Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

* * *

Beguiled, struck , captivated not only by the mother, but also by the child. Each captivating in different ways and for different though related reasons; clearly related, even to someone as dense in the area of family relations as he. Not that he had never heard of eating disorders in children, but he hadn’t seen a specific case. He wasn’t even sure it was an unusual case. And why should he have known more about it? He dealt almost exclusively with old people. Antonio, his pediatrician friend, would have been able to cite similar cases, but the topic had never come up. Antonio had two sons who ate like pigs, Omasum and Abomasum he called them. “You’re costing me a fortune!” he said to them, pleased and proud. Pride in a child who eats eagerly. As if the child were endorsing his parents. My father knew nothing about that. He didn’t even remember what it had been like to eat when he was eight years old. He remembered his mother’s words, though: “to enjoy a healthy appetite.”

He had a memory, incorrectly set in adolescence: his mother, Marta, distracted by something, worried or depressed for some reason, had stopped cooking, had stopped doing the grocery shopping. Incorrectly assigned to the period following his father’s death in order to explain the behavior, and because something like that had happened after his father’s death as well. He remembered a time of grim hunger, or thought he remembered it. He’d buy himself huge slices of pizza from the bakery before going home from school and eat them sitting on a bench with a classmate. But it hadn’t lasted, and perhaps it wasn’t a period of time but an episode or two, transformed by resentment into a recurring incident. He was familiar with those memories and continually tried to put them into perspective because they seemed improbable. What could his mother have done to him that was so terrible?

He thought about the child. Viberti was more and more drawn to foods that were white and bland. Ricotta, boiled fish, vegetable broths. He wanted to know what it was the child saw on his plate. He sat at the kitchen table with a packet of prosciutto in front of him and tried to imagine disgust or indifference. He rolled the ham into small cylinders and ate three or four slices plain, without bread. Or he cooked himself the kind of tasteless dishes the child must have had to eat in his first few days at the hospital; semolina porridge, thin soup with stelline pasta, applesauce. Circling around in the bowl, the spoon sketched a tangle of lines in the porridge which disappeared immediately and sank into the depths like a probe. It was possible to make the same whorl, but with more distinct lines, appear by dipping a piece of bread in a pool of olive oil, at the center of a blue plate.

* * *

He was tempted to buy the child a present, and one day he went into a toy store near his apartment. The toy shops from his childhood no longer existed; this one was a kind of warehouse where the merchandise was displayed like in a supermarket — long shelves and long aisles, a place where someone like my father was bound to be bewildered, worried as he was that someone might spot him. He had no children; he had no grandchildren; he was an impostor. After wandering around for twenty minutes he gave in and asked a salesclerk if they had any toy garages. The clerk led him to a garage that my father examined in detail for half an hour, reading all the labels on the box, then bought out of desperation. He knew that wasn’t the garage he was looking for, the garage he had been given when he was eight years old: that one was much more carefully made and more detailed, much more realistic. As soon as he got home he realized that the “3+” on the box meant that the model was suitable for children over three, and therefore probably meant for children no older than four or five. The rounded shapes and strictly primary colors should have made him suspect as much. Now the fact that it was intended for children much younger than Mattia seemed so crystal clear and glaringly obvious to him that he wondered how he could have made such a mistake. An elderly person like his mother could have bought that garage. He never considered taking it back and exchanging it. He tossed the box in a corner and tried to forget it existed.

* * *

They fell into the habit of eating together three or four times a week. At first, being unable or unwilling to ask about the specific times of her shifts, my father would arrive at the café around a quarter to two. If Cecilia was working the afternoon shift, she would already be there munching a sandwich; if she was coming off the morning shift, she would arrive half an hour later. They never stayed more than twenty minutes, sitting at the table behind the column. Regularity was important, eating at regular hours, even just a bite, but unhurriedly, chatting about relaxing topics. Maybe Cecilia simply had to get used to wanting a connection again, friendship or something more, accepting it a little more each day, just as her son was getting used to eating again. And my father’s situation, though his divorce went back more than ten years, wasn’t all that different.

Incredible that the woman came back day after day to the same café knowing that he, too, would be there. He’d heard from Antonio that Cecilia was separated or practically divorced, or maybe actually divorced. The news hadn’t surprised him, in fact he’d mumbled, “Yes, I know,” all the while aware that he hadn’t known it at all, no one could have told him. He reflected on the lie for an entire evening, and the next day, when he saw Cecilia again, he wondered what could have heightened his scant intuitive capacities. He wasn’t good at reading people, particularly their feelings; he specifically couldn’t tell if they were married or engaged or committed in some way. Maybe intuition had nothing to do with it, maybe it was only wishful thinking. She simply had to be free. She was free. Actually, now that he knew for sure, he didn’t feel any better. Now came the difficult part, his homeopathic plan to make her fall in love with him.

And he liked her more and more. He liked it when she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, how it revealed that small, perfect pink conch. He liked it when they were eating and she touched her lips with two fingers, searching for a nonexistent crumb or indicating that she couldn’t speak at that moment, her mouth was full. He liked the way her eyes widened an instant before she laughed. She had a mole in the hollow at the base of her neck. She had a very lovely neck. She had a green spot in the iris of her right eye (did she know?).

* * *

They talked a lot about work. My father complained about having to spend a lot of his time chasing after his patients’ children, who were always and forever trying to put off the day of their elderly parent’s discharge. Daughters who hadn’t slept for weeks because their nonagenarian mothers cried out for help all night had them hospitalized for dubious bronchial asthmas and then claimed they couldn’t take them back home and couldn’t afford caregivers to look after them (sisters or brothers refused to contribute to the cost of assistance because the sibling in question lived in the parent’s house without paying rent). The greater the number of children and grandchildren, the greater the likelihood that no one wanted to take care of the elderly family member. At the other extreme, an unmarried son, an only child, living with his parent was dependable — until he became a threat: this was around the time my father had been accused of negligence by a seventy-two-year-old man following the death of his ninety-seven-year-old mother. Dear Doctor, the son had written in very large letters that slanted precariously forward, as though the words were about to drop off the right edge of the paper at any moment, you killed my mother. I will never forget the grief you caused me. When I admitted my mother to the hospital I placed her in your hands and you did not take care of her. My mother entered the hospital to die and for this I will never forgive you. And on and on for four pages. His six hours a week in the endocrinology outpatient clinic were an oasis of peace.