Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

One day Silvia showed up in the ER, toward the end of the morning shift. Having a family member turn up at the hospital was one of Cecilia’s recurring nightmares. She imagined it would happen like this, or something like it: She’d be examining a patient who had chest pain and a negative EKG; she would be asking if the pain was localized or radiating, like a pinch or like something pressing, if it stayed in one place or traveled up to the neck. She’d be concentrating on making her questions understood and concentrating on understanding the responses, when a colleague would come up and touch her arm: “Come with me, there’s a patient in Room Two you have to see.” “Right away,” she’d say, perhaps irritated by the “you have to,” and she’d ask the nurse to draw a blood sample to check the enzyme levels, still focused on the case in front of her. Beyond the door of Room Two, on the gurney, she would find Mattia unconscious or Michela crying or her mother with fear in her eyes. But mostly the boy, nine times out of ten it was the boy in the examining room. The malnourished boy, the boy who was starving to death while she wasn’t paying attention. Lying there defenseless and gaping, like an open mouth. The food he was waiting for was her.

Silvia was fine though, she’d come to pick her up so they could go and get something to eat together.

“Did we make a date to do that?” She was afraid she’d forgotten.

But no, they hadn’t planned on lunch. Silvia had come unexpectedly because until the last minute she didn’t know if she really wanted to speak to her.

“Is there something wrong? Are you all right? Is Mama all right?”

Silvia patted her hand, told her not to get excited, everyone was all right.

“Do you need money?”

Silvia smiled slightly, shook her head. She wanted to talk to her about Michela, about something Michela had told her in confidence. But they should find a quiet place to sit.

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Is there someplace else where we can talk?”

It was only one fifteen, but Cecilia asked her colleagues if she could leave early; the waiting room was empty and there were no ambulances on the way.

When they were seated at the table behind the column, her sister told her that Michela had started crying one night. They were watching a two-part film about the life of Mother Teresa, “Awful,” Silvia said, but they agreed that they would watch only a half hour of it, because a teacher had talked about it and Michela had found out that she was the only one in the class who hadn’t seen the first part.

Cecilia snorted: “She’s the one who always decides what we watch in the evening, Mattia and I, we can never have a say. Besides, I thought that problem at least…”

Silvia said: “If you’re thinking about how for a while she wanted to become a saint, I don’t think that has anything to do with it. She just wanted to see it so she could talk about it. It wasn’t the film that made her cry.”

It irritated her to no end when Silvia read her mind.

“Then why was she crying?”

Usually there was no need to insist in order to hear Michela’s thoughts, even her most secret ones. But this time she’d covered her face with her hands and didn’t want to talk, while Silvia stroked her hair and whispered not to worry. She’d started crying without warning; she wasn’t anxious or upset, she hadn’t been sad or troubled when they got home. At dinner they’d talked about school and Michela seemed like the same sunny child she always was.

Finally the girl calmed down, and said, “Mama can’t stand me.”

Cecilia looked down at the sandwich she hadn’t yet touched, a slice of mortadella peeking out between the slices of bread like a patch of bare skin revealed by an undone button or a lowered zipper.

“Look, I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad,” Silvia said. “I thought about it for two weeks and I couldn’t figure out what to do.”

Make her feel bad? But she didn’t feel bad at all, and she was afraid that if she raised her eyes from the sandwich, her sister would realize it. Or maybe she did feel bad, but not in the way Silvia meant.

In any case, she looked up and saw that Silvia was feeling much worse. She took her hand, she seemed to be trembling, but maybe it was she who was trembling, her gaze wavered and she saw the table and the glass and the bottle of orangeade and the cup and teapot and the prosciutto sandwich and the mortadella sandwich waver, too. “I don’t think you’re telling me to make me feel bad. Not at all. Then what did she say?”

“She told me she knows you can’t stand her, but she doesn’t know what to say to make you happy.”

Cecilia lowered her eyes again. She knew she should at least be moved at that point, and if she’d been able to fake emotion she would have. To put an end to the matter, to put an end to their lunch.

“Don’t look like that, don’t make me feel like a piece of shit.”

“You did the right thing by telling me, really. But did she say anything about Mattia?”

“She said you’re so worried about him you don’t notice anything else. She repeated that she can sense it, she senses that she annoys you.”

“But that’s not true. You’re with us a lot: Does it seem to you I treat her as if I’m annoyed with her?”

“No, in fact I told her: Mama always listens to you, and she likes listening to you, and the next day she tells me what you’ve talked about. But she was adamant.”

“And what do you think? Aside from what you told Michela, do you think I only act like I’m annoyed and irritated with her?”

“It’s true, though: she exasperates you.”

“Yes, children are exasperating, that’s nothing new.”

“But no, I don’t think you only act like that with her.”

“Good. Because that’s true. I don’t only act exasperated and irritated. I’m pretty sure I let her know how much I love her.”

“Don’t get angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

They fell silent. Cecilia thought that maybe everything was settled, that they could talk about something else now. The two women at the neighboring table, doctors or clerical staff or relatives of patients — all presented less-risky topics of conversation. Instead Silvia resumed the discussion.

“Maybe, but…”

“But what?”

“That talk you had with me, when you thought she might be influencing Mattia in some way…”

“I was beside myself, I wasn’t serious. You were right then when you told me to cut it out.”

“Yes. But she might have overheard something.”

“She heard what she says she heard, that I’m very concerned about Mattia. And it’s true: I’m more concerned about Mattia than about her. I think she’ll get by very well in life. I don’t think she needs me as much.”

“You’re wrong. She’s thirteen years old. She needs you very much.”

“I know she’s thirteen, if you didn’t remind me, she would, she tells me all the time, she talks to me a lot and I talk to her, it’s not like she’s all by herself.”

“Don’t get angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“I told you about it because she was really crying. I don’t think she was putting it on to make an impression on me.”

“She’s a born actress.”

“She wasn’t acting. She said it was something she’s felt for a long time. She didn’t know how to make you like her. She used those very words: I want her to like me .”

Maybe the only way to end that discussion and get out of that café was to actually get angry. Start shouting, ask Silvia if she realized what she’d been through the past several years, tell her it was easy for her to talk, having no responsibilities, knowing there was always someone to cover for her. Get angry and be unfair. Say something obnoxious and apologize a moment later. Get up from the table and walk out of the café. Getting angry would make her feel better and afterward it would make her feel worse.