The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

  The carbohydrates and the bad television were putting her into a sort of half-comatose state. Her head felt stuffed full of cotton wool.

  Baby brain.

  Enough, Ellen!

  The phone rang and she put her plate to the side and heaved herself off the couch with a grunt. Now she was even walking like a pregnant woman, with one hand supporting the small of her back. She made herself stand upright. She really was the most suggestible person in the world.

  It was her godmother Melanie. That was good. Mel didn't really like talking on the phone and was always in a hurry to finish up the conversation. She would be quick, and Ellen could get back to the enjoyably stupid beauties and endearingly geeky geeks.

  "I just wanted you to know how much I liked Patrick," said Mel. "I really, really liked him. And such an improvement on that Jon. Such a self-satisfied prick. I hope you don't mind me saying that."

  "The self-satisfied prick has just asked someone to marry him," said Ellen.

  "Oh, that poor girl," said Mel with genuine feeling. "What a lucky escape for you."

  And just like that, Jon was safely locked away in the filing cabinet at the back of her memory where he belonged. Ellen felt a surge of gratitude and affection for both her godmothers. Pip had also called earlier today and left a long, rambling, giggly message on Ellen's voice-mail all about soul mates and wedding bells, and was she too old to be a bridesmaid? Of course, Ellen's own mother hadn't called yet.

  "Your mother liked him too," said Mel.

  "Did she say that?" said Ellen.

  "Well, no," admitted Mel. "But I could tell. Speaking of your mother, did she seem herself to you on Friday night?"

  "I think so." Ellen dragged her mind with difficulty to her mother's behavior on Friday night. Hadn't Anne been her normal self? Ellen had been so focused on Patrick and herself, she hadn't really spent much time observing her.

  "Why?"

  "Oh, nothing, really. She's just been a bit, hmm, secretive lately, like there's something she's not telling us."

  Look, I am currently dealing with a very big secret myself. I don't have time for my mother to have secrets too. I am meant to be the young, interesting one. Why couldn't her mother be dull and staid with the major upheavals of her life safely behind her, like Patrick's mother?

  These were the childish thoughts that crossed Ellen's mind as she looked longingly at her roast potatoes and the flickering television set.

  "You don't think she's sick or something?" she said in a sudden panic that she was about to be punished for her selfishness.

  "No, no," said Mel. "How stupid of me to worry you. She's in perfect health. She flogged me at tennis just the other week. I'm probably imagining the whole thing, or I'm just desperate for gossip. Ignore me. The whole point of this phone call was to tell you that I really liked Patrick. Now I must let you go. Talk to you soon!"

  She was gone. Nobody ever finished phone calls more abruptly than Melanie, unlike Phillipa, who spent at least twenty minutes wrapping up each conversation. If it had been Pip saying she'd noticed something strange about her mother, Ellen would have put it straight out of her mind, but Mel wasn't the type to imagine things. Her mother must be hiding something. Of course, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. People were allowed to have secrets.

  "I myself have a secret," said Ellen out loud. It was an unusual feeling. She couldn't remember the last time, if ever, she'd had a secret of this magnitude, one that would give people a little shock.

  Just you and me, kid. We're the only ones who know about this.

  She would keep it that way for a while longer.

  She was halfway through another roast potato when the phone rang again. This time it was Julia.

  "I can't believe you set me up with a guy who comes up to my armpits!" she shrieked.

  "Sorry," said Ellen with her mouth full. "I didn't know."

  It was so tempting to make Julia shriek even louder with two little words: I'm pregnant.

  "And he looked like he stepped straight off the set of Farmer Wants a Wife!"

  "I thought he was sort of sexy, actually," said Ellen. Of course she must resist telling her about the pregnancy. Patrick had to be told first.

  "I didn't say he wasn't sexy," said Julia.

  Ellen's eyebrows popped. "I see."

  "After you and Patrick left, he walked me to the car and asked me out for a drink."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said yes. Just as friends, obviously."

  "Obviously." It warmed her heart to hear the change in Julia's voice. The brittleness was gone. She hadn't sounded like this in years.

  "And I found out his real name. It's Sam. I knew it wasn't Bruce. Oh, hey, I forgot to say that I loved Patrick! He's gorgeous. Don't mess this one up."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

  "I'm serious, Ellen. He's a keeper."

  "OK." Well, that's handy, seeing as I'm having his baby.

  "I mean, Jon was so pleased with himself," mused Julia.

  "Why does the truth always come out later? Everyone behaved as if they adored Jon when I was with him," said Ellen. "You all used to fall about laughing at his jokes."

  "Yeah, he was sort of witty," said Julia distractedly. "Are you watching Beauty and the Geek? See the blond girl with the bulgy eyes? Don't you think she looks sort of homicidal? Speaking of homicidal, you didn't tell me that Patrick's stalker breaks into his house!"

  "I didn't know." Ellen watched the bulgy-eyed girl on the television screen. She'd quite forgotten about that new revelation regarding Saskia. What would she think if she knew Ellen was pregnant? Would that be enough to cure her? Or would it tip her over the edge into insanity? Had she ever wanted to have a baby with Patrick?

  "Anyway, I've got to go. My mobile is ringing. Might be Sam! I'll talk to you later!"

  She hung up. As soon as Ellen sat down on the couch with her roast potatoes the phone rang again.

  "Hello, darlin'." It was Patrick. For some reason, it had become one of their rituals that he always put on a deep American cowboy voice whenever he said hello. "What are you doing?"

  "Watching television and ... eating potatoes." Ellen felt guilty, as if every second she didn't tell him about the pregnancy was a betrayal. But it would be wrong to tell him over the phone, wouldn't it? And frankly, she didn't want to hear what Patrick thought about it just yet. It was already confusing enough working out how she felt about it. His feelings would add a whole new layer of complexity to the situation. If he was thrilled by the news, she would back off: It was too soon, it was all wrong, the sensible thing would be not to let this pregnancy continue. If he was horrified, if he suggested a termination, she would be devastated. She wanted this baby! If he said, "I'll stand by you whatever you decide," she would be annoyed. It was their problem, not just his. Basically she couldn't think of any way the poor man could react that would please her.

  "How was your day?" she said, trying to keep her voice natural.

  "It was fine, until you-know-who showed up at the office."

  "You know who?" said Ellen. "Oh, of course. I do know who." Poor Saskia. He always refused to use her name.

  "She was even crazier than usual. Crying. Talking about babies."

  "Babies," said Ellen. Her blood ran cold. Did Patrick already know? Was this some creepy way of letting her know that he knew?

  "What did she say about babies?" she asked. She laced her fingers through the curly cord of her grandmother's phone. (The phone was green, over thirty years old, with the old round rotary dial face that you slowly turned with one fingertip.)

  "Oh, I don't know. Seriously, I don't listen. I told her she needed psychiatric help. She handed me yet another letter and begged me to read it."

  "Did you?"

  "Of course not. I stopped reading them years ago. It's always the same old crap. Anyway, look, do you want to get out of Sydney for a long weekend? I just had this sudden desire to get on a plane and escape this cold weather, an
d then I got an e-mail about cheap flights to Noosa. It felt like a sign that we should have a romantic long weekend. After the weekend we just had, I'd like you to myself for a couple of days."

  Ellen didn't say anything for a moment. She felt an overwhelming wave of tiredness at the thought. She would have to pack a bag. One of those big broad-rimmed hats that girls wore on romantic long weekends. She didn't know where her sunglasses were at the moment. They had been missing for days. The lost sunglasses seemed like an insurmountable problem.

  "You know, cocktails by the pool, sleeping in, lying on the beach," Patrick continued. He hesitated and sounded unsure of himself. "Or I guess when you live by the beach, maybe going somewhere like Noosa doesn't sound so exciting?"

  Ellen roused herself. Her lovely new boyfriend was suggesting a weekend away. She should be thrilled.

  "No, no, it sounds perfect. Just what we both need."

  Relief smoothed out Patrick's voice. "I already asked Mum if she could take Jack for the weekend and she's fine with it. Oh, my whole family loves you, by the way. My brother said you were hot. I said hands off, kid."

  "Did he?" Ellen was flattered. Simon was so young! Take that, Jon.

  What would Patrick's family think if they knew she was pregnant? She remembered the crucifix hanging over the television. They were old-fashioned Catholics, Patrick had said. Presumably in this day and age they would assume they were sleeping together, but they probably didn't want to have it shoved in their faces quite so soon. Would his mother suddenly call her a wanton hussy?

  "Can you take next Monday off?"

  "I've got a few appointments, but I should be able to move them."

  "Good. I'm really looking forward to it. I love you."

  "I love you too."

  When she hung up, she headed straight for the plate of roast potatoes to throw them away.

  She would tell him on the weekend. It made sense. A neutral location; not his place or hers. They would be lying on a king-size bed, tangled in crisp white hotel sheets, without any of the clutter of their day-to-day lives, and as a result they would come up with a correspondingly clean, elegant solution.

  "Patrick, my love," she would say, with the white sheet pulled up over her breasts and tucked under her arms like in the movies, her hair sexily tousled. "There's something I have to tell you."

  As she straightened up from scraping the potatoes into the bin, she caught sight of her missing sunglasses sitting on top of the fridge.

  Yes, everything was going to be just fine.

  I drove straight to work after my appointment with the hypnotist. When I walked into the office, I moved carefully and slowly, because I was in a million pieces and any tiny movement might have made me disintegrate like a special effect in a movie.

  "You look like you're in pain," said my boss. He thinks I'm seeing a physio for a bad back. I chose this deliberately because he had problems with his back all through last year, and now he finds anything to do with bad backs a fascinating topic of discussion.

  I said I was in pain, and then we talked about slipped discs and stretching and anti-inflammatory tablets before he remembered he was late for a meeting.

  Then I worked.

  I answered e-mails, returned phone calls, cleared my in-tray and wrote the first five pages of a report.

  I worked well. I was crisp and efficient and diligent. I am highly respected in my professional world. I wonder what my colleagues would think if they knew I spent my lunch break crying in my ex-boyfriend's office. I wonder what they would think if they knew that underneath that veneer I am broken.

  I gave him a letter I had written sitting outside the hypnotist's office. It was full of rage and probably didn't make much sense.

  It was pointless because I have a feeling he doesn't read my letters anymore.

  And that's the problem with this rage. There's nowhere for it to go, because he no longer sees me. It's like I am smashing my head against an enormous, impassive silent cliff face, over and over, until I'm dripping with blood. Nothing I do will change his opinion of me. Nothing I do will make him see me again.

  And I can't seem to accept that.

  If he were dead, like my mother, then I would understand. He would be gone. But he's not gone. He's still there. He's living his life as if I died, like his wife. He seems to think he is perfectly entitled to move on, to replace me, to make another woman pregnant.

  If somebody would just tell me what to do to make the pain and the rage stop, I would do it.

  It's strange. Sometimes when I'm sitting in the hypnotist's office with all that light bouncing around the walls, I want to ask her. "Ellen," I want to say, "please help me."

  She would, I think.

  Chapter 10

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  by Danny Hogan

  On Thursday night, while Ellen was trying to pack for her weekend away, there was a knock at the door.

  "What happened?" said Ellen, when she opened the door and saw her mother holding a bottle of wine and smiling socially as if she was arriving for a dinner party.

  "I'm 'dropping by,'" said Anne. "Stop looking so panicked. I had dinner in the area, and I made an impromptu decision to stop and see my daughter. For heaven's sake, you've gone completely white. It's not that unprecedented, is it?"

  "Yes it is," said Ellen, standing back so she could come in. "You don't drop by."

  "I can't believe you still haven't got rid of this wallpaper," said Anne, running her fingertips disdainfully down the wall in the hallway. "I'd be ripping it off--"

  "And painting it a nice neutral color," finished Ellen. "I know. You've told me, and I've told you, I like it. It reminds me of Grandma."

  "Exactly," murmured Anne. She walked into the kitchen and winced as she always did at the orange worktops as if she'd never seen them before. It was all some sort of performance to prove how she'd moved on. Her mother had enjoyed a perfectly idyllic childhood in this perfectly lovely, spacious house, on the beach, mind you, but for some reason she liked to behave as though she'd spent her childhood in a white-trash ghetto and she now lived in Paris.

  "Glass of wine?" said Anne.

  "No, I won't actually," said Ellen. "I overindulged last weekend, and I'm trying to be alcohol-free this week."

  And I'm pregnant, Mum.

  The thought crossed her mind but felt strangely meaningless. Although nothing had changed since she'd done the test on Monday, now that the initial shock had worn off, it had begun to seem less and less likely that she really was pregnant. For one thing, apart from that night when she'd had the roast potato "cravings," she hadn't experienced any symptoms; she felt completely normal. It had also crossed her mind that she would probably miscarry. She was in her thirties, after all, and you were meant to take vitamin supplements when you were planning to get pregnant and make an appointment with the doctor and have blood tests. As soon as this had occurred to her, she had become positive that it would happen. If she didn't make too much of a fuss about it, or overthink it, this pregnancy would probably just slip quietly away, until her body was ready for a properly organized pregnancy.

  "Oh, well, I won't either then," said her mother. She put the bottle of wine down and rapped her knuckles gently on the table. It seemed an uncharacteristically pointless gesture, and Ellen remembered Melanie's call earlier in the week about her mother seeming "secretive."

  "How are you?" she said.

  "Me? I'm well. Very well." Her mother stopped rapping and shook her head slightly. "Shall we have a cup of tea then? What were you doing when I interrupted you so shockingly?"

  "Packing," said Ellen, as she put the kettle on to boil and carefully selected two of her grandmother's most flowery, old lady-ish china cup
s and saucers. "I'm going away with Patrick for the weekend. To Noosa."

  "Ah, Patrick," said Anne. She settled herself down at the table. "I really don't need the whole teacup and saucer palaver. I'm not eighty."

  Ellen ignored her and took out the teapot.

  "A tea bag will do! Are you eighty?"

  "So, what did you think of Patrick anyway?" said Ellen, warming the pot just to annoy her mother. "Both Mel and Pip called to say how much they liked him."

  "Did they?" said Anne. She raised her voice over the bubbling of the kettle. "Well, I certainly didn't dislike him. You really should replace that kettle."

  Ellen put down the teapot. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I mean it's so loud. It's like a plane taking off."

  "No, what do you mean, you didn't dislike Patrick?"

  "He's perfectly innocuous," said Anne.

  "That is so insulting!" Ellen was half laughing in disbelief.

  "If you want to know the truth, I just felt that there was something not quite right about him. A sort of coldness."

  Coldness! This, from her warm, cuddly, motherly mother.

  "Oh, and you're such a discerning judge of character." Ellen sat down at the table and watched her hand shake slightly as she poured the tea. It was rage. She was filled with rage on Patrick's behalf.

  "Well, you asked me," said Anne. "I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just telling you how I felt."

  "You thought Jon was wonderful."

  "Jon was good company." Anne smiled fondly, as if Jon was a dear old friend.

  "Mel said the other night that he was a self-satisfied prick. He was brutally sarcastic. He treated me like I was an idiot. He was bordering on verbally abusive."

  "Oh, Ellen, he wasn't. Don't try to rewrite history. Especially don't rewrite it to make yourself the victim. I hate that victim mentality women have these days. It was just a relationship that didn't work out. He wasn't an evil monster."

  "Jon made me very unhappy," said Ellen. He was SO an evil monster! Her voice trembled. She was reminded of the year she turned fifteen when her hormones went crazy, and it seemed like every conversation she had with her mother ended up with Ellen crying. "And Patrick makes me very happy."

  "Well, then, that's all that matters," said Anne in the same brisk, sensible, placatory tone that used to drive Ellen to distraction when she was fifteen. "You don't need to listen to me. Look at my history. What do I know about men?"