Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (94 page)

I was baffled. “Infomercial?” I asked.

Edgar chuckled. “Don’t worry. I was kidding. Are you having second thoughts about spending so much time in corporate land?”

“Something like that.”

“Come up to New York tomorrow. Stick invited me to lunch with the head of our new European division. You should join us.”

“Didier Lahost?”

“Yeah, some name like that. A French businessman. What a nightmare. I’m going to be bored out of my mind. Come along and entertain me. It’ll give you time to think and you can tell Stick your decision face-to-face.”

“I don’t want to crash a meeting.”

“Ain’t no meeting, just a how-do-you-do. The food’ll be good anyway. We’re eating at the Carnegie Deli. I love taking Frogs to eat Jew food.”

“There
are
delis in Paris,” I said.

“What do you want to bet Monsieur Lahost has never darkened their door?”

Another look at Copley wouldn’t hurt, I decided. I told Edgar to expect me and then dialed Stick. While I did, I wondered why Julie had my number. Perhaps her mother was worse; she had a mild stroke six months ago. I should call her and perhaps visit my cousins in Great Neck. I hadn’t seen them since Sadie’s funeral three years ago. This isolation from the world was silly—I was no superman. I needed my family.

“Well hello, stranger,” Laura returned my greeting with a happy note of welcome. “We’ve been trying to find you. Hold on.”

Stick’s stern voice was there immediately. “Where are you?”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” I said. “I’m not your employee. I don’t have to account to you for my whereabouts and my time.” I was surprised by my anger and momentarily ashamed. But why hold anything back? This man wasn’t my patient.

For a moment there was nothing but that weird absolute silence—not a hint of electronic contact. Then, very softly, Stick said, “I
am
paying you to be a consultant.”

“Every penny has gone back into Minotaur. I can show you the receipts. I bought furniture and plants so your labs wouldn’t resemble an unfinished basement.”

He stayed in a low key. “You’ve done a fine job. Centaur’s testing fifty percent faster than our competition. Jack’s looking more relaxed, too. Said to me this morning he was bringing the family along when he makes his West Coast swing.”

“How was your doubles game?”

“I canceled it. What about this Saturday? We could play at my country club.”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Edgar invited me to your lunch at the Carnegie Deli.”

Another silence. I waited. Finally Stick said in a normal volume, “Good. I’d like to know your opinion of Didier.”

“Okay. Also, I haven’t decided if I want to stay on long enough to lead your retreat sessions. I’ll let you know about that tomorrow.”

Stick remained in neutral. “I need to know one way or the other,” he said coolly. “To make plans.” I said nothing. He waited until the silence was uncomfortable and continued, “Would you consider a full-time position with a meaningful salary, say … one hundred K?”

“No,” I answered immediately. “Our financial arrangement is satisfactory. I’ll let you go, Stick. It’s time for your daily swim.”

“What? Oh.” He sounded enervated. “No, I’ve changed my exercise program. I’m doing machines now.”

For a moment, I had no words. Was he teasing me? Worried he was playing a game, I asked sheepishly, “You’ve dropped the two-mile swim?”

“Yeah …” His voice was weary and sad.

I didn’t draw a breath. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was almost frightened to ask—what if his gym was having trouble with the pool filter? “Why?”

“Too boring. And it’s not challenging enough. I’d have to swim longer to get the same benefit I can in half the time on the machines. I thought we discussed this. I thought I told you I was giving it up.”

“Probably you did. Okay, Stick. See you tomorrow.” A chill actually ran down my back. I shook my shoulders to be rid of it. I considered whether he could be this clever. No. There was no way he could know what it meant to me.

In the tradition of listening to the patient for answers, Copley had provided the solution to the problem of his condition: our conversation about his father had had an effect. Three days before, I had gently suggested the association in his office. I commented after Stick’s story of being thrown in the pond that he must enjoy his daily swim. At the time I hardly thought the remark was subtle. Surely Stick didn’t need me to explicate that the reason he relished swimming briskly for two miles was its reminder of triumph over his sadistic father. His conscious mind had missed my point, but not his subconscious. What once was an enjoyable reenactment had become predictable, its emotional power sapped by awareness. The effect was similar to traditional therapy’s—only in reverse. Neurotic patterns can be broken by bringing the original motivation to the surface. Copley’s swim had lost its pleasure by awakening that frightened little boy: it no longer made him feel strong. An effective adaptation had been spoiled by self-knowledge.

I wasn’t sure, of course. Perhaps it was a coincidence. Perhaps it wouldn’t work with behavior driven by less painful memories. Another question: was the subtlety important? Confronting Stick’s and Halley’s psyches with open analysis seemed to have failed miserably, but had it softened him up for the penetration of my quieter observation? Also, why did Stick think he had already told me he was giving up his daily swim? Had he been talking to me in his head? That would be an indication of transference. I noted that my mean tone, my angry reaction to being questioned, seemed to cow him. Could I effect a transference of his sadistic relationship with his father to me and replay his childhood so that he emerged as a neurotic? If I interfered with his successful adaptation to the pain of childhood, could I create conflict where now there was none?

A few hours later, when I decided to drive to the city, I was excited. Why not? If talking therapy can make an ineffective neurotic into a functioning well-adjusted person, shouldn’t it also work in reverse?

I phoned Mary Catharine. After I reminded her of who I was, we had a long talk. Although she seemed to have no memory of our conversation in her bedroom, she was far enough along in her drinking day—this was just after lunch—to be easily drawn into reminiscences of Halley’s childhood.

I searched for the book she told me about at the mall next to the institute, bought a copy, and went to the supermarket—where I found only half of what I needed to complete the treatment. I was unable to find an important aid for Halley’s sense memory. To my surprise, I discovered from the assistant manager that the manufacturer doesn’t sell it during the summer. I decided to take a chance on the slow-moving inventories of New York’s delis.

I departed for the city. I arrived late, almost ten o’clock, thanks to a violent summer thunderstorm. The decaying West Side Highway became a black river and the street’s potholes were muddy ponds. I crawled for an hour and a half from the George Washington Bridge to Central Park West in the seventies, a distance of five or six miles. There were no parking spaces so I used the garage opposite my sublet. The driving rain had stopped. At last, I felt smart again—sure enough, I found one box of what I needed in an all-night Korean grocery store. I walked the block to her apartment building. I announced myself to the same doorman who had assured us the cherry bombers were going to lose fingers.

He told Halley my name, said, “Hold on,” and offered me the intercom, explaining, “She wants to talk to you.” Its receiver was no different than an old-fashioned phone’s.

“Rafe?” Halley’s voice crackled as they always do on intercoms—as if coming over a shortwave radio.

“Yes.”

“What’s … ? You’re here to see me?”

“I’m here to tuck you in,” I said and winked at the doorman. He smiled slyly, then looked away, as if he shouldn’t be listening, even if I didn’t mind. “I have Malomars,” I said.

She came in loud. “What?”

“Ma-lo-mars,” I said slowly. “I have Malomars and hot chocolate.”

That got me a puzzled look from the doorman. The storm hadn’t cooled things off. The reverse, in fact. The city air was as thick as steam—the sidewalks seemed to be boiling the rain.

She was at her door when I came out of the elevator, hair wet, dressed in a large white men’s T-shirt that reached her knees. She watched my approach with her head tilted, black eyes wide and unafraid. I pulled the box of Malomars out from the grocery bag. “Good,” I said, handing them to her. “You’ve had your bath.”

She took the yellow box in both hands, staring at it as if it couldn’t be real. With her head down, she was no taller than my stomach. Cradling the bag in my left arm, I ran my right hand over the top of her damp hair, gathering it. I tugged gently. “Put this in a ponytail,” I said.

She raised her eyes. They narrowed. She stepped back, breaking my hold, the door opening wider, yet still blocking the way. She asked, “Is this game for you or for me?”

I reached into the bag and showed her a box of Nestle’s mix. “Hot chocolate, Malomars, and a bedtime story. You know how I like to read bedtime stories,” I said.

She stamped her foot. “Just tell me!” Annoyed at herself for that display, she shut her eyes, took a breath through her nostrils—their flare was quite pretty—and said softly, “I don’t care. I just want to know.”

I let the Nestles box slip back into the bag, stepped into the doorway and looked down at her. “I love you,” I said. And then a whisper, “This is for me.”

I heated the milk in a pot on the stove, shunning the microwave, noisily stirring the sides with a metal spoon. I hadn’t covered this point with her mother; that was how I remember Grandma Jacinta made hot chocolate. I would listen from the next room to the slow scrape of metal on metal and anticipate the sweet taste. There wasn’t a brown mug like the one Mary Catharine had described, but the white mugs Halley owned were large and would feel heavy in her hands. I put four Malomars on a plate, poured the hot chocolate, and brought the drink and cookies to her bedroom. On the way, I got the book I had brought from my raincoat.

Halley, her hair braided into a tail that draped down her right shoulder, was propped up by two pillows in bed, clutching a small stuffed white bear.

She sipped the hot chocolate and said, “Mmmmm.” She took a bite of a Malomar.

“Don’t you want to dip it?” I asked.

“It’ll be messy.”

“You’ve been a good girl. You can dip.” I opened the book,
Goodnight Moon,
holding it in my left hand, and began: “In the great green room, there was a telephone, and a red balloon.” She dunked half the Malomar, spread her lips over the melting chocolate shell and sucked at the gooey interior. I slid my right hand under the covers and ran the tips of my fingers up her thigh.

I left an hour later. The procedure took ninety minutes. Double a normal therapy session, but I had been slowed down by her initial resistance, and this was, after all, our first one.

She complained that I didn’t allow her to touch me. In the early throes of orgasm, she asked to see my penis—using a child’s words, of course: “Can I see your thing?” I said no, that she was dirty.

As she climaxed, when I leaned over to whisper in her ear, she yelled, “Don’t say it!” I assume she meant my blunder during the bath adventure of reminding her that Gene died for her—although the bath scene had a different goal than my new one and therefore I can’t say it was a blunder. This time, as her belly undulated against my arm, I whispered, “You’re a good girl,” over and over until she was finished.

After I left her room, she called for me plaintively three times. Waiting in her foyer, ready to hurry out if I heard her leave the bed, I didn’t hear (nor did I expect to so early in the treatment) the tears, the sobs of abandonment, that I believed would mean we had achieved a breakthrough.

The next day, I arrived late at the Carnegie Deli. There was a line spilling out the door waiting for tables. I didn’t see Edgar or Stick so I joined its end. A short man in an expensive three-piece came up to me. “Dr. Neruda?” I nodded. “Mr. Levin’s waiting for you inside. Follow me.”

He led me through a narrow path between jammed tables, and around waiters carrying plates of towering sandwiches above their heads. A pastrami and corned beef came within an inch of my nose. “You’re too tall,” the pale, sweating waiter told me. “Sit down already.”

Edgar, Stick, and Didier Lahost had been seated in the closest thing to a private table, all the way in the left rear corner, against two mirrored walls and with no one to the right because of the kitchen door. Even so, we were crowded in, bumped repeatedly, and of course the noise was deafening.

“Edgar, this is a ridiculous place to get acquainted with someone. Hello, Monsieur,” I added to Didier, and began an imitation of my father, a model for me of how to be charming. I was, at once, curious about the stranger, teasing toward the powerful presence of Edgar and apparently intimate about my life. I treated Stick as if he were my child, talking about him in the third person, sometimes answering for him. I asked Didier if his name was Alsatian. They hadn’t bothered to inquire about his history and he was glad to tell it. When he mentioned that his mother was Spanish, he and I were off. She turned out to be an Asturian, the neighboring province to my grandfather’s, Galicia, and the birthplace of my Uncle Pancho. I told the story of Francisco abducting me from Uncle Bernie—delighting Edgar, naturally, since this now encompassed Great Neck gossip. I was very lucky in the coincidence of a Spanish connection with Didier. That made it easier to isolate Stick, dimming his light before Edgar, and exacerbating his mild paranoia (a presenting symptom of sadism) into a frenzy.

Our cheerful conversation lasted for more than two hours, past three o’clock, when the popular Carnegie emptied out considerably and we could lower our voices. Edgar used a cellular phone to cancel a meeting, saying he was having too good a time listening to me spill the beans about Bernie.

“I hope the meeting wasn’t important, Edgar,” I said. “Buying the Empire State Building?”