Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

When she and Luca had shared that bed, she would toss and turn to wake him, irritated that he went on sleeping, unaware, or seemingly unaware, of the intensity of her anger. Angry that he woke up rested and better equipped than she was to face another day of fighting. When he finally left and she had the double bed to herself, she’d tossed about in all directions, kicking and getting it out of her system as she’d never been able to before. But there was no longer anyone to awaken. Those had been nights of nervous gymnastics, of anxiety and fear. Then she’d given in to a sleeping pill.

Mattia had been ill; Luca came back home for a few months and then left again. Now she saw him once or twice a week, depending on her shifts. Peaceful meetings on the landing, the children entering the house, passed from one warden to another (they had stopped calling it a “prisoner exchange,” sarcasm had lost much of its appeal), and him lingering for five minutes of very civil conversation, encouraging and comforting. Whatever the topic of their talk, his words said that they could do it, lots of couples were in their situation, there was nothing dramatic about it. That’s what the words said, and she submitted to them without putting up any resistance, neither curbing nor encouraging it, accepting each conversation for what it was. But meanwhile she kept thinking — and it had come to her often, recently, like the refrain of a song — she kept thinking: How strange, I loved this man.

The second time he left, there was no violent wrench. Maybe there’d been no wrench at all, ever. He hadn’t been the only one who’d gone, maybe. Both of them had agreed to leave the past behind. If they hadn’t gotten back together for those few months, following Mattia’s hospitalization that winter, she might not have mislaid the memory of her love. But she wasn’t even sure of that. A year ago: How could she remember what she’d been capable of feeling a year ago? A year ago she still felt an attraction. Though she hated him more, she felt a serious sexual attraction toward her future ex-husband. She hated him and she wanted to fuck him. Many nights, during the prisoner exchange, she felt like grabbing him by the tie, pulling him into the house, and taking him to bed. And then throwing him out again. But it was difficult to explain the real difference between sex and love to a man (men were sure they knew it, they thought they knew it). Then, too, what was the difference?

A moment ago it had seemed quite clear to her. Maybe she was getting sleepy. When her thoughts became confused and contradictory it meant that she was getting sleepy (thoughts that the next day would seem confused and contradictory). But she wasn’t getting sleepy. She was just confused. What she meant was, if they hadn’t gotten back together, she would have always nurtured in some corner of her mind the idea that she still loved him or that she could go back to loving him. Instead they’d gotten back together and she’d suddenly lost the impetus of hostility she had toward him. They had an emergency to deal with, their child needed them. She’d begun to see Luca as an old friend who could help her.

She could gladly see that new old friend of hers a couple of times a week without missing him. But when he came back home for a time, they’d again made love as husband and wife. Luca no longer seemed horrified by her, as he’d claimed to be a few months before. When he couldn’t touch her. When he said he no longer recognized her. He’d come back home because their child was ill and they’d made love again to conceive him a second time, to have him be reborn with a new, normal appetite. After a while, they’d no longer felt like it. The expression “once the novelty wears off…” came to mind. More appropriate in their case was “once the novelty wears off again …” And instead of feeling angry or bitter over the burst of sarcasm, she laughed alone during her sleepless nights, her face pressed against the pillow.

Luca was trying to take it slow, he was afraid of wounding the child. But she was afraid that if they took their time, he’d never leave again. She felt panicky at the thought that he might want to stay. She spoke to him and suggested they take it step by step, according to a plan. Conspire to avert the children’s suspicions, get them used to it little by little, immunize them. She was so worried he might not want to leave again that she’d have been willing to let him have all the furniture — like the sacrifice a lizard makes, leaving its tail behind for its pursuer — all the books, the CDs and DVDs. Luca began to sleep out “for work” a couple of nights a week. By January, the nights away became four, there was a new apartment and the children went there every so often. Everything was going well. Without having to explain (they weren’t good at explaining, and in any case there was no need for explanations), it was all working out.

She’d thought the children would no longer react. But one day, out of the blue, Michela told her that she should get a new bed now. Now that their father had really gone, she should get a single bed. If she was no longer married she couldn’t sleep in a double bed. “Who says I won’t get married again?” She didn’t say that. You couldn’t joke like that, or at least she couldn’t. She would have to learn. If she’d had the presence of mind to say, “Maybe I’ll get married again, I might need room for another man,” with a playful smile on her lips, her daughter might have been less obsessed. Or maybe she’d have become even more insufferable. Or maybe the problem wasn’t Michela, and the desire to get a single bed was written on her face; maybe her daughter had simply read it aloud.

Where could she have gotten such an idea — that a mother doesn’t have sex? At a certain point, she’d lost the urge. She’d stopped feeling like it during all the fighting three years ago. It had returned during the separation, but maybe it was just anger in another form. It had gone away again. “It comes and goes,” that, too, was pretty funny, though not as funny as “once the novelty wears off again…” “It comes and goes,” patients said that often. The pain comes and goes, not even pain is consistent. Sleep comes and goes. She remembered a woman, sixty years old, who came to the ER accompanied by her husband at three in the morning, dressed in her Sunday best. Written on the triage chart was the notation: Can’t sleep . She’d gotten scared because she couldn’t sleep. It had never happened before.

* * *

Between traffic lights, she often thought about the shy, reserved internist. Or she recalled the sleepless nights and the chain of thoughts she had spun out during the night, lying motionless on her stomach in the dark. Later she would relate some of these thoughts or anecdotes to the internist, who would inquire discreetly, subtle and cautious, probing only where he perceived no resistance.

For example: while eating a slice of watermelon, the boy had started laughing over something silly his sister had done, and a small piece got sucked up his nose from his throat. After a while it came out through a nostril and the girl screamed: “Mattia’s nose is bleeding watermelon!” The watermelon nose was funny because the boy suffered from frequent epistaxis. Citing harmless disorders was comforting to her as well as to the shy internist listening to her.

If Viberti hadn’t encouraged her to tell the story, and hadn’t recalled and mentioned it occasionally as a small sign of their closeness, the episode would have faded and then vanished; instead it fed off repetition and over time grew more resilient. The internist was reserved, but curious. He had a nice way of inquiring, without being intrusive, and he didn’t get much, because she didn’t tell him anything important. But he was omnivorous, interested in any topic, any small incident, maybe just to hear her talk. Or maybe just to see her. There, that’s where her morning’s rumination had been heading as she drove to the hospital. The shy internist was in love with her.