Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

She didn’t dare ask him what those amulets were for, whether they were amulets, or prompts or mementos or pieces in a secret game. The Magic cards were the most predictable items in the collection. She didn’t want to be a nosy mother, but one day she asked him if it was really necessary to always carry everything around with him, wasn’t there a chance he might lose something? He shrugged, as if the objects weren’t as precious as his mother thought. And she found herself in the no-win situation in which the child often left her, not knowing whether to be more concerned about the fact that her son went around with all that stuff or about the fact that he didn’t seem to value it enough. Michela, who seemed more complex, was an infinitely simpler child. She neglected her things, left them around and lost them, became inconsolable, and acted like a pain in the neck until her mother gave in and bought her new ones. When she wanted something, she wanted it.

In the car she made the boy get into the front seat, even though the seat belt came up too high, too close to his throat. He seemed proud to ride in an adult’s seat. He swam in it, looking even skinnier, shrunk by too hot a wash cycle along with his T-shirt. He’d always been thin. He had never been eager to eat, he’d never had an appetite.

When he had started not eating a year and a half earlier, or eating only certain things (yogurt, creamy cheeses, mashed potatoes) and in very small quantities, she and Luca had reacted differently, at different times. Having the boy with her every day, she’d been slower to see it and hadn’t wanted to become alarmed. There were already too many alarms sounding loudly; she was somewhat dazed. She had probed cautiously, buying time, in other words, hoping that the crisis would pass and the child would start eating again. Maybe it didn’t seem alarming to her because the boy didn’t do anything to hide it; he left the food on his plate and didn’t even pick up his spoon or fork. He lied halfheartedly. If she suggested “Did you maybe fill up when you had an afternoon snack at your grandmother’s?” he nodded. His grandmother couldn’t remember how much the children ate at snack time. But at some point Silvia had asked her briefly: “Your son doesn’t eat a thing, is that normal?” Because she was the doctor and everyone thought she should be the first to notice.

How long had their collective blindness lasted, how long had they ignored the evidence? Three weeks, a month. Hence the need for hospitalization, later. Luca had gone to find her in the ER to have a face-to-face talk. He’d said to her: “Let’s forget everything else.” Luca had been keeping an eye on the child for some time. Since he no longer saw him every day, maybe he had a better chance of noticing it, his eye sharpened by discord, anger, and resentment. The contentious scrutiny of the children, in search of signs of neglect. But no, it wasn’t that, and even if it were, it didn’t matter.

He’d been the first to notice and had purposely gone to look for her in the ER because he had to do something that would break their routine of tension, silences, and recriminating looks.

“Let’s forget everything else, there’s a problem here now.” He said that what scared him the most was the child’s remoteness. As if the son were checking on the father and not vice versa.

“When you ask him why he doesn’t eat, is he the one checking on you?”

Yes, the child was checking that he was still doing his job as a father, it was obvious.

Cecilia shook her head, she still didn’t want to face it. Only when she spoke with the pediatricians, when she saw the test results, did she begin to admit the truth. At that point she was no longer a mother, maybe, she was a doctor in familiar territory.

All of these things (and others as well) had come out with the child psychologist, the one with the Kleenex. To whom Luca, however, hadn’t wanted to go. Curiously, he, too, like the psychologist, considered it a given that the child didn’t eat in order to force them to talk to each other and face the problem together. But the child psychologist claimed it was something else as well. “You haven’t had any deaths in the family, recently, have you?” Cecilia said no. Then she corrected herself. “Well, two years ago, my father. Mattia was very close to his grandfather. But he can’t be reacting two years later.” “Does he ever talk about his grandfather?” “Oh, yes, he talks about him a lot. But not as often as he used to. When my father died,” she said, smiling, proud as usual to tell stories that showed her son’s intelligence and sensitivity, “Mattia was only six years old, but he said something I thought was remarkable: I don’t want to grow anymore, because when you grow up, then you die.”

The child psychologist nodded without smiling and murmured: “A child who doesn’t eat is in no danger of growing.” She wasn’t heartless, but she’d already adopted the insufferable attitude of psychologists who think they can read your thoughts. No, her father’s death had nothing to do with it, or maybe it did for the sole reason that it anticipated her and Luca’s separation. The separation was the incurable disease that the child wanted to cure.

Besides, hadn’t they gotten back together in the following months, to show him that they understood, that he was right, that he had won? But she’d never believed it, she didn’t believe it would last and it didn’t last. She did her best to see that it wouldn’t last but that it would end better than the first time. If he had wanted to make them separate in a different way, the child had succeeded. But what if that weren’t enough for him? What if he’d wanted to bring them together forever?

In the sporting goods store, amid two hundred different kinds of hiking boots and two hundred different kinds of backpacks, there were only two sleeping bag models, a very heavy one and a very light one. The day was too stifling to leave the air-conditioned store empty-handed and go in search of another, so the question had to be resolved then and there. Cecilia said the sleeping bag fit for a polar expedition was definitely better, if he was hot he could keep it open. Maybe she was afraid he’d feel colder than the others; maybe the child understood that but had to come to terms with his fears. Mattia preferred the lighter one because two of his friends had the same one. Cecilia didn’t believe him — he was so distracted, how could he have noticed the brand of sleeping bag? She insisted a little, but Mattia seemed very sure and determined.

“I won’t go to camp with this one,” he said.

So she lost her patience, took her cell phone out of her purse and called the mother of one of his friends (the one who seemed more sympathetic and who would maybe understand her since she, too, was divorced). She asked her if the brand and model of the lighter sleeping bag really matched her child’s. The mother was sympathetic, but she confirmed that yes, they matched.

The child said: “I told you.” He didn’t seem annoyed, though. Cecilia had to smile, a good mood spread through her like a stain on white linen. There was nothing to worry about, the real child was wiser and more mature than the imaginary child who lived in his mother’s head.

“Try getting into it,” she told him.

The boy smiled: “You don’t try on sleeping bags.”

“Go on, try it.”

“It’s not allowed.” He pointed to a sign she hadn’t noticed: TRYING OUT DISPLAY MERCHANDISE NOT PERMITTED. “It’ll be fine for me, for sure,” he said.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t fit in it,” she smiled, ruffling his hair.

They headed for the checkout counter carrying the sleeping bag, and halfway there Cecilia stopped to look at a collection of small aluminum flashlights in a glass display case. She remembered that the child had really wanted one of those flashlights; his father had one, she remembered the colorful metal and the grainy handle. She called him back and showed them to him.