Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Michela didn’t answer right away, but after a while, when her mother was about to ask a second time if she was still upset because of that stupid kid who was infatuated with her, the girl spoke: “It’s not my fault, I swear, it’s not my fault.”

“What’s not your fault? What are you talking about?”

“If Mattia isn’t well it’s not my fault.”

“But Mattia is fine.”

“I heard you crying, I could hear that you were crying.”

“Because I’m so worn out, and I had a scare, but the tests went well and Mattia is healthy as a horse. Do you believe me?”

Michela didn’t answer.

“And I don’t think it’s your fault, it’s not a matter of fault, it’s no one’s fault.”

She went on comforting and reassuring her, losing track of time, hugging her daughter, who hugged her back, exhausted. She remembered a ridiculous phone call from Silvia, she couldn’t say when, five or six years ago. Her friend Stefania had been in a panic because her cat had been diagnosed with feline hepatic lipidosis and was in danger of dying. The cat was obese and hadn’t eaten in two days. “The cat is consuming himself,” Silvia had screamed into the phone, “don’t you see? He’s devouring himself!” That was her sister. And she never told anyone to go to hell.

She must have closed her eyes at some point, because only when she sensed his presence beside the bed did she realize that Mattia was standing there.

He was watching them curiously. “The movie is over,” he announced in his bored, solemn tone.

* * *

After the phone call she felt better, bruised but still intact, or rather, the more bruised she was, the more intact. She didn’t see Viberti for almost two weeks.

Silvia brought him up only once, at the end of a long, complicated story about her work, saying it was a difficult time, that she was facing a lot of problems, not personal problems, though, because the situation she had mentioned to her had ended quickly and she wasn’t sorry about it. Had she caused her any trouble?

“No, I already told you,” Cecilia replied.

“Do you still see him?”

“Sure, every so often I run into him,” she lied.

“And he hasn’t said anything to you?”

“Of course not.”

She was very composed. She didn’t try to figure out where that composure was coming from.

She understood, however, ten days later, when she found Viberti waiting for her outside the ER. He had his usual beaten-dog look. He was a beaten dog. As usual (not to say that it meant anything important), seeing him raised her spirits. He didn’t talk much, he didn’t know what to say, and Cecilia took pleasure in his embarrassment and his silence. They talked about the boy, then they stopped at the window opposite the locker room and the internist told her about watching her through that window two years ago, on the day Mattia was discharged after his first hospitalization. What Viberti remembered about that scene (which she remembered vividly), the way he spoke about it, touched her deeply. Two years had passed; they seemed like twenty. Then the internist began a sad, confused confession, a kind of self-accusation like at a people’s court, and she stopped him before he could scourge himself too severely, told him not to say anything more.

They began seeing each other at lunchtime again as if nothing had happened. They didn’t mention Silvia, and they didn’t talk about their future. For two weeks they ate together as they’d always done, enjoying each other’s company, talking about the usual things, the hospital, Marta’s condition, the children. The children were on vacation.

If she had the afternoon shift, Cecilia spent the morning in the house, which was still cool, lying on the bed in her bra and panties reading old Maigret and Poirot mysteries. Or she took out the folders with the children’s drawings: serene cats and anxious dogs, scurrying clouds, graceful blades of grass endlessly repeated, hysterical suns and somewhat demented moons, cheerful redbrick cottages. Or she leafed through the books they’d looked at together for years, every night: books by Richard Scarry, with those tiny little creatures that filled the white pages, the big red double-decker elephant-bus with Big Ben in the background and the distracted bunny who crosses the street and is sent sprawling by the rhinoceros-taxi, while the bunnies on the sidewalk despair. Or she would start watching television: reruns of a popular cooking show from last season. She watched an hour-long episode in which professionals and amateurs discussed a thousand ways to prepare carbonara : bacon or pancetta, pecorino or Parmesan cheese, whole egg or just the yolk, toss in a pan or pour onto the plate. A few months ago she might have gotten restless, but now she watched it straight through, relaxed and serene.

If she had the morning shift, she left the hospital at two and walked to the pool, braving the sweltering heat in the shade of the chestnut trees, swam for an hour and a half, and then went to spend the evening at her mother’s. They ate together in front of the open kitchen window, longing for a breath of air. Since the internist had confessed to watching the deserted courtyards for hours, not thinking about anything, she often moved a chair out to her mother’s balcony and did the same thing. At home the interior windows looked out onto a dark shaft where there was nothing to see. Picturing Viberti in that melancholy pose, putting herself in his place, she no longer felt sad; instead, she felt like laughing and patting his ghost sitting next to her. Her mother sometimes caught her with a big smile on her face, and said it was nice to see her smile like that again. And she nodded, letting her believe she was thinking of Mattia, about the scares she’d had. But in fact, during that time she was learning not to think about her children as incessantly as she once used to. Not because they’d grown up; as if she had grown up.

She hardly ever saw Silvia. She was closeted at home, finishing up an assignment. Cecilia wasn’t jealous of her anymore, if she ever had been. On the contrary, one day it occurred to her that her sister had helped her. And apart from everything else, she now had an excellent excuse to keep her relationship with Viberti a secret for a little while longer. Above all, it eased her mind about keeping it hidden from the children. All of those thoughts, which she considered as she lay diagonally across her bed, naked or in a bra and panties, were thoughts detached from reality, given that she and Viberti had become friends again, not lovers.

The day before going to pick up Mattia at summer camp, when she opened the locker in the dressing room she saw a white envelope fall to the floor. She opened it; it was a letter from Viberti. Could he have copied it from a novel? she wondered. She smiled, imagining the internist bent over the kitchen table writing her a love letter. She added a huge dictionary to the scene and thought that maybe she really was in love. She was even envious. How had he managed to write such a beautiful letter? He must have copied it. The fraud. Who did he think he was fooling. She would tell him so as soon as she saw him, and she wanted to see him right away.

She left the locker room and called him. When she heard his voice she knew that she would tell him everything that night. She walked unhurriedly beneath the trees along the avenue, looking for her car. The idea no longer made her anxious, telling the (now shy again) internist everything would be the easiest thing in the world.

(And this is her moment of perfect happiness, a moment that will never come again, in which she walks alone on a summer afternoon and feels lighthearted, like another woman. And even if it’s paradoxical, because it isn’t her , that’s how I like to remember her.)