The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

"It was fine," said Ellen. "I think your family is lovely."

  It was true. There was something about the Scott family that made her feel surprisingly comfortable, as if she'd sat at that dining room table and passed around baked potatoes many times before.

  "I shouldn't have let that conversation about Saskia go on like it did," said Patrick. "I just get resentful when they seem to be on her side."

  "I know," said Ellen, rolling over to touch his shoulder. It felt rock hard, as though all his muscles were contracted. She kneaded his flesh with her fingers, trying to ease his tension. "I understand."

  "And I should never have yelled at Saskia in front of Jack," said Patrick. "I just felt this sort of crazy fury when I heard her voice. I thought for a while there that I could just accept her in my life, like a disability. But now I seem to be going in the opposite direction. It's like I'm reaching the end of my tether. Sometimes I think I could kill her. I understand now how people get to that point. The point of murder. I could kill her."

  "Please don't," said Ellen. She stopped massaging him. It didn't seem to be helping. "I don't want to see you in jail for conjugal visits."

  "I'd make sure I didn't get caught," said Patrick. He removed another tablet from the roll he was holding on his chest and chewed it grimly.

  Ellen glanced with concern at his face. He saw her looking and smiled.

  "It's all right," he said. "I'm just joking. Anyway, I would get caught. I'm the sort of person who never gets away with anything. I do an illegal right-hand turn and the cops are waiting around the corner."

  "Speaking of the police--"

  "Yes, I know." Patrick's jaw shifted convulsively. "I just--I don't know. I'm just not sure if that's the way to go."

  He obviously didn't want to go back to the police again, but she couldn't quite pinpoint his reasons. Was it just his fear that Saskia would do what she'd threatened and make accusations against him? Or something more than that?

  "Think about it," she said.

  "I will." But she could tell that he wouldn't.

  She yawned, suddenly and hugely. "I can't believe how tired I feel."

  "I'm going to be awake for hours," said Patrick. "With my thoughts going around and around like a merry-go-round. Could you just hypnotize me to sleep?"

  "Ha," said Ellen.

  "Seriously. Can you do that?"

  "Hypnotizing your partners isn't considered such a good idea, you know, ethically," she said, feeling prudish. It had come up before, in previous relationships, but mostly the requests had been flippant and she'd been able to brush them off.

  "I won't report you," said Patrick. "I just want to switch off all these thoughts in my head."

  Her heart went out to him. She wavered. "I thought you didn't really like the idea of hypnotism. You said you hated the idea of losing control."

  "That was before I met you. I understand more about it now. And I trust you."

  Ellen thought of her mentor, Flynn, an old-school hypnotherapist in his sixties who hated stage hypnotists with a passion, and believed that the only way to protect his professional integrity was to never, ever practice his craft outside the therapist's office. She thought of the cool young guy she was mentoring, Danny, who proudly told Ellen that he used the hypnotic handshake to help pick up women in bars (with huge success, apparently, so Ellen knew that it didn't matter how strenuously she disapproved). If she ever told Flynn about what she let Danny get away with, he'd be horrified, like a grandparent who thought she was spoiling her child. She guessed that on the ethical spectrum she was somewhere in the middle of Flynn and Danny.

  "I suppose there wouldn't be any harm in just doing a relaxation exercise," she said.

  Chapter 8

  By the way, I'm not "stalking" you. Please stop using that word, you know it's ridiculous. I just want to TALK to you, that's all.

  --From an unopened e-mail to Patrick Scott

  So this guy in the U.S. goes to court because he is being stalked by his ex-girlfriend," said Patrick. "And the judge says, 'You should be flattered by the attention,' and a few days later he ends up dead. His stalker shot him or stabbed him or something. True story."

  It was Sunday afternoon and Ellen, Patrick, Julia and Patrick's friend Stinky (his real name still hadn't been confirmed, and both Ellen and Julia were too much their North Shore mothers' daughters to bring themselves to call him "Stinky") were eating fish and chips on a picnic rug at Watsons Bay.

  It was Julia who had brought up the stalking issue. "So I hear you have a stalker, Patrick," she'd said within minutes of them all sitting down, in the same sociable tone she'd use to say, "So I hear you're a surveyor, Patrick." Ellen had been surprised that Patrick hadn't tried to change the subject, especially after the previous night with his family. In fact, he responded almost enthusiastically. It was interesting seeing the slight variations in his personality when he was around different people. With his family he was chattier, softer, boyish. With Stinky and Julia he was a laid-back, nothing-worries-me Aussie bloke.

  "But you're not in fear of your life, are you, Scottie?" asked Stinky.

  Stinky was chunky and balding, with two giant dimples creasing his cheeks, so he looked like a giant baby with gray stubble and a deep voice. He was also quite short for a man, something Patrick had neglected to mention, and Ellen had neglected to mention that Julia was quite tall for a woman. When Julia, who was looking especially cosmopolitan, with a fitted jacket and scarf and spike-heeled leather boots that made her look supermodel tall, had shaken hands with Stinky, who was wearing a rumpled country shirt and faded jeans, with scuffed workman's boots, she had raised one eyebrow over the top of his head at Ellen, who had shrugged back. This would become a story Julia would exaggerate for years to come: The time you tried to set me up with a bald midget called "Stinky."

  But in a way it was better that Julia had obviously written off Stinky, because she was completely relaxed, eating the hot chips like a machine and even flirting a bit with Stinky. If she'd actually seen him as a prospect she would have been avoiding eye contact and acting aggressively noninterested and she would have lost her appetite completely.

  "I'm not in fear of my life," said Patrick. "Just my sanity at times. My point was that people don't take male stalking victims seriously."

  "Did you ever meet this girl, ah, you over there?" said Julia to Stinky. "Look, can I get your real name, please? I just can't call you 'Stinky,' and you seem to smell perfectly acceptable."

  "It's Bruce."

  "It's not."

  "What's wrong with Bruce? I'm offended."

  "OK, Bruce, did you ever meet her?" said Julia. "Patrick's stalker?"

  "I knew her well," said Stinky. "I liked her. I liked her a lot actually."

  He glanced at Patrick, who shrugged and said, "You want her phone number? You're welcome to her, mate."

  "So you wouldn't have thought she was capable of this ... crazy stuff?" said Julia.

  "Oh, I don't know." Stinky's dimple deepened. "Aren't we all capable of it? I always think love is a kind of madness."

  "Love is a kind of madness," repeated Julia. "That's a very, hmm, poetic thing for a man called Bruce to say."

  "He's trying to impress the laadies," said Patrick.

  "The point is," said Julia, "we've all been hurt by someone, but we just have to get on with it, don't we? That's life."

  "You've never Googled an ex? When my last girlfriend broke up with me, I spent hours cyber-stalking her," said Stinky. "Even if I didn't physically stalk her, I stalked her in my mind."

  "So what? I might have raised my voice at my ex-husband, but that doesn't mean I'm in the same category as someone who murders their ex."

  "But doesn't it give you an understanding of how it could happen?"

  "Nope," said Julia.

  "Oh, you're a hard woman."

  "You sure are." Ellen gave Julia a pointed look.

  "OK, fine," said Julia. "I once made anonymous phone calls to an ex-boyfriend's new
girlfriend. Just for a few weeks and I was seventeen!"

  "Aha!" Stinky pointed his chip at her triumphantly. "You've got a history as a stalker yourself!"

  "I was not a stalker, I was just a silly teenager."

  "You're not in the same league as my bunny-boiler," said Patrick. He paused. "Sometimes I think she comes into my house when I'm not home."

  "You never told me that!" Ellen turned to look at him.

  "Report her to the police, for God's sake!" said Julia. "And change the locks!"

  "What makes you think she's been there?" asked Stinky.

  "I've changed the locks more than once," said Patrick. "And I don't know what makes me think it. Just a feeling when I get home. Nothing is moved or anything. I just sense she's been there. Something in the atmosphere. Maybe I smell a trace of her perfume."

  Ellen noticed that Patrick had avoided responding to Julia's comment about the police.

  Julia shuddered theatrically. "Oh, God, that's like something out of a horror movie." She pointed her chin in Ellen's direction. "Lucky your new girlfriend likes horror movies."

  "Do you?" Patrick put his hand on Ellen's knee. "I didn't know that. I'm a wimp. They scare me to death."

  "I like my horror with popcorn and a choc-top," said Ellen. "I don't like the idea of Saskia going through your house! I don't like that at all." She shuddered, although part of her knew she was shuddering because it seemed like the expected response. She felt deeply sympathetic toward Patrick and understood his fear and anxiety, but for some reason she genuinely didn't feel any fear for herself. Perhaps it was because she hadn't met Saskia and she still didn't feel quite real to her. Or perhaps it was just that Saskia was a woman and she didn't really believe that women were capable of violence, even though she knew, of course, that they were. Whatever the reason, she still found everything about Saskia more interesting than frightening.

  "Sorry," said Patrick. "I never actually meant to tell you that. Anyway, I'm probably imagining it."

  "She'd never actually hurt anyone," said Stinky to Ellen. "If that's any comfort to you. She was a pacifist. She marched against the war in Iraq."

  "That was political," said Patrick. "This is personal."

  "Didn't she work for an animal shelter for a while?"

  "An animal shelter," snorted Julia.

  "What's funny about working for an animal shelter?" said Ellen.

  "I don't know," said Julia. "It's such a cliche."

  "Not for the poor little kitties and puppies." Stinky looked mournful.

  "What is this?" Patrick reached out and punched Stinky on the arm. "I'm surrounded by people who want to defend my stalker."

  "Sorry, Scottie" Stinky held up both palms. "I was trying to make Ellen feel better, let her know she's not in danger."

  "Well, Scottie, unlike Stinky here, I'm not going to defend your stalker," said Julia to Patrick. "I think she's an absolute nutcase and you and Ellen should both be scared out of your minds."

  "Thank you," said Patrick.

  I went to the beach again today and fell asleep on the sand in my red dress.

  Not the beach where the hypnotist lives, or any of the beaches I'd been to with Patrick. I went to Avalon. I'd never actually set foot on that beach before, so no memories.

  I made myself ill on memories last night. I overdosed on them.

  After I left Patrick's family's house, I didn't go to the party. Maybe I knew all along I wasn't going to the party. I don't do parties. I drove for six hours without a break, except once, when I stopped for petrol and a bottle of water.

  I drove to every place in Sydney I'd ever been to with Patrick.

  I drove back and forth across the Harbour Bridge at least thirty times.

  I was so in love with this city when I first came here. Sydney. Even just the name sounded exciting to me, like "New York" probably sounds to more sophisticated people who didn't grow up in a tiny gray smidge of a country town right in the middle of Tasmania.

  "You're from Tasmania?" Sydneysiders used to say, with a lifted eyebrow and a half smile, when what they actually wanted to say was, "Really? That dear little place?" And I would duck my head humbly, as if I was saying, "Don't hold it against me." That doesn't happen anymore. Now people murmur, "Oh, beautiful countryside in Tasmania." I don't know if it's me who has changed or Tasmania.

  Sydney is my big, brash, jewelry-wearing, credit-card-flashing ex-lover. Sydney dazzled me with beaches and bars and sunshine, with restaurants and cafes and music and with that big, hard, glittery sapphire of a harbor.

  Like a silly, besotted girlfriend, I threw myself into finding out everything there was to know about this place. I know my way around Sydney better than any local or taxi driver. I can tell you where to go for the best yum cha and sushi and tapas. I know the theaters and the museums and the cool pubs. I know where to scuba dive, where to bushwalk, where to park. I'd only been living in Sydney for six months when I met Patrick, who has never lived anywhere else, and he didn't know half the places I took him to even existed.

  Patrick and Sydney gave me the best, the most blissful time of my life. We kissed on ferries and drank champagne by the harbor. We saw plays and movies and bands. We took Jack, grinning down at me from Patrick's backpack, on long walks through the green dappled light of the national parks. We held his hands on the beach and said, "One, two, three!" and scooped him up high over waves that frothed around our ankles.

  I was so in love with both of them. I remember saying to my mother, "I didn't know it could be so easy to be this happy."

  And she'd say, "Hearing you say that just makes my day." I could imagine how she'd be smiling as she scrubbed energetically away at her kitchen with a dishcloth and a bottle of Spray n' Wipe.

  Because all Mum ever wanted was for me to be happy.

  I always thought she was just weirdly selfless, until I started taking care of Jack, and that's when I began to get an inkling of how your child's moods dictate yours and how maybe that becomes a habit.

  I do remember that once she said, "Do you think Patrick is as happy as you?" and I said that of course he was just as happy as me.

  There was a pause, and then she said, very carefully, tentatively, "It's been less than a year since he lost his wife. He must still be grieving, Saskia, it takes such a long time, just maybe ... keep that in mind."

  She was qualified to talk on the subject because my dad died when I was a toddler. I don't remember a thing about him. I certainly do not have any repressed feelings of abandonment by my daddy.

  I know my father was the love of my mother's life, according to her, and I know she said she missed him every day, but that doesn't mean Patrick was the same. For one thing, Mum didn't meet anyone else who could have made her happy. Patrick met me. I made him happy. I know I made him happy. I'm not stupid. I didn't imagine it.

  Of course, I knew part of him was still grieving for Colleen. I was deeply respectful of Colleen's wishes about Jack's upbringing. She had written down a list of instructions. Her writing was shaky because she must have been quite ill by then. Her spelling wasn't the best. It was uncharitable of me to notice that, I know, but there you have it; I have never held myself out to be a particularly nice person. Colleen believed in vitamins, so I gave Jack his vitamin tablets every day. Colleen believed that singlets somehow protected children from all evil, so I put singlets on him even when I knew he was probably going to be too hot. I'm sure Colleen didn't mean for the poor child to wear a singlet on warm days, but Patrick took everything on that list literally.

  And Patrick was happy with me. He said he was happy. He said, "You saved my life." He said, "I'm keeping you forever." He said, "I would have been lost without you."

  Today I lay on the beach and dreamed of Colleen. In my dream I was screaming at her, "There is no need for an apostrophe in the word 'vitamins'!"

  So that's a pretty embarrassing, nerdy dream: screaming at a dead person about her grammar.

  Somebody said, "Big night?"
>
  And I opened my eyes and there was a man standing on the sand staring down at me. I was looking straight into the sun, so I couldn't see much of him except that he was wearing a knee-length wet suit and carrying a boogie board under one arm and had woolly hair that seemed too young for him.

  I sat up and looked down at my red dress. I guess I did look like someone who had passed out after a big party, except I'm too old for that kind of behavior. I said, "Sort of."

  Then he didn't seem to know what else to say. He smiled and put his fingers to his forehead in a sort of salute and kept walking down to the water. I sat on the beach and watched him on his boogie board. He wasn't very good at it. He kept trying to paddle for waves and then missing them, but each time he finally managed to catch one, he got such a funny excited look on his face, his woolly hair lying flat against his forehead.

  This afternoon I went into one of those surf shops, and I don't know what came over me, but I somehow walked out carrying a wet suit and a boogie board.

  I guess I'm going to have to learn how to ride it now. Or surf it. Or whatever the right terminology is. I'm quite chuffed about it.

  Ellen woke on Monday morning feeling drained and wrung out, and was horrified when she opened her appointment book to find her day filled with back-to-back appointments without even five minutes for a lunch break.

  She could vaguely remember thinking blithely to herself, "Oh, I'll manage!" when she'd scheduled so many appointments. Now she thought longingly of her bed and how truly, amazingly glorious it would be to slide back under the blankets and sleep the day away. If only she felt properly, contagiously ill, with actual symptoms, then she could get on the phone and cancel all her appointments. But she knew she was just worn out. There had been too much eating and drinking and nervous socializing on the weekend. Too much heightened emotion. Too little sleep and too much sex. She suspected she was coming down with a bad case of cystitis.

  She was also out of milk, which for a few moments as she stood at the open fridge seemed like the end of the world. She actually stamped her foot. She needed the crunch of cereal contrasting with the coolness of milk.

  She put stale bread in the toaster with fast, sulky movements, as if the person responsible for the lack of milk was watching and feeling guilty. She went and picked up the newspaper from the front yard, where the delivery person had considerately thrown it straight in the middle of her front hedge so that she had to rustle through unpleasantly damp, dewy leaves to retrieve it.