The Hypnotist's Love Story (14 page)

“What are you thinking about?”

Patrick was up on his elbow, looking down at her, smiling. He brushed back her hair from her forehead.

“Saskia,” she answered honestly, without thinking.

Patrick retracted his hand. “I cannot get away from that woman, can I?”

“I’m sorry,” said Ellen. She went to pull him back toward her, but his lips had compressed into a thin line and he looked like a grumpy schoolteacher who has just about had it up to
here
with you kids.

He said, “Now the bitch is in bed with us.”

He got out of bed and walked into the en suite bathroom, closing the door behind him unnecessarily hard.

Ellen settled herself back on her pillow and gazed up at the slowly whirling ceiling fan. (Around and around and around. She saved it up as a good image for an induction. “Imagine you’re watching a ceiling fan.”)

Look, Saskia. You stopped us from having sex. He’s angry with me because of you.

Every time she was with Patrick, part of her was imagining how Saskia would react if she was there, watching. It was like she was performing in her own reality TV show with an audience of just one. If Patrick knew how much time she was devoting to thinking about Saskia, he’d be furious.

Outside the window, the kookaburras burbled with laughter.

If you stare at someone for long enough from behind, they will sense your gaze and turn around. They don’t actually see you, but they feel something different in the atmosphere.

That’s why I’ve always believed that if I thought about Patrick for long enough and hard enough, he would sense it. If someone can feel a gaze across a room, then shouldn’t they be able to sense a torrent of true emotion, a
tsunami
of feeling, from across a handful of suburbs?

I imagine my feelings like a dense cloud, floating above the streets of Sydney, and one day Patrick is standing in the shower (he likes his showers long and hot, steam billowing)
with the window open and all of a sudden he senses it—my love—he’s breathing in the cloud of my feelings, and he turns off the taps and thinks, “Saskia.”

And while he’s drying himself he thinks, “I made a mistake.”

And then, before he even gets dressed, he calls me. And everything is right again.

People get back together. It happens all the time. Why shouldn’t it happen to us?

Ellen could hear the sound of Patrick’s shower running.

She must have upset him; he’d been looking forward to this morning. Jack had stayed with his grandparents, and Patrick wasn’t picking him up until they went there tonight for dinner. He’d talked about how they would sleep in till late this morning, and eat breakfast and read the papers in bed. He’d bought croissants especially. Now she’d ruined his morning.

Was it any wonder that the poor man didn’t want to hear his stalker’s name mentioned when he was trying to make love to Ellen?

Overcome with remorse, she threw back the covers.

Without putting her nightie back on, she got out of bed and tried the bathroom door. It wasn’t locked. The shower was pounding. There was so much steam she could hardly see.

“Are you going to join me?” said Patrick from the shower. He didn’t sound like an angry schoolteacher anymore.

She pulled back the screen.

A few minutes later her legs were locked around Patrick’s waist and she wasn’t thinking about Saskia at all.

I wandered around for a while in the hypnotist’s front garden.

I picked a daisy and stuck it behind my ear, as if I was that sort of girl, the sort who knows she will look whimsical and pretty with a flower stuck
behind her ear. It was like I thought the daisy could transform the whole situation, make me cute and endearing, as if this was a funny little love triangle, as if Ellen and I were two girls at a party trying to get the attention of the same boy. Then I walked onto Ellen’s front porch and caught sight of my own reflection in the glass panel next to her front door. I looked middle-aged and seedy. I took the flower out and crushed it in the palm of my hand, and then I knocked, quite loudly, on the front door, even though I knew she wasn’t home. I knocked again, angrily. I seemed to be making some sort of a point.
I’m here!

Then I shrugged as if we’d had an appointment and she’d let me down. I stepped off the porch and noticed a path running straight down the side of the house and onto the beach.

I went down it and took my shoes off and walked barefoot on the cold sand.

Imagine that. Walk out your back door and you’re on the beach.

I wonder if she appreciates it. She doesn’t seem like a particularly sporty type. I can’t imagine her sweating or puffing. I guess she sits cross-legged and meditates and chants. Or she does yoga. Salutes the sun and all that crap.

The beach was deserted and silent, except for the lap of the waves and the occasional squawk of a seagull; still too early for the joggers and power walkers and dog walkers. It was high tide and the pearly sky seemed to hang very low.

Without stopping to think about it, I took off all my clothes and ran out into the ocean and dived straight under a wave.

The water was so shockingly cold it made all the air rush out of my lungs. When I came back up, I screamed out loud, and dived under again and again. I opened my eyes each time I went under and saw swirling eddies of sand and shafts of filmy light.

Forget him.

Let him go.

Be free of him.

The words came into my head, crystal clear, each time I went under, as if mermaids were whispering messages in my ear.

Afterward, as I walked naked along the beach toward my clothes, with the early morning sun gently caressing my shoulders, I decided to have coffee and read the paper at one of the cafés. Suddenly I felt a strange feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time, and it took me a few minutes to work out that it was happiness. Plain, simple happiness. I’d forgotten how much I liked swimming in the sea. It’s been ages. The weather had to be scorching and the water had to be practically tepid for Patrick to swim. “You wuss!” I used to yell at him from the water, and he’d lift a hand in ironic acknowledgment without even looking up from the paper.

His mother told me once that he’d always been funny about water temperature. She had to write him notes to get him out of school carnivals. When he was in the shower, his brother used to throw cups of cold water over him and he’d scream like a girl. “Big girl’s blouse,” his dad would say.

I wondered if the hypnotist has met his parents yet. His mum was fond of me. One Christmas, after she’d drunk too much punch, she told me that I was like a daughter to her.

I might listen to the mermaids and have a night off from Patrick and the hypnotist. I might go to that work party tonight after all. I might wear the red dress I keep putting off wearing.

And on the way there, I might drop by on Patrick’s mum. Just to say hi. I could show her that I’ve moved on.

“So you’re a hypnotist, Ellen,” said Patrick’s mother. “I must admit I’ve never met a hypnotist before.”

“She’s a hypno
therapist
, Mum,” Patrick corrected her.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” His mother looked stricken.

“It’s all right!” both Patrick and Ellen rushed to reassure her.

Maureen Scott was an off-the-shelf mum and grandma. She had the nondescript, colorless hairstyle, the softly sagging face, the formless figure, the pastel-colored, elastic-waisted clothes.

“My mum is a lot older than yours,” Patrick had said when they were driving over. “She’s a different generation.”

“How old is she?” Ellen had asked.

“She’s turning seventy this year.”

Ellen’s mother was sixty-six, only four years younger, but Ellen hadn’t pointed it out and now she was glad; Maureen did seem as if she was at least twenty years older than Anne. Whereas Ellen’s mother was all sharp lines and angles, Maureen seemed without definition. She could imagine Maureen as one of Anne’s patients. Anne would be brisk and condescending, and tell her to take calcium to avoid osteoporosis and have regular mammograms, as if these old lady problems were a long way in front of her.

“So a hyp-no-therapist,” repeated Maureen carefully. “Now I’m just so interested to hear more about this, Ellen.” She passed Ellen a tray with a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge containing a dish of French onion dip and rows of Jatz biscuits.

“We’ll have to watch ourselves,” said Patrick’s dad. “She might hypnotize us over dinner.” He clapped his hands and chuckled.

George looked disconcertingly, comically, similar to Patrick. Ellen had to stop herself from staring. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a parent and child who looked so alike. If Patrick hadn’t been in the same room, she might have suspected he was playing a joke on her and pretending to be an old man with a not especially convincing disguise. George’s hair was white instead of brown but seemed to be cut in an identical style, and Patrick’s eyes looked out at her from a more wrinkled face. Everything was the same: the shape of his nose, the jawline, the set of the shoulders, even the way they sat in their chairs cradling glasses of beer in big hands, their legs stuck out straight in front of them.

“They’re actually clones,” said Patrick’s brother in her ear, as he reached down beside her to place a coaster in front of her. The coaster had a picture of Ayers Rock on it.

Patrick’s younger brother, Simon, was small and dark, with a neatly trimmed goatee like a fashion designer. He was only twenty-four, and looked to Ellen like he should have been taking drugs in a nightclub instead of passing around drinks in this redbrick bungalow with the crucifix hanging above the television that was silently playing a game show and the china cabinets stuffed with knickknacks and collector plates.

“Ellen is going to teach me how to hypnotize my friends,” said Jack without looking up from his spot in front of the television, where he was lying on his stomach and playing with a small computer game.

“I can teach you, mate,” said George. He picked up a teaspoon and let it swing back and forth between his fingertips. “You’re … getting … sleepier.”

He slapped his knee. He was one of those self-applauders.

“Yeah, right, Grandpa,” said Jack.