Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

“How come you don’t play Tollbooth anymore?” Cecilia asked, pulling him to her.

“It made a mess.”

“It made a mess? No, that’s not true. Who told you it made a mess? You can play in the hallway as much as you want. Sometimes it’s fun to be messy.”

“Michela said that you said it made a mess.”

“Michela? Are you sure?”

“Yes, Michela said so. But it’s true, it made a mess.”

She told him to open his notebook and start his math exercises. Then she stood and walked out, her steps measured so as not to seem rushed, so she could slow down and have time to stop, if she decided to stop, if she hadn’t decided instead to go and find Michela, who was lying on the couch in the living room, studying her history book. She closed the door behind her, took a few steps toward her daughter, and before she could think rationally and restrain herself, gave her a slap on the head that landed between her forehead and her eye. She realized an instant later the enormity of what she had done, but her rage had not subsided. The girl put her hands to her head, incredulous; her book had fallen to the floor. She didn’t cry and she didn’t say anything because she still didn’t know what had happened. “Don’t you ever dare give your brother orders,” Cecilia hissed without raising her voice, “and don’t make up things I never said. If he wants to play in the hallway with his toy cars, he can, do you understand?”

The girl started sobbing and Cecilia collapsed on the couch, her legs trembling. She hugged Michela, who hugged her back as if the woman who’d slapped her a moment ago weren’t the same one who was now comforting her. There was a glazed earthenware pot on the cabinet behind the sofa. The writing said HÔTEL DES TILLEULS; they’d gotten it as a gift during a vacation in the South of France. On the way back they’d stopped at that aquarium, on the Côte d’Azur. In the depths of a tank, which visitors could view from underground, two dolphins had been mating in a frenzy of splashing. The children hadn’t understood, Luca had squeezed her hand, smiling. All this centuries ago, in another life, which would never return.

Despite the sound of Michela’s desperate weeping in her ears, she heard a creaking, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the door open and Mattia standing in the doorway.

* * *

There was no need to get over the incident or cause the children to see it as an incident or offer reasons that might excuse her action. There was no need to go back and talk about it or to ignore it. She was certain the children wouldn’t forget in any case, and she was equally certain that they didn’t want to talk about it anymore and that they were actually able to not think about it anymore, except unintentionally, briefly, quickly suppressing the thought. She was certain of it because that’s what she’d done as a child when faced with something disturbing or incomprehensible or violent.

Despite this certainty, she spoke to them. During supper, she explained that she had lost her temper because she didn’t want them being spiteful to each other (the offense reduced to “spitefulness”). Smiling, she asked Michela if seeing her mother angry had scared her, and Michela nodded, not at all sure it was something to smile about. Meanwhile, Cecilia checked Mattia’s plate without letting him notice. Worried that he might not eat that night, she hadn’t filled it as much, but there were no immediate consequences. For long-term ones, she’d have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, however, when she went to pick the kids up at Luca’s after his turn with them on Sunday, her husband came out on the landing, pulling the door closed behind him, and asked her what had happened, if it was true that she’d slapped Michela. He asked her, but not angrily; it was as if she had been the one slapped, with the solidarity of one parent talking over a problem with the other, in order to solve it. She nearly started crying, she was so moved; on the dimly lit landing, surrounded by the smell of minestrone, they were once again a couple, albeit part-time. She confessed that she’d lost her head because she liked to see the boy play and she was disappointed that he’d stopped — the row of toy cars like a ray of hope, a matter of waiting and then the traffic jam would clear up.

Luca said: “Every now and then Michela deserves a slap. And we never gave her any.”

“Do you think I’ve became a violent parent?”

Luca hesitated, it was inevitable, and she regretted the question, even when he replied with a smile: “No, I really don’t think so.”

* * *

She thought often about the shy internist’s declaration. It must have cost him a lot, he must have thought about it for months, but perhaps he hadn’t expected a different result. So why declare himself? To free himself of an obsession, he’d stammered something like that. In fact, afterward, after delivering his little speech, it seemed like a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. But within a couple of weeks all the benefits disappeared and their lunches became more strained. If there’d been any momentary relief, it soured quickly, like certain perishable substances delivered to the hospital. Expired, ineffective, it wasn’t an honest-to-goodness, effective relief, maybe because the underlying intention hadn’t been to free himself of that weight. She thought and thought about this possibility, and felt that the shy internist had inadvertently managed to find one of her weak points, a soft spot where she was easily moved. Yes, she’d been moved because that forty-year-old man had not only declared himself, but had begged her (almost immediately, anxiously) to discourage him, as if he himself were afraid of his own feelings. How hopelessly incompetent.

She thought and thought about his constancy and his commitment, about the extraordinary attachment the man had for their table at the café. She went so far as to think that probably no one had ever loved her so much, but she immediately had second thoughts. It was ridiculous for two reasons: first, someone else had loved her, and second, an undeclared love doesn’t count. It counted only from the time of the declaration, before that it was mute adoration, infatuation. To worship someone for a year without telling her — it took constancy, but it was sheer madness. If he was mad, the internist’s madness was concentrated in a single symptom: her. Yet this was a further sign of absolute commitment.

She thought and thought about the declaration while she had the children do their homework. Mattia had to reconstruct the chronological order of a newspaper article that the textbook authors had divided into six segments and mixed up.

They left their dog alone on the balcony and went off while the summer heat hung over the city with a temperature of over 100 degrees.

Whatever idea she may have formed about Viberti, he didn’t seem to her to be either an abandoned dog or the victim of a cruel master.

Firemen quickly arrived on the scene and thanks to their vehicle, equipped with a ladder, they went up to the balcony and carried the dog to safety .

It was a strange association of ideas: when the conversation became less strained, he’d said he sometimes felt like a dog and told her that she reminded him of a cat.

The neighbors reported that it wasn’t the first time the dog had been left alone on the balcony for days .

While the boy read the jumbled parts of the story, she imagined holding the shy internist on a leash.

They then transported him to a veterinary clinic where he was examined and treated .

But she had no intention of being his mistress.

The dog owners were ultimately charged with cruelty to animals and the dog was turned over to the municipal dog pound .