Up until now, Ellen hadn't minded the lack of balance in their conversation. In fact, she'd enjoyed a slightly superior feeling about her maturity in the face of Madeline's prejudice. Her sense of self-worth didn't rely on other people's approval. But now she felt a powerful surge of resentment. Her work was important to her. It was a huge part of her life. Why hadn't Madeline at least tried to learn more about hypnotherapy? She'd never even asked a single question about her work! What was that about? It was disrespectful. In fact, it was infuriating.
"Have I got something in my teeth?" asked Madeline, flustered. She turned to the mirrored wall. "Why are you staring at me like that?"
Ellen cleared her throat. It would not be appropriate to suddenly shriek, "Why have we never talked about my job, Madeline?"
What was wrong with her lately? Pregnancy seemed to be stripping away all her emotional maturity. She had all these new raw, out-of-control feelings. Moments of pure fury followed by hopeless despair. Good Lord. She was behaving like a client.
"Sorry." Ellen smiled at Madeline to make up for her silent shrieking. "I drifted off."
"Well, I think there must have been more to it than just hormones," said Julia. "Did it make you feel guilty? Knowing that you were having a baby with her husband? Of course, you're the expert on repressed feelings."
Ellen gave Julia a grateful look. Unlike Madeline, Julia had always been supportive and proud of Ellen's work. Over the years she'd referred dozens of friends and acquaintances to her. Yes, she was a dear, dear friend.
"Are you crying now?" asked Julia. "Just remembering it?"
"No, sorry, I just--" Ellen began to giggle hopelessly.
She saw Julia and Madeline exchange looks.
"I know pregnant women go a bit crazy," said Julia. "But isn't this excessive?"
"Yes," said Madeline.
"I hate to think what you did when you met your father for the first time," said Julia. "You must have needed a sedative." She put the back of her hand to her forehead. "Daddy, Daddy! My long-lost daddy!"
Madeline chortled and then looked guilty. "Although, I guess, maybe meeting your father probably was quite emotional, was it?"
"Actually," said Ellen, "I had the opposite problem. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"Really?" Madeline looked relieved. That was more like it.
"He was just a man," said Ellen. "A dull, ordinary man. Like your dentist. Or your accountant. Receding hairline. Glasses. I just didn't find him that interesting."
"Poor Daddy," said Julia into her wineglass.
"You know what I really want to talk about?" Ellen put down her knife and fork. "Boxes. Boxes clogging up my hallway."
"That doesn't sound especially interesting," said Julia.
"They're Patrick's, right?" Madeline immediately grasped the situation.
"Yes," said Ellen. "I asked and asked and he won't move them. It's driving me crazy. How do you make a man do something without nagging?"
"That," said Madeline, "is the billion-dollar question."
I was watching the late news tonight when it suddenly came to me.
I knew exactly who that man was.
So what did he want with Ellen? And why was he so angry with her?
Ellen sat in the car in the dark without turning the keys in the ignition and luxuriated in the sudden silence after the noisy babble in the restaurant. Her ears were buzzing, and she felt overstimulated, as if she'd just been having a crazy drunken night out in a nightclub, not a sedate, alcohol-free dinner with two old friends. For some reason she had found Julia and Madeline a little overwhelming tonight. Their faces in that crowded booth had been so close to hers: Julia's fine-boned face with the surprising lines around the eyes (surprising because Ellen would always think of her as a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl) and Madeline's plumper, softer features with the upturned nose and the rosebud lips. Ellen could still smell Julia's perfume and hear the rhythms of Madeline's slightly hoarse voice (she had the beginnings of a cold).
"I'm seeing Sam tomorrow night," Julia had said to her, as they stood on the pavement outside the restaurant, after Madeline had hurried off.
"Stinky? He really did have the flu that time? I knew it! You've been seeing him? Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"We don't call him that," said Julia. "Anyway, don't get all excited and start planning cozy little double dates. We're just friends."
Ellen could see hope shining bright in Julia's eyes.
"Stop it," said Julia, when she saw the expression on Ellen's face. "Not a word." But her arms tightened around Ellen when she hugged her good-bye.
Now Ellen glanced at her watch. As they'd skipped the movie, it was only nine-thirty. There was a good chance Jack would still be up when she got home. He seemed to stay up very late for an eight-year-old, but what did she know?
She knew that Patrick would be entirely respectful if she was to suggest that Jack's bedtime be changed, but she felt so self-conscious when it came to parenting this self-sufficient little boy, as if she was just playacting. She should have asked Madeline what time her children went to bed. She would have set her straight.
It was so nice to not be going home to an empty house. The lights would be blazing as she pulled up in the driveway. When she opened the door, there would be the smell of tacos or popcorn or some other late-night snack. Patrick and Jack would be watching television together, or playing some game on the Wii, or chasing each other through the house, brandishing the branch that had once hung on her ceiling to remind her to practice mindfulness and had now somehow become a sword or a laser gun or something (they seemed so violent sometimes!). Patrick would ask about the movie. Jack would want to tell her something about his day. They would have hot chocolate and some of the fund-raiser chocolates Jack was meant to be selling for school. Patrick would tell Jack to go to bed about twenty times and he finally would.
Yes, it was so very nice to be going home to the hubbub of the family life she'd always wanted.
But she still didn't turn the key in the ignition.
Fine. Think it out loud, Ellen.
It would also be quite nice to be going home to an empty house, to calming silence and a hallway free of boxes, to a cup of tea with a book, to a long hot bath without anyone asking if she was coming to bed soon.
It would be lovely, in fact, the way she was feeling right now, to have her own house to herself, to have her own bed to herself, to have her old life back for just tonight.
She thought of all those nights over the last year when she'd come home alone and she'd fumbled in the dark with her key to unlock the door, and as she'd fumbled, she'd longed for someone to be waiting inside for her, someone exactly like Patrick.
She thought about Saskia, so single-minded in her desire to have Patrick back. She'd held on for all those years. She was an attractive, intelligent woman. She could have met plenty of other men, but she only wanted Patrick. It might be crazy, but it was committed.
Ellen knew that she didn't love Patrick with that same ferocity. Actually, she'd never loved anyone that much. She would never break into anyone's house. She'd never be so overcome by a feeling that she'd break a law, or do anything that was socially unacceptable. She could hear Julia and Madeline saying, That's a good thing, you fool! That's sanity! That's maturity!
She sighed and reached out to turn the key in the ignition, and then she dropped her hand back in her lap. A young couple walked by on the pavement outside the car. They were arguing over something. Suddenly the girl turned on her heel and walked away, making a flicking motion with her hand. The boy watched her go. Follow her, thought Ellen. That's what she wants you to do. But he clenched his jaw, shrugged, shoved his hand in his pockets and walked away from her.
She thought about everything she'd said to her friends at dinner that night and everything she'd left out.
All those years she'd sanctimoniously told clients that "relationships are hard work," she'd never truly understood the truth of what she was
saying.
(In fact, she'd probably secretly thought that relationships were hard work for other people, not for her, not with her knowledge and skills and emotional intelligence. Oh, the conceit!)
She and Patrick had made up after their trip to the mountains, of course, later that night. The relief was exquisite, almost worth the argument.
"It was my fault," Ellen had said nobly.
"It was absolutely my fault," said Patrick, and he'd explained about a problem he was having at work: a client who was refusing to pay a big bill. Also, he'd seen Saskia waiting outside in her car when they left for the mountains. Patrick said, "I think I was subconsciously taking out my stress on you." He was trying his best to speak her language, which was sort of adorable.
Then he'd been horrified to learn that she'd had to cancel her coffee with Julia to stay home with Jack.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he said. "That's crazy!"
"I don't know," said Ellen. "I guess I just wanted to be like a proper mother."
"You are a proper mother," said Patrick. "I love the way you are with him. You couldn't be any better. I should never have assumed you were free."
"Well, I guess I should have told you earlier."
"Shut up, woman. I'm taking the fall for this one," said Patrick, and he'd spent the next twenty minutes rubbing her feet.
There was no way she was going to mention Saskia's biscuits then. The foot rubbing would have ended instantly, while he paced and fretted and swore.
And later that night on the day of their trip to the mountains he'd actually moved two of the boxes. He'd dragged them into the dining room, leaving what looked like the tire marks of a monster truck right across her grandmother's carpet. Ellen had a vision of her grandmother's horror-struck face, remembering all the times she'd spent on her hands and knees scrubbing away at some tiny spot visible only to her eyes.
Sorry, Grandma.
The rest of the boxes were still there. They had a settled, slumped look about them now. It was becoming impossible to imagine them moved.
Now she turned on the ignition and switched on the headlights, illuminating the street in front of her.
The boy she'd seen earlier was running back along the street, his chin down, his arms pumping like he was on a football field. Yes! Ellen felt a tingle. He was running back after his girlfriend to swoop her up into his arms and bury his face in her hair. How lovely.
Or perhaps he was going back to knock her teeth out. Life wasn't always as romantic as it seemed. She pulled out into the traffic.
Like, for example, you would think that meeting your father for the first time ever would be an occasion filled with tender, tremulous emotion.
Monday lunchtime had been such a mistake. Why in the world had she thought that daytime would be better than night? It was so obvious that dinner would have been more appropriate. They had ended up meeting at a cafe in North Sydney, because all three of them had various appointments around the area that day and it seemed to make sense. The problem was that it made the lunch feel like just another appointment in their day, an errand to be crossed off their list. They were making small talk like business acquaintances do before someone takes out their notepad and says, "Right, let's get started."
Also, the lighting was all wrong. It was too sunny and real. She didn't want to notice the minuscule black dots of hair on her father's upper lip. She didn't want to see the pores on his nose, or the glimpses of pink mottled scalp beneath his hair. She didn't want to see the sauce from his Moroccan chicken wrap on his lip. She certainly didn't want to see her mother gaily wiping it away with her serviette! (Her mother! So soft and accommodating and feminine. At one point in the conversation, she'd actually fiddled with her hair.)
Ellen's nausea hadn't helped either. It really colored the way she saw the world. A horrible beige color. It seemed to get better at night. Why hadn't she remembered that?
When she'd walked into the cafe, it had reminded her of Internet dating: that intensely peculiar feeling of searching the room for the face of a stranger, a stranger whom you were imagining as a potential life partner. Could I imagine kissing you, waking up with you, arguing with you? Except that there was no escape clause with this meeting, because it didn't actually matter what she thought of him. She wouldn't be able to go back online and choose another potential father.
Her eyes had skimmed right past him at first. He was just another one of the ubiquitous gray-haired businessmen in good suits who filled the cafe. And then she saw her mother sitting opposite him. She almost hadn't recognized her. She was used to seeing her mother with Mel and Pip, the three of them making a minor spectacle of themselves: talking and laughing louder than anyone else. Her mother seemed somehow diminished sitting opposite this gray-haired man. Instead of sitting back in her chair, with perfect posture like a queen, she was leaning forward, both her forearms resting on the table, her head tilted at a subservient angle.
When she saw Ellen, she sat up abruptly, as if she'd been caught doing something wrong, and then she smiled and waved, and Ellen saw pride, followed almost instantaneously by fear, cross her face.
David, her father, stood up as Ellen walked toward them, and kissed her graciously on both cheeks, in the way that men of a certain age and income level did these days. ("The kissing thing has got out of control in this city lately," Madeline had said tonight at dinner. "Next thing you know, you'll have to kiss the checkout chick good-bye as you're picking up your groceries.")
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Ellen," he'd said, and then as they sat down he said, more formally, "You're a very welcome surprise in my life." But at the moment he said it, a waitress appeared, talking over the top of him, tossing down laminated menus on their table, and then he obviously wasn't sure if Ellen had heard him and he didn't know if he should say it again, and Ellen was too busy asking if the waitress could bring some plain bread as quickly as possible, please, so the moment passed for her to reassure him and to say that he was a welcome surprise in her life too. That tiny little moment of social awkwardness had caused his urbane facade to slip a little, and that had given her the squirmy feeling of seeing something she shouldn't have seen, as though she'd suddenly noticed that he was wearing a toupee.
After that they'd stuck to the small talk. They chatted about the weekend away in the Whitsundays (Glorious! Amazing! Her mother's voice was so shrill. She sounded like someone else's mother) and the play they'd seen, about what it was like for David to be living back in Sydney after all these years. He was an orthopedic surgeon and planned to practice for only a few more years before he retired.
"Then I might buy a boat and sail around the world for a year," he said. He looked at Anne. "Fancy being my first mate?"
Anne glowed. "As long as there's an espresso machine onboard."
Every now and then Ellen would think, These are my parents. I'm out having lunch with my parents. She imagined meeting a friend, or a client, someone who didn't know her history. "This is my mum and dad."
How extraordinarily ordinary.
Her father had asked her lots of searching questions about hypnotherapy, with elaborately casual references to articles he'd recently read. It was obvious that he'd spent some time researching hypnotherapy specifically for this meeting, which was touching, almost painfully so. Ellen got a prickling sensation behind her eyes as he listened so courteously and attentively to her answers.
It was also obvious that he was relatively open-minded on the subject of "alternative therapies," especially for a surgeon of his age and background. Her mother didn't make any of her normal sharp comments. She even made some vaguely complimentary remarks. "Ellen often has a waiting list, you know," she told David, and a few minutes later, in a doctor-to-another-doctor tone: "Apparently she's had some quite good results with idiopathic pain management."
Although you've never once referred a patient to me, Mum. Did her mother feel she needed to sell Ellen to him? As if Anne was a single mother and her kid was part of the pa
ckage, like Jack was part of Patrick's package.
David spoke about his two sons with a father's casual tenderness; just using their names caused him to smile involuntarily.
"Do they have children yet?" asked Ellen. She was refusing to think too hard about the fact that these two strange men--one was in real estate and the other was in marketing--two men, a few years younger than her, living on the other side of the world, presumably with English accents and English complexions, were her half-brothers. It was like hearing that the imaginary friends of your childhood had actually existed all along. When she was a child she was always asking her mother if her father had other children, and her mother would answer, depending on her mood, airily or tersely, "Probably."
She had created sisters and brothers in her imagination: a sexy older brother who wore a leather jacket and rode a motorbike and had lots of handsome friends, a younger sister who adored her, an older sister who lent her makeup. She'd grown out of it, of course. There was really no necessity for two younger brothers now. She was busy. She had enough trouble keeping up with her own friends. What was she meant to do: look them up on Facebook?
"No grandchildren yet," said David. "Callum is married, but his wife doesn't seem too interested in having children, and Lachlan seems to be settling into bachelorhood." He stopped and frowned. "So this"--he made an awkward sweeping motion with his teaspoon toward Ellen's stomach--"so this is my first grandchild!"
Then he flushed slightly as though he'd overstepped the line.
"Yes," said Ellen, trying to be generous.
"Who would have thought we'd be grandparents," murmured Ellen's mother, and Ellen watched as her parents (her parents!) exchanged secretive, loaded looks.
Throughout the lunch Ellen had stared at her father's features, searching for evidence of their shared DNA. She noted the small ears and good teeth that her mother had put on his list of attributes. (She couldn't see any evidence of his "strange sense of humor," but that was probably because he was nervous. They all were. None of the three of them were really being themselves.) David must have been covertly studying her too, because at one point he suddenly said, "I think you have my mother's eyes."