Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

But she also remembered the isolation of the assembly line, the continuous cycle of suckling-pooping-sleeping. She remembered the sudden feeling of not being able to be free of it. Half asleep one day, ears pricked for the slightest whimper, a senseless thought had occurred to her: “When the baby leaves home.” She’d repeated reassuring phrases such as “Once this phase is over…” without ever adding the second part: “… there will be another.” In the first three months she’d never left Michela, and even while resting, even when she lowered her eyelids, she saw the baby’s face, like in an old negative. She could still hear the explosive bursts of her wailing. She’d tried to breast-feed the child, she had a lot of milk in the first weeks. Michela devoured her nipples, excruciatingly painful. She’d had to buy nipple shields. She’d bought a breast pump to feed her later with a baby bottle. Luca wasn’t happy that the baby could no longer suck her breast. He’d never particularly loved her tits, even when they’d swelled up during pregnancy. But he’d had a fit of anger one evening when she abruptly tore the child away because of the pain. “What the hell are you doing,” he yelled, “can’t you see she’s crying?” Later he apologized and they laughed about it. Protect and feed the young, an ancient coding in his genetic makeup, his wife’s sore nipples didn’t worry him. One of the first things the shy internist had done, on the other hand, was to suck her nipples with great gusto; if she’d let him he’d have slurped her all up.

Mattia got up and went into the kitchen, while on the screen Harry Potter flew astride a broom. He came back from the kitchen with a package of cookies and gave it to his sister, who started eating them. He’d gotten up to get the cookies for her from the kitchen. They weren’t for him. Cecilia hadn’t noticed Michela asking him for them, she must have whispered it, without even turning her head. She’d rather not see these things. Michela was telling her brother that her religion teacher had said that Harry Potter’s life was inspired by Jesus’s. The year before, the same teacher had said that Lord of the Rings was inspired by the Bible.

Five years ago (it seemed like ancient history), when Cecilia had completed her residency and diagnosed her father’s tumor, Michela’s brief mystical crises had reached their high point. They’d sent her to catechism because Luca, or Luca’s parents, felt it was important, even though Luca wasn’t religious, or if he was, he’d never said anything, and in any case he was nonpracticing (unlike his parents). They’d been married in the church because it was customary, but Cecilia hadn’t viewed it as an obligation. Her thinking wasn’t clear on this either, and although her upbringing had been decidedly secular, she had made her First Communion. So why deny it to Michela? Sending her to catechism had seemed reasonable, especially since all the other children in her class went. The mystical crises, however, had scared even Luca, and they’d decided to postpone her Confirmation until she was of age. Mattia, on the other hand, had gone through catechism during the year of their first separation, skipping a number of classes and barely learning the names of the four evangelists. He didn’t attend his First Communion ceremony, because he was in the hospital. The priest gave it to him two months later, a First Communion especially for him, and at least he’d eaten the host (maybe).

But what did Michela’s mystical crises consist of? When she was around seven or eight, her temper tantrums took on a religious tenor. She couldn’t stand to be restricted or controlled in any way. Cecilia and Luca had called them “mystical crises,” a kind of private joke they could laugh about together. For a while Michela had casually lied about various subjects. Homework, how many hours of TV she watched at her grandmother’s, brushing her teeth at night. When caught, she’d begin crying and screaming, pacing back and forth like a penitent, thumping her notebook on her head and intoning: “Holy Virgin Mary, you know I didn’t do anything wrong, I beg you, stand up for me, make Mama and Papa see the truth.” She prayed aloud in her room at night, kneeling before a creased picture of Our Lady of Fatima. She prayed loudly to make sure everybody in the house could hear her and said things like “Please Holy Mother Mary, protect everyone in my family, my father who often flies, don’t let the plane crash, and my mother who treats sick people, don’t let her catch an incurable disease, and my little brother who doesn’t talk properly, please don’t let him be retarded.” She was very precise in her use of words, a little monster who spoke like an adult. “You’re my incurable disease,” Luca would say, cuddling her on the couch as they watched TV, while Cecilia and the boy observed them out of the corner of their eyes. She prayed for ten minutes, leaving her parents to either laugh at or worry about it, depending on their mood. When Luca or Cecilia went back to her room to look in on her and tell her that she had prayed enough and that it was time to go to bed now, she joined her hands one last time and, without looking at them, still facing Our Lady of Fatima, said: “And please, Holy Mother, forgive those who don’t believe in you.”

“It’s all simulated, I told you, done on the computer,” she said to her brother now.

Cecilia couldn’t hear Mattia’s replies.

“No, it’s impossible, flying brooms don’t exist, I know it!”

But Mattia, his voice low, insistent, was adamant.

* * *

In those sweltering June days, her two sweethearts were going through a difficult time. The shy internist was gloomy and confused, but she didn’t know how to help him. The child, too, was rather gloomy and confused. They had suggested he go to summer camp for two weeks. The place was an hour’s drive from the city, and if need be they could go and bring him back at any time. His best friends, three classmates of his, went there and had insisted that Mattia join them. It was an “adventure and discovery” camp. And the boy really wanted to go, but he wasn’t sure.

“I’m not sure,” he kept saying.

“About wanting to go?” Cecilia asked.

“No, I’m sure about wanting to go.”

“So you want to.”

“Yes, I want to.”

“Then what aren’t you sure about?”

Was he not sure he could do it, maybe, was he not sure it was a good idea, was he afraid it would be too hard or that they would force him to eat? She and Luca had decided to neither push him nor discourage him. They agreed to adopt this strategy: play down the difficulties, emphasize the fun, respect the child’s decision. If he didn’t feel like going, it was fine. The boy decided he felt like going, maybe because he didn’t want to disappoint his friends. And so they started getting ready.

Just the two of them were left at home; Michela was already at a “tennis and English” camp, two weeks at the shore. They went out one afternoon to buy a sleeping bag to use at the main camp, on the bunk bed, and for when they would sleep in a tent for a couple of nights. The boy was wearing blue shorts with lots of pockets, and the pockets were full of chestnuts and cypress cones and Magic cards and corks and rocks that he never parted with. Usually it wasn’t noticeable, because he kept his treasures in his backpack, but on weekends and in the summer he looked like a duck, with his skinny shins sticking out from his bulging thighs.

Cecilia often saw him rummaging in the baggy side pockets and pulling out the small cypress cones, his favorites. He’d told her (or confessed at her insistence) that he gathered them at the foot of a tree in the schoolyard. Cecilia had said that they smelled like cypress, so they’d looked for them on the Internet together and found their real name: not cones, not berries, but galbuli or coccole , cypress “berries.” Cecilia smiled. “ Coccole , what a nice name,” since the word also meant “cuddles.” The child made a face, a little irritated. When they dried out, the cones (or galbuli or “berries”) opened up, releasing the seeds that Cecilia found when she turned his pockets inside out before putting the pants in the washing machine. On the inside, the “berries” revealed a delicate, very symmetrical structure, with compact scales attached to a central axis by slender stalks.