The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

  She glanced over at him and caught an expression of almost terrified vulnerability cross his face. For an instant he looked exactly like his son.

  "When I'm nervous I just start coming out with all this crap that doesn't even make sense." He frowned as he looked in the rear-vision mirror. "Also, I'm sort of distracted because our friend is back."

  "Friend?" said Ellen.

  "Our bunny-boiler friend. Behind us."

  "Saskia is following us again?" Ellen swung around in her seat and scanned the cars behind them. "Which one is she?"

  "Yeah, that's great. That's fantastic. That's one thing you really need, your ex following you to meet your girlfriend's family for the first time," muttered Patrick.

  "Yes, but where is she?" The seat belt pulled hard across Ellen's neck. Directly behind them was a man in a truck, his eyes closed, thumping his hands against the big steering wheel, his mouth moving as he sang along to an unheard song.

  "She's in the lane next to us, a couple of cars back," said Patrick. "Don't worry. I'm going to lose her."

  He slammed his foot down on the accelerator and the car shot forward. Ellen turned around in time to see the lights change from orange to red. When she looked back, they were crossing the intersection, leaving a bank of stationary cars at the lights.

  "What color?" she said desperately. "What color car?"

  "Lost her," said Patrick happily. "Look. We're moving again."

  "Great," said Ellen, and rubbed at her sore neck.

  I lost them at the lights and I couldn't guess which way they were going.

  Maybe they were meeting up with friends of hers. Patrick doesn't know anyone down that way.

  I saw her turning around in her seat. I wonder if she was trying to see me. Patrick probably knew I was behind. I know when he knows I'm behind him. He drives faster than usual, erratically. Sometimes he sticks his finger up at me. Once I saw him getting a ticket for doing an illegal right-hand turn trying to get away from me. I felt bad about that because he'd always been proud of the fact that he'd never got a ticket in over twenty years of driving. I sent him a bottle of wine to his work to apologize. I picked it out especially. A Pepper Tree white. We'd discovered that wine on a trip to the Hunter Valley during our last summer together. We bought a whole case and we got addicted to it. I don't see how he could drink that wine without thinking of me. But I waited outside his office that night, and I saw one of the girls he worked with walking to her car carrying my bottle of wine. I recognized it because I'd wrapped it up in blue tissue paper. He didn't even bother to open it. He just handed it to that girl.

  I try to imagine how he describes me to the hypnotist. To Ellen. I guess he tells her I'm "psychotic." He yelled that at me once. I was walking behind him at his local shops, when he suddenly swung around and walked straight back toward me. I stopped and waited for him, smiling. He was smiling too. I thought we were finally going to have a proper conversation. But then, when he got closer, I saw it was a sarcastic, angry smile. He stuck his finger in my face and yelled, "You're a psychotic lunatic!"

  Which ... you know, might have been funny in other circumstances, except that I was worried he was going to hit me.

  He was so angry he was shaking.

  Actually, I sort of longed for him to hit me. I needed him to hit me. If he wasn't ever going to hold me in his arms again, at least he could hit me. There would be a connection once more. Flesh against flesh.

  But he didn't. He locked his hands behind his neck and rocked his head like an autistic child. I just wanted to comfort him. He didn't need to get so worked up. It was only me. I'm still only me. That's what he can't seem to get. I said, "Darling."

  He dropped his hands and I saw that his eyes were red and watery. He said, "Don't call me that," and he walked away, and I stayed where I was, looking at the specials pinned up on the window of the shop where we always got fish and chips on a Sunday night.

  That's the thing. I'm permanently stuck in this crazy person role now. He will always think of me as a crazy person. He used to think I was a "funny bugger" and I had "beautiful eyes" and that I was "one of the most generous people he'd ever met." Those were all things he said to me, things he meant at the time.

  But now I'm just crazy.

  The only way for me to not be crazy would be to disappear from his life. Like a proper ex-girlfriend is expected to do. To discreetly vanish into the past.

  And that's what drives me ... crazy.

  Ellen could see Patrick's "fight or flight" response kick in as soon as they walked across the doorway of her mother's home.

  Oh, my poor darling, she thought. She remembered the first time she'd taken Jon to meet her mother; the way he'd looked about with those lazy, hooded eyes, so certain of his own superiority. Patrick's clear green eyes were darting about as if looking for possible escape routes, and he was clearing his throat over and over.

  It mattered to him what Ellen's mother thought. It mattered, and that meant Ellen mattered.

  Poor man. It was understandable that he was nervous. Jon was an exception; most men would find this intimidating.

  Three immensely elegant, immensely confident women in their sixties, all holding the delicate stems of their wineglasses with their fingertips, all bizarrely dressed almost entirely in white, to complement her mother's all-white theme--white couches, white walls, white accessories--all swooping down from the high stools on which they'd been perched to kiss Patrick on both cheeks. And Patrick, who only expected to be kissed on one cheek and kept offering the wrong one, having to bend awkwardly at the knees so they could reach him.

  "Why are you all dressed in white?" asked Ellen. "You're blending into the furniture."

  There were peals of laughter.

  "We couldn't believe it when we saw each other!" gurgled Pip.

  "We look like that Bette Midler movie. First Wives Club. Not that we've ever been wives." Ellen watched her mother's eyes rest on Patrick's tradesman-out-on-the-town outfit of blue jeans and long-sleeved Just Jeans checked shirt rolled to the elbows. Jon wore Armani and Versace and some other Italian men's designer label that was so very special Ellen had never heard of it.

  "Ah, Anne, Mel is a wife," pointed out Pip.

  "Of course she is. I just never think of her as one. Which is a compliment, Mel."

  "I'm so flattered, Anne."

  "Who else was in that movie?" mused Pip. "Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and somebody else. Someone I like. Do you know, Patrick?"

  Patrick looked startled. "Ah, I'm not--"

  "We finally worked out it was because we'd all read the same article in Vogue," said Mel. "About flattering colors for women in their fifties. Not that we're technically in our fifties."

  "Speak for yourself," said Anne. Ellen's mother found it genuinely insulting to be reminded of her actual age.

  "You're thirty-four days older than me, Anne O'Farrell."

  "Diane Keaton!" cried Pip. "That was the third wife. Thank goodness I got it. That was going to drive me crazy for the whole night."

  "Patrick, what can we get you? Beer, wine, champagne, spirits? You sound very dry." Ellen's mother flicked her hand at the sideboard containing a selection of drinks on ice, while keeping her violet eyes upon Patrick, like a bird on its prey.

  (Anne's eyes were her most striking feature. Her friends had wanted her to enter an Elizabeth Taylor look-alike competition when she was young, and she probably would have won if she hadn't thought such competitions beneath her. Unfortunately, she hadn't seen fit to pass on her beautiful eyes to Ellen. Obviously this wasn't really her decision, except that Ellen had always suspected that if her mother did have the choice, she might have decided to keep all the glory for herself. She was very vain about her eyes.)

  Patrick cleared his throat again. "A beer would be great, thanks, ah..."

  "You haven't actually introduced us properly yet, Ellen. The poor man probably thinks he's stumbled into some sort of elderly harem."

  "You haven't stop
ped talking," said Ellen. She put her hand on Patrick's arm. "Patrick, this is my mother, Anne."

  "Can you see the resemblance?" Anne fluttered her eyelashes up at him as she handed Patrick a glass of beer.

  "I'm not ... I'm not sure." Patrick clutched his hand around his beer.

  "And my godmothers, Mel and Pip," continued Ellen, ignoring her mother. "Or are you Phillipa tonight? She switches back and forth."

  "Depending on whether I'm skinny or fat," said Phillipa. She beamed at Patrick and waved a hand up and down her plump body. "So it's perfectly obvious who I am right now, hey?"

  An expression of pure panic flew across Patrick's face.

  "Phillipa," remonstrated Ellen.

  "Aha! So not thin enough for Pip! I have to come back to you for some more hypnotherapy sessions, Ellen." Phillipa turned to Patrick with a deadly serious expression on her face. "I suffer the most debilitating addiction to carbohydrates."

  "That's..." began Patrick. He obviously had no idea how to finish the sentence, and drank his beer as if his life depended on it.

  "I have tried to get Ellen to hypnotize my addiction away."

  "She giggles the whole way through," sighed Ellen, as her mother passed her a glass of white wine without asking what she wanted; she would have preferred a juice.

  "Come and have a sensible conversation with me, Patrick," said Melanie. She patted the stool next to her. "Ellen said you are a surveyor, right? My grandfather had a wonderful collection of old maps he left to me. I think the oldest dates back to about 1820."

  Patrick took his beer glass away from his lips and spoke in his normal voice. "Is that right?"

  Mel got Patrick settled next to her, and pushed a plate of bread and salmon dip toward him. Ellen watched Patrick's shoulders relax as Mel chatted calmly to him, steering him on to stable, factual masculine conversational ground where he could be sure of his footing. She always thought that Mel should have been a diplomat's wife because of her ability to talk graciously and knowledgeably on any subject.

  (Although Mel herself would have found that a very sexist remark. "I'd be the diplomat, thanks very much," she would have said.)

  "Let's go help your mother." Phillipa grabbed Ellen by the arm.

  "Why, how kind of you, Pip," said Anne, her violet eyes still on Patrick.

  "Oh, darling, he's just adorable!" said Phillipa as soon as they were in Anne's pristine kitchen. "I bet he's one of those strong, silent types, isn't he? I can just see him on a mountaintop with his surveying equipment, squinting into the sun."

  "No," said Ellen (although that was exactly the way she liked to imagine him). "He's not like that at all. He's very chatty when he gets a chance to be. And he mostly does surveys on houses."

  "Oh, to be young and in love," said Phillipa nostalgically. "I loved being in love. I always lost so much weight."

  "I remember you sitting in this kitchen and saying, 'Oh, to be young and in love,' to Julia and me when we were seventeen," said Ellen. She paused. "And that means you weren't that much older than me now!"

  "Speaking of Julia," said her mother, who never required anyone's help and was now giving the last-minute touches to delicately constructed meals on giant square white plates that would be divinely flavored but would no doubt leave Patrick suggesting pizza on the way home and Phillipa reaching for the breadbasket. "I saw Julia's mother at yoga on Saturday. She said your new boyfriend has a stalker."

  "The grapevine is so efficient," said Ellen. It sometimes felt like she'd never left that closed little private-school world of her school days where all her friends' mothers were on the same committees.

  "A stalker!" Phillipa's eyes popped. "How exciting!"

  "Oh, yes, it will be all very exciting, Pip, when my daughter is found dead in a ditch." Anne spoke from inside her walk-in pantry.

  "Is it an ex-lover?" continued Phillipa, ignoring Anne. "A woman he spurned? Or just a random homicidal maniac who has taken an interest in him?"

  Anne came out of the pantry and put a bottle of vinaigrette down on the bench top with unnecessary force. "Has this person shown any violent tendencies?" she asked. "Has Patrick reported her to the police?"

  "It's just an ex-girlfriend who hasn't quite moved on," said Ellen. "There's really nothing to worry about."

  She wondered how her mother would react if she knew Saskia had been following them tonight, or if she knew that Ellen had felt a discernible sense of disappointment when they lost her at the lights.

  Anne said, "Just promise me you'll be careful. You always see the good in people, Ellen, which is all very adorable but also naive."

  Ellen smiled at her. "I must get that adorable tendency from my father."

  Anne didn't smile back. "You certainly didn't get it from me."

  "Too right," said Phillipa and giggled so hard she snorted.

  I couldn't decide where to wait for them.

  Patrick's place or hers. I knew it would depend on what they were doing with Jack for the night. Mostly Patrick's mum seems to go over to his place and mind Jack, but sometimes Jack goes to her place, and I guess he stays in their spare room. It's not very fair to Maureen. I remember she used to get exhausted when we left him with her as a toddler. He had her wrapped around his little finger. Although of course it would be different now that he's eight. I guess he probably just does his own thing--watches TV or whatever. I hope Patrick doesn't let him watch too much TV. I hope he reads. He used to love his books. I remember once I decided to see how many times I could read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar before he got sick of it. I had to give up after I'd read it to him fifteen times. Every time I finished he'd say "Again?" with the same enthusiasm. I can still see his little fat, flushed cheeks as he sat there on my lap in his red Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, his lips pursed in concentration as he poked his fingers through the holes where the caterpillar had bitten through the apples.

  I could have babysat Jack tonight, while Patrick and Ellen went wherever they went. That would have been fine. "Bye!" I could have said cheerily, like a teenage babysitter snuggled up on the couch with Jack under a duvet, sharing a bag of chips.

  Maybe I should text Patrick and offer. Ha ha.

  I could have been babysitting for years. I sometimes think that would have made all the difference--if Patrick hadn't decided to rip Jack out of my life, my little boy, my darling little boy.

  I remember one of the mothers I knew from Jack's preschool ringing me up when she heard and saying, "He can't do this to you, Saskia. It's got to be illegal. You must have rights. You're Jack's mother."

  Except I wasn't his real mother. Just his dad's girlfriend. What court would care about that? A relationship that lasted three years. I didn't even officially live with them for the first year. Not all that long.

  Long enough to see him get out of nappies, learn to swim and tell knock knock jokes and use a knife and fork. Long enough for his hair to go from curly to straight. Long enough for him to call for me whenever he had a bad dream. Me. Not Daddy. He always called for me.

  A sudden shriek slicing through my sleep and I'd be halfway down the hallway before I even woke up properly. I remember once I went to him and he was sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes and sobbing his heart out. "I just wanted to blow out the candles!" he said to me. And I said, "It's OK, you can blow them out," and held out an imaginary cake. He puffed out his cheeks and blew, and that was it, problem solved; he smiled at me with his eyes still full of tears and then put his head back on the pillow and fell straight asleep. Patrick didn't know anything about it until the next day.

  I guess Jack's nightmares aren't so sweet and simple these days.

  This is the thing. When do you cross the line from babysitter to mother? If you look after a child for a night, you obviously don't suddenly become his mother just because you bathed him and fed him for a few hours. The same goes for a week. Or a month. But what about after a year? Two years? Three years? Is there some point where you cross an invisible line? Or is there
no line except the legal one, the one you sign on the adoption papers? Foster children can be claimed back by their real parents at any time, even after years.

  I should have adopted Jack. That was my mistake.

  But it never even occurred to me.

  I saw looking after Jack as a privilege, a gift. It was just another wonderful part of being in a relationship with Patrick.

  So when he broke up with me, I knew that I'd have to lose Jack like I'd have to lose everything else that I loved about Patrick, like the veiny tops of his hands, I loved his hands; and his handwriting, he had such beautiful handwriting for a man; and the particular way he smiled at me after sex; and his singing, he sang country music songs quietly to himself when he did stuff around the house. I hate country music, but I loved hearing that quiet singing. It was the sound track to my life.

  I never found out if I did have rights to Jack. Maybe I did.

  But I went into shock when Patrick said he didn't love me anymore.

  I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't talk. Couldn't eat. It was like I'd been hit with a terrible illness. It was like a bomb had exploded through my life, shattering everything I thought I knew.

  If Patrick had just let me see Jack on weekends. Like a divorced dad. That might have been enough.

  Maybe then I wouldn't be doing this thing, this whatever it is, that I cannot seem to stop doing no matter how hard I try. And I have tried. I have. I never understood alcoholics or gambling addicts before. Just stop it, I always thought when I heard about somebody wrecking their life because of a stupid addiction. But now I get it. It's like telling someone to stop breathing. Just stop breathing and you'll get your life back on track. So you hold your breath for as long as you can, but it doesn't take long before you're gasping for air. I know it's humiliating. I know I'm pathetic. I don't care. It's just not physically possible to stop.

  And so I sat there in my car outside Ellen's house. She told me her grandmother left it to her when she died, which sort of sums up the differences between us. My grandmother left me a fruit bowl. I had the window down and I could hear the sounds of the waves breaking on the beach. That's what Ellen must hear when she goes to sleep. That's what Patrick must hear when he stays over.