The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

  Bloody beautiful blond-haired laundry-powder-dissolving Colleen.

  "So, anyway, I thought now that we're engaged and with the baby and everything." Patrick cleared his throat and didn't quite look at her. "I thought maybe you could come along and meet them this Sunday?"

  Ellen took a deep, soothing breath. This was important to him. He was nervous about asking her.

  "Well, that would be nice, but I can't this Sunday," she said. "I'm having lunch with Mum and with--my father. I'm meeting him for the first time, remember?"

  Patrick had been excited about the sudden appearance in Ellen's life of a father. They'd talked about it at length, wondering together what he would be like (would there be a resemblance to Ellen?), wondering how he must be feeling, the strangeness of it, the awkwardness of it, the weirdness of Anne's behavior.

  "Oh, of course," said Patrick now, frowning, as he buttered the crumpets with far too much butter. "I'd forgotten. Could you change that, do you think? Meet him for dinner instead?"

  She didn't want to change it to dinner. Dinner was more intimate, more formal, more momentous. Lunch was just right. Light and breezy. "Hi, Dad, nice to meet you!" And she didn't want to go through all the bother of changing it anyway. Her mother would have a fit. Ellen had never seen her so tightly wound up about anything (and that was saying something, because her mother's natural state was uptight), as if everything depended on this one event going right. There had been a lot of uncharacteristic dithering about the choice of venue. A restaurant had been booked and then canceled. Another restaurant had been chosen and then discarded because she couldn't get a table with a view. When she'd finally settled on a Malaysian restaurant, she'd confirmed and reconfirmed the time and place with Ellen. Pip and Mel were on tenterhooks. Ellen's friends were demanding immediate updates as soon as she got home. She couldn't just casually change it.

  "This lunch is a really big deal for me," said Ellen.

  "I know it is," said Patrick. He came and sat down next to her, placing the plate of crumpets on the table. He gave her a pleading look. "But your dad wouldn't mind if you changed the time, would he? What about Saturday instead?"

  "Your dad." His very choice of words showed that he didn't understand the enormity of this meeting. She wasn't just having lunch with "her dad" in the same casual way that he would have lunch at the local shopping center with his own sweet father.

  "Well, why can't you change your lunch with Colleen's family?" Ellen kept her voice neutral and pleasant. This should be easy. This was just negotiating timing. This was the sort of thing that might lead to conflict with other couples but not with someone as emotionally evolved as her.

  Patrick winced and scratched the side of his jaw. "It's just that this is when we always meet. The last Sunday of the month. Even when Colleen was alive. It's a tradition. It's never changed. Her parents are quite old and conservative--they like things done a certain way. Also, I sort of--"

  He looked shamefaced and put down his crumpet.

  "I sort of told them you were coming. This is huge for them. It's huge for me. I've never introduced another woman to them. It will be hard for them--they'll feel like you're replacing Colleen. They're still grieving, of course. You never get over the loss of a child. But they're really keen to meet you! Millie said, 'Ellen is going to be a part of Jack's life, so we want her to be a part of our life too.'"

  Patrick shook his head in an amazed sort of way, and gave Ellen a sad, sentimental smile, as if she would be equally amazed by Millie's bravery.

  Ellen felt a surge of resentment against everyone. She didn't particularly want to meet the strange man who was her father this weekend. She didn't particularly want to meet Patrick's dead wife's family. (How could she not feel guilty for being alive when their only beloved child was dead?)

  She was pregnant. She had never felt so tired in her life. Her hallway was crammed with stuff. She just wanted to be left alone to sleep and sleep and sleep, and while she slept she would like Patrick to get rid of those boxes.

  That's what she wanted to do on Sunday.

  Patrick licked honey from his fingers. "Jack is excited about you meeting Millie and Frank. He told them you'd hypnotize them."

  "You told Jack I was coming before you even invited me?" said Ellen.

  "I know. I'm really sorry. I'm an idiot. I just had it in my head that you were coming."

  "But I can't come!" said Ellen.

  "But if you ask your dad--"

  "He's not my dad," said Ellen. She noticed her teeth were clenched together and made a conscious effort to relax her jaw. "I've never met the man. Please don't call him my dad."

  "Fine, I know that meeting your father is important to you. Obviously! It's huge. But I'm positive that he wouldn't mind if--"

  "I'm not changing it," said Ellen. "Just explain to Millie and Frank that I can't make it this time. I'll come next month."

  "Is it that you feel awkward about meeting them? Because they won't make you feel awkward. God, they were even nice to you-know-who--and that was only a short time after Colleen had died."

  "You-know-who? You mean Saskia? You just said two seconds ago that you'd never introduced another woman to Colleen's parents!"

  Patrick's voice rose. "Another sane woman. She doesn't count."

  Ellen's voice rose to meet his. "She counted then!"

  Patrick's face took on that look of controlled fury he got whenever Saskia's name came up. "Why are you taking her side?"

  "I'm just saying--" began Ellen.

  "Forget it. Forget about Sunday. Forget I ever mentioned it. You're right. We'll do it another time." He stood up. "I'm going to get some more stuff from the house."

  He slammed out of the kitchen without looking at her.

  "Thanks for eating all my crumpets!" Ellen yelled after him.

  Then to her complete astonishment she picked up the plate and threw it against a wall.

  Everyone is moving.

  Jeff from next door is moving down the coast. The lively new family will soon be moving in.

  Patrick and Jack are moving in with Ellen.

  I'm the only one standing still.

  Tonight after work I sat in my car outside Patrick's place while he loaded boxes into the back of his pickup truck. He obviously still doesn't believe in movers. I remembered the day that I moved in to his house. He insisted on moving all my stuff. He got Stinky to help him, while I looked after Jack. We went to the park down the road. There was another little toddler there about the same age as Jack, so we had to practice sharing. Jack thought the park belonged to him. The little girl was exactly the same. They both kept saying, "Mine! Mine!" while the other mother and I chanted those inane things parents say, "Share!" "Play nicely!" "Take turns!"

  The other mother sighed, "This stage is just so exhausting, isn't it?" and I agreed, except, of course, I didn't think it was exhausting because I was giddy with happiness. I was in love with Patrick, and I was in love with Jack, and the three of us were starting our new life together.

  That night we had pizza and beer, and we let Jack have a piece of pizza. His first ever. Patrick took photos. He said it was a historic moment. Jack had the funniest wide-eyed, blissful expression--like he couldn't believe that he'd lived on this earth for three whole years without knowing about the existence of this extraordinary thing called pizza. He chomped his way through it like a machine. "I know, mate, I'm with you," said Patrick. "Just wait till you have it with a nice cold beer."

  I was there when your son ate pizza for the first time, Patrick. I helped teach him how to share. I was there, and I'm still here.

  He didn't look too happy tonight as he dumped his boxes in the back of his pickup truck. He didn't look like a man who was getting married and having a baby. He looked sort of grumpy and middle-aged, to be honest.

  I guess it could have been the fact that he knew I was there watching him. I know my presence infuriates him, but, I don't know, I sensed there was something else. I know him better
than anyone.

  When he put the last box in the pickup truck, he came over to my car. I wound down my window and he bent down and leaned in and said, "Hi, Saskia."

  I was taken aback. He hasn't said my name in such a long time. Or if he had said it, he'd yelled it, as if even the very word "Saskia" was something evil and disgusting.

  This time he said it in such a normal way, like I was an old friend.

  And for a second I was filled with jubilant, insane hope. He's leaving her, I thought. He's back. It's him again. It's all over. All I had to do was wait it out.

  But then he spoke, and I saw that he was actually angrier than I'd ever seen him before. It was like he was carrying a bomb and he had to walk and talk very quietly and carefully so it wouldn't detonate. He said, "I don't want you going anywhere near Ellen again. Do you understand me? Follow me, if you must, but leave her alone. She's done nothing to deserve this."

  He was going all knight-in-shining-armor, protecting his fair maiden from the dragon. Me. I was the dragon.

  "I haven't--"

  "The book."

  "I was returning it!"

  "The flower." He spat out the word "flower." You'd think I'd left her a dead animal.

  "Patrick, I like Ellen," I said. I wanted to reassure him that I wasn't any danger to her. The flower was meant to be a sort of friendly, even apologetic gesture. I wanted her gone somewhere far away, yes, but I didn't want to hurt her.

  "Don't," he said sharply. "Don't even talk about her. Don't--Jesus."

  He took a deep breath and puffed up his cheeks to blow out. I remembered how we used to say to Jack, "Deep breath, deep breath," when he was having a tantrum and trying to learn how to control his anger.

  "Do you remember--" I started to say.

  "When is this ever going to end?" Now he was using this fake, flat, reasonable voice.

  I said, "I won't ever stop loving you, if that's what you mean."

  He said, "You don't love me. You don't even know me anymore. You love my memory, that's all."

  I said, "You're wrong."

  He sighed and said, "Fine, you love me, but what's the point? I'm marrying Ellen."

  I said, "I know. Congratulations, on the baby too."

  His face changed again, and he said, "How do you know about the baby?" And then he said, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know." He pushed himself away from the car and walked off.

  I called after him, "Do you remember when Jack ate pizza for the first time?"

  And then suddenly he stopped and went still, and he turned around and yelled, "Yes, I remember! We had some happy times! So what? So what?"

  He lifted his palms in the air, with his fingers splayed, and I saw his hands were trembling.

  "This can't go on," he said, and he really sounded quite strange. "This has to stop."

  "I know," I said, and I sounded and felt perfectly calm. "You have to come back to me."

  The plate Ellen had thrown against the wall was one of her grandmother's. It was part of a set that her grandmother had received as a wedding present from her own parents. Ellen loved that dinner set. If there was a fire, she'd run back to save it. She couldn't believe that she'd thrown one of those precious, irreplaceable plates against the wall. And over such a silly, trivial thing. It wasn't like Patrick had just announced he was having an affair. They'd just had a disagreement over conflicting social engagements!

  She did not behave like that. Imagine if her clients could see her!

  She knelt down on the floor and regretfully picked up the broken pieces.

  "I'm sorry, Grandma," she said out loud. "That was really embarrassing."

  She saw an image of her grandmother in the spirit world (she would be busy helping out on some spirit world committee; she had always been a very civic sort of person), looking up from her paperwork to observe Ellen over the rims of her glasses. "That's not like you, darling."

  "I know," said Ellen. "It's so strange!"

  The phone rang. It was her mother.

  "I just broke one of Grandma's plates," Ellen told her. "The wedding present set."

  "Those plates always gave me such a musty, fusty feeling," said Anne. "I'd keep them handy for throwing against the wall whenever you have an argument with Patrick. Not that you'd ever do anything like that, would you? I guess if you two have an argument you just meditate together, or chant or align your auras or something."

  "I actually did throw it against the wall," said Ellen.

  "You did?" Her mother sounded impressed.

  "Yes," said Ellen. She was suddenly furious with her mother. "And Patrick and I do not chant or meditate together and I do not believe in auras, well, not as an actual physical manifestation, and anyway, you don't align your auras, you align your chakras. If you're going to be cutting, at least get your terminology right."

  There was a pause.

  "I didn't mean to be cutting," said Anne in a softer placatory voice. "I'm sorry. I thought I was being witty. Actually, your father, ah, David, made a comment last night. He said I could be a bit 'sharp' at times. Perhaps he has a point."

  For some reason her mother's apology made Ellen feel even angrier. "Well, I assume you're not going to change your personality to suit a man!" she snapped. "You drummed that into me from when I was eight years old! When Jason Hood wanted to sit next to me at lunchtime, I told him that he couldn't because he might repress my personality. He said he wouldn't press anything and then he blushed and cried and ran away."

  Anne giggled. "Actually, I never said anything of the sort. You would have got that whole repression lecture from Melanie. I never believed any man was capable of repressing my personality, thank you very much."

  "You might be right," sighed Ellen, although she was sure it had been her mother. That was the problem with having three mothers; they all got mixed up in her memory. She pressed a fingertip to her forehead. "I think I have a headache. What were you calling about?"

  "Well, I just wondered if we could change this weekend's lunch. David and I have been invited to go up to the Whitsundays for a long weekend on a yacht, a sixty-foot yacht, if you can believe it! Some friends of his from the UK are in Australia at the moment. Bankers apparently. Very wealthy. By the sound of it they're weathering the financial crisis rather well."

  There was an undercurrent of pure pleasure running beneath her mother's normally clipped, cool tone. It occurred to Ellen that this was the sort of life Anne had always been meant to lead. Drinking champagne on a yacht, chatting with bankers. Next it would be shopping in Paris.

  "David didn't want to put off our lunch, but I said you wouldn't mind. Of course, I didn't tell him that you were totally blase about the whole event."

  "It's fine," said Ellen, but she was hurt. Her father had got a better offer. After all, he could meet the daughter he'd never met any old time. And now she would have no excuse not to go up to the mountains on Sunday and meet Colleen's parents. Wonderful.

  "Are you sure?" said her mother. "You sound upset. You're not upset, are you? Because it was me who said we should accept the invitation. I know it's horribly superficial of me, but I have to admit it just sounded so wonderfully ... decadent, I guess is the word."

  Her mother's honesty and slight embarrassment made her sound vulnerable. She was never embarrassed. Ellen's heart softened. She took a deep breath. For heaven's sake. Her emotions were skidding about all over the place.

  "It's perfectly fine. It's good, in fact. Patrick had something he wanted me to do."

  "Excellent!" said her mother. "Oh, by the way, I thought you'd be interested to hear that I've had not one but three patients tell me they've lost weight through hypnosis over the last week."

  "Is that right," said Ellen, not especially interested.

  "Yes, apparently they've been going to these 'hypno-parties.' They're all the rage in Sydney at the moment. They're like Tupperware parties but instead of handing around plastic containers they all get hypnotized. Then they drink champagne and eat car
rot sticks, I guess. Ladies of a certain age and income bracket are going crazy for them."

  "Fancy that," said Ellen. Well, good for Danny.

  Although it gave her an obscurely depressed feeling. What was the point of stock-standard hypnotherapists like her when there were dynamic young guys like Danny shaking up the industry?

  "Well, I have to run," said her mother. "We're off to the theater."

  "OK. Say hi to Pip and Mel."

  "I'm going with David, actually."

  "Oh," said Ellen. "What are Pip and Mel doing?"

  "I don't know, but David and I are seeing the new David Williamson play. It's opening night. We've got front-row tickets."

  "Of course you have," said Ellen.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Nothing. Say hi to Dad!"

  "Ellen?"

  "Sorry. I'm in an extremely peculiar mood. I'm fine. Have fun."

  She hung up the phone and looked at the tiny pieces of broken plate glinting on the floor.

  Everything she had ever believed would make her happy was happening. She had a father and a mother going to the theater together tonight. She had a fiance and a stepson and a baby on the way. Why wasn't she in seventh heaven? Why was she feeling so skittish and irritable? It couldn't just be pregnancy hormones combined with a simple fear of change, could it?

  She couldn't be so ordinary, could she?

  Aha! So you think you're extraordinary then, do you, Ellen?

  There was an enormous crash in the hallway and Ellen jumped. She ran out of the kitchen and saw that two of Patrick's boxes that had been piled on top of each other had toppled over and split open, spilling their contents in a great jumbled mess across the hallway floor.

  She could see an old dirty sneaker, CDs that had fallen out of their cases, tangled extension cords, a travel hair dryer, Christmas decorations, a fry pan, a Matchbox car, a bulging photo album that had fallen facedown, an old dustpan, coins, receipts ... stuff.