The Hypnotist's Love Story (46 page)

And at that point I must have thought, Why not go there right now?

Or maybe I felt an overwhelming desire to tell Patrick something: that I loved him or I hated him, that I understood or I would never understand, that I was letting him go, finally, this was it, I would never go near him again, or that I would never let him go or I would love him for the rest of my life.

Who knows?

The next thing I remember is standing at the foot of their bed.

Patrick was flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring in that way of his, where each snore goes further up the scale in volume, until there is an enormous shuddery one that half wakes him up and he stops, and then a few seconds later it starts again. Ellen was lying on her side, with her hands
folded in prayer under her cheek, just like you’d expect her to sleep, although she was snoring too, in a gentler, more regular rhythm than Patrick. Their snoring sounded comical, as if they were trying to play a tune together and kept getting it wrong and having to start again.

I didn’t feel envy or anger or pain. I felt calm and quite friendly toward them. I think it was because of the snoring. So I got a shock when they woke up and I saw their reactions. The fear on their faces! I wanted to say, “No, no, relax, it’s only
me
!”

It was like Patrick had seen some sort of dangerous animal. As if I were a grizzly bear looming over him. Me! Just me, Saskia! I don’t even kill cockroaches. He knows that.

And then Ellen was yelling at me about something in my hand, and I looked down and saw that I was holding their baby’s ultrasound pictures, although I didn’t remember picking them up or looking at them.

She reacted as if I was stealing her baby.

Technically, she stole my baby. I could have got pregnant with Patrick’s baby if we’d kept trying. I might have.

They woke Jack up with all their noise. I heard him call out. So then I just wanted everyone to calm down. I wanted them to know that there was no need for anyone to be upset.

It was like a nightmare, where you suddenly realize you’re naked in a shopping center. A tiny voice in my head said:
Saskia, you’ve gone too far. What would Mum think
?

Mum would not approve of me upsetting Jack.

Nobody would calm down. Patrick refused to listen. He was pushing me, shoving me. I noticed that everything had turned sepia, as if we were in an old photograph. It added to that nightmarish, surreal feeling.

I remember Jack running down the hallway in his pajamas, his eyes and mouth huge with terror. That voice in my head saying:
This is your fault, Saskia.

And then, somehow, we were falling together, and I was trying to hold on to him, to stop him from hurting himself. It was terrible.

That was the last thing I remember before I woke up in the hospital and felt the most unbearable pain shatter the lower half of my body, as if someone was dropping bricks on me from a great height, and I saw Ellen, standing with her back to me at the hospital window. I must have made some sort of a noise, because she turned around and smiled at me. She didn’t look frightened. She smiled at me, as if I was a normal person, not a grizzly bear.

She said, “There’s been a big dust storm.”

It was the first thing that came into her head.

“Sydney is covered in dust,” she said. “It really looks quite apocalyptic out there. No wonder Jack thought it was the end of the world. I actually thought there had been a nuclear blast myself.”

Saskia stared up at her blankly, as if she was speaking a foreign language.

“They can see it from space, apparently,” said Ellen. She took a deep breath and sat down on the chair next to Saskia’s bed. “That’s why it took a while for the ambulance to come this morning. The city is in chaos.”

Saskia’s eyes moved slowly down the bed and the white hospital blanket covering her body.

“You’ve fractured your pelvis,” said Ellen. “And your right ankle. You might need surgery for the ankle, but they think the pelvis should heal itself. You can press the little button here for more pain relief.”

There was silence. Ellen’s eyes locked with Saskia’s. It felt shocking, as if the strange connection between the two of them was more intimate than that of two sexual partners.

“I don’t know if you remember what happened,” began Ellen.

“Jack,” said Saskia clearly.

“He’s broken his arm,” said Ellen. “But other than that he’s fine.”

Saskia’s face crumpled. “My fault.”

“Well,” said Ellen. “Yes.”

Jack went through a stage when he was a toddler when he seemed to be constantly hurting himself. He’d bang his head on the coffee table, his elbow against the door frame. As soon as one bruise or graze healed he’d get another one. I’d be down the other end of the house and hear the crash, the pause and then the anguished scream that shredded my heart. I’d think, Not again.

Once Patrick was playing with him when it was past his bedtime and I was saying, “OK, that’s enough now,” because I knew Jack was getting overtired and he’d hurt himself soon and, sure enough, next thing Jack’s yelling and spitting out blood because he’d banged his chin and bitten his tongue, and I was
furious
with Patrick.

I must have said it a thousand times: “Careful.”

And now, because of
me
, Jack had a broken arm. There was no denying my responsibility. There was no way I could twist the events of the previous evening around to make it someone else’s fault.

Ellen sat there, just looking at me steadily. She looked exhausted: gray shadows under her eyes, pale lips. No makeup. Messy hair. Her face plain. Ordinary even. Except that there was something so pristine about her. Looking at her was like looking at something natural and true.

I caused Jack to break his arm.

It was like someone was holding a screen right up close to my face, and it was playing a movie of everything I’d done for the last three years: every text message, every phone call, every letter I knew he’d never read, leading up to the final sepia-colored moment when Jack and I crashed down the stairs.

I closed my eyes to try and escape from it, but I could still see it. It was unflinching and unrelenting.

I was being suffocated by shame.

“Breathe,” said Ellen. “Just concentrate on your breathing. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale.” The sound of her voice was like an old familiar
tune. It took me straight back to her little glass room overlooking the ocean. I listened greedily, as if her voice were oxygen.

“That’s it. In. And out.”

I opened my eyes and saw that she’d leaned in closer, so that her face was only inches from mine. She took my hand. Her hands were cold. My mother always had cold hands. “Cold hands, warm heart,” she used to say.

“Have you heard the phrase ‘hitting rock bottom’?” she said.

She didn’t wait for an answer. I noticed her voice had changed subtly. She was speaking in her “professional” voice.

“It’s something that happens to addicts when they finally break down in every way possible: physically, spiritually, emotionally. I think that’s sort of what’s happening to you right now, Saskia. And I don’t know, but I think it probably feels terrible. I think it probably feels like the end of the world.”

I felt a wild, flapping sensation in my chest, like a trapped bird.

Ellen kept talking. “But it’s good, it’s a good thing, it’s even a great thing, because it’s the turning point. It’s the beginning of getting better. It’s the beginning of getting your life back. I think you’ve probably tried to stop before, haven’t you?”

Again, she didn’t wait for me to reply.

“But this time it’s going to work. For one thing you’re going to be stuck.” Ellen’s eyes sparkled, as if it was all a great joke. “They tell me you won’t be walking for six to eight weeks, and after that you’ll be on crutches.”

I didn’t react to that at all. My future didn’t seem possible. It had no relevance.

“And during that time you’ll get counseling,” continued Ellen confidently, happily, as if we were discussing shared holiday plans that were already in place. “It will be a good way to pass the time. And then once you’re back on your feet, I think you should move.”

She smiled. “That might seem a bit presumptuous of me, but, well, I’ve got the right to be presumptuous. I think you need to move somewhere far away from Sydney. So you won’t be tempted.”

Her hand tightened around mine. “I expect Patrick will finally take out a restraining order against you. So legally, you won’t be able to come near us. He’s going to need to do that, but what I need is a promise from you, a promise right now, that this is it, that last night was the end and today is the beginning. The end of your old life and the beginning of your new life. Can you promise me that?”

I felt my head jerk up and down, as if I were a puppet and she was pulling the strings. I said, “I promise.”

She patted my hand and said, “Good.”

I became aware of the pain again; it gripped and viciously squeezed the lower half of my body, and it felt personal, as if someone was doing it on purpose. I tried not to resist it, to accept it as my punishment, but frankly, it hurt too much.

“Give yourself a hit,” said Ellen. She put something like a light switch in my hand. I pressed the button. A few seconds later I felt a sensation of fuzzy warmth, like pins and needles creeping up my legs, and the pain receded. I said, “Why are you here? Why are you being nice to me?”

My mouth felt as if it was full of marbles, as if I hadn’t spoken for a very long time.

Ellen went to speak and then she stopped, as if she was reconsidering.

She said, “I don’t really know. You frightened me, but at the same time you intrigued me. I even found it strangely validating. You watching us made my life seem more interesting.” She shook her head. “I was sort of addicted to you.”

“You should hate me,” I said. My voice sounded unfamiliar: slurred, like a stroke victim. “Patrick hates me.”

“That’s because I don’t have the emotional connection that Patrick has to you. Patrick hates you because he once loved you.”

“That’s nice of you to say that,” I said. My nose was running. I went to wipe it with the back of my hand and saw I had the drip attached. I sniffed noisily. I didn’t even care. I had no dignity left to lose.

“I’m not that nice,” said Ellen. “When I saw you holding the ultrasound
photos, I wanted to kill you. It turns out that I do have limits. I don’t want you near my baby.”

Her eyes had turned steely.

The words “I’m sorry” came into my mind, but they seemed insultingly inadequate.

I said instead, “Patrick is lucky to have you.” And it occurred to me that I might actually mean it, that in a far-off, more generous part of my mind, I could even be happy for him.

Her face shifted in some tiny, subtle way. She said, “He’s still in love with his first wife.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. I could feel my senses starting to drift. “He still loves Colleen. First love and all that, but, so what, she’s dead, isn’t she? I always knew that I loved him more than he loved me, but I didn’t care. I just loved him so much.”

A great wave of tiredness was dragging me somewhere far away.

“I know you did.” Ellen stood up, adjusting my blankets, like a mother. “You loved him. And you loved Jack.”

For a moment I seemed to swim back up to lucidity again, and I said, “Have you hypnotized me?”

She smiled. “I’ve been trying to
un
hypnotize you, Saskia.”

And then I was drifting away again, and I heard her say, “It’s time to move on now, Saskia, and let go of all those memories of Patrick and Jack. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or that Patrick didn’t love you, or that you weren’t a wonderful mother to Jack. I know that you were. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t hurt you terribly. But now it’s time to close that door. Imagine an actual door. A big heavy wooden door with an old-fashioned gold lock. Now close it.
Bang.
Lock it. Throw away the key. It’s closed, Saskia. Closed forever.”

When I woke up again, the room was empty and the hypnotist’s visit seemed like a dream.