The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

  Then, to top it all off, as she was eating her toast (which tasted weirdly acidic) and reading the paper (which was full of bad news: murders, fatalities, wars and suicide bombs--the world was adrift on a sea of tears) she came upon an article under the heading "A-List Turns Out for Society Wedding."

  And there was a picture of her client Rosie. It had been about two months since Ellen had last seen her, and during that time she'd lost a lot of weight. All her curves were gone. Her shoulders were bony and hunched in a strapless wedding dress, and she was surrounded by four tall, skinny bridesmaids in floor-length gowns. So she'd gone ahead with the wedding. Her revelation under Ellen's supposedly skillful hypnosis that the reason she wasn't having any luck giving up smoking was because she didn't really like her fiance had meant nothing at all. Either she'd decided that she didn't really feel that way, or she was marrying him anyway, maybe for the money or the prestige or because she didn't have the courage to cancel the wedding after all the invitations had gone out to the "A-list."

  Either way, it left Ellen feeling even more depressed. It made her feel pointless and incompetent.

  The phone rang and Ellen quickly answered it, hoping for a cancellation, ideally of the morning's first appointment so she could go back to bed.

  "Good morning," she said briskly. "This is Ellen."

  "It doesn't sound like you're having a very good morning at all!"

  It was Harriet, her ex-boyfriend's younger sister. They had stayed friends after Ellen and Jon broke up.

  Harriet was a tiny, brittle, bossy woman, and very occasionally her somewhat malicious conversation was exactly what Ellen felt like, in the same way that she sometimes found herself oddly craving the bitter taste of black licorice.

  But right now, the sound of Harriet's slightly nasal voice shredded Ellen's nerves like a cheese grater.

  She took a deep bracing breath as though she was about to run up a steep hill and said, "How are you, Harriet?"

  "Fine, fine, just thought I'd call for a chat. It's been months."

  Only Harriet would think that seven-thirty on a Monday morning was a good time for a chat.

  "Yes, yes, too long," said Ellen, and let her eyes briefly close. She felt an absurd desire to scream.

  Whenever she spoke to Harriet, Jon suddenly jumped to the front of her consciousness. She could hear his voice in the similar speech patterns of Harriet's voice. She could see his heavy-lidded half smile, half sneer. Harriet reminded her that Jon still existed.

  She preferred to be bright and bubbly and moving full steam ahead with her life when she talked to Harriet so that the appropriate messages would get back to Jon. (She knew that Harriet would make sure she mentioned every conversation to Jon. That's what she did: collected information and then shared it around, little pellets of power.) Ideally, Ellen should mention Patrick right now (Have you heard? Ellen has a new boyfriend), but she didn't have the energy to give him the enthusiasm he deserved.

  "How's Jon?" she said instead. Let's bring him out on center stage, instead of letting him lurk about in the corners of this conversation.

  "Funny you should mention him. You're not going to believe this, but my eternal bachelor of a brother is getting married. We're all in a state of shock. Can you believe it?"

  "No," said Ellen. She cleared her throat. "Goodness."

  She had lived with Jon for four years and the word "marriage" had never been mentioned. It had been her understanding that he didn't believe in the institution, and it never seemed to occur to him to ask how Ellen felt about it. In fact, he just didn't believe in marriage to her.

  Her feelings were quite badly hurt. She actually felt them break, like a row of fragile porcelain cups that had exploded all at once. There were shards of pain flooding her body; tiny ones prickling her sinuses, a huge sharp one lodged in her chest. Oh, for heaven's sake, you don't care! You're in love with another man! You're properly in love for the first time! You don't care, you don't care, you don't care. Except she did.

  "He's only known this girl for a few months," continued Harriet. "She's a dental hygienist."

  A few months. After just a few months. Maybe Jon was properly in love for the first time. And it was fine that Ellen had never properly loved Jon (as she now realized), but it was not fine that Jon had never properly loved her. Why? Because she was the nice one!

  "Anyway, we're sure it won't last," said Harriet. Her voice faltered a little, as if she was pulling back now that the damage was done.

  Had she deliberately called first thing on a Monday, when any normal person's defenses are down, to pass on this information just to hurt her? She must have known it wasn't going to be welcome news, and yet Ellen knew that Harriet was genuinely fond of her.

  "Oh, well, I hope for their sake that it does." Ellen was impressed with the cool, detached tone of her voice. "Listen, Harriet, can I call you back another time? I'm having one of those mornings. I'm out of milk, and I woke up in such a bad mood."

  "Touch of PMT?" said Harriet. She'd always been one of those women far too happy to talk about her menstrual cycle.

  "Just got out of the wrong side of the bed," said Ellen.

  She put down the phone and cried. Harsh, jagged, angry sobs. It was ridiculous. It was way out of proportion.

  "This is your ego," she said out loud. Her voice sounded loud, childish and broken in the kitchen. "This is just your ego."

  She could think of nothing worse than to be married to Jon. She did not miss him. It had taken a long time for her to reinstall her personality after he'd systematically taken it apart, making her doubt her every thought.

  He was a selfish, pompous, egocentric, nasty man. She did not want to be married to him, but she did not want him to marry someone else. She did not want him, but she wanted him to want her.

  It was stupid and immature and yet there it was, she couldn't seem to wrestle control of her feelings. She cried and cried. It was an orgy of outlandish sobbing and wailing. She wanted to pick up the phone and call him. She wanted to scream, "What was wrong with me?" She wanted to see this girl. She wanted to watch them together. She wanted to listen in on their conversations.

  Oh, Saskia. I understand. I know. I get it.

  Finally, after much heaving of the shoulders, loud snotty sniffs and sudden fresh flurries of tears, it was over, and she felt remarkably cleansed, exhausted, shaky and pale but fine, like she'd just vomited up the last of a rancid meal.

  Good Lord. How peculiar. Maybe Harriet was right and she really did have PMT, although her hormones were normally well behaved and didn't cause such dramatic waves of feeling.

  She picked up her diary to check when her period was due.

  She flicked back and forth through the pages, slowly at first and then faster and faster. It wasn't possible, was it?

  Finally she put the diary back down and stared out the window of the kitchen at the sea.

  I'm going to stop. I'm over it. I'm done.

  Ironically, those were the actual thoughts going through my head when I went for my appointment at the hypnotist's today.

  She didn't look that great when she opened the door to me. Her skin looked blotchy, and her hair seemed sort of lank, and there was a greasy food mark on her top. I felt quite cheered by the sight of her.

  And then, before we had our session, when she asked if I needed to use her bathroom, as she always did, I said yes, because I actually really did.

  Out of habit, I automatically opened the mirrored cabinet above her sink. I wasn't really that interested. I knew exactly what I'd see: the supermarket brand moisturizer, the contact lens solution, the deodorant and razors, the handful of lipsticks and the little bottles of essential oils.

  I nearly missed it. I was about to close the cupboard door when something different caught my eye: a long, flat rectangular box.

  I picked it up without much interest, and then I felt something snag in my chest, like a sharp hook dragging and tearing at my heart.

  It was a pregn
ancy test. I recognized it because I'd used this same brand myself. Many times.

  The box was open.

  I opened it and pulled out two long white plastic sticks. She'd already done both tests, wanting to double-check the result.

  The little window on both tests showed the same symbol. The symbol I had longed for but never, ever seen.

  The hypnotist is pregnant.

  Chapter 9

  You shall see nothing, hear nothing,

  think of nothing but Svengali,

  Svengali, Svengali!

  --Svengali's instruction to Trilby O'Ferrall in the classic novel

  Trilby, by George Du Maurier

  She kept forgetting for minutes at a time and then remembering.

  It was only seven hours since she'd done the test. After putting down her diary and staring out the window for at least ten minutes, she had suddenly gone into a frenzy, as if someone else had taken over her body. She'd thrown on dirty clothes, driven into the village and double-parked in front of the local chemist, which was only just opening. The chatty gray-haired lady who normally sold Ellen hay fever medication had kept her face politely uninterested when Ellen asked her for a pregnancy test and double-sealed the top of the white paper bag while talking about the funny weather for this time of year.

  Her first appointment of the day had knocked on the door while Ellen was still sitting on the edge of her grandmother's bathtub, holding both undeniably positive pregnancy tests in her limp hand.

  The morning passed in a blur. She had no idea whether her work had been abysmal or brilliant. She had chatted and listened and induced trances and written out receipts while an amazed voice in the back of her head chanted over and over: I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant, I'm actually pregnant.

  It was much too soon. Only three months! Their relationship was far too new for the words "I'm pregnant." It felt tasteless and tacky. Like something that happened to a teenage couple on a soapie.

  Also, it was too medical. My period is late as a result of your sperm accidentally colliding with my egg through something faulty or slippery or otherwise relating to our condom usage, and I did a test that confirmed the level of pregnancy hormones in my urine and there you have it.

  Putting that aside, did Patrick even want another child? At all? Ever? She thought he did, but now that she considered it, she saw that her beliefs were based on flimsy evidence, such as the fact that he adored his son, and she'd once seen him smile tenderly at a stranger's baby, and his mother wanted him to have more children and he seemed very fond of his mother. Also, he was a lovely man, and lovely men should automatically want more babies because it was a biological imperative that they pass on the loveliness gene.

  In fact, it was quite possible he'd smiled at that stranger's baby because he was thinking, Thank God that's all behind me.

  She felt a cold chill at the thought. It was ridiculous. She knew so much about him--he was frightened of spiders, he couldn't see the point of cucumber, he'd once punched a boy called Bruno--but she didn't know this one essential point.

  And let's assume he did want another child, what would they actually, literally do?

  Would they move in together? Into her house or his? Get married? She didn't want to live in his house. The bath was too shallow and the kitchen too small and the color of the living room carpet was bad for her soul. She loved her grandparents' house and working in this room and falling asleep to the sound of the sea. But maybe it would be disruptive to Jack to move him out of his home? And what about Jack? Was he ready to have a little brother or sister?

  A little brother or sister. That gave her another fresh start. The baby was either a boy or a girl. That was already decided. Oh my goodness, she was having a baby. She suddenly felt weak with a strange feeling that she thought might be equal parts hysterical terror and blinding joy. A baby.

  "Ellen? Could we get started?"

  It was her two o'clock. Luisa. She had just returned from using Ellen's bathroom and was looking at her with a faintly angry expression on her attractive, sculpted face. Ellen had always sensed an undercurrent of barely controlled fury in Luisa. She was a relatively new patient, a daughter of a friend of Julia's mother. She was seeing Ellen for "unexplained infertility," and she had made it quite clear that although she didn't actually believe in "this sort of mind control stuff," she had got to a point where she was willing to try anything. She said she was also seeing an acupuncturist, an herbalist and a dietitian. Imagine if Luisa knew that Ellen had accidentally, clumsily, foolishly, inconveniently become pregnant. The world was an extremely unfair place.

  I was in my late thirties when I met Patrick, so I knew if I was ever going to have a baby he was my only chance. It wasn't like I had to beg him or anything. He said yes straightaway. He even seemed excited by the idea--he kept talking about how he didn't want Jack to be an only child--but then, as the months went by without anything happening, he seemed to lose interest.

  He didn't want to talk about it and he refused to see any doctors. He didn't even want to try on the right days. He said, "I don't want to hear that you're ovulating." As if ovulating was something disgusting.

  In all honesty, he was a bit of a bastard about it.

  I forgave him. I understood that it was different for men. They don't have the biological drive.

  He said, "Saskia, my love, if it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be."

  Which was true. We had Jack.

  Except that it wasn't true. He had Jack. I didn't have Jack at all. And I wasn't his love.

  Turned out that it was meant to be. He was meant to have another baby, just not with me.

  "Sorry? What did you say? You're inviting me to a Tupperware party?" Ellen was on the phone to Danny, the young hypnotherapist she'd been mentoring over the past year.

  "Ha! Yeah, right!" shouted Danny. He appeared to be calling from a nightclub. He reminded Ellen of Patrick's younger brother, Simon. That generation seemed to have a different dialect or accent or something. They all sounded ever so slightly American, and there was an amused casualness about the way they saw the world, as if nothing was beyond them. Maybe it was technology. It put power in their fingertips.

  Or was that the way Ellen had sounded when she was twenty-four too? No. She'd never been casual about anything.

  "Let me just go outside for a moment," said Danny.

  I'm pregnant, Danny. Pregnant. That means I'm having a baby. And I've only been dating the guy for three months. What would you do if your girlfriend told you she was pregnant after only three months?

  "OK, is that better?" The background noise had vanished. "No, what I'm saying is, you know how you've got Tupperware parties, right? So I was just standing at the bar and listening to these two women, middle-aged--mothers, I guess--and they were talking about how much weight they needed to lose, and their personal trainers, and how long you need to run on the treadmill to work off a roast potato, and you could tell they were, like, passionate about this shit."

  "I'm having trouble following," said Ellen.

  "Hypno-parties! I'm going to run weight-loss hypno-parties! So all these women can get together and I can give them a group hypnosis session for weight loss. I'd use Flynn's rapid induction techniques you were telling me about--he wouldn't mind, would he? These chicks would be in the perfect receptive state anyway. Then a standard script with a few positive affirmations--maybe an aversion suggestion for every time they look at a roast potato or open the fridge? But they've got to cook dinner for their kids, I guess. Anyway, I can work out all the details. What do you think?"

  "I'm not exactly--" began Ellen.

  "It's perfect! How much do you think I could get away with charging?"

  "Well, I don't know," said Ellen. "I always prefer to individually tailor treatment to--"

  "The money they spend on these personal trainers. I could get them better results."

  "Maybe you could."

  All the women would fall in love with him. He'd been the only
male in the Introduction to Hypnotherapy course Ellen had taught, and he was attractive and charismatic but in an understated way that made you think you were the only one to have noticed. When he was doing Ellen's course, he always took a seat at the far right of the room, and Ellen had noticed the way all the other students unconsciously leaned toward him, like flowers bent by a breeze.

  She could hear a girl's voice in the background now calling out, "Danny! I've been looking everywhere for you!"

  I bet you have, thought Ellen. When Danny looked at you, he held eye contact. It was a gift. Not many men could do that without appearing psychotic.

  "So, anyway, I've got to go, the idea just hit me and I wanted to see what you thought! I'll call you, OK? How are you anyway, Ellen? Sorry. I never even asked."

  He didn't sound perfunctory. He sounded like he genuinely cared. Maybe he did. Or maybe he was the ultimate salesman.

  "I'm fine, Danny. You go."

  It was later that night and Ellen was slouched on the couch watching Beauty and the Geek and using her fingers to eat a plate of roast potatoes, which was all she felt like for dinner.

  It wasn't like it was the first time in her life she'd ever experienced a strong desire for a particular type of food, but now that she was pregnant she felt entitled to label it a "craving." Perhaps the baby needed potato.

  Or perhaps it was just that Danny had mentioned roast potatoes and her subconscious had obediently responded to the suggestion.

  She allowed these thoughts and words to cross her mind--Now that I'm pregnant ... the baby ... craving--and felt as though she was doing something slightly illegal. She couldn't just waltz into that whole complicated world of motherhood without some sort of official entry pass, could she? What was the entry pass? A marriage license? It seemed crazy that as of yesterday the thought of having children was still something far in her future, and then today, after one trip to the chemist, she was craving roast potatoes and thinking about "the baby." Next she'd be having pickles and ice cream for dessert.