Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

“Just as I shouldn’t imagine the work Mattia might do. I’m acting like a child; it’s like saying, ‘When I grow up I want to be a fireman.’”

“All I meant is that Mattia is fine, it’s been a year, in his own way he’s a calm little boy.”

“I don’t keep after him about having to eat, I’m very careful.”

“I know you don’t keep after him, I’m not criticizing you for anything, I’m saying it for your own sake, I’m telling you you can relax, maybe he’ll relax, too.”

“No, you’re wrong, I’m not anxious around him, I’m very calm, I have no reason to be anxious, maybe I’m not relaxed, but I’m not tense either.”

Silvia closed her eyes and was silent for a while. Then she said: “That thing you do where you tuck your hair behind both ears is uniquely yours, and you don’t do it when you’re relaxed.”

Cecilia waited for her to open her eyes again. She didn’t want to get irritated, she didn’t want to irritate her sister. Yet she could find nothing more diplomatic to say than “Well, that’s a new one. Just the kind of thing Mama always says to me.”

Silvia opened her eyes. “A new one?”

“The fact that you and Mama agree.”

Silvia threw a cushion at her. “Idiot. I spend a lot of time with your children.”

Cecilia smiled. “Yes, and I’m really grateful.”

“I owe you.”

“You’ll pay me back.”

“I wasn’t talking only about money.”

“You’ll pay me back for the rest, too.”

Silvia shook her head, opened Mattia’s notebook again.

“Tell me about this coworker who called,” Cecilia said.

“What coworker? There is no coworker … Mama really is a shit. A total piece of shit. I know of course I’m shitty to her sometimes. But every so often. Occasionally. She, on the other hand, never quits.”

“But you get along pretty well now. Think about how things were a few years ago.”

“It’s all thanks to me, she doesn’t make any effort.”

“And this coworker?”

“So: he’s just a coworker. I’m definitely not attracted to him, and I’m not even sure he’s interested in me. In any case, I’m not interested.”

“Sometimes men aren’t interesting, at first.”

“Sometimes they’re more interesting at first. Anyway, I’m not interested in this guy, I don’t know why he thought to call me at Mama’s house, or rather, I do know, he found the number in the directory, it matched the address where I have proofs sent to me, since Mama has a doorman…”

“So he’s Mama’s invention.”

“He’s not a complete invention, it’s true he calls me, he looks for me.”

“Does he bother you?”

“What do you mean? Of course not, he’s totally harmless.”

“What does he ask you?”

“Do I want to go out, do I want to go to the movies — why do you want to know? Don’t you remember how they are?”

“No, I don’t remember.” Cecilia laughed.

Silvia threw her head back. “Remember that guy who used to call the house, breathe heavily for ten minutes, and then hang up?”

Cecilia felt a shiver down her spine. The memory of it, or she was beginning to feel cold; maybe now she’d feel like going to sleep. “Of course, how could I not remember.”

Silvia looked at her wide-eyed. “We thought it was someone who had it in for you.”

“I don’t know.”

“You suspected one of your boyfriends…”

“Yes, that’s true. But now it seems unlikely. He was kind of a show-off, but he wouldn’t have made calls like that.”

“You know what occurred to me a while ago? That we had it all wrong.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It was meant for Mama, he called to scare Mama.”

“Why would he do that?”

Silvia didn’t answer.

“That same old story again?” Cecilia asked.

Silvia turned toward the window. Outside it was dark, the glass reflected their two cowering figures.

Cecilia lowered her voice. “Do you really think it’s possible that a man like our father could have had someone else?”

Silvia shook her head. “No, you’re right. It’s not possible.”

“Do you think about Papa a lot?”

Silvia nodded. “Don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” But it wasn’t true. She never thought about him. That afternoon, when she woke up from her nap, she realized that she hadn’t thought about him in months. She picked up an illustrated book that Mattia had pulled off the shelves that afternoon; it was called Animals and Plants of the European Coastal Region , and was full of drawings of huge blue-green algae.

“It was nice of Mama to offer you Papa’s books.”

“She didn’t know what to do with them.”

Their conversations: at the beginning she felt like the big sister, and maybe she treated Silvia a little condescendingly; by the end she became the little sister, as if Silvia always knew better than she did.

“If you had to leave something to your children, what would you choose?”

“The minestrone recipe.”

They laughed.

Cecilia rested her cheek on the back of the couch and smelled the beach house odor even more powerfully. “I’d like to choose which memories to leave them. Can I?”

* * *

She didn’t like driving at night, and even less so in the gray light of dusk. She didn’t like driving on the highway, where everyone went at a different speed than she did. Some had something to prove, others had good reasons to delay their return home. You had to pass or get out of the way quickly. She didn’t like driving on the highway at night, because it seemed like everyone was aiming their high beams at her, her eyes hurt every time she glanced in the rearview mirror. She didn’t like going back to the city on a Sunday evening after such a long weekend, there was too much traffic and everyone was edgy. She was edgy, too, and there was no real reason for it.

They’d had a good time, the weather had been beautiful, her mother and sister hadn’t fought, and there were moments when the children seemed to have forgotten everything; she could read it in their eyes. Now they’d fallen asleep — Mattia almost immediately, Michela an hour later, after repeating no less than four times that at twelve she didn’t fall asleep in the car like a child anymore. They slept with their heads lolling, supported by the seat belts; she’d always worried they’d be strangled, but Luca had explained that no, there was no danger. Mattia, the only one who never took his T-shirt off at the beach, she and her mother debating whether he was ashamed of being too skinny. Did he know he was skinny? Was he cold, like he said? Then again, she hadn’t taken her T-shirt off either. Michela, on the other hand, was worried about keeping her bathing suit top in place, proud of her budding breasts. Silvia knew how to get on her good side. She’d had to leave early; their mother had rolled her eyes. Silvia, still convinced that their father had had a mistress. Of all the possible fixations, the most improbable. The children’s party was nice, nine of them in all; that was the secret, always having kids around. Mattia tagging along, playing whatever the other kids played. Funny because when he was alone, he thought up lots of games. But he played them by himself — he had no interest in recruiting others, in winning them over. For example, the fish market game: oleander leaves served as anchovies, hydrangea leaves were sole, pinecones were sea urchins. Luca was on vacation with “friends,” but she expected that sooner or later the children would tell her, “Daddy has a girlfriend.” Michela would tell her, proud, jealous, delirious. Learn to hide the irritation that delirium caused her.

To distract herself she thought about the emergency room. The spring-summer season was starting. Like the forest, or fashion, the ER changed according to the seasons. In the summer and before vacations people came to drop off their elderly relatives. In the winter, immigrants and the homeless came to sleep in the waiting room or just to spend a few hours in the warmth. During the Christmas holidays, relatives from the south came to visit their families and took advantage of the opportunity to seek medical advice. Then it was deserted during the World Cup. Last time, in two hours, there’d been only one little old woman suffering from depression. At Ramadan medications were a problem; Muslims couldn’t take them before sunset. Summer brought the elderly: dehydrated, or with pneumonia from air-conditioning. Winter, influenza. Not to mention the pleasure of unforeseen outbreaks such as SARS. Before the divorce, she would reach the end of her shift and realize she hadn’t once, not for a moment, thought about Luca and the children. She’d feel guilty. Now she was thankful that, for six hours, she was forced to think about something else.