Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Viberti admitted that things were getting worse, even if the symptoms were contradictory. There had been no more serious incidents, but Giulia tended to view any sign of deterioration as irreversible. Viberti argued that with Angélica doing the housework and cooking, Marta was self-sufficient. For most of the day she didn’t seem at all forgetful and she hadn’t scored any lower in the Mini mental test. One morning, however, Giulia had found her cooking with three burners turned on and two pots full of vegetables boiling on the stove. “I had nothing ready for Claudio,” she said. Giulia seemed even more angry when maternal feelings and instincts floated up through her mother-in-law’s senile dementia.

“Unfortunately, every now and then women find themselves having to deal with senile mothers and menopause at the same time,” Antonio had said to Viberti.

“But Giulia is forty years old and Marta isn’t her mother.”

“Premature menopause.”

Recently Giulia had gotten into the habit of sitting at the table with her chair turned at a ninety-degree angle. She couldn’t manage to put her legs under the table, as if her legs suffered from claustrophobia. Viberti, wisely sitting across from her, saw her in profile and she almost always faced the French doors as she spoke, turning every so often to meet his eyes.

“Fine, let’s sign her up, let’s hire her,” Viberti said.

“Fine, my ass,” Giulia said, “don’t think you can get out of it just like that. You have to be the one to tell her.”

“All right, I’ll tell her.”

“And if she says no?”

“I’ll persuade her.”

Giulia stared at him. She raised her voice: “Don’t think it’ll be easy. Don’t start out with the idea that it’ll be easy, because if you can’t persuade her I can’t guarantee anything. It’s not as if you can find good people who are willing and able on every street corner.”

“You’re right,” Viberti said, “if I can’t persuade her I solemnly swear to find someone else within two weeks.”

“Like hell you will,” Giulia said, shaking her head.

It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. Viberti said he absolutely had to dry his hair, he’d be back in a sec. That day he’d received an e-mail from Silvia Re. He hadn’t responded yet, he’d printed out the message and put it in his coat pocket to remind himself to reply in his own good time that evening or the next day. Every so often he found it in his hand again, didn’t remember what it was, and reread it. He’d reread it a few times during the day and read it again when he found it near the sink, then he left it on the stool nearby.

Not turning off the hairdryer, he looked in the mirror and said aloud: “I’ll speak to her tonight. She’ll say yes. You’ll see.”

He returned to the kitchen, found Giulia in the same position.

“I’ll speak to her tonight. She’ll say yes. You’ll see.”

He stretched, extending his arms, and rubbed his eyes. When he reopened them, Giulia was looking at him. He drew the flaps of his bathrobe closed, trying not to make it too obvious, hiding the little patch of bare chest he had unintentionally shown.

“You were always modest.”

“There’s not much to see.”

Yet for a while after the separation, three or four times a year, even after she’d remarried, Giulia would climb the two flights of stairs and go back to him. They, too, had had their relapses.

After a brief hesitation Giulia nodded: “She’ll say yes to you. She never says no to you.”

Then she stood and told him not to come down in his bathrobe, that in fact he wasn’t much to look at.

* * *

Dinner nearly turned into a disaster. Viberti spoke with Marta in Giulia’s study; he told her that Angélica had a cousin who was looking for work and that they’d promised to help her. Marta, with a surprising lucidity, replied that she’d expected as much, she knew they would keep trying to bring someone into the house, and she didn’t think badly of them, for heaven’s sake, “I know you want to do it for my own good,” but she didn’t need anyone. Viberti suggested a trial period, but Marta took him by the hand and led him out of the study. “Dinner is ready, you must be famished, and in any case you won’t be able to persuade me.” In fact, Viberti was starving.

At the table Giulia launched into a tirade against the obsession with diets. Marta said that at one time people were thinner because there wasn’t so much stuff to eat. Everyone smiled. Viberti said: “Do you remember how skinny I was as a kid, Mama?”

Marta said that Viberti had always been rather plump. In fact, she’d been afraid he had inherited his diabetic great-uncle’s body.

Viberti began fidgeting in his chair. “Plump? No, Mama, you’re confused. I was thin as a rail.”

“Come on! We called you Fatty—”

“ Fatty ?”

The others burst out laughing, but Viberti wasn’t taking it well. Giulia signaled to him to let it go, for once she was the one ready to forgive Marta’s confusion, and Marta pressed her advantage.

“I always thought your getting fat like that was a reaction to your father’s death. Luckily, Stefano Mercuri came along and took you out to play a little tennis.”

Viberti shook his head. Giulia’s husband passed him the pasta bowl: “Some more tagliatelle, Fatty?” They all laughed.

After dinner he had an idea. Maybe Marta had already forgotten his previous attempt, maybe he could try again as if he were asking her for the first time. He joined her in the living room, where she sat playing cards with Giulia’s child, and repeated the same speech. In fact, his mother didn’t seem to remember that, an hour ago, her son had already asked her to take a Peruvian caregiver into the house overnight, though she demonstrated exemplary consistency: her response was the same.

Times past and forgotten flowed out of Marta’s mind like the genie from the lamp and settled around Viberti, who, not knowing what else to say, glanced toward the dark corridor and saw Giulia’s shadow go by. Eavesdropping?

Maybe Marta had pretended not to remember. It occurred to him that her senile dementia was making everyone demented. He’d repeated his speech as if he didn’t remember having already said it, his mother had replied not remembering that she’d already replied, or had remembered it and was pretending to reply for the first time, like the first time. Dementia was spreading through people and things, dictating a new order.

He leaned forward, took his mother’s bony hand into his own, the skin thin and spotted, unconsciously he felt her pulse, bradycardic.

“I know you don’t need anyone. It’s for our peace of mind, you see? We’d like to stay with you, but we can’t. Do it for us, take this person. I’m asking you as a favor.”

Marta seemed distraught. She stared at Viberti and her beautiful blue eyes glistened with tears. Suddenly she said, “All right, I agree.”

“You agree?”

“If it’s to do you a favor, yes. You could have told me sooner that I had to do it for all of you. Because I really don’t need her. I’m just losing my memory.”

Viberti enfolded her in a hug — she was small and slight, easy to enfold — and gave her a kiss. Then he asked: “But is it true you called me Fatty?”

* * *

Two days later he came home in the afternoon with a gardenia he’d bought from the kids at the rehab who had a stand outside the hospital; he set it among the other pots on the balcony and sat down in the wicker chair to gaze out at the courtyards. His eyes followed the walls separating the yards, their edges, the shards of glass, the climbing vine, the window of the gym, and the roof of the storehouse. After a bright shiny day, a dull patina had settled over things, the morning’s promises betrayed or forgotten, as if the colors of the world had always been spent, or slowly fading. He could have remained in that chair for hours, he would have if he hadn’t needed to go to the bathroom. Afterward he washed his hands and, on the floor, under a stool, he spotted the slip of paper with Silvia Re’s e-mail, damp and wrinkled like an old parchment. He had no intention of reading a novel in which a cook manipulated people, whatever the verb “manipulate” might mean in this case (Viberti suspected it meant “cooked”). Still, he wanted to thank her, because she was Cecilia’s sister, because it was kind of her.