welcome home. She didn’t greet him with her typical petulance. She hugged him tight and kissed him passionately while Pete tugged at them, until they all toppled to the floor. Gene’s little boy crawled over him while Cathy snuggled both of them. She had cooked an elaborate dinner, complete with fresh flowers and candles for the table; Petey had built a Lego model of Black Dragon. Gene was pleased and embarrassed by his predicament. Of course, he expressed the appropriate emotions: guilt that Halley loved him; shame that he was betraying Cathy; fear that he was hurting Pete. But it wasn’t hard to crack the thin shell of these civilized formalities and get to the yolk of his true reaction: glee that there were two women who wanted him; relief that he was, after all, a desirable and successful man.

“What do I do?” he asked me.

“I don’t know, Gene. I know you don’t believe me, but I’m really not a priest. It’s up to you to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. I’m sure you remember what you thought about your father when you found out he had been having an affair all those years.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, for the first time keen guilt worrying his cheerful face. “He just made it worse.”

“But you’re not your father, right?”

“Right.”

“What’s right and what’s wrong is up to you, Gene. My hope is that you will act on
your
feelings, not what you imagine someone else wants you to do.”

[I assume some of my lay readers may be shocked by my casual reaction to Gene’s affair. I’m aware from television talk shows and popular psychology books that in the United States confusion has arisen between what is mental health and what is moral behavior. There is also a humorless lack of awareness of moral relativism. In France, if Gene made Halley his mistress, he would not be frowned on by society unless he was so cruel as to rub it in Cathy’s face. In the U.S., the deception itself is often regarded as tantamount to illness and he would be considered noble if he walked in the door, told Cathy he had fallen in love with another woman and wanted a divorce. I’m sorry that so many popular psychologists encourage confusion about the role of therapy: a judgment of Gene’s affair, except insofar as the situation was generated by years of emotional and sexual passivity, is a matter for social mores or religious convictions. As I’ve noted before, my job was to introduce Gene to his real self, not to shape that self to suit my notion of good behavior. I assume there are some professionals reading this who would interpret Gene presenting a crisis in his marriage two sessions prior to termination as a way of prolonging therapy—in short, a cry for more help. I admit I believed then that there was an element in his behavior of creating material for me, providing an event he could claim was overwhelming and therefore justify a continuing dependence on our sessions. Indeed, this is part of the reason I reacted casually. It was time for Gene to deal with his life without a pretense that he wasn’t fit for the job. The transference had reappeared: I was the last barrier he couldn’t climb comfortably, the last excuse not to act on his feelings. Bear in mind, if Gene got himself into real trouble, I knew he could, and moreover,
would
come to me. Should he divorce Cathy and need support, I would supply it or find it, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath waiting for that drama. To put this as simply as possible: I did not consider his adultery to be an illness that I could treat.]