On March 15th, 1990, I began our last session by offering Gene the taped record of our work together. At first, he seemed embarrassed. He grinned, touched the hard shell of his moussed hair, and said, “What am I gonna do with them?”
“Whatever you like. I told you I needed them for our work but that’s over and—”
He raised his hand from feeling his smooth hair, like a student asking for the teacher’s attention and interrupted, “What happens if I need to come back?”
“I’ll keep them if you want. They’ll be safe. I just thought it was right to offer them.”
“No, you keep them. It’s too final if I take them.”
He talked about the situation with Halley. She was traveling a lot, trying to sell the company’s products, not the relatively popular Black Dragon, but their less successful line of personal computers. Her frequent absences relieved his feeling of urgency about his marriage and the affair. Besides, Halley had kept her word: she continued to see him when in town without pressuring him to leave Cathy. Of course, this had a perverse effect on Gene, worrying him that perhaps Halley didn’t love him as much as she claimed. I must admit I was skeptical about the authenticity of her feelings. Why had she taken a job with the company her father was running, especially since she didn’t seem to have any background or interest in computers? Why, if she was as beautiful and intelligent as Gene described her, was she involved with a married man who, to be blunt, didn’t seem sufficiently dynamic to inspire an illicit love? I guess I assumed from the slight facts that she was a female version of the old Gene — that she got herself into situations and relationships which were guaranteed to thwart her desires, probably because she didn’t want to face other, deeper needs. And she obviously had some version of an Electra complex, working for her Daddy, involved with his number one man. Probably, given Gene’s status as a kind of adopted son of Copley’s, there was an element of making love to a stand-in for her dead brother. And, perhaps unfairly, I assumed she was much less fascinating a woman than Gene believed her to be. Her true motivations were beside the point, however. What seemed utterly clear — and a little unpleasant — was that, for the first time in his life, Gene was in control of the people around him. Stick was under pressure at the company, in danger of being fired by the board for dipping sales, indebted to Gene for their only successful product and dependent on his management to bring in a new line for next year. Now that her husband needed her less desperately, Cathy had become a loving wife. Gene commented on this irony: “It’s weird, you know? It’s kind of sick. Now that I’m getting laid a lot, she wants sex. And it’s getting better. Not as good as with Halley, but better. I love her less,” he said, “and she seems to love me more.” He noticed Freudian oddities, observing that the names of the two women in his life were strangely similar: Cathy and Halley. “Sometimes I have to think twice before I say them, it’s so easy to make a mistake,” he told me and cackled, not truly mean-spirited, more a childish delight at his surfeit of pleasures. He was like the youngest sibling after the older ones have moved out — amazed and thrilled that he no longer has to worry about his big brothers and sisters gobbling up all the dessert before he gets his share. He looked at the choice in his life — to stay married or go off with Halley — nervously, of course; but also with excitement; that at last he was the playwright of his own drama. Whatever misgivings I may have felt about my help in freeing Gene’s id were calmed by my knowledge that in the end I was confident he was a caring man who would do his best for all of them.
“I’m probably gonna call you tomorrow,” Gene said. “I’m probably gonna be back here in a week.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“But just in case I pull this off, I want to thank you for—” he interrupted himself to say, “You know I spoke to Dad the other day.”
“How is he?”
“Complaining, as always. His career’s not going well. But, anyway, he asked me how I was doing and I told him, I really told him. Everything. You know.”
“Halley also?”
“Yep. And he actually lectured me about how important it was to try to keep my family together. Can you believe it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember how long he tried to.”
“I guess that’s right. Anyway, he said, even though he had a hard time living with Mom, that the years we were together, you know, when I was a kid, that, in the end, it was the happiest time of his life.” Gene swallowed, moved. When he could speak easily, he added, “He told me when he has another show, he’s going to put a picture of me and Mom in it, a picture he took when I was a child.” Tears appeared in Gene’s solemn eyes, the same worried and yet trusting eyes that had looked at me furtively thirteen years before, pleading for rescue. “He said I was a good son and that he was proud of me. He said he knew I would do the right thing.”
“I agree with him,” I said.
Gene sighed. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to say that to compliment myself.”
“You’re sure about that?” I asked with a smile.
“Really,” he smiled back. “I meant to say that I would never been able to talk to him about all this if it weren’t for you. I would never have been able to get through Black Dragon, or have had the nerve to come on to Halley. Even if that was wrong, it made me happy. It’s thanks to you.”
“Well, you’re welcome. But you—”
He interrupted. “I know. I did it. Still. Thanks.”
He stood up, dressed that day in fashionable black shoes, faded blue-jeans, a black polo shirt, and a light gray sport jacket, his hair slicked back, his eyes, at our parting, at last direct and unafraid. He put out his hand and said, “I hope this is goodbye, Dr. Neruda.”
As I shook it, I have to admit a surge of vanity: I was proud of what I had wrought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Closure
JOSEPH STEIN DIED A YEAR AFTER MY LAST SESSION WITH GENE. HE survived less than two years since testing positive, a mere fourteen months following the first symptoms of full-blown AIDS. To the horror of his colleagues and friends, he made no attempt to stave off the disease, refusing not only standard therapies but those in the experimental stage that, in his privileged position, he could have had access to. He dropped out of sight after the onset, severing contact with everyone, including his lover, Harlan. No one knew that he took a long tour of Asia and Europe. Later we found out that during his travels he twice fell ill with pneumonia and tried to avoid hospitalization. The second time, the delay in getting treatment killed him: the infection was too far gone and complications led to heart failure. He died, of all places, in Poland. His behavior was pointed, clearly suicidal. He knew better than anyone that with proper preventative care he might have lived for many years. I learned of his death from his mother. She nursed him for the final three days of his life. At last her nightmare came true: she returned to the scene of the Holocaust, to the sick bed of a son who was vulnerable to every germ.