The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

  "Still, it's no excuse. It happens to all of us. Patrick should take a restraining order against her. Has he done that?"

  Julia believed there were solutions to everything.

  "He says he's been to the police," began Ellen, but then she stopped and didn't bother to go into further detail. She wasn't entirely convinced that Patrick had told her the whole story about why he hadn't gone ahead with the restraining order.

  "Anyway, the silly woman just needs to pull herself together," said Julia, as if it was up to Ellen to pass on this instruction.

  "Yes."

  They lay there in silence for a few moments. Ellen was planning what she'd cook Patrick for dinner that night. He'd already cooked once for her, on a night when Jack was staying at a friend's place. It had been a very nice plain roast dinner, nothing too fancy, which was good, because she'd been out with men who fancied themselves gourmet cooks. It seemed like such an asset in the beginning, but then they were always so vain about it, hovering around the kitchen criticizing the way she chopped the garlic.

  Maybe she should do something with pork, seeing as he'd ordered the pork belly. Some nice tender pork medallions.

  "Do you remember Eddie Masters?" said Julia.

  "The butcher's apprentice," said Ellen, remembering a skinny, long-haired boy in a blue-and-white-striped butcher's apron. Julia had gone out with him when they were in their teens. Yes, pork. She would stop by at that expensive butcher in the arcade on the way home from the pool.

  "He went out with Cheryl from the chemist after me," said Julia.

  "The scary-looking girl. Actually, I think I just thought she was scary because she had her ears pierced twice."

  "Yes. Well, after Eddie dumped me I used to ring her house all the time. If she answered I'd just sit there, not saying anything, until she hung up. She'd scream all this abuse at me, and I'd just sit there, breathing. Not heavy breathing. Just breathing, so she knew I was there."

  "Julia Margaret Robertson!" Ellen sat up quickly, half pretending and half genuinely shocked. She looked at her friend, who was still lying with her hands clasped on her front. Julia had been school captain of the snooty private girls' school they'd both attended. She'd been slumming it with the butcher.

  Julia didn't open her eyes. She smiled devilishly.

  "I was thinking about your stalker and I remembered it," she said. "I hadn't thought about it for ages."

  "But it's so unlike you!"

  "I know, but I was shattered when he dumped me. I couldn't stop thinking about her, about why he chose her over me. I felt as if I didn't exist anymore. Ringing her up somehow made me exist. It was like an addiction. I hated myself afterward, and I'd think, I'm never doing that again, but then next thing I'd find myself dialing her number."

  "How did you stop?"

  "I don't know. I guess I just got over him."

  Julia paused and said, "You know what? Eddie the butcher was a beautiful kisser."

  "Didn't he have a goatee?" said Ellen. "A really wispy one? Like a bit of fairy floss hanging off his chin?"

  "Yes, and do you remember how he kept his packet of cigarettes stuffed into the sleeve of his T-shirt?"

  "It looked like a growth on his arm."

  "I thought it was unbearably sexy."

  They didn't say anything for a few seconds, and then they both dissolved into the sort of helpless, wheezing laughter unique to women who had spent their school days together.

  "You should look Eddie up on Facebook," said Ellen when they'd stopped laughing. "He probably has his own butcher shop by now."

  "Oh, God, I'm not that desperate," said Julia. "Anyway, I am perfectly happy being single."

  You're lying, my dear friend, thought Ellen, covertly observing Julia's body language: clenched hands, compressed lips. It had been two years since Julia's ex-husband had upgraded to the brunette.

  Julia lifted her head suddenly. "You didn't just make up that whole story about the stalker, did you? Is it a fable you've made up and the subliminal message is that I'm like the crazy stalker and I need to move on and start dating?"

  "What are you talking about?" But Ellen knew exactly what she was talking about.

  "I remember you told me once about that famous hypnotist, your hero or whatever, the guy who wore the purple cape."

  "Milton Erickson," sighed Ellen. "Gosh, you've got a good memory."

  People were always underestimating Julia. It was because she was so beautiful, and also because she had the sense of humor of a fourteen-year-old boy.

  "You said he used to treat patients by telling stories," continued Julia.

  "He used therapeutic metaphors," murmured Ellen.

  "Well, I've noticed that ever since William left me you've been casually telling me these little motivational stories about people overcoming obstacles, finding happiness after heartbreak."

  "I have not," said Ellen. She had.

  "Mmmm," said Julia.

  She lifted her chin and smiled at Ellen; Ellen grinned sheepishly back at her.

  "So Patrick's stalker isn't a therapeutic metaphor?"

  "She is not," said Ellen.

  They lay in silence for a few seconds.

  "So this Patrick has a crazy ex-girlfriend and a dead ex-wife," said Julia. "Sounds like a real catch. No complications whatsoever."

  "It doesn't feel complicated," said Ellen.

  "Yet," said Julia.

  "Thanks for your enthusiastic support," said Ellen.

  "Just saying."

  Julia sat up and took her towel off her head and dabbed it against her pink, shiny cheeks.

  "I bet you love the fact that he's a widower, don't you?" she said. "It makes him seem like a romantic tragic figure. It's just like Miles."

  "Miles?"

  "Miles. That one-legged boy you fell in love with in high school."

  "Giles," said Ellen. "And we all fell in love with the one-legged boy. He was gorgeous."

  This was the problem with being friends with someone who knew you when you were a teenager. They never quite take you seriously because they always see you as your stupid teenage self.

  It was true that she wasn't unhappy about Patrick being a widower. She quite liked the fact that it made things more complicated. It made her feel like she was part of the rich tapestry of life (and death). Also, it gave her a chance to demonstrate her professional skills. She imagined people saying to her, "Do you worry about his feelings for his wife?" and she'd say serenely, "No, actually, I don't." She would understand completely if he still had feelings for his wife. She would know instinctively when to draw back, when to let him grieve for her.

  "I never fell in love with the one-legged boy," said Julia.

  "No, you were too busy breathing down the phone line to your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend."

  "Aha! Touche!" Julia expertly flourished an imaginary sword. She'd been the school's fencing champion. She twisted the towel back around her head and lay down on the bench again.

  "Anyway, I've got an excuse for my stalkerish behavior," she said. "I was seventeen. Teenagers don't have properly formed brains. It's a medical fact. How old is your stalker?"

  "She's Patrick's stalker, not mine. She's in her early forties, I think." It was like pulling teeth getting the basic facts out of Patrick about Saskia. Ellen noticed that he avoided using her name wherever possible. He called her "that woman," or "bunny-boiler."

  "There you go. She's a grown-up woman. A middle-aged woman, in fact. No excuse. She's loopy. Loony bin material."

  Ellen sighed and stretched out her arms and legs as hard as she could, before releasing them and letting her body melt into the bench. "We're all a little crazy, Julia."

  Chapter 5

  "You will lose weight"/"You can become just as slim as you choose to be!"

  Look at the differences between these suggestions. The first could be described as authoritative, paternal and direct. The second could be described as permissive, indirect and maternal. Milton Erickson b
elieved that the unconscious mind would resist authoritarian suggestions. He was the first to use "artful vagueness." Don't you just love that phrase?

  --Excerpt from an advanced hypnotherapy

  class delivered by Ellen O'Farrell. Three students

  nodded, the rest stared at her, artfully vague.

  The news that she was unexpectedly meeting Patrick's son that night for the first time caused Ellen to feel a completely out-of-proportion sense of panic.

  "Sure! Of course, of course!" she said to Patrick, nodding her head like a maniacal puppet, when he rang to ask if it was OK to bring Jack along with him to dinner tonight because the kid from school he'd been planning to visit had come down with some virus.

  "He can just eat whatever we're eating," said Patrick. "Or we'll just order him a pizza or whatever. Don't stress. Oh, and he'll bring along a DVD to watch."

  So, what, should she give the child a sliver off each of their pork medallions? Should she rush out and buy him a lamb chop? But there wasn't time. She was seeing two clients that afternoon and the first one was due in five minutes.

  All she had to drink was champagne and wine. She needed Coke, or lemonade, or at the very least, juice. She had strawberries in liqueur and King Island cream for dessert, entirely inappropriate for a child.

  He'd expect ice cream. Cake. Cupcakes? Too childish? She mustn't insult him by treating him like a little kid. Good Lord. She needed hours to prepare for this. She needed to ring her friend Madeline, who was the expert on all things children; to text Julia, who would tell her she was being an idiot; to e-mail her friend Carmel in New York, who would order her a book on Amazon with a title like The Secret to Positive StepMothering; to Google "eight-year-old boys and how to talk to them without appearing desperate to be their mother."

  When she and Patrick had talked about her meeting Jack for the first time, they'd agreed that it would be during the day, not at night; probably a trip to the aquarium. Some sort of activity to keep the pressure off. She had planned to make funny, interesting, seemingly off-the-cuff (but actually carefully scripted) remarks about fish that would appeal to an eight-year-old boy.

  She felt a chill as she remembered something else: Her DVD player wasn't working. The poor motherless child would be bored out of his mind.

  Games! They'd have to play games. Did children still play board games? Or should they just sit around and talk? But what about?

  For a moment she actually felt close to tears.

  She needed to reframe this problem in a more positive light.

  Ellen, he's a kid, not the queen of England or the president of the United States.

  Well, that wasn't at all helpful because, actually, Ellen would be more comfortable meeting the queen or the president. The queen reminded her of her grandmother, whom she missed every day, and President Obama seemed like a jovial, chatty sort of fellow. Ellen was an only child who had grown up around adults, and her job brought her into contact with new people all the time. She wasn't shy, and although she had a tendency for self-loathing (working on this was an ongoing self-improvement project), she didn't really feel socially inferior to anyone.

  Except children. Yes, truthfully, she felt inferior to children.

  They were their own species with their own language and culture. They seemed so full of self-confidence these days. When she'd gone to the shops today after the pool, a little girl whom Ellen wouldn't have thought had been more than eight went gliding by, chatting away into a pink mobile phone. She was wearing a fur-lined hooded coat, her face was painted like a tiger and she was gliding because her sneakers appeared to have tiny wheels magically hidden in the soles. Not only that, her shoes had flashing pink lights along the side. Ellen had stared, full of wonder, at this exotic tiger princess on her invisible skates.

  A few of her friends had babies, but babies were easy. You could cuddle them, and make them laugh just by tickling their palms or blowing raspberries into their soft, sweet necks. Oh, she adored babies, but kids ...

  Actually, in spite of the fact that she was in her midthirties, many of her friends of similar age were childless. "You girls all think you've got forever," her mother said. "You do realize that you're born with all the eggs you're going to get? Not that I'm in any rush to be turned into a wrinkly, gray-haired old granny." A clipped laugh.

  OK, so Ellen didn't have much experience dealing with children. But it had to be more than that causing this sense of panic. She peeled back the layers of her consciousness with brutal efficiency to reveal the naked, hairy truth.

  She wanted to be this child's stepmother. She wanted him dressed in a cute little suit at her wedding. She wanted him to be a big brother to her own little baby, because she was thirty-five and born with all the eggs she was going to get. She wanted his daddy to be the one because she couldn't stand to look up another profile on that awful Internet dating site and find another middle-aged, bald, chubby man staring smugly at her out of the computer screen, demanding a "slim lady who takes care of herself, for snuggles and long walks along the beach." Yes, she wanted this child to love her and approve of her and save her from snuggles with chubby, smug men.

  And of course that was all too much, and all too soon, and all very embarrassing, and if the kid sensed her crazy desperation (and she suspected that children were like dogs, with an instinct for fear), then he would--

  The doorbell rang in an impatient way.

  Ellen looked at her watch. It was her two-o'clock client. She ran down the stairs, two at a time, and then stopped at the bottom and recited her standard pre-appointment affirmation: Breathe in, I am now fully present with this client, breathe out, I will give everything I have to give.

  She opened the door, smiling calmly and professionally. Neurotic Ellen was now safely stashed away in a closed cupboard at the back of her mind.

  The client was Rosie: her bride-to-be who had promised her fiance that she would give up smoking by her wedding day.

  She was a short, curvy woman with big trusting round eyes and a tiny gap between her two front teeth, giving her an innocent, childlike look. Ellen couldn't actually imagine her smoking. It would be like watching a toddler with a cigarette in her mouth.

  At their first session Rosie had mentioned that she was marrying "Ian Roman" and given Ellen an expectant look.

  I'm meant to recognize that name, thought Ellen.

  "He's in the media," said Rosie. "He's quite, um, prominent."

  And then Ellen thought, Ian Roman! It was one of those names that sank into your subconscious via osmosis. He owned newspapers or television stations or something. His name appeared in the financial pages. Not that Ellen made a habit of reading the financial pages.

  "So my married name will be Rosie Roman." Rosie gave an artificial little laugh.

  "You don't have to change your name," pointed out Ellen.

  "Oh, no, I'm not a career woman or anything." Rosie waved her hand dismissively, as if she'd just been offered something far too expensive for her tastes. "I'm just an ordinary person."

  Rosie seemed in a bad mood today, moving her head from side to side as if her neck was sore, and then pulling hard on the hem of her jumper as though it had shrunk in the wash.

  "How are the wedding plans going?" asked Ellen, leading her up the stairs.

  "Don't ask," said Rosie.

  "Oh, dear."

  "Stupid time to give up smoking, when I'm stressed out of my mind."

  "Not necessarily. It's often a good time to break a habit when you're out of your day-to-day routine."

  "I guess." Rosie didn't seem convinced.

  Ellen watched Rosie's shoulders relax as they walked into her glass office. The combination of the light and the ocean view was so powerful that sometimes she thought she probably didn't need to do much else for her clients but allow them to sit there.

  "So how is it going?" asked Ellen, when they were sitting down.

  "I'm still smoking like a chimney," snapped Rosie.

  Bef
ore Ellen had a chance to respond, Rosie said, "I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I know it's my fault. I haven't even been listening to the CD you gave me."

  Ellen had given her one of her CDs with a specially prepared script for breaking the smoking habit. She'd made them years ago, and clients were often effusive about them, although she found it unbearable to listen to her own voice.

  "Why haven't you been listening to it?"

  Many clients didn't get around to listening to her CDs, and they always told her this with guilty, defiant looks, as if they were admitting they hadn't done their homework but knew they couldn't really get into trouble because they were grown-ups and were paying for this.

  Rosie shrugged. "I don't know. I just can't seem to think of anything else besides the wedding. Like, for example, I despise the color I picked for the bridesmaid dresses. Apricot! It was like I was suffering temporary insanity."

  She lifted a chocolate out of the bowl and then dropped it again.

  "My fiance gave up smoking years ago. He just decided one day when he was driving along the F3. He wound down his window, threw out the half-full packet of cigarettes and never smoked again."

  "Litterbug," said Ellen.

  Rosie looked at her with surprise and giggled. "Yes." Then her smile vanished abruptly, as if she'd been caught out.

  There was something not quite right here. Ellen had a feeling that Rosie was lying to her about something. People were always lying, of course, whether consciously or not.

  "Do you want to give up smoking?" said Ellen.

  Rosie widened her eyes. "Of course!"

  "Well, sometimes there are unconscious blocks to letting go of a habit. I'm thinking we might do something a bit different and explore that today."

  "Sure," sighed Rosie. "Although I can tell you, there's nothing mysterious about it. I just need more willpower."

  "Well, let's see." Ellen paused, trying to decide on what induction to use. Then she knew the perfect metaphor. "What color do you wish you'd chosen for your bridesmaids?"

  "Blue," said Rosie immediately.

  "OK, would you like to choose a spot on the wall to focus on? Anywhere you like."

  Rosie sighed and shrugged and looked around the room. She kept her eyes fixed on the same spot in the far right-hand corner that almost everyone chose and said, "OK."

  "Soon you will blink."

  Rosie blinked.

  "That's right," said Ellen warmly. "And sooner or later your eyes are going to close. It might happen straightaway or it might take a little longer."