The Hypnotist's Love Story (35 page)

I decided I would spend the rest of Sunday watching television. A few months ago, Lance, who works in the office next to mine, lent me the series
The Wire
. He and his wife are always developing obsessions with TV series, and then he talks on and on about the fabulous character development and the amazing plotlines and the whatever—it’s just television. I always want to say, “Look, Lance, I’m not that interested in television. I have a life.”

Ha. Good one.

Such a pity that “stalking” isn’t a socially acceptable hobby.

For some reason he insisted on lending me the series, even though I’m sure I’d showed minimal interest. He wants me to watch it so we can talk at length about each episode. I know this because he lent
The West Wing
to another girl in the office, and then every time he saw her he wanted to know what episode she was up to so he could do an in-depth analysis.
Eventually she started hiding, leaping into nearby offices whenever she saw him coming down the corridor.

So I was never going to bother watching it and Lance has given up asking me if I’ve seen the “pilot” yet, but suddenly it seemed like the perfect way to swallow up a whole Sunday. I would eat toast and chocolate and try to let the rest of the day go by without even thinking of Patrick, Ellen or Jack. I was even looking forward to it.

But of course, like so many other things, it wasn’t meant to be.

When I drove into my driveway, the new family from next door was pulling in too, with impeccably horrible timing.

They moved in on Friday, and they’re just as bad as I knew they would be. A swinging-ponytail mummy and a bald-in-a-cool-way daddy. A little girl with freckles and curls. A little boy with dimples. They’re adorable and athletic, friendly and frisky. It’s going to be like living next door to four Labradors. They introduced themselves and said they hoped they wouldn’t be too noisy, and I must tell them if they are, and they must have me over for drinks sometime. I tried to be polite but standoffish so they would know that none of this was necessary, that all that was required was a friendly wave. Jeff or the real estate agent should have explained this to them. The garage door sticks, garbage night is Monday, the neighbor doesn’t require conversation.

As soon as I got out of the car, they all came bounding over to me, their tongues hanging out, tails wagging. I nearly held up a palm to ward them off.

“Do you want to come over to our place this afternoon?” asked the little girl.

“Give Saskia a minute,” said the mother, all loving laughter. She’s at least fifteen years younger than me. Maybe more. I had no memory of her name. I hadn’t even bothered to register it.

They wanted to know if I would like to come over for a “housewarming barbecue” that afternoon.

“Just a few friends,” said the mother. “Just very casual.”

“The next-door neighbor at our last house was called Mrs. Short,” the little boy told me. “But she actually wasn’t short. She was actually pretty tall.”

“Huh,” I said.

The boy reminded me a little of Jack, something about the eyes maybe. Or perhaps it’s just the age. He looks about five, the same age as Jack was when Patrick and I broke up. I didn’t want to make friends with him. Just looking at him made my chest hurt.

“Or even if you just wanted to stop by for a quick drink,” suggested the father.

“We’ve got special sausages,” said the little girl. “They’ve got chili in them.”

“No pressure, don’t feel obligated!” said the mother. “We just thought—you know, if you didn’t have anything else on, seeing as we’re sort of sharing a house, we’ve never lived in a duplex before, so we thought—but of course, you probably have other plans, or you might prefer to just relax on a Sunday.”

She stopped, a little flustered. I saw her husband give her a look. They could sense my resistance and they were giving me a way out. They’re nice. Nice, polite, ordinary people. That’s all I need. To be living next door to nice people. They make me feel so inferior.

So much for my day at home sedating myself with television. I told them I would have loved to join them but I had another commitment that would take up most of the day.

I overdid it with my regrets. I shouldn’t have acted at all regretful.

“Another time!” said the father.

“Another time!” said the mother.

“Another time!” said I.

“Another time!” said the little boy, and we all laughed oh so heartily, and the poor kid frowned because, after all, why was it funny when he said it?

So, fabulous. Now there will be another time.

I went inside and spent quite a lot of time preparing for my fake social obligation. I decided I was going to an old friend’s fortieth birthday party. It was just a casual but elegant event in her backyard. There would be lots of kids running about, and she was having it catered—I decided she was a well-off friend; in fact, her house actually backed on to the harbor—so the food would be good. I would be doing a speech! It would be funny and sentimental. The sort of speech that Ellen would do at a friend’s fortieth birthday party.

I dressed in jeans, boots, a really beautiful blue top that Tammy had bought me for my birthday just before Mum died, that I’d never found the right occasion to wear—a fortieth birthday by the harbor, perfect!—and a long scarf that Mum had made for me. I knew that everyone at the party would compliment me on the scarf. My mother was very talented, I would tell them. I even blow-dried my hair and put on makeup and a pair of big earrings that Patrick always said made me look sexy.

By the time I walked out the door I was feeling the most attractive I’d felt in a long time.

On impulse I grabbed together the ingredients I’d bought for the Anzac biscuits and put them in a plastic bag. I decided I would drop them off at Ellen’s front door on my way to the party. She could make biscuits; I was too busy with my active social life.

As I walked to my car, a man and woman were walking up the driveway toward the neighbor’s house for the housewarming barbecue. The man was holding a bottle of wine and the woman was carrying a large plate wrapped in aluminum foil.

I smiled at them and said, “Hi!” as if I was a person too, a person off to a fortieth birthday party on a Sunday.

They smiled back. In fact, the man’s smile seemed especially friendly, not at all perfunctory, almost like he knew me and was trying to place me, or almost as if—could it be?—he found me attractive.

“Coming over to the party?” he said.

“No, I’ve got another one to go to,” I said. “A fortieth.”

“Oh, well, have fun!” he said, at the same time as the neighbor’s front door was opening and the next-door neighbors came out crying, “Look who’s here!” and “So you found us OK?”

I went to my car quickly, before they felt they had to introduce me. There was none of this awkwardness when Jeff lived next door; neither of us ever had anyone over. As I turned on the ignition and waved good-bye, I saw the man was still watching me. He lifted his hand to wave good-bye and I felt a warm feeling, like the way I remembered happiness felt.

I reversed out onto the street and glanced back, smiling, ready to wave again if someone caught my eye, and saw that none of them were looking at me. The woman was handing over the aluminum-wrapped plate, and as she did I saw the man pulling her toward him, his hand on her hip in the same mock-masterful way that Patrick used to do, and she was laughing up at him, and the little boy from next door was pulling at his free hand, wanting to point something out to him.

The warm feeling vanished.

He hadn’t found me attractive at all. He was just one of those nice, friendly people who liked everyone. It made sense. The nice people next door would know other nice people. They tend to congregate.

Or possibly he had found me attractive, but in a slimy, sleazy I’m-happy-to-cheat-on-my-girlfriend-if-you’re-up-for-it way. He was probably the sort of man who smiled at every woman like that, just in case he was in with a chance.

And then I thought: Where the fuck am I going to go now?

The fortieth birthday party in the house by the harbor had begun to seem so real I’d almost been looking forward to it.

I had nowhere to go. Once upon a time there were people I could have called. It’s amazing how friends can slip through your fingers, how your social network can vanish like it never existed. If you don’t have a family, if you live in a city designed so that you don’t need to connect with anyone, and you drive everywhere, so there is nowhere to walk and nod hello, so
you can do all your shopping in soulless supermarkets with blank-faced teenagers scanning your groceries while they look right through you as if you don’t exist, because you don’t, not really.

If I lived in a town like the ones I once wanted to design, there would be somewhere I could go where I wouldn’t feel alone, somewhere open and light where I could drink a cup of coffee and read a book in a place that encouraged conversation.

Which is all such self-delusional crap, because I could not bear to live somewhere lovely, where I would be forced to talk to people every day, a whole town of horrendously nice people, smiling their sunny smiles at me when I just want to buy a small carton of milk without anybody asking about my weekend.

I’m not lonely. I’m just alone. I choose to be alone.

I know exactly what I need to do if I want to step back into society. I could watch
The Wire
and talk to Lance about it, and then I could offer to lend him a DVD series, and then one day I could say, “Do you and your wife want to come over for dinner sometime?” Didn’t I meet his wife once? I could say, “Do you want to have a drink one night after work?” to any number of people in the office. I could have said yes to that work party a few months back. I could have said yes to the people next door. I could even get on the Internet and meet men who want a relationship, or at least sex.

I am not socially disabled. I am reserved, sometimes shy—but not in a debilitating way. I could do it. I did it when I moved to Sydney and didn’t know a soul. I participated. I said yes to invitations. I smiled and asked questions and made the first move.

But now I can’t be bothered to do it again. I’m too old, and this is the crux of it—
it’s not fair
. I shouldn’t have to be in this position again.

I can’t bear the pretense, the fraudulent cheeriness, like when I spoke to the people next door. I would be pretending all the time, because you have to fake it in the beginning—that’s the way it works.

But once I had a real relationship with real friends. Once I was a mother and a wife and a friend and a daughter, and now I am nothing.

And if I moved on, if I lived a regular life, it would be like Patrick had got away with it, and he was right: We weren’t meant to be together.

I drove to Ellen’s house, and my regular feeling, that permanent sense of pain and loss and fury, felt even worse than usual because it had disappeared for a few seconds.

I was just going to leave the plastic bag with the ingredients at the front door—no need for a note, they would know they were from me—but as I was about to go back down the footpath, I saw she had a little miniature stone owl, with glasses, sitting up on the cornice above her door, and I thought, I bet she keeps her spare key under the owl.

And I was right.

C
olleen’s parents came out onto their front porch as soon as Patrick drove the car into the driveway.

“That’s them. Frank and Millie.” Patrick spoke in an odd, strained voice and waved, smiling with his teeth clenched.

Jack threw open the car door and ran to his grandparents. Ellen and Patrick watched as he hugged them. It seemed like he was going to be the only one acting naturally today.

“Right,” said Patrick, and they got out of the car.

“Quick!” called out Millie from the doorway, beckoning to him, as Jack disappeared inside with his grandfather. “Come inside, you two, where it’s nice and warm!”

“Hi, Millie! Yes! Good idea!” called back Patrick in a jolly tone Ellen had never heard him use before.

Good Lord, she thought.

“Hel-
looo
!” she cried out, in a desperate rush to demonstrate to Colleen’s parents she was a friendly, nice person and so very sorry for their loss.

(Oh, God, why had she called out “hello” in that echo-ey voice? Like she was shouting to them across a mountaintop? She sounded deranged.)

Millie was right. The house seemed especially cozy and warm after the chilly visit to the graveyard. There was soft music playing, and Millie led Ellen to a comfortable seat right next to a log fire.

“What can I get you to drink?” she asked. She was a tiny birdlike woman, wearing a younger person’s outfit of jeans and a white jumper that hung on her thin frame. You could see that once she’d been beautiful, and there was something about her, a look of resigned acceptance, that said,
I know I’m no longer beautiful and I couldn’t care less.

Her husband, Frank, was thin too and very tall, like an elderly, stooped basketball player. Ellen saw how grief had dragged at their faces, like faded claw marks.

They seemed like shy people, but they were all smiles, gracious and welcoming, chatting about the traffic and the weather. It broke Ellen’s heart. If only they weren’t so damned nice.

“What Ellen really needs is a dry cracker,” said Patrick. “She’s feeling nauseous. The, ah, pregnancy, you know.” Did she imagine that he’d lowered his voice on the word “pregnancy” like it was a shameful disorder?

“I’ll get you one straightaway,” said Millie.

“I had some ready at home, but then I forgot to bring them. I’m so sorry to be a nuisance,” Ellen babbled, as if asking for a cracker was a huge inconvenience, when what she really meant was that she was so sorry to be there at all, inconveniently alive and pregnant, taking their daughter’s place.