Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I was sincere, although not honest. I felt sorry for him. What else did he know but control? He was obliged to be in charge from when he was my age. I knew how hard that was: I remembered the loneliness and fear of being on my own for just two nights and days. I admired my uncle, despite the dubious morality of his success. I understood that the survival of his family had depended on his ability to harness capitalism’s power.

  He woke up from his contemplation. “Why are you sorry? I liked being in charge.”

  “I’m sorry ’cause you didn’t have a choice,” I said.

  He bowed at that, as if I had produced an idol he was obliged to worship. He twisted his wedding ring again and again, eyes fixed on its gold. “Are you happy here?” he asked and looked up at me.

  I was afraid of his question. Was it a prelude to bad news? I didn’t believe for one moment that I could allow myself to express any ambivalence. “It’s great here!” I said with a piercing note of enthusiasm worthy of the Broadway stage.

  Bernie straightened. His worried grin opened to a smile.

  “Thank you so much, Uncle,” said Little Orphan Rafe. I rushed toward him, partly to hide my face from the pressure of his gaze, as well as to let go of the real gratitude I didn’t want to feel. What an alloy of manipulation and reality I was. (At the time, I believed I was a total liar.) I hugged him with abandon, pushing my face into his blue silk tie and Turnbull & Asser white shirt.

  “Oh, that’s okay, boy,” his cello rumbled with regret. He squeezed me tight. “You’re such a polite and good boy. You don’t have to thank me. I didn’t mean that.” Gently, he urged me off from the finery of his clothes. I was crying. From stress more than anything else: the dread that yet another horror was about to happen. “You’re welcome to stay here no matter what, until Ruthie—until your Mom gets well—or even longer if she likes. Maybe she’ll come and live here too. But is there anything wrong? Anything you want to be different?”

  I moved away from Uncle with my face averted. I controlled the tears, relieved there was no bad news. The emotional release and his kind reaction encouraged me, but only some. To repeat: I couldn’t be sure that I could afford to admit to a single genuine desire.

  “You can tell me,” he played low. “I won’t get angry.”

  “Can I see my Mom?” I asked fast, as if the speed would somehow make the request less of a risk. It had been more than a month. I wondered sometimes if she was still alive. They talked about her as if she were, but that hardly reassured me. I knew that grown-ups lied, especially about important things.

  “Well, she’s at the hospital and I don’t think they allow children to—”

  “Okay, forget it,” I said fast, hurrying to reel in my request. I yanked hard, hoping a quick retraction might also remove the memory of its existence. I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. There was no obstacle capitalism could put in place that my uncle couldn’t have removed for his convenience.

  “You miss her,” he said as if this were a surprise. Was he surprised that he couldn’t completely replace her for me? Or was he surprised that he didn’t miss her? I think his lack of feeling for her, and the enjoyment of raising her child, was a mystery to his conscious mind. Although only nine years old, thanks to a boy’s understanding of competition, more intimate and honest than any adult’s, I understood there was some pleasure for my uncle in my mother’s psychotic breakdown: the pleasure of winning, a clear confirmation of his superiority. Of all the siblings only Ruth had spurned his help and now she had to accept it, to submit her most precious possession to his control.

  “Not too much,” I said and almost believed the lie.

  “What about your father? Do you want to see him?”

  I was on full alert now. In the primary imagery of the paranoid and apocalyptic sixties, my bombers flew to their fail-safe positions and prepared for nuclear conflict. “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  Why not? My God, I hadn’t thought up a why not. I used the child’s best defense. “I dunno,” I mumbled. “I’m tired,” I said.

  “Think about it. You can go to sleep in a minute. Don’t you want to see your father?”

  I shrugged again and fell onto my bed. There was an unquiet silence, the false stillness of an ambush. From my sideways view of Uncle he remained in a fixed position on the child’s chair, elbows resting on his legs, his Buddha head in his hands, contemplating me. I wasn’t going to stop his interrogation that easily. “Am I going to visit Grandma and Grandpa this summer?” I asked in an innocent tone.

  I was a good tactician. Bernie’s focus was disrupted by my introduction of Jacinta and Pepín. He sat up and released me from his stare. “Your father’s parents,” he said and paused at the fact, as if it had a significance he understood only then.

  “I always visit them in the summer.” Whenever I re-read my father’s letter, I wondered if something that he alluded to—a secret method for my mother to get a message to him—might be known to Jacinta and Pepín. But I didn’t have the nerve to ask Bernie to allow me to phone them. Besides, I was discouraged by the fact that they hadn’t called or written me.

  “I thought you wanted to go to summer camp,” Uncle said. We both knew that was an evasion. He was embarrassed by it himself. He stood up, went over to the window and pulled the cream-colored drapes closed.

  “Does camp go the whole summer?” I prodded.

  “Well, well figure this all out. Hey, it’s very late. Hurry up and get into your pajamas.”

  I rushed to do so. I picked out light blue cotton Brooks Brothers pajamas. Of course, the store label had resonance for me, sending out a strong vibration of both my parents. Holding the fabric, I could hear the voices in lively argument—funny, passionate, and clearly audible above the hubbub of their communist friends. I remembered the surf of New York City’s traffic and I felt their breath on my cheeks as they dispensed good-night kisses.

  While I stepped into the bottoms, Aunt Charlotte walked in. I hurried to cover up. It seemed to me she looked at my penis with an almost scientific dispassion, but I’m confident this is a notion of my premature sexualization. It’s fair to say that I had little more than the status of a servant in her eyes, only I was extra trouble since I took up more time and energy than the lazy cook or incompetent maid. I don’t think she really noticed my nakedness. But she did have a male member in mind.

  “It’s late,” she said to her husband in a scolding and suggestive tone. “I’m going to bed now. Aren’t you coming up?”

  “Just want to tuck Rafe in,” Uncle answered in a sheepish, unmusical voice. I was surprised by the meek tone with which he answered his wife. I had little experience of their relationship. He rarely talked to Aunt Charlotte when I was around, mostly because they weren’t often together, usually only on state occasions such as that day and thus when they had their guests to entertain. I knew she wanted him to join her upstairs for the pleasure a man could give a woman. I understood in a way that normal children couldn’t have. His abashed response interested me. Was there something frightening about having sex with her? I looked at her, considering this side of their relationship. Charlotte’s hair was in a Jackie Kennedy puff, dyed a severe, almost platinum blonde. Her full bosom was more of a formidable shelf than the warm small pillows of my mother or Eileen’s lively freckled pair. And certainly she had nothing of the mystery and thrill I associated with the birth of Julie’s passionate and idealistic breasts. I wished I could see them all bare to the waist, nipples revealed, instead of mere glimpses of white flesh flowing into intervening bras. I wished they were all on a couch together with their tops off and I could go from one to another, resting my head on each, sailing on Aunt Charlotte’s, asleep on my mother’s, laughing on Eileen’s, and growing up on Julie’s.

  “Well, I’m going upstairs,” Aunt Charlotte said. “I don’t know how long I can keep my eyes open so don’t take forever.”

  No doubt she believed I had no
idea what all that meant. I hurried into bed while Uncle turned out the overhead light and desk lamp. I hugged my knees to my chest. I felt safe, but lonely.

  Uncle’s perfumed face closed in on mine. I don’t remember which cologne he used that day. He changed brands often. He had worked in the fish market at age twelve, in the predawn before school, and had been teased about the smell by other boys. (This was another sad story of his childhood that he told proudly as a happy and formative time which had not hurt him, but helped make him great. Underneath the braggadocio, however, it was obvious he felt otherwise. He worked at the Fulton Market for only three months and yet the stink of that humiliation still clung to him in his twenty-four-room Great Neck mansion.) He hovered above me, smelling tart, the starched cuff and gold arrow-shaped link scraping my chin. His hairy fingers rested on the pillow. “You really miss your Mom?” he whispered into my ear.

  That sent a jolt through my heart. I shut my eyes at the pain. “Yes,” I whispered and held my breath at the chance I took.

  “You really want to see her?”

  “Yes,” I leaked the word and shut the valve fast, afraid of the deluge behind it.

  “But if you had to choose—” he hummed in my ear, the bow slipping and buzzing its note, “who do you want to live with, me or your parents?”

  I hugged my knees, turned my face toward the pillow, away from his arrow cuff link and pungent face. “I want to stay with you, Uncle,” I said and shivered with such violence that my teeth clicked together.

  He kissed my temple and left. I waited until I felt sure he wouldn’t return. Then I told myself to let go and cry. But there were no tears. I lay awake until Eileen came in from her night off. She was humming a tune. I knew she had been out on a date with a carpenter from the Old Country who had just emigrated and found a lot of work in the area. They were good times for New York; houses were going up everywhere on Long Island. I got a glimpse of Eileen tiptoeing across the hallway in her bra and panties as she went to fetch a clean nightgown from an ironed pile of laundry left by the maid outside her door. I pushed my hurt aside and instead held the fleeting image of her pink skin, mottled and bright, fixed in its place. I listened to her sing “Danny Boy” while she brushed her hair in the bathroom. She sang low so as not to wake me. Her voice was sweet, free of the darkness and intensity of my kin. I heard no sadness or loss in the lyrics. I fell asleep without tears.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Misdiagnosis

  AUNT SADIE WAS NERVOUS. SHE SWUNG MY HAND BACK AND FORTH TO soothe me, but her palm was gooey with perspiration. I was nervous also. I tapped my brown loafer on the marble floor, unable to stand still. We were in a large reception hall of the Hillside Psychiatric Hospital, a private facility set on four acres in Great Neck, waiting for Uncle Bernie to return from his conference with my mother’s psychiatrist. We hoped Uncle would come back with permission for me to see her.

  The central hall was part of Hillside’s grand main structure, a stone and marble mansion built by one of the Roaring Twenties stock manipulators. His ruin in the crash and the forced sale of his possessions at depressed prices led to Hillside’s creation by Dr. Frederick Gulden. Gulden was an early refugee from Nazism, trained by Freud himself, who had earned the good will of a wealthy widow for the “cure,” or improvement anyway, of her manic-depressive son. In the late forties, Dr. Gulden added a three-story concrete dormitory for patients and the mansion itself was converted into offices and consulting rooms. The reception hall’s high domed ceiling and sweeping marble staircase was an oddly imposing entrance for a sanitarium. Nor did the mahogany reception desk and its sour-looking occupant, Bill Reedy, make the place more inviting. Reedy drank heavily every night, nursing his hangover while on duty, staring at prospective patients and their nervous families through bloodshot eyes. He looked enraged that anyone had dared to enter his domain.

  I was intimidated by Reedy’s face: it started my foot going again. That disturbed Aunt Sadie. “Don’t tap your foot, honey,” she whispered and its echo scurried across the marble floor up to Reedy’s florid cheeks and squinting eyes. His frown intensified, as if focusing to identify me as a miscreant. That set off another fusillade of foot tapping, completing the vicious circle.

  Uncle Bernie was conferring with Dr. Halston, who ran Hillside in the 1960s for the semi-retired Dr. Gulden and, given Uncle’s stature, had personal charge of my mother’s case. When Bernie returned with him, they led us into a reception room in the dormitory wing. Its walls were painted green down to the level of the mopboard, then white down to the linoleum floor. The room where I saw my mother was furnished like a doctor’s reception area; a couch, a love seat, a coffee table, a lamp, a magazine stand, and museum posters of masterpieces on the wall.

  Ruth sat on the couch, shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on a copy of Time that someone had left open on the coffee table. Her hands were limp at her sides, palms up. She was very thin and her face seemed devoid of blood. I almost screamed—I thought she was dead.

  Aunt Sadie sensed my panic. Her grip tightened and she pulled me close. My mother didn’t look up.

  “Your son is here,” Dr. Halston said. He had thinning blond hair combed straight back and, as long as I knew him, wore glasses whose thick black frames looked more like goggles for a World War II pilot than aids for weak vision. He was a compact muscled man with a military posture, but his voice was thin and rather high-pitched. There was little natural warmth in it to begin with and Freudian training washed out any other coloration. “Ruth. Look.” Halston waved Aunt Sadie to bring me forward. “Your boy is here to see you.”

  As soon as I realized she wasn’t dead, I recovered my nerve. I broke off from Sadie, rushed to the couch and tried to hug my mother. I hadn’t been given any instructions or advice by Halston about how to behave or what to expect. (I cannot fathom why not; I am amazed that no one discussed her condition with me in advance. Perhaps my memory is faulty.) Ruth didn’t move. I pressed against her awkwardly, trying to fit into her limp body. Once I had wished she would never touch me again; now I longed for the energy and passion of her abuse. I felt her love for me had died.

  “Mom,” I said into her ear, leaning my cheek against hers, my arms attempting an embrace. “I’m here, Mom.” I held a rag doll. I smelled her. Someone had perfumed her with an unfamiliar scent. She was dressed in a demure white blouse and a long blue skirt. The clothes were unlike her usual style, which was both more dramatic and always sexy. Hillside was really an institution for the wealthy, or more often, the mentally ill relatives of the rich. Except on the rare occasion that a patient became violent and required restraint (before the widespread use of antipsychotic drugs), Hillsiders were encouraged to dress neatly in their regular clothes; even catatonic patients were carefully groomed. Obviously someone had made up Ruth for the occasion. I was put out by her rouge, her eyeliner and lipstick. All were applied by a stranger. The incorrectly drawn lines made this Ruth seem more like an lifeless imitation, an approximate mannequin of my mother.

  I wanted to cry but I was worried the visit would end if I showed I was upset. Dr. Halston urged me off Ruth, saying, “She needs time to get used to you being here.” To hide my feelings, as I slid away to sit beside my mother, I pushed my forehead against the outside of her shoulder. She didn’t react, hands at her side, palms up, face immobile, eyes blank and fixed on Time magazine. It was awful, worse than any state I had yet seen her in, worse than her rages, worse than her brutalized body on the car, worse than her seductions. She wasn’t human.

  Uncle came forward. His cello didn’t resonate with its usual confident sound. “Ruthie,” it quavered. “Rafe is fine, as you can see. We all want you to get better. Everything is taken care of. I don’t want you to worry. When you’re feeling better, you can come live with me, and raise Rafe, and …” I heard a tear in his powerful voice, a note of boyish awe and distress. He trailed off. “And … uh … everything will be okay. That’s all. Don’t worry.”

  I peeke
d out at Ruth’s profile. I felt that Uncle’s unusual display of tenderness would move her. No. She looked right through him.

  Sadie covered her mouth, quelling a sob. She turned away. Bernie backed off, appalled. “I thought with Rafe here …”

  Halston took my uncle by the elbow and moved him toward the door. He mumbled as they retreated, “No, she’s totally schizo. Living in a fantasy world. I doubt she knows you’re here.”

  Aunt Sadie choked out a phrase, “Don’t talk about it.”

  I assume Sadie meant because of my presence, since Bernie’s reaction was to glance in my direction. He turned, and nudged Halston to turn away, giving us their backs while they talked in whispers. Aunt Sadie joined them, forming a huddle at the far end of the room.

  It was a short time, perhaps ten seconds, while Sadie, Bernie, and Halston weren’t looking my way. I continued to kneel on the couch, angled toward my mother, my nose flattened against her shoulder. Ruth’s eyes suddenly flashed with intelligence and mockery; big and green, they moved in their sockets while her head remained still. She whispered rapidly, lips hardly moving: “Rafe. Don’t react. Just listen. Everything they say is a lie. I’m playing possum. I’ll come get you soon as I can. Keep my secret or they’ll put you in here. Be brave.”

  “Mom …” I started to answer, but I was stopped when Ruth’s eyes glazed over and died. I glanced at the door to see Halston peer in our direction. Because of their thick black frames, his glasses were so obstructive that I couldn’t tell whom he was scrutinizing, me or my mother. After a brief survey, Halston returned to the huddle.

  Immediately Ruth’s eyes came to life. Her lips moved into a smile. “Fool,” she whispered.

  “Mom,” I said into her ear. “You’re not crazy?”

  Her profile crinkled with delight. “No. Read Hamlet.”