The Hypnotist’s Love Story

by Liane Moriarty

  "Nothing," said Ellen. "You know nothing."

  Her mother raised her eyebrows and lifted her teacup. "I didn't mean to upset you."

  "Well, you did," said Ellen sullenly. She really was behaving like a teenager. Where was all her advanced emotional intelligence today?

  "I am sorry. I'm truly sorry." Anne clumsily patted Ellen's shoulder. "You still look very pale."

  "Probably because I'm pregnant," Ellen said and dissolved into a luxurious flood of salty tears.

  I called in sick on Tuesday and went to Avalon Beach again with my new boogie board.

  I have never done such a thing before. It's not how I was brought up. My mother would be bewildered. She thought a regular pay packet was a wonderful thing; something a woman especially should never take for granted. I can still hear the reverence in her voice when she told people about my very first position out of university. "Saskia has got herself a job."

  I remember how baffled she was when I once said something about "job satisfaction." "But, darling, they pay you!" She was worried I would be rude to the boss. She would have thought taking a sickie was crazy, risky and very bad mannered.

  Sorry, Mum. I needed a "mental health" day.

  "Mental health," she would have snorted.

  She didn't believe in modern maladies like depression or anorexia. A friend's son was diagnosed with clinical depression and Mum was disgusted. "What's the silly man got to be sad about? He's got a good job! A wife! A baby!"

  She believed in grief over death and joy over birth and love and marriage and plain wholesome food and a spick-and-span house. Anything else was just "being silly."

  I wonder if she would have said I was being silly when I fell apart after Patrick broke up with me. She adored him, and Jack too, of course. She thought of Patrick as her son-in-law and Jack as her grandson.

  I assume that Patrick would have met the hypnotist's parents by now. The thought of him chatting to the hypnotist's mother, being polite and trying to impress her, as if my sweet mother never existed, as if my mother was just practice for the real mother-in-law--well, that just fills me with an almighty torrent of rage.

  I've stopped picking up the phone to call my mother. I did it for months after she died. I even dialed the number a few times, before I remembered and quickly slammed down the phone, before some stranger answered. I don't hear the phone anymore and think, "That will be Mum." But I still miss her. Every day.

  I understand, intellectually, that the death of a parent is a natural, acceptable part of life. Nobody would call the death of a very sick eighty-year-old woman a tragedy. There was soft weeping at her funeral and red watery eyes. No wrenching sobs. Now I think that I should have let myself sob. I should have wailed and beaten my chest and thrown myself over her coffin.

  I read a poem. A pretty, touching poem I thought she would have liked. I should have used my own words. I should have said: No one will ever love me as fiercely as my mother did. I should have said: You all think you're at the funeral of a sweet little old lady, but you're at the funeral of a girl called Clara, who had long blond hair in a heavy thick plait down to her waist, who fell in love with a shy man who worked on the railways, and they spent years and years trying to have a baby, and when Clara finally got pregnant, they danced around the living room but very slowly, so as not to hurt the baby, and the first two years of her little girl's life were the happiest of Clara's life, except then her husband died, and she had to bring up the little girl on her own, before there was a single mother's pension, before the words "single mother" even existed.

  I should have told them about how when I was at school, if the day became unexpectedly cold, Mum would turn up in the school yard with a jacket for me. I should have told them that she hated broccoli with such a passion she couldn't even look at it, and that she was in love with the main character on the English television series Judge John Deed. I should have told them that she loved to read and she was a terrible cook, because she'd try to cook and read her latest library book at the same time, and the dinner always got burned and the library book always got food spatters on it, and then she'd spend ages trying to dab them away with the wet corner of a tea towel. I should have told them that my mum thought of Jack as her own grandchild, and how she made him a special racing car quilt he adored. I should have talked and talked and grabbed both sides of the lectern and said: She was not just a little old lady. She was Clara. She was my mother. She was wonderful.

  Instead I said my brief acceptable little poem and then I sat back down and held Patrick's hand, and afterward he helped me bring cups of tea to my mum's friends and chatted so charmingly to the old ladies, and I never thought, I no longer have a family, because Patrick kept holding my hand, and Jack was going to be running into our arms at Sydney airport, and I knew that Patrick's mum was planning on leaving a big bowl of her beef stroganoff in the fridge because she knew it was my favorite.

  Four weeks later he said, "I think it's over."

  My mind kept going around in endless circles. If I ring up Mum to tell her about Patrick, I'll feel better, but Mum is dead. If I tell Patrick that I can't believe my mum is gone, I'll feel better, but Patrick doesn't want me anymore. If I take Jack to the park or a movie, then I'll feel better, but I'm not his mother anymore. If I go and see Maureen, then I'll feel better, except she's not part of my life anymore.

  I didn't have enough other people in my life to cover the loss of this many people at once. I didn't have any spare aunties or cousins or grandparents. I didn't have backup. I didn't have insurance to cover a loss like this.

  The pain felt so physical: like huge patches of my skin were ripped off and have never healed.

  And now the hypnotist is having a baby.

  So, Mum, I know, it's a good job and they pay me, but ever since I saw the hypnotist's pregnancy tests, I've had these strange images running through my head at work. Sometimes I imagine throwing a hot cup of coffee straight at a colleague's face, or tearing off all my clothes and running naked into the boardroom shouting obscenities, or picking up a pair of scissors and driving the sharp edge over and over into my thigh. You would not understand that. Crazy thoughts didn't run through your head.

  So I called in sick and went to the beach to learn how to boogie board.

  It was harder than I expected. The board was slippery. Why was it so slippery? I couldn't seem to keep it in position under my stomach. I kept sliding off. That had never looked like a problem when I saw other people doing it. I got mad and swore. I thought, Even the boogie board doesn't want me.

  And then when I did manage to hold the board still, I couldn't seem to get my timing right to actually catch a wave.

  I thought, Six-year-old boys can do this, what's wrong with me?

  I thought, Other people find love and have babies and make families, what's wrong with me?

  I thought, Other people don't obsess over their ex-boyfriends, what's wrong with me?

  I considered letting the board float away to sea in a fit of petulance, but it seemed too wasteful, and I was already ashamed enough about my day off.

  When I was walking up to the car, sniffing and cold and cranky because I couldn't even seem to fit the stupid board comfortably under my arm, I saw that woolly-haired man who had seen me the day I fell asleep in my red dress. He was walking down to the beach with his boogie board stuck comfortably under one arm.

  "How's the surf?" he said.

  "Stupid," I said, and kept walking.

  When I got to my car, my mobile phone was ringing.

  It was the hypnotist.

  The experience of flying together for the first time made Ellen and Patrick chatty and overexcited. They both got the giggles as a flight attendant did an especially grim-faced safety demonstration, although nobody else seemed amused by her. They had bought novels to read on the plane, but they both kept putting them down on their laps to talk.

  Patrick seemed especially high-spirited.

  "I didn't even ask if
you've been to Noosa before," he said, as the plane took off.

  "I haven't," said Ellen. "What about you?"

  "Just once," said Patrick. "Actually, it's where I met Saskia."

  Ellen noted that it was one of the rare times that he actually spoke about her as if she was just a normal girl.

  "How did you meet?" she asked, trying to keep her voice light and not overly interested.

  "We were both in Noosa for a conference," said Patrick. "She's a town planner, have I mentioned that? Anyway, I sat next to her at one of the sessions. It's strange, because I felt like I was a bit insane then; I think I was still in shock over Colleen's death, and Saskia seemed so sane. She was into bushwalking and she took me on these great long hikes through the national park. I hadn't been doing any exercise and all of a sudden my heart was pumping, and I was getting air into my lungs, and looking at these stunning views made me feel like it was possible to be happy again."

  "Endorphins," said Ellen. "We'll have to do some walks this weekend."

  And when you're pumped full of happy endorphins, I'll tell you about the baby.

  "Yeah, I'd like that. For a while there, Saskia and I were bushwalking every weekend, but then she got this problem with her leg. She couldn't walk for hardly any distance without getting pain. It really affected her."

  "What was wrong with it?" said Ellen. There was something strangely familiar about this story. Had Patrick already told her about Saskia's leg? She was sure she would have remembered. She'd carefully hoarded all the information he'd handed over about Saskia.

  "Nobody could tell her. She went to doctor after doctor, physiotherapists, nobody could help her. One specialist suggested it was all in her mind, and Saskia was so angry she walked straight out."

  Ellen was aware of a strange slippery feeling of panic, as if she'd just remembered she'd forgotten to turn off the stove.

  "Sometimes she had to bring a chair into the kitchen so she could sit down to cook dinner," mused Patrick. "It changed her personality. She used to be so sporty. I tried to be sympathetic, but then I got so frustrated because there was nothing I could do about it. She thought I was losing patience with her, but I wasn't. I felt for her, I did. It just frustrated the hell out of me because I couldn't fix it. It reminded me of when Colleen was sick. That useless feeling. Like you're losing a fight, and you can't even take a swing."

  Patrick was distracted by the approach of the flight attendant. He twisted his head to look. "Should we have a drink? Except we'll have to pay for it, so it doesn't seem as decadent. That's the problem with these cheap flights."

  It couldn't just be a coincidence, could it?

  She nearly said it out loud, to test the possibility. "Huh! That's funny, I have a client who has exactly the same problem." Except she knew it wasn't a coincidence, and she knew he would know it wasn't.

  Deborah.

  What was her last name?

  Deborah Vandenberg.

  She could see Deborah Vandenberg's face so clearly. She ran late for her very first appointment. She had seemed a little odd, a little shifty-looking, but then, many of her clients seemed odd and shifty at their first appointments. It was because they had never seen a hypnotherapist before and didn't know what to expect. They kept looking about warily, as though they suspected someone was about to play a practical joke on them.

  "I've had this pain in my leg," she'd told Ellen, and ran her palm down the length of a long, slender blue-jeaned thigh.

  She told Ellen that sometimes she had to sit down to cook dinner. She told her about a "smarmy doctor" who asked if she'd been experiencing any "stress" lately, and she'd been so furious at the implication that she could be imagining the pain that she'd walked out without saying another word.

  Deborah was Saskia.

  Saskia was Deborah.

  All this time obsessing over Saskia and she'd already met her, she'd talked to her, she'd been in her house. She was tall and striking. Interesting-colored eyes. Hazel. Almost gold. Like a tiger's eyes. (Ellen noticed eyes. It was because she'd been brought up in the shadow of her mother's violet eyes.) Well dressed. Articulate. She would never, ever have picked her as a stalker. She had not had a definite picture in her head of Saskia, but she'd been imagining her as small, with squinty eyes, a scurrying insane little mouse of a person. (Why did she think tall people couldn't be crazy? Because they looked like they ruled the world? Because she admired them and coveted their legs?)

  She felt Patrick's hand on her arm. "Ellen? Did you want a drink?"

  The interesting thing was that she quite liked her. Deborah--Saskia. She'd enjoyed their sessions. Their chats. She'd admired her boots once, and Deborah--Saskia--had told her about how they were actually comfortable as well as beautiful, and Ellen had gone out and bought exactly the same pair, spending more money than she'd ever spent on shoes.

  She was wearing those boots right now.

  "No, I'm fine," she said to Patrick, tucking her boots under her seat.

  So did Saskia really need help with her leg? Or was that just an excuse? And what exactly was her objective? Did she just want to observe Ellen? (In the same way that Ellen would have quite liked to have secretly observed Jon's new wife-to-be, the dental hygienist, except that she would never actually make an appointment, because she wasn't that interested, and, more to the point, how embarrassing if someone found out.)

  Patrick sighed and stretched out his legs.

  "The best part of leaving Sydney is knowing that I don't need to worry about Saskia suddenly turning up anywhere. I didn't even bring my mobile phone. I gave Mum and Jack the number at the hotel and your mobile number. I hope that's OK, I meant to ask you."

  "Of course it's OK." Oh, no, no, no.

  "So that's the last thing I'm going to say about that woman for the rest of the weekend. I'm not going to talk about her, I'm not going to think about her, I'm not going to see her. We are now entering a Saskia-free zone."

  Oh, God. Ellen tapped two fingers rhythmically against her forehead. If it wasn't so awful it could nearly be funny. Or at least slightly amusing.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I just remembered something. Something I meant to do before I left."

  She had told Deborah, or Saskia, exactly where they were going this weekend. She had even told her where they were staying.

  She'd called her the other day on her mobile phone to ask if they could reschedule their Monday appointment. "I'm unexpectedly going away," she'd told her. "For a long weekend to Noosa."

  "I'm envious," Saskia had said, in her cool Deborah voice. "I love Noosa. Where are you staying?"

  "I think my partner has got us booked at the Sheraton," Ellen had answered. Partner! She'd called Patrick her partner! Why had she done that? She didn't even like the word. It was because Deborah seemed like the sort of woman who would find "boyfriend" too juvenile a term. But why had she even needed to mention Patrick at all? For some reason she had wanted Deborah to know that she was in a relationship. Because Deborah had seemed like an attractive professional fortyish woman who would be in one of those elegant relationships involving vineyards and boating and really high-quality sex, with no accidental pregnancies. She had wanted Deborah to think that she was in one of those relationships too.

  So because of her foolish, unprofessional desire to impress a client (whom she should not have wanted to impress in the first place), she had helpfully let Saskia know that they were going away for a romantic weekend to the same place where she and Patrick had met.

  She glanced at Patrick. He had leaned his head back against the seat and let his face relax.

  "I don't even realize how tense she makes me until I get away," he said without opening his eyes.

  Ellen dropped her head and hit the heel of her hand against her forehead in silent anguish. Instead of making life easier for Patrick, she'd actually aided and abetted his stalker. Her mouth went dry and she lifted her chin. Saskia wouldn't follow them all the way to Noosa, would she? She couldn
't, for example, have booked tickets on this very flight?

  Ellen unbuckled her belt and lifted herself slightly up in her seat to glance over the top at the faces of the passengers sitting around them. People avoided her eyes, or had their heads bent reading or talking. Only one little girl sitting on her mother's lap and sucking crazily on a dummy stared back curiously. Ellen plonked herself back down, repressing a hysterical desire to giggle or cry.

  Now she was going to spend this weekend lugging around not one but two major secrets. At any moment she could open her mouth and instantly wipe that relaxed expression off this poor man's face.

  He opened his eyes, and the sunlight pouring in from the window made them look very green. "You OK?"

  "I'm great." She patted his knee and turned to look out the window at the wing of the plane. "I'm just great."

  So I managed to get myself on the same flight as them.

  They walked straight past me. Patrick was in front, frowning at the seat numbers on his boarding pass. Ellen was walking behind, looking dreamily about. I don't need to frown at my boarding pass because my "partner" will find our seats. I'm so new age and happy and pregnant.

  She's going away with her "partner." I hate that word. It's so Sydney. What's wrong with "boyfriend"? When he was with me he was my boyfriend. I was his girlfriend.

  And we're all off to Noosa for the weekend. A jolly threesome.

  I dropped the boogie board when she said "Noosa." Just when I think there are no new ways for him to hurt me. Why Noosa? They've got a whole country full of places for a romantic weekend away and he chooses Noosa.

  I thought my memories of that week were safe. I thought nothing could touch that time. I feel like I can remember every minute. Every taste, every sound, every smell.

  I can still feel the exact shape of my room key in the palm of my hand and taste the exact combination of salt and ice and alcohol in my mouth from the margaritas we drank as we stood together in the hotel lift, looking up at the flashing floor numbers, both of us knowing that we were going to my room to make love for the first time. I can still see the sunburned face of the young boy who wheeled in the clunky trolley with breakfast the next morning: the smell of fresh coffee and bacon. I can still see the croissant flakes scattering the front of the newspaper we read in bed.