Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

This time it wasn’t the old trick to affectionately extort confessions. It was a new trick, in which you said exactly what you thought. In part because by this time it was clear that Cecilia had been the one to betray him, and Silvia wasn’t sure she wanted to know the details of the story.

“You don’t understand, you can’t,” said Luca.

He got up. He stood there a moment. He said goodbye, and then he was gone.

Cecilia had fallen in love with another man while her father was dying. Silvia placed her empty cup on the tray, beside the one that was still full.

* * *

Luca came back after a few days, very upset. “I would have been better off if I’d never met her, hadn’t married her, hadn’t had the two children we have. Can you imagine? Me thinking such a thing? The best moments of the past ten years, the most precious things I have, destroyed forever. Michela’s first day of school, remember how big she was already? We were more nervous than she was as she was getting ready the night before, and that morning I took her picture before we left the house; she was proud, excited. Every so often I look at the photo again and I laugh to myself, happy, you know? And the evening, at dinner, when Mattia began speaking, his first complex sentences with all the words in the right place, and Ceci and I looked at each other and almost started crying: he hadn’t gotten a single word wrong. He chatted about cars, he already knew all the models of all the manufacturers, and we pretended not to notice, not to interrupt him, to prolong the moment, but Michela couldn’t help herself, she shouted: ‘Mattia, you’re talking perfectly!’ We all burst out laughing. And once at the beach when he defended his sister from two older kids who threw sand at her, and Michela was beaming, and he wanted to continue fighting, furious at us for dragging him away. And that time, in the mountains, when some young people passed us, we were on the shore of a pond, and Michela, behind us, followed them all the way to the other side, she was three or four years old, and when I went to bring her back they were laughing like crazy, saying what a cute little girl she was, she wanted to know which ones were boyfriend and girlfriend, she’d only known them five minutes, and she was saying, ‘Don’t you like her? Why don’t you kiss each other?’ in that tiny voice of hers, remember?”

“Oh, I remember, I remember.” Silvia nodded. She nodded. And nodded. What else could she do? She could only nod. Until Luca went away, forgetting even to say goodbye this time.

The man she’d glimpsed a few days ago wanted to talk, he needed help, he was seeking advice. This one didn’t need someone to talk with , he needed an audience, he just had to recite his monologue, he already knew all the answers. Besides, wasn’t this whole scene a little too much, if it was just an affair?

* * *

Then finally, on his fourth visit, Luca blurted out what he wanted to say, with no second thoughts.

He showed up carrying an umbrella, even though it wasn’t raining and wasn’t threatening to rain. He sank onto the couch. He sat up straight. His voice went up two octaves, took on a ragged, high-pitched timbre, and ended in a sob through clenched teeth: “We were expecting a baby, Cecilia aborted it, she said she couldn’t keep it.”

Silvia held up her hands to stop him. “Wait, I don’t understand! She was expecting a baby? She lost it?”

“She went and had an abortion, she went alone, without telling me.”

“She had a miscarriage…”

“NO! NO!” he shouted. “WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME? SHE HAD AN ABORTION! SHE DIDN’T WANT IT!”

“She said she couldn’t keep it…”

“She meant she didn’t want it.”

“She told you: I can’t keep it. That’s all she said.”

“She told me she didn’t want another child, that Mattia was still having problems, that she didn’t have the strength to start all over again. That’s what she said. I wanted us to talk about it, I asked her to wait. No use. Ten days later, she’d done it.”

“I don’t believe it.”

The disclosure was so unexpected, the shock so great. Silvia shook her head. When had it happened? A day when they’d seen each other? A day before, a day after? Without telling anyone. She’d made an appointment. By phone? At the hospital? She’d gone by herself. When? What was the weather like? Was it sunny or raining? What had she been doing at that moment? Where were the children? In the morning she’d taken them to school. In the afternoon she’d gone to pick them up. She was calm; she was frightened. Did her mother know? She didn’t know. But how could she not have noticed anything? How could her sister have been able to hide it all so well?

She didn’t want to hurt Luca, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to console him. She had a knot in the pit of her stomach, her old friendly knot, and at the same time she felt lighter, relieved, maybe only of uncertainty. Above all, she was sure she didn’t share Luca’s anger. She would have been willing to share his grief or pain or sorrow, but anger? Actually, it seemed unthinkable to her that in the face of such an act he would feel only anger, or mainly anger, that he didn’t have anything to say about Cecilia.

“Is Cecilia all right?”

“Cecilia is just fine, she doesn’t realize what she’s done; you’d think she’d gone to the dentist.”

“Are you sure ?”

He nodded.

Silvia started stammering. “It doesn’t seem possible that she … if she made that decision … I’m not against it … I’m not opposed in general, but … it’s a big decision, the way you tell it, it seems like she made a snap decision, just like that … without giving it any thought … it’s not like her, I can’t believe it … I don’t like you saying that … that thing about the dentist … I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit !”

She was a little short of breath. But she knew why she felt relieved. Cecilia was no longer the perfect woman, she was no longer infallible, and it was only right that her mother know it. In the end, she did share a little of Luca’s anger, though for different reasons: Cecilia never told her anything, she didn’t expose herself, she didn’t reveal her weaknesses, she wasn’t a true friend, and that’s why she had no girlfriends — girlfriends bare all to one another. To go and do a thing like that alone. She felt relieved, but it was a fragile relief; her anxiety was stronger. She put a hand to her throat to gauge her heart rate, she tried to think rationally.

“Maybe none of us realized how much Cecilia suffered over the death of our father, for not having been able to save him. I, too, sometimes felt angry with her, because she always seemed so cold when she spoke about Papa’s condition, about his prospects — when she told me and Mama what could still be done, as if she were talking about a to-do list, without ever saying there was nothing more that could be done. But those are defense mechanisms, you know? If she did — if she felt the need to do that thing, she must have had her reasons, she certainly has reasons that you have to find out. I understand you’re upset, but angry, no, you can’t give in to it, you have to be there for her. And don’t ever say that thing about the dentist again.”

“It’s definitely not the worst thing I said.” He told her that for a month they’d gone to the park to fight, so the children wouldn’t hear them. In a clearing among the trees he told Cecilia she was an animal, a murderer, that she made him want to puke, she was a monster, a hideous thing. He told her she didn’t deserve to be the mother of his children. He told her he would have rather she died giving birth.

He relayed all this as if it had nothing to do with him, the dry umbrella still beside him. It was pointless for her to say anything. And in any case, she couldn’t take any more, she was too upset. She bent forward and rested her forehead on her knees, her arms limp at her sides. Her heart was pounding in her ears. And to think she’d actually planned to ask him for money. Her heart slowed, swelled with each beat, filled her entire rib cage, became tough and fibrous. Again Silvia imagined her sister, alone — before, during, and after — alone from now on, alone with herself, as she’d never wanted, or been able, to be.