Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (96 page)

This brings us to an aspect of the treatment it is crucial I warn other practitioners about. Two dangers exist in reverse therapy that, although they have corollaries in traditional psychoanalysis, are more present and intense. The first should be familiar, namely countertransference: I had to struggle to avoid forming a real attachment to Halley and I had to be careful not to want to harm Stick. The second danger, which unfortunately I did not fully anticipate, is that, since the treatment moves toward disintegration of the patient’s personality rather than greater control, caution must be taken not to push the patient into outright psychosis.

Halley was the tougher assignment in terms of countertransference. I don’t mean to make a vulgar joke of it, but my sexual frustration alone would have tested the patience of a saint—the pleasure was all one-sided and it was a mockery of lovemaking. I don’t suppose I need to explain how I found relief for my physical forbearance, and I won’t pretend fondling Halley was all work. The emotional frustration was another matter. I underestimated its danger. Although I limited physical contact with Halley to two nights a week of incest fantasy and my role demanded, when we were in public, that I treat her with stiff formality, almost contempt, nevertheless I had to (in order to play the part of lover/father) telephone her every day and maintain a deep emotional connection.

The routine was rigid. I telephoned her apartment at seven-thirty every morning, greeting her in a loving voice, “Hello, little one. How did you sleep?” The daily conversations, once she came to expect them so she picked up instead of her machine, lasted roughly half an hour. On weekends they sometimes continued for an hour or more. They allowed me to monitor the residue of my interference with the sexual and emotional dynamics of her relationship with her father; more importantly, however, I repeated the assurances her narcissism demanded. She’d rustle the sheets, groan sleepily, and ask plaintively, “Do you love me?”

“I love you,” I’d say.

“Then why aren’t you here?” she’d whine.

“Because yoü don’t love me,” I’d say.

“But I do!” she answered on the second week of these morning calls. The first week she tried teasing me with the reply, “Tough,” but I would only laugh at that.

“You don’t love anyone,” I said.

“Maybe I love you,” she said sweetly, playing the innocent music of a little girl. It was hard to remember that she was lying.

“If you love me,” I said, “then you’re going to have my babies and
get
fat. You’re going to be covered with spit-up and men won’t want you. If you give me a beautiful daughter, I won’t bother to look at you. If you give me a strong son, I won’t bother to talk to you.”

For a moment there was no reply. Then I heard a thump—I decided later it was her feet landing on the floor as she got out of bed. She said in an efficient tone, “That’s right,” and hung up with a bang.

The next morning she picked up and answered my, “Hello, little one. How did you sleep?” by saying, “I have a guest, I’ll call you later.”

She tried to make me jealous for two weeks, either by not picking up or answering only to say she had company and couldn’t talk. I ignored the taunts so thoroughly that (and maybe Stick proposed this or she intuited his desire) she appeared in the labs and invited Andy to lunch, using the ad campaign for Centaur as the excuse. She took him out twice more before giving up on him, probably when she figured out that Andy was gay. I half expected her male secretary to call him next, but evidently Halley was not a delegator—and besides, that would hardly have upset me.

During the jealousy resistance phase, one night she told the doorman not to allow me up for an incest session. That alarmed me, but it shouldn’t have. The physical craving for so complete a physical satisfaction—a narcissistic ecstasy that no one else could or would supply her—was addictive. The next morning she answered my greeting with a grumpy, “I didn’t sleep well.”

“Is that my fault?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You missed your bedtime story,” I said.

“Come here now,” she insisted.

“No. Thursday night.”

“What’s your phone number? You know, it’s outrageous that no one can call you at home. If you won’t give me your number, I’ll get it from Laura.”

That was the first time she tried to bring her father in as a greater authority figure than me. “Stick doesn’t have this number. This isn’t my home,” I said. “And I don’t really work for your company. I’m doing research.”

“Come here,” she groaned.
“I’ll
read
you
a story,” she added brightly. “I’m a good lover, you know.”

“You’re a great lover—but you’re not sincere.”

She whispered, “Let me make you happy.”

“You don’t want to make me happy,” I said. “I’ll be there Thursday. The next time you don’t let me in will be the last time I’ll come to see you.” I hung up. There were no more cancellations.

Despite the unprecedented intimacy my daily feeding of her narcissism required, I was convinced that she was nothing more than a patient to me until an interruption in our work proved otherwise. In late August, Aunt Ceil, Julie’s mother, suffered another stroke and died. Since my family was told by the institute that they didn’t have my New York number, Edgar, of all people, informed me on their behalf and offered a ride in his limo to Great Neck. He had joint real estate investments with Jerry, Uncle Bernie’s son-in-law, and would be attending the funeral. This was another reinforcement to Copley of my dangerous connection to the larger business world. I made sure to tell Stick who was providing my ride when I canceled our Thursday meeting.

I also warned Halley that I wouldn’t be available to tuck her in and refused to discuss why although she was sure to learn the reason from Stick. When she said, “How about Friday?” I said softly, “No.”

I can imagine what Stick fantasized Edgar and I would say to each other during the ride to temple. In fact, we reminisced about Great Neck High, the old men who played gin at the country club, and the toughness of his father and my uncle in business. Edgar launched into an anecdote about Bernie to illustrate. “You know,” Edgar said, “when your uncle bought Home World he was having trouble with the Mafia hijacking trucks. Hijacking! The union drivers would pull over nicely at such and such a time in a rest stop and have a cup of coffee while goombahs would take their load. Then they’d call the cops. It was a regular thing, taking about ten percent off the top. That was fucking up his profit margin big-time. So supposedly Bernie goes to see the Godfather—who’s drooling in a wheelchair in his mansion. Somehow Bernie knows him—”

I explained, “When they were kids they used to lead gangs against each other in the Bronx.” I knew the story he was telling, but I was interested in his version.

“No kidding? That’s for real?”

“That part is real,” I assured him.

“So Bernie tells him …” Edgar started to laugh and he began again, “So Bernie, he brings this big hulking Jew with him,” Edgar laughed again so hard that he paused, swallowed and continued, “Bernie says, ‘This man here is on a leave from the Israeli Army. He needs work and he has lots of buddies from Tel Aviv who need work and if my trucks keep having trouble, they’ll be riding in every one for me as security men. You know about the Israeli Army,’ Bernie says. They’re used to fighting Arab terrorists so they don’t mind getting their hands dirty,’” Edgar smiled. “And that was why the Home World trucks made their rounds without losing any inventory. Now here’s the payoff. Supposedly the big hulking Jew was a cantor from a synagogue in Texas.” Edgar laughed. We were exiting the LIE, heading for Community Road. He looked through the smoked-glass window at a Mercedes flanking us. The driver was a jeweled woman with a deep tan. Beside her was an African-American nanny. In the back, a toddler sat beside an infant in a car seat. “God,” he said to their comfortable domesticity, “I wish that story was true.”

“It’s true,” I told him.

“Really? You’re shitting me.”

“I know it’s a true story.”

“Are you sure? You knew it? Why didn’t you stop me?”

“I’m sure. I didn’t stop you because I wanted to know if you had it right. And you don’t. The hulking Jew wasn’t a cantor. He was a colonel in the Mossad.”

“You’re shitting me,” Edgar said.

“No. Uncle was good at matching men with jobs they were qualified for.”

“Don’t be a bleeding heart.”

“Between the two of us, Edgar, you’re the sentimental one.” He was. He stayed beside me through our entrance at the temple and, despite gestures of invitation from men important to him in business, pulled me down the center aisle row after row. Twice I mumbled, “Here’s good.” Edgar insisted on our progress until we got to the front where Julie sat in a black dress, an arm around each of her children.

“I brought him,” Edgar said to her.

She stood up. I had only a moment to see that her hair was cut very short, her skin looked five years younger than when we last saw each other, and that her warm brown eyes, calm before she saw me, were immediately wet. She was in my arms and that’s when I knew something was wrong with me. Julie’s strong back, the feel of her long body in my arms, had always, always and I thought forever, been both a thrill and a comfort. Although my mind told me to embrace her thoroughly, if only to express sympathy, my body revolted. My arms were stiff, my legs tense, and my belly reluctant to be flush with her.

“It’s so good—” she said in my ear and tried to squeeze my unyielding chest. “It’s so good to see you.”

I pulled away as soon as I could, mumbling I was sorry. She wiped away a tear and smiled. “Here are my babies,” she gestured to a handsome eleven-year-old curly-haired boy and a shy nine-year-old girl—my cousins, and I realized in a flash, the only heirs I was likely to have. Was I that alone? Not even to have been introduced to my future?

The listless ceremony began. Her dead father, Harry, was the loved parent; Ceil had been a critical and self-absorbed woman. Probably I was the only one who knew how little Julie liked her and felt loved by her. Not that the loss of her mother left her cold. On the contrary, she wept harder at this funeral than at her father’s, out of guilt and regret.

But I wasn’t the only one who knew what she was feeling, I reflected. I looked around for her husband and only then noticed he wasn’t present.

When we rose to follow the casket to the grave, Julie gathered her children with one arm and reached for my hand with the other. “You’re with us,” she said. Her eyes were red and tears kept flowing, although her voice was strong and clear. As we led the way out with the other Rabinowitzes, between mumbled thanks to mumbled expressions of condolence, Julie whispered asides to me. I didn’t prompt them and they were non sequiturs, as if I were a part of her mind. “I’m thinking of moving to New York,” she said, a moment after being released from a hug by Cousin Aaron. Guiding her boy and girl into the limo parked behind the hearse, she thanked the rabbi for his eulogy, then said to me, “I’m getting a divorce,” and ducked inside.

Confronted by her son’s earnest face, I didn’t feel I could follow up on that news. Julie put her daughter in her lap. Margaret leaned her head on her mother’s breasts and closed her eyes. I looked at her boy, Brian. “He’s very good at math,” Julie told me, another non sequitur.

“And basketball,” he told me.

“I bet,” I said. He was tall. “Do you know why six is afraid of seven?” I asked.

Cousin Margaret lifted her head and giggled. Brian frowned at me. “That’s old,” he said.

“You’re right,” I agreed.

“What’s old?” Julie said.

“Why is six afraid of seven?” I asked Julie.

Brian looked at his mother sideways and smiled. “She doesn’t remember anything,” he told me. “That’s an old joke, Mom.”

Margaret said, “You know why, Mommy.”

“I don’t,” Julie said with a pout.

“Because seven ate nine!” Margaret said and laughed loud, showing a row of big and little teeth.

Following tradition, we buried Aunt Ceil both in symbol and fact, each of us in turn digging a shovelful of earth from a mound to the right of the grave and tossing it on the casket. Julie went first. She stabbed at the dirt and flipped the shovel over casually.

She turned to Brian, doubtful whether to offer him a turn. He had no doubt. He took the shovel confidently. He dropped a heaping load into the grave and whispered, “Goodbye Grandma.” He looked to his little sister, pointing the handle at her. Margaret shrank from it.

“You don’t have to, honey,” Julie said.

“Let’s do it together,” I said. Margaret’s hand seemed very little beside mine as we filled only the tip of the spade. We cleared it with a wave over the open earth. “Bye,” Margaret said low and sadly. She ran into Julie’s arms.

Staring down at the smears of brown on the shining black coffin, I thought—Even you, Ceil, will be missed.

While the rest each took a turn, I walked five feet to the right to stand at my mother’s lonely grave, the sister they had killed, to put it as bluntly as I feel. Another fifteen feet to the left and north, was Papa Sam and his wife. Below them I looked at the other solo placement: Uncle Bernie was positioned at the center of the triangle of dead Rabinowitzes, still dominating them. His first and second wives were buried elsewhere. Only he and my mother would rest alone.

Julie’s hand fell on my back, rubbing. Again, I tensed at her touch. She sensed it and stopped. I looked toward the open grave. Her children weren’t in sight. The line waiting to use the shovel was shrinking.

“I want us to be together,” she said in that oddly calm voice, despite the red eyes and stained face.

“What?” I felt stupid. I knew what she meant. “You mean ride back together?” I said obstinately.

She shook her head and frowned. “You know what I mean. There’s no reason we can’t.”

“When did you—” I stopped because I understood why I didn’t like her touch. I had to think more about the revelation, of course, but the obvious worry had at last penetrated. Perhaps the daily recital of “I love you” to Halley wasn’t all medicine.