“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 animaclass="underline" 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.]