Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

For the first time since Silvia left she was tempted to call Viberti. Telling Silvia everything wasn’t possible, talking to him was. She lowered the blinds. She lay down on the bed without even taking off her white coat. Mattia was sleeping all curled up. He was fine, that was the important thing. She would tell Viberti that she’d heard about it or had a feeling about it. It was hard to keep her composure, even just the thought of talking to him and asking “Is it true?” was upsetting. How much of it was true? What had actually happened? More than anything she felt like crying.

Only now did she feel like crying, lying across from Mattia, as she thought about it and imagined a conversation with Viberti. Maybe because for the first time she pictured Viberti in front of her, ready to listen. She imagined him as indifferent and maybe argumentative, and in the end hostile.

“Let’s try to be adults, we didn’t have a future, you and I, our relationship perhaps never even began, we kept seeing each other because we were afraid of being alone, so this somewhat abrupt, surprise ending is for the best, there’s a part of you in your sister, and it’s as if I’d courted you for two years to get to her, with her there’s no need for courtship, let’s say … not only because she’s more decisive than you, more uninhibited , but because I’ve already moved on from that stage; and it’s not like it’s an ending for you, either, it’s a beginning — you can devote yourself to your children, and in time you will certainly find someone and fall in love, probably with a man who’s different from me, he won’t be so insecure and introverted, he’ll be someone more like your husband, but different, better, less self-centered — was your husband self-centered? You’ll find someone who isn’t, your children will be grown and you’ll no longer be afraid of betraying them, you’ll make a new life for yourself. And you know what the best thing about it will be? That we’ll keep seeing each other! Of course, because, after some initial tension, you and Silvia will patch things up and become close again, and given how much you care about Silvia, you’ll care for me as well, and you’ll forgive me for what happened.”

A sarcastic, offensive, brash, long-winded Viberti. Effusive like Silvia. As if he’d been infected by sleeping with Silvia (he’d done it for sure ) and now he, too, talked like a cat on fire.

But all in all this new internist was improbable, no, she didn’t believe it, he couldn’t have changed so radically in two weeks. A silent Viberti was a more likely Viberti. Speechless, mortified, ashamed, unable to justify himself. Faced with the more probable internist, she would have to be the one to speak.

“I’m trying to be an adult,” she would say, “I’m trying to understand and not judge. But I don’t understand, and even though I’m not judging you, I’m just asking myself: How was it possible? What got into you? Wasn’t there something between us? Wouldn’t it have been better to wait and clarify things with me? I know I have no right. I can’t accuse you of anything, let alone of having behaved incorrectly, but I have to ask you: Wasn’t there something between us?”

Mattia was breathing peacefully in his sleep, the faulty blinds projected bands of light onto the ceiling. Eyes open in the dark, Cecilia thought she should start off with that question, a compelling question: “Wasn’t there something between us?” or better yet as a positive: “Was there something between us?” Any other questions would then follow naturally. Why my sister? Do you hate me that much? What did I do to you? Were you trying to get even? Did you think I didn’t love you? And if I told you that I love you, now, what would you do?

What would Viberti do if she told him she loved him? Probably nothing. Like when she had told him, a few months ago, in the café beside the river. Better to speak to him by phone, better to just ask, “Has there been something between us, these past two years?” And hear what he had to say. His version. Unless he remained silent, overcome by shame. The coward, the hopeless incompetent.

* * *

The next day, when Luca came to relieve her, they stood talking in the doctors’ lounge and she told him the result of the tests they’d done that morning, going on at length with various reassuring details. For once things were looking good and it wasn’t enough to say “everything is fine.” She exaggerated to store up a little good news, provisions in case things got worse.

Suddenly Luca stopped her and said: “There’s something I have to confess, I thought about it yesterday, but I’d had it on my mind for who knows how long … our son scares me. Not always, I’m not saying I’m always afraid to be with him, or that the thought of being with him scares me, but sometimes, when we’re together, I’m afraid of what he thinks of me and of what he could do.”

Cecilia smiled. “What could he do?”

Returning the smile, to lessen the absurdity or the sting of what he was about to say, Luca said: “Don’t you think that someday, maybe when he’s grown, when he’s old, he might decide to make me pay for it?”

Encouraged by his smile, determined not to take him seriously, she said: “No, I don’t think that. Make you pay for what?”

Luca went on smiling, no, he wasn’t serious, just a little: “Okay, he won’t make me pay for it, but still, I’m afraid of him, of what he thinks, of what he feels…”

“Me, too, he scares me, too,” Cecilia said to comfort him.

Sharing that fear lifted her spirits. Driving home, she found that she could think about the matter of Silvia and Viberti more calmly, curiously examining her jealousy toward Silvia. She thought: I’ve never been jealous of her and I never thought I’d have reason to be, especially over Viberti. But she wasn’t telling the truth.

True, she had never been jealous of Silvia as an adult and true, she had never felt jealous of her because of a man. The men Silvia liked usually got on her nerves. She had, however, been jealous of her sister when they were children. Being jealous of a sister was a predictable, commonplace thing, inevitable, infantile, and self-centered. Overcoming that kind of feeling was part of becoming an adult.

Still, she remembered clearly, as if it were that very moment, how she’d felt as a child when Silvia entered the room, screaming and laughing, and a spark lit up her father’s eyes. She remembered the satisfaction of watching her mother scold her, whenever Silvia was punished. But over time she had trained herself not to be jealous anymore, to feel important and more grown-up since she had to protect her. She’d stopped feeling jealous of the special bond that Silvia had with their father, she was sure of that, and Silvia’s constant bickering with their mother didn’t concern her. Or else she had learned to deceive herself almost entirely.

And she was sure she could never talk to her about it. She could never call Silvia and tell her about her relationship with Viberti. Never, ever. She had to try to resolve the matter with him. That morning, while she was taking Mattia from the CT scan in Radiology to Pediatrics, she’d gotten three calls from the internist, which she hadn’t answered because she didn’t feel ready yet. But she had to talk to him and ask him what his intentions were, and also ask him for a favor: not to ever say anything about them to Silvia. The thought that Silvia might feel threatened by her terrified her.

After sleeping very little or not at all, she nearly fell asleep in the shower, sitting with her legs drawn up and her forehead resting on her knees, the spray of water hitting the back of her neck. She’d thought all night about Silvia and Viberti and ultimately imagined them making love, imagining Viberti making love as he had with her and imagining Silvia making love in a way that she, Cecilia, had never been able to: imagining her more practiced and more skilled, imagining Viberti rapt in ecstasy and overcome by desire. Viberti, who maybe for a moment, as he was making love with Silvia, had thought about how strange life was, to fall in love with a woman and worship her for two years only to discover that she was concealing a more delightful, more passionate version of herself (more compact ).