Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Viberti finished telling the story and she told him she couldn’t picture what kind of woman his mother was. “She’s elegant,” he said with a sweet, sad smile. Cecilia, however, understood him to say “She’s arrogant” and without knowing exactly what he meant, sensed it was something that would require a lengthy explanation. She remained silent.

* * *

The boy proved to be a perfect accomplice. Leaving school, his eyes were feverish and he complained, “I’m tired.” Cecilia placed her lips on his forehead and said he felt hot. She took him by the hand and walked off hoping that none of the mothers would stop her as they made their way through the small crowd of children and parents. As if they could read the sick intention in her eyes, the desire to separate the children, and might try to dissuade her.

She left Mattia at her mother’s house and went to pick up Michela. She told her that her brother was sick and that he was going to sleep over at their grandmother’s.

The girl nodded. “He was coughing this morning.” She’d just left her piano lesson and was drumming on her knees, humming softly.

That’s always the secret, Cecilia thought: children are like that, you have to present things as facts and they’re not surprised.

“Do you want to hear how the new science teacher talks?”

“How?”

“And nooow take out your booooks and ooopen them to paaage six.”

She said it was a family defect.

“A family defect? What does that mean?”

“Her sister is an Italian teacher and she speaks the same way.”

“Yes, but you don’t say family defect. You say speech defect. But it isn’t, in this case. It must be an accent from somewhere. She speaks like that, you speak differently. It’s not important.”

Michela nodded.

“Try to imitate me.”

“Huh?”

“Imitate the way I talk.”

“You talk normally.”

“You’ve never done an imitation of me.”

Michela made faces, glowering, then wide-eyed and frightened, then cross again, then scared again.

Cecilia laughed. It was possible that the teacher came from a town not far from her father’s birthplace, which in turn wouldn’t be far from the town where the child who was starved to death had lived his brief life. And this, certainly, had upset her, though for a few days she hadn’t admitted it to herself. Because it didn’t actually mean anything. She sighed.

And later on, sighing, she told Silvia that she had left Mattia to sleep over at their mother’s house.

“She insisted so much that I couldn’t say no.”

“Sure, I get it, when she acts like that she’s unbearable,” Silvia said, also somewhat distracted, also ready to be fooled by Cecilia’s smokescreens.

“Listen, do you want me to bring Michela to sleep at my house for a night? I never offered, because I thought you might not like to be away from them, but if it might help you a little…”

It seemed like her mother and sister were reading her mind, in which case there were two possibilities: maybe they could read only part of her thoughts, her anxiety and fatigue, and sincerely wanted to help her; or maybe they could read everything, including her intention to separate the children, and would rather not oppose her.

At the start of her shift, at eight, she sent a text message to Viberti saying that she was at the hospital without a car and that she got off at midnight. The internist replied that he would be waiting for her outside the main gate. They went to the same area where they’d parked the last time and made love. Until she’d felt the urge to see him and sent the text message, she hadn’t thought of him for almost twenty-four hours. If someone had said, “Tonight you’re going to have sex with Viberti,” she’d have replied, “It’s more likely I’ll go to the moon.” As for the rest, it was just like the other times: she enjoyed it a lot and immediately afterward she was positive she would never do it again.

* * *

The next day, she asked Silvia to go and pick Michela up from volleyball at six and keep her for another night.

When her shift ended she stopped by her mother’s to pick up Mattia and brought him back home. For a moment, as she opened the door, she pictured the dark, deserted interior of the house, the shadowy corridor that seemed cushioned with thick, soft felt padding. She turned on the lights in the hall and without taking off her coat walked into the kitchen, turned on the light, went into the living room and turned on the light, and went into the bedrooms and turned on the lights. She returned to the door and saw the boy standing in the doorway, watching her.

For the first time in three days Mattia asked where Michela was.

“Have you missed her?” Cecilia asked.

Mattia nodded, but as usual it wasn’t clear what his true feelings were.

The house didn’t seem to have missed them. Beds made, rooms neat, the kitchen clean and even the dishwasher emptied. Each time she came home after a short absence it occurred to her that maybe she should get out of that place, move like Luca had done, because the apartment would never forget their past life together.

The child, however, was happy to retrieve his playthings; he immediately started rummaging in a box, looking for a toy car. They would be able to enjoy an evening by themselves. It had taken two days of long-distance discussions and phone calls and car trips from one house to another and talking about contingency plans to create that opportunity and get to that moment, even if the moment didn’t seem like anything special. Sitting at the table with Mattia, she wondered what she had hoped to achieve. He ate with his normal listless air, he had no more appetite than usual, he looked neither happier nor more unhappy. Despite Cecilia’s attempts to entertain him, he went back with stubborn determination to the one topic that seemed to matter to him: going to school the next day, not missing another day. He had phoned a classmate from his grandmother’s house to get the assignments from him.

They had studied simple sentences, subject and verb. “Like: the cow moos, the dog barks, the lion roars.”

“Only animal sounds?”

“Mama!”

He couldn’t stand her being silly.

“Not just animal sounds. For example: the plane flies, the thief steals, the father works.”

“For example: the boy finishes what he has on his plate.”

“No! That’s not a simple sentence.”

“The boy eats.”

Finally he smiled, too, and took a forkful of pasta.

Then Cecilia told him that it was fine, if he felt like it he could go back to school the next day.

They watched television until ten, then Mattia got his schoolbag ready and went to bed. Cecilia took the cordless phone into her room, closed the door and phoned Silvia so she could talk to Michela.

The girl was already in bed. “She was sleepy, she was exhausted when she came from volleyball.”

“Was she hurt that I hadn’t called her?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Cecilia said that when Mattia got sick, she always lost track. She assured her, however, that she would definitely bring Michela home the next day.

Silvia told her not to worry, she hadn’t lost track, nothing awful had happened.

But something awful had happened, Cecilia thought, she’d made love with Viberti again. She knew it wasn’t right, but she couldn’t remember why.

She had never cheated on Luca, now she felt like she was cheating on the children. But cheating on the children was a weird idea. She fell asleep, not knowing what it meant.

* * *

Between late winter and early spring Michela’s nights at her aunt’s house became habitual, which perhaps only made her grandmother jealous. Cecilia remained alone with the boy more often, though he didn’t seem to notice his sister’s absence; he seemed to know that it was only one night every once in a while. He ate the way he’d become used to eating by then, enough not to worry his parents, without ever showing a particular appetite or any particular preference for one food or another. Eating was like doing homework. His teachers said he was polite, respectful, too proud to ask for help, and though he did only the bare minimum, it wasn’t because he was lazy, but because he lacked the energy. They thought all he needed was encouragement. Encouragement to make it through, to become an adult who was distant and aloof and indifferent? Cecilia didn’t agree and continued to try to cheer him up with her jokes, hoping he’d become a little more animated, more spirited, that he would learn to laugh or at least smile sometimes.