The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty Page B
Authors: Liane Moriarty
Tags: General Fiction
Ads: Link
politics and business and anything outside the domestic realm. If only she had a gray-haired, bespectacled father who would warmly shake Patrick’s hand and ask him man-to-man questions about surveying, while the sweet mother fussed about, trying to get the “fellows” to take a second piece of cheesecake.
It wasn’t going to be like that at all.
“Mum has had a few long-term relationships over the years,” she told Patrick. “But not for a while now.”
“And your dad is just … not in the picture?”
“Never anywhere near the picture,” said Ellen. She paused, aware of a slight flash of irritation. “Like I said.”
She had told him her family history a few weeks after they started dating. She had perfected the telling of the story over the years, so that it was the ideal party piece or dinner party anecdote, unusual and interesting and intimate, just the right length, with no embarrassing emotion likely to cause guests to shift uneasily in their seats.
She always started the same way. “My mother was a woman ahead of her time.” Then she would explain that early on the morning of the first of January 1971 the intensely pragmatic Doctor Anne O’Farrell made a New Year’s resolution to become a single mother. She was a successful, independent woman in her thirties and she didn’t especially want to be married, but she did (oddly) want a baby. With the help of her two closest female friends, she made a list of potential candidates to father her child, along with their positive and negative attributes: their education levels, their medical histories and their personality traits.
Anne had kept these lists and given them to Ellen when she was a teenager. Her “father” wasa list of bullet points in her mother’s scrawly handwriting with the figure “85%” circled next to it. The highest score by ten percent.
Her father’s positive attributes included “postgraduate education level” (he was a surgeon; Anne had met him at the university), “good teeth,” “small ears” (her mother abhorred large, flappy ears), “excellent skin,” “no family history of heart disease, diabetes or respiratory problems” and “good social skills.”
His negative attributes were “eyesight” (glasses), “spiritual tendencies,” “mother who reads tarot cards,” “somewhat strange sense of humor” and “engaged to be married.”
Over recent years, Ellen had started leaving off the “engaged to be married” part when she told people about the list. She didn’t know if it was the whole world that was becoming more moral—a sort of increasing level of global prudishness—or if it was just her own social circle that appeared to be becoming more conservative.
Apparently her father’s engagement hadn’t been an obstacle. It had been as easy as pie to seduce him, not just once, but the optimum number of times, and on the appropriate days before and after ovulation.
“It was the seventies after all,” said her mother.
And that was that. A job well done. Her “father” got married two months later, and went off to live in the UK and never knew of Ellen’s existence.
“What if I wanted to go and find my dad?” she’d said to her mother when she was going through her extremely tame, short-lived rebellious teenager stage, and she quivered a little at the unfamiliar, almost sexual word in her mouth, “Dad.”
“I’m not stopping you.” Anne didn’t even look up from the newspaper she was reading. “It would be a very cruel, hurtful thing to do to his wife.”
And, of course, Ellen would never knowingly do anything cruel or hurtful, and besides, the thought of actually meeting this middle-aged man filled her with shyness. Her friends’ fathers were big and hairy and deep-voiced,sometimes funny but mostly boring, and somehow essentially irrelevant to real life.
Her mother’s friends Melanie and Phillipa had never had children of their own. They had been Ellen’s godmothers, and for
It wasn’t going to be like that at all.
“Mum has had a few long-term relationships over the years,” she told Patrick. “But not for a while now.”
“And your dad is just … not in the picture?”
“Never anywhere near the picture,” said Ellen. She paused, aware of a slight flash of irritation. “Like I said.”
She had told him her family history a few weeks after they started dating. She had perfected the telling of the story over the years, so that it was the ideal party piece or dinner party anecdote, unusual and interesting and intimate, just the right length, with no embarrassing emotion likely to cause guests to shift uneasily in their seats.
She always started the same way. “My mother was a woman ahead of her time.” Then she would explain that early on the morning of the first of January 1971 the intensely pragmatic Doctor Anne O’Farrell made a New Year’s resolution to become a single mother. She was a successful, independent woman in her thirties and she didn’t especially want to be married, but she did (oddly) want a baby. With the help of her two closest female friends, she made a list of potential candidates to father her child, along with their positive and negative attributes: their education levels, their medical histories and their personality traits.
Anne had kept these lists and given them to Ellen when she was a teenager. Her “father” wasa list of bullet points in her mother’s scrawly handwriting with the figure “85%” circled next to it. The highest score by ten percent.
Her father’s positive attributes included “postgraduate education level” (he was a surgeon; Anne had met him at the university), “good teeth,” “small ears” (her mother abhorred large, flappy ears), “excellent skin,” “no family history of heart disease, diabetes or respiratory problems” and “good social skills.”
His negative attributes were “eyesight” (glasses), “spiritual tendencies,” “mother who reads tarot cards,” “somewhat strange sense of humor” and “engaged to be married.”
Over recent years, Ellen had started leaving off the “engaged to be married” part when she told people about the list. She didn’t know if it was the whole world that was becoming more moral—a sort of increasing level of global prudishness—or if it was just her own social circle that appeared to be becoming more conservative.
Apparently her father’s engagement hadn’t been an obstacle. It had been as easy as pie to seduce him, not just once, but the optimum number of times, and on the appropriate days before and after ovulation.
“It was the seventies after all,” said her mother.
And that was that. A job well done. Her “father” got married two months later, and went off to live in the UK and never knew of Ellen’s existence.
“What if I wanted to go and find my dad?” she’d said to her mother when she was going through her extremely tame, short-lived rebellious teenager stage, and she quivered a little at the unfamiliar, almost sexual word in her mouth, “Dad.”
“I’m not stopping you.” Anne didn’t even look up from the newspaper she was reading. “It would be a very cruel, hurtful thing to do to his wife.”
And, of course, Ellen would never knowingly do anything cruel or hurtful, and besides, the thought of actually meeting this middle-aged man filled her with shyness. Her friends’ fathers were big and hairy and deep-voiced,sometimes funny but mostly boring, and somehow essentially irrelevant to real life.
Her mother’s friends Melanie and Phillipa had never had children of their own. They had been Ellen’s godmothers, and for
Similar Books
