Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

It’s been twenty days since her fling with the nondescript Viberti and she still feels like she’s fallen behind, even though the fling itself didn’t consume any of her working hours, since it took place entirely in the evening. Chalk it up, perhaps, to the usual tangle of meaningless thoughts, as well as to that damned tome on Hindu mythology, that meteorite she allowed to hit her, which she has to finish polishing up by mid-July. If she’s behind schedule, those three harmless nights aren’t responsible. She has thirty days of work left, she could add a weekend to make sure she finished on time.

She’s therefore planning to work on a certain Saturday afternoon when she suddenly falls into a deep, dreamless sleep on the couch, and sleeps like a log for three straight hours. As far as she knows, only children nap like that. A phone call from Cecilia wakes her at six. She’s confused, dazed, but pretends to be wide awake, as if she were afraid of being yelled at, by her sister moreover, for having wasted the afternoon. Cecilia doesn’t notice anything, she’s excited about her own news, she wants to tell her that she took the boy to summer camp, even though he’d been in the hospital twelve days earlier.

“Good for you, Ceci, he won’t have any problems, you’ll see.”

“He’s been playing soccer every afternoon.”

“Really.”

“Going to camp meant so much to him. But, you know, the minute I leave him I get anxious.”

“You’re an hour’s drive away. But there won’t be any problem … And Michela?”

She manages to get Cecilia’s mind off Mattia by having her tell her about Michela’s study holiday and then finally gets rid of her.

She takes a shower. Her breasts are swollen; she must be getting her period. She gets dressed, she goes out with her girlfriends and some other people, they go to eat and then to see The Day After Tomorrow . She’d been the one to insist on it, she chose the film and persuaded everyone that it wasn’t the usual apocalyptic trash. After ten minutes, however, she slumps down in the seat. Stefania wakes her when a new ice age has descended over the world and the actors are moving around in the blizzard, muffled up in bulky yellow snowsuits.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m working too hard.”

She works all day Sunday without ever going near the couch or the bed for fear of falling into a stupor again. Ever since morning, she’s known exactly what she’s going to start thinking once she calls it quits. As if an unwelcome letter had been delivered and she hasn’t wanted to open it all day.

At seven she saves and closes the file she’s been working on, makes some tea, and picks up her datebook. The nondescript Viberti had been careful. She’d told him to be careful. She saw him. She saw him the second night. She saw him the third night. Traces of that precaution were left on her sheets. The first night, they’d made love on the floor, in front of the couch. Right afterward he’d gone to the bathroom, presumably to wash up.

She’s never kept track of the date of her last period, ever, in her whole life. Cecilia, of course, is the one who marks a little cross on the calendar. Though Stefania, unpredictably, does, too. Carla is so regular she doesn’t need to.

The hell with it, it’ll come. Still, just to pass the time while the tea steeps, what day was it? A Monday morning, toward the middle of May: she’d awakened at six with stomach cramps and stained pajamas. She’d gotten out of bed, trying not to fully wake up, toddled into the bathroom, rinsed off, got a tampon and clean panties. She’d been about to go back to bed, sleep until eight. But something drew her to the living room window. At night she keeps the shutters lowered only in the bedroom, she likes the light coming from the other room in the morning. Outside it was daylight, and there was a gray cloud in the pale sky above the rooftops that was constantly changing shape: a flock of birds that swelled and contracted rhythmically in the morning air.

So, it was five weeks, almost. So she is late. She’s been eight or nine days late before. She could be late even longer. She could be late by a month and still not be pregnant. She suspects it’s just a way to neglect her work, to create excuses for herself, to sabotage the mammoth book of Hindu mythology, substituting one delay for another. She’ll wait a week and then think about it. But since Thursday is a holiday and she might decide to go to the beach with Stefania (if she’s caught up with her work), since it could ruin a couple of days in a bathing suit, she’ll get it on Wednesday night, it’s bound to happen.

The next day she tries not to think about it, she’s able to work well but her breasts are still swollen and she’s tremendously sleepy; she’s worried. She sleeps wearing panties and a tampon. Nothing happens.

Tuesday morning at eight she shuts off the alarm clock without thinking and goes on sleeping. She sleeps until ten, gets up with anxiety buzzing in her head like a persistent fly. At ten twenty she goes to the pharmacy and buys a pregnancy test; it’s the first time, it’s not the pharmacy she usually uses. They ask her if she wants two, she doesn’t get it, she says no. Afterward she realizes it was a trap (to see if she was worried about being pregnant or trying to get pregnant).

She returns home. She opens the box: the object looks like a marking pen, the morning seems like a normal workday, but instead of editing proofs with a highlighter, like you used to do — coloring the uppercase letters that should be lowercase and vice versa pink or blue — she’s about to take a pregnancy test. She’s thirty-two years old and it’s never happened to her before. She hasn’t considered herself particularly fortunate because of it, but maybe she has been?

She removes the cap, holds the tip under the stream of urine for five seconds as instructed, leaves the bathroom, and waits. The tip turns pink, the first control line in the display window turns blue. The second one turns blue as well. Surely it’s wrong. She has to do it again. The reason she’s never gone to that pharmacy is because they’re unreliable, they have old merchandise, expired stuff.

She goes out again, she feels a little dizzy, she stops for coffee and a croissant, she can’t manage to drink the coffee, the aroma alone makes her feel like throwing up. She orders a cup of tea, sits down, tells herself: Calm down now, okay? Calm down. Stern, angry. Eyes fixed on the marble tabletop. She drinks the tea, eats a bit of the croissant.

She goes to her own pharmacy. She asks for the test kit, mortified. The pharmacist smiles, asks if she wants two. “Of course,” she says. She also buys a toothbrush.

At home she repeats the test. It’s a different brand, but that one also looks like a highlighter. It turns pink and then blue. Then blue again. Why always those colors? Who decided? It’s not possible, she can’t be pregnant.

She’s shaking. It’s eleven fifteen and she hasn’t started working yet, the Hindu mythology book stares at her from the desk. Never mind looking inward, thousands of Bodhisattvas are pointing their finger at her.

She thinks about doing the third test right away, but instead she calls Stefania at her office, asks to have lunch with her. The moment she says the word “lunch” she feels nauseous. Stefania can’t meet her, she asks if something happened, if something’s wrong.

“No, everything’s okay, talk to you later.”

She hangs up and the next instant she panics. She calls Stefania back, tells her she’s afraid she’s pregnant, she had a fling with someone she’ll never see again, she’s a moron, she screwed up, can’t she see her right away?

Stefania asks how it could have happened, doesn’t wait for an answer, tells her to take a pill, half a pill, she’ll be there as soon as possible. If she really is pregnant, maybe taking a Xanax isn’t the best idea.