Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (75 page)

“All right!” Susan dropped her knife onto her plate. It clattered angrily. “That’s enough. I’ll tell you my opinion. I know you won’t like it. I know you’ll reject it, but this is the simple truth: Gene was weak. He came to you, over and over, no matter how many times you tried to discourage him, and he asked you: help me be strong, help me be a man. Each time you did, he got scared. And finally, you left him no choice. Nowhere to hide. That’s what you did with the dream and later, with the prostitute, right?”

“The prostitute was a distraction.”

“Yes, I would—most therapists—would have spent a year, maybe two just on that diversion. He asked you to do the impossible and you did it.
That
was your mistake.” Susan leaned back with triumph.

“Doing my job was a mistake?” I asked, incredulous.

“No!
He
was the mistake. You cured his neurosis against his will. He didn’t want to be cured. He wanted to be comforted. He wanted you to fail and he wanted to blame you and go on living miserably, but you were too clever. You fixed something he didn’t want fixed.”

“Then I did kill him.”

The elevator landed on their floor. Its locks tumbled.

“He was a schmuck, Rafe! Sooner or later he would have killed himself. He needed backbone, not insight. He was like the princess and the pea.”

The door opened. A volleyball rolled out, dribbling softly across the dark living room.

“Harry?” Susan called. She got to her feet, anxious. “Is it your back, Harry?” She whispered to herself, “He’s too old for this nonsense.” She moved toward the open door. As she neared it, Harry leapt out, pretending to be a ballerina, his thin arms aloft, dancing on the tiptoes of his dirty sneakers, his ample belly trembling underneath a T-shirt darkened by perspiration.

“I’m beautiful,” he sang tunelessly. He stopped and looked at me. “Am I a role model? No, I’m just the greatest volleyball player in North America. Parents are role models.”

Susan shut the door with a bang.
“Meshuga,”
she said, tried to frown, but it expanded to a smile. Harry attempted another pirouette, stumbling into the couch; she laughed with delight.

Harry gathered himself and strode over to her. He pecked her on the lips. “And here is my groupie, willing to perform whatever sexual service I want.”

Susan backed away from him. “Take a shower. Then I’ll be your groupie.”

“The hell with that. I’m eating.” Harry walked to the table, grabbing a bagel and a knife before he settled in a chair. “Well, what’s the verdict?” he asked me, still standing.

“You’re telling me she didn’t tell you?” I said.

“I’m telling you she didn’t tell me,” he answered. He sat at last, reached for the cream cheese and paused, outraged. “You ate all the cream cheese,” he accused Susan.

“There’s plenty.”

He showed me the container. Three-quarters was gone. “This is enough for … what? Half a bagel?”

“I got another,” Susan said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Harry fixed his bagel and whispered, “She told me you did good work.”

“That’s not what she just told me,” I said, as Susan returned with another box of low-fat cream cheese.

“What did you tell him?” Harry said. He grabbed the container away from her. “This is mine. You’ve had enough.”

“Maybe Rafe wants more.”

“What did you tell him?” Harry insisted.

“I told him he went too fast.” Susan sat, brushing her wild hair back. “That’s the only mistake I can see,” she said to me. “Maybe if you were fooled a little, and it all went slower, maybe he wouldn’t have been so shocked to discover he was living in a real world, with real troubles, and real pain.”

“You’re right. I rushed. I was competing with Joseph. I had Prozac envy.”

“Prozac envy,” Harry said and chuckled. He had made himself a towering bagel, using up all that remained of the Nova. “Well, we all make mistakes. Right?” Harry took a bite. His cheeks puffed. Susan and I watched his mouth work. He looked at me, eyebrows up, asking me to agree. He shifted his eyes to Susan and then frowned. He swallowed. “I mean,” he had to pause to swallow again. “We can’t succeed with every patient.”

“You don’t understand,” I explained. “It’s not that I couldn’t succeed with this patient. A year ago, I told him he was fine. I said, ‘You’re cured. Go and live your life.’ Well his life ended pretty quickly. Obviously, I made a mistake.”

“You didn’t make a mistake!” Susan shouted.

Harry dropped his bagel. “What
is
your problem? What is so terrible about making mistakes?”

“He didn’t,” Susan pulled her wild hair back and pushed her face at me until she was only inches away, her eyes lit by the sun, intent and earnest. “You mustn’t fall for that. This was not your failure. It was Gene’s.”

“You’re just softening it,” I mumbled.

“When did I ever soften things for you! Listen to me. Of course you weren’t perfect. Nobody’s perfect. But for every time you rushed or missed something, there are a dozen times you got it just right. That wasn’t the problem. Gene was the problem. He was weak. Right from the beginning and all the way through—he was always weak. Nothing terrible ever happened to him. He walked in on his parents screwing. His father was an opportunist. His mother was a silly passive woman. So what? Think of your kid patients. Think of what they survived. Think of you.” Susan touched my arm. She whispered, “Everybody isn’t created equal, no matter what the Constitution says.”

“Excuse me,” Harry said.

I was staring into the comfort of her forgiving eyes, wanting never to look away.

But Susan looked away. She cleared her throat. “What is it, Harry?”

“Rafe,” he said. “Can I ask you a question?” I gave him my attention. “Do you always take it this hard when you lose a patient?”

Susan stared at the table.

I smiled at him. “Yes,” I said. “I guess it’s narcissistic. I apologize.”

“I got somebody going down the drain on me once a month.” He shrugged. “I guess this guy was special.”

“No,” I said.

“No?” He was amazed. “Jesus, what happens to you when it’s someone you really care about?”

“Harry, go take a shower,” Susan said.

“What?” Harry sniffed his armpits. “You can smell me all the way over there?”

I mumbled, “Leave him alone.”

Susan banged the table with the end of her knife to emphasize each word: “I won’t let you add this to your list of sins.”

“I’m not saying he sinned!” Harry complained. “I was just saying sometimes you do your best and it’s not good enough. You know, like a team foul. The therapy didn’t work, but no one’s to blame. That’s happened to you before, right? I mean this isn’t the first time a patient went bozo on you, right? All I wanted to know—” Harry stopped talking. I was watching him so I didn’t see the face Susan made that shut him up. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked her.

Susan waved the knife at him. Its blade was coated white from the cream cheese. “He’s never lost a patient,” Susan said. “This is the first time for him. Okay? Now go take a shower. Everybody loves you, Harry, and you don’t stink, but go take a shower anyway. Rafe and I have some more things to discuss, then we’ll all go for a walk on this beautiful day.”

Harry stood up. He looked out his tall window for a moment. He turned and walked past me a step or two. “How long you been practicing? Fifteen years?” I nodded. I felt his hand on my shoulder. “Never?” he asked.

“Susan’s exaggerating,” I said. “My patients kill themselves regularly. Its just that usually I don’t tell them they’re cured.”

He patted my shoulder twice and left. Susan waited until she heard the bathroom door close. She looked out the window. “This is ridiculous, you coming to me. I’m not qualified to judge your work, to answer these doubts. I know I’m right, don’t get me wrong, but you’ve always made too much of me.”

“You saved my life—”

“No—”

“—How can I make too much of that?”

“I’m competent. That’s all. You don’t have a realistic memory of our work together. You did most of it. You’d come in with a memory or a dream and, halfway through the session, you’d analyze it while I was still busy copying down what you said. You healed yourself with that meticulous brain of yours. And with your vision, your terrible, clear vision that won’t let anyone off the hook, especially not you. That’s the only character problem you’ve got left from the bad old days. You won’t give yourself a break.”

“You won’t tell me I failed because you’re scared of what I’ll do if I come to that conclusion. But you’re wrong, Susan. I can accept that I screwed up. I won’t freak.”

“No?” She stood up and began to cover things—the orange juice container, the cream cheese—while scolding me. “You threw away your life’s work at the clinic because of some crazy research that made you think maybe, just maybe, you
might
make a mistake. And not just
you.
You were worried maybe one of your colleagues would make a mistake.” Everything was covered now. She picked up the knife and licked off the white residue of cream cheese. “It’s clear as day to me that Gene was responsible for what happened to him. But I can’t convince you because deep down you know I’m not your equal. And you’re right. What you need is to go back to your real work with children. Every day you don’t work with them is a loss to the world. That’s your failure, Rafe. Not this—you should forgive me—this poor schmuck who destroyed himself and his family.”

“Susan, you reviewed my treatment of Gene just now and showed me that I made shifts in my approach to him because of events in my life. My technique was—”

“Oh come on! We’re human beings, Rafe. You know that. Of course that’s what happened. Good or bad, that happens with all therapists. It’s a relationship, after all.”

“Will you admit that it was at least partly my fault?”

“No.” She tucked the orange juice carton under her arm and loaded her hands with the empty bagel platter and the cream cheese. “It was Gene’s fault. You asked for my opinion. I admit I’m just an ordinary run-of-the-mill therapist but I’m telling you no one I know, no one I’ve ever met, could have done a better job.” With her hands full, she nodded at the rest of the brunch’s debris. “Help me clean up this mess.” The Good Witch wandered away from the sunlight. As she retreated into the dark, she called back, “Make yourself useful.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO
Judgment Day

I
DISTINCTLY REMEMBER WHEN MY PLAN FIRST TOOK SHAPE.
I
WAS OUTSIDE
my studio on the institute’s grounds, sitting in a lawn chair I had borrowed from the main house, positioned under a leafy maple for shade from the intense June sun. On my lap was a notebook in which I was trying to begin a standard case history of my work with Gene. I had recorded my successes; why leave out the failures? Contrary to what Susan said, there had been others, although none so shocking and unexpected as Gene. I decided to write a book of my mistakes, beginning with his case.

I intended to start with an account of my last few sessions with Gene. I was about to introduce Halley and Stick when I realized that, although I had been told over and over of Halley’s beauty and Sticks charisma, I had no idea what they looked like. For a moment I was convinced Gene had told me she was a blonde, but I became unsure. I would have to listen to the tapes again, a dismaying prospect. Well, it doesn’t matter, I concluded, and then it hit me.

It doesn’t matter? Surely it mattered to Gene and he was my subject. And Stick’s living presence also mattered, the timbre of his voice and the look in his eye when he fired Gene. Would I wish someone to tell my story, of my terror in Tampa, or my collapse in Great Neck, without knowing the sound of Bernie’s cello or at least taking a look at a picture of my skinny green-eyed mother and her tall Latin husband?

The hand poised to write halted. A breeze lifted the heavy arms of the maple. I shut my eyes as the moving air washed over me. I knew nothing about Gene’s life. I thought of myself as the greatest expert in the world on the subject, yet I had neither seen nor heard nor touched any of its crucial elements. When I opened my eyes, I closed the notebook.

About an hour later I walked into Prager’s research library to ask what kind of computer they used to store their database. I was disappointed, keenly disappointed, to hear it wasn’t Black Dragon or anything made by Minotaur Computers. I wanted to see one of the machines Gene helped build.

I phoned their corporate headquarters in Westchester. I intended to ask the operator to give me their sales department but an operator didn’t answer. At least not a live operator. There was an automated system. I was instructed, if I had a touch-tone phone, to press the pound key (I had no idea whether the pound key was the asterisk or the number sign) followed by the extension I wanted, or to press other numbers to reach various departments. If I did nothing, I was told an operator would be on to help me. One of the alternatives was to press five and the pound key to reach their executive offices. I guessed (wrongly) that the pound key was the asterisk.

“Good morning, Minotaur,” a female voice said almost immediately.

“Theodore Copley please.”

“His extension is eleven. Please make a note of it. I’ll transfer you.”

What was I going to say? I wondered. That was a novelty. Unplanned speech isn’t something psychiatrists engage in with a stranger. Of course, he wasn’t really a stranger.

“Mr. Copley’s office.”

“Is Mr. Copley there?”

“Mr. Copley’s out of town. May I take a message?”

“No, that’s all right,” I said, abruptly feeling stupid. “Is he in New York?” came out of me, without thinking.

“Until Wednesday he’s in the city. But he’ll be picking up his messages.”

“At the convention?” I continued with my blind guessing.

“Convention? No,” she enunciated slowly, becoming suspicious. “Can I take a message, sir?”

“No, I’ll call back. Thank you.”

I sat at my desk, my hand still on the cradled receiver, feeling foolish. I realized the first issue was whether they knew my name, or indeed, of my existence. Gene told me he wanted to keep it a secret from Stick that he was seeing a psychiatrist, but Cathy knew, and presumably he also told Halley. I couldn’t remember a specific reference to a discussion of his therapy with Halley and, upon reflection, that was odd. There’s usually quite a strong reaction from a patient’s partner about his or her psychotherapy. (Cathy, for example, frequently complained I was causing trouble in their marriage. She was perfectly right, of course.) At the very least there’s an overpowering curiosity; more typically resentment and criticism of the doctor; and sometimes competition that takes the form of the partner beginning his or her own therapy. Gene was besotted with Halley. He must have confessed everything about his life to her. She, I guessed, would have eventually informed Stick. If not before Gene’s suicide, certainly after.