The Hypnotist's Love Story (13 page)

“That’s…” began Patrick. He obviously had no idea how to finish the sentence, and drank his beer as if his life depended on it.

“I have tried to get Ellen to hypnotize my addiction away.”

“She giggles the whole way through,” sighed Ellen, as her mother passed her a glass of white wine without asking what she wanted; she would have preferred a juice.

“Come and have a sensible conversation with me, Patrick,” said Melanie. She patted the stool next to her. “Ellen said you are a surveyor, right? My grandfather had a wonderful collection of old maps he left to me. I think the oldest dates back to about 1820.”

Patrick took his beer glass away from his lips and spoke in his normal voice. “Is that right?”

Mel got Patrick settled next to her, and pushed a plate of bread and salmon dip toward him. Ellen watched Patrick’s shoulders relax as Mel chatted calmly to him, steering him on to stable, factual masculine conversational ground where he could be sure of his footing. She always thought that Mel should have been a diplomat’s wife because of her ability to talk graciously and knowledgeably on any subject.

(Although Mel herself would have found that a very sexist remark. “I’d be the diplomat, thanks very much,” she would have said.)

“Let’s go help your mother.” Phillipa grabbed Ellen by the arm.

“Why, how kind of you, Pip,” said Anne, her violet eyes still on Patrick.

“Oh, darling, he’s just adorable!” said Phillipa as soon as they were in Anne’s pristine kitchen. “I bet he’s one of those strong, silent types, isn’t he? I can just see him on a mountaintop with his surveying equipment, squinting into the sun.”

“No,” said Ellen (although that was exactly the way she liked to imagine him). “He’s not like that at all. He’s very chatty when he gets a chance to be. And he mostly does surveys on houses.”

“Oh, to be young and in love,” said Phillipa nostalgically. “I loved being in love. I always lost so much weight.”

“I remember you sitting in this kitchen and saying, ‘Oh, to be young and in love,’ to Julia and me when we were seventeen,” said Ellen. She paused. “And that means you weren’t that much older than me now!”

“Speaking of Julia,” said her mother, who never required anyone’s help and was now giving the last-minute touches to delicately constructed meals on giant square white plates that would be divinely flavored but would no doubt leave Patrick suggesting pizza on the way home and Phillipa
reaching for the breadbasket. “I saw Julia’s mother at yoga on Saturday. She said your new boyfriend has a stalker.”

“The grapevine is so efficient,” said Ellen. It sometimes felt like she’d never left that closed little private-school world of her school days where all her friends’ mothers were on the same committees.

“A stalker!” Phillipa’s eyes popped. “How exciting!”

“Oh, yes, it will be all very exciting, Pip, when my daughter is found dead in a ditch.” Anne spoke from inside her walk-in pantry.

“Is it an ex-lover?” continued Phillipa, ignoring Anne. “A woman he
spurned
? Or just a random homicidal maniac who has taken an interest in him?”

Anne came out of the pantry and put a bottle of vinaigrette down on the bench top with unnecessary force. “Has this person shown any violent tendencies?” she asked. “Has Patrick reported her to the police?”

“It’s just an ex-girlfriend who hasn’t quite moved on,” said Ellen. “There’s really nothing to worry about.”

She wondered how her mother would react if she knew Saskia had been following them tonight, or if she knew that Ellen had felt a discernible sense of disappointment when they lost her at the lights.

Anne said, “Just promise me you’ll be careful. You always see the
good
in people, Ellen, which is all very adorable but also naïve.”

Ellen smiled at her. “I must get that adorable tendency from my father.”

Anne didn’t smile back. “You certainly didn’t get it from me.”

“Too right,” said Phillipa and giggled so hard she snorted.

I couldn’t decide where to wait for them.

Patrick’s place or hers. I knew it would depend on what they were doing with Jack for the night. Mostly Patrick’s mum seems to go over to his place and mind Jack, but sometimes Jack goes to her place, and I guess he stays in their spare room. It’s not very fair to Maureen. I remember she used to get exhausted when we left him with her as a toddler. He had her wrapped
around his little finger. Although of course it would be different now that he’s eight. I guess he probably just does his own thing—watches TV or whatever. I hope Patrick doesn’t let him watch too much TV. I hope he reads. He used to love his books. I remember once I decided to see how many times I could read him
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
before he got sick of it. I had to give up after I’d read it to him fifteen times. Every time I finished he’d say “Again?” with the same enthusiasm. I can still see his little fat, flushed cheeks as he sat there on my lap in his red Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, his lips pursed in concentration as he poked his fingers through the holes where the caterpillar had bitten through the apples.

I could have babysat Jack tonight, while Patrick and Ellen went wherever they went. That would have been fine. “Bye!” I could have said cheerily, like a teenage babysitter snuggled up on the couch with Jack under a duvet, sharing a bag of chips.

Maybe I should text Patrick and offer. Ha ha.

I could have been babysitting for years. I sometimes think that would have made all the difference—if Patrick hadn’t decided to rip Jack out of my life, my little boy, my darling little boy.

I remember one of the mothers I knew from Jack’s preschool ringing me up when she heard and saying, “He can’t do this to you, Saskia. It’s got to be illegal. You must have rights. You’re Jack’s mother.”

Except I wasn’t his real mother. Just his dad’s girlfriend. What court would care about that? A relationship that lasted three years. I didn’t even officially live with them for the first year. Not all that long.

Long enough to see him get out of nappies, learn to swim and tell knock knock jokes and use a knife and fork. Long enough for his hair to go from curly to straight. Long enough for him to call for me whenever he had a bad dream. Me. Not Daddy. He always called for me.

A sudden shriek slicing through my sleep and I’d be halfway down the hallway before I even woke up properly. I remember once I went to him and he was sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes and sobbing his heart out. “I just wanted to blow out the candles!” he said to me. And I said, “It’s OK,
you can blow them out,” and held out an imaginary cake. He puffed out his cheeks and blew, and that was it, problem solved; he smiled at me with his eyes still full of tears and then put his head back on the pillow and fell straight asleep. Patrick didn’t know anything about it until the next day.

I guess Jack’s nightmares aren’t so sweet and simple these days.

This is the thing. When do you cross the line from babysitter to mother? If you look after a child for a night, you obviously don’t suddenly become his mother just because you bathed him and fed him for a few hours. The same goes for a week. Or a month. But what about after a year? Two years? Three years? Is there some point where you cross an invisible line? Or is there no line except the legal one, the one you sign on the adoption papers? Foster children can be claimed back by their real parents at any time, even after years.

I should have adopted Jack. That was my mistake.

But it never even occurred to me.

I saw looking after Jack as a privilege, a gift. It was just another wonderful part of being in a relationship with Patrick.

So when he broke up with me, I knew that I’d have to lose Jack like I’d have to lose everything else that I loved about Patrick, like the veiny tops of his hands, I loved his hands; and his handwriting, he had such beautiful handwriting for a man; and the particular way he smiled at me after sex; and his singing, he sang country music songs quietly to himself when he did stuff around the house. I hate country music, but I loved hearing that quiet singing. It was the sound track to my life.

I never found out if I did have rights to Jack. Maybe I did.

But I went into shock when Patrick said he didn’t love me anymore.

I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t eat. It was like I’d been hit with a terrible illness. It was like a bomb had exploded through my life, shattering everything I thought I knew.

If Patrick had just let me see Jack on weekends. Like a divorced dad. That might have been enough.

Maybe then I wouldn’t be doing this thing, this whatever it is, that I cannot seem to stop doing no matter how hard I try. And I have tried. I have. I never understood alcoholics or gambling addicts before. Just stop it, I always thought when I heard about somebody wrecking their life because of a stupid addiction. But now I get it. It’s like telling someone to stop breathing.
Just stop breathing and you’ll get your life back on track.
So you hold your breath for as long as you can, but it doesn’t take long before you’re gasping for air. I know it’s humiliating. I know I’m pathetic. I don’t care. It’s just not physically possible to stop.

And so I sat there in my car outside Ellen’s house. She told me her grandmother left it to her when she died, which sort of sums up the differences between us. My grandmother left me a fruit bowl. I had the window down and I could hear the sounds of the waves breaking on the beach. That’s what Ellen must hear when she goes to sleep. That’s what Patrick must hear when he stays over.

I fell asleep, eventually, and when I awoke my back had seized up and the sun was rising and I couldn’t see Patrick’s car. So that meant they’d stayed at his place.

I thought of them asleep in the bed that was once mine, probably lying on sheets that I’d chosen, and I wondered if he was reaching out for her now in the dawn light, running a fingertip so delicately down her arm she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming it. Dreamy, half-asleep lovemaking at dawn was his thing.

I opened the car door and got out all hunched over, like an old lady. The kookaburras laughed like crazy.

E
llen woke to the feel of Patrick’s fingertip running slowly, delicately up the length of her arm.

The fingertip on the arm was always his opening move.

Jon used to kiss the back of her neck. Tiny butterfly kisses.

Edward would lick her earlobe, enthusiastically and wetly, which tickled unbearably. He mistook her shrieks and convulsions for crazy sexual excitement and she never got around to clearing up the misunderstanding.

Andy would whisper in her ear, his breath hot and irritating, “You feel like … ?” (“What?” she always wanted to say. “I feel like
what
? Finish the sentence!”)

She wondered if Jon was kissing the back of someone’s neck right now, and if Edward was licking an earlobe and Andy was whispering his unfinished question.

Why are you thinking about ex-lovers?

With her eyes still closed, she rolled toward Patrick to give him easier access to her arm. She liked the fingertip thing. She loved the fingertip thing.

She’d loved Jon’s butterfly kisses too.

So what? Concentrate on the fingertip.

Presumably, Patrick had used the same techniques on Saskia, in this very same bed, possibly on these very same sheets.

Which was interesting, but not at all relevant.

Once you’d perfected your sexual moves you didn’t tend to change them. She herself still kissed exactly the same way that boy in the caravan park had taught her to kiss when she was fifteen. He tasted of beer. Disgusting and delicious. What was that boy’s name? Chris? Craig? Something like that.

Patrick tugged at her nightie. “Let’s get this off.”

She wanted to be in bed with Patrick right now; there was nowhere else she wanted to be. On the other hand, it didn’t especially please her, the idea of Jon kissing someone else’s neck.

She helped Patrick pull the nightie off over her head.

She wondered what Saskia was doing right now. Where did she go last night, after she lost them at the lights? Did she go home and look at old photos of herself and Patrick? Did she cry?

Was Ellen responsible for another woman’s pain? Should she give him back? Of course, she had no intention of giving him back. He didn’t want Saskia. He wanted Ellen.

This was the way the world worked. Relationships ended. If they didn’t, she’d still be with the beery-breathed boy in the caravan park.

Julia was right. Saskia needed to be a grown-up and move on.

But, on the other hand, wasn’t there something noble about Saskia’s refusal to let go? She was crazy with passion. Ellen had never let passion make her do anything crazy.