Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  * * *

  The following afternoon, the women who looked after his mother called him because Marta was upset; she wanted to leave, she was already packing her bags and had phoned a travel agent. Talking over each other excitedly, the two Peruvians tore the phone out of each other’s hands to add further alarming details: the signora had found an old ID card belonging to her dead sister, a sister who had died young, and realized that she had never visited her grave, she was determined to set off for the cemetery. Viberti told them to give her one of the tranquilizers that were on the credenza, marked with a note written by Giulia, but he saw that they were in a panic, that for some reason they couldn’t handle the situation and needed him to come home as soon as possible.

  When he got there he found Marta in her robe in front of the closets, which were all open; for half an hour she’d been giving instructions to the two women, who were shifting clothes and blankets from one section to another. The emergency had faded. “Good for you, Mama,” he said, resting an arm around her shoulders, “every so often you have to straighten things up,” and he kissed her on the forehead. On the bed lay an open suitcase, still empty and perhaps forgotten. Leaving the room, the women told him about the ID card found accidentally in the bottom of a drawer during one of the general clean-ups that for some time had become Marta’s chief occupation. Angélica showed Viberti the document, pointing out the name, “Maria Rita,” and Signora Marta’s extraordinary resemblance to the woman in the black-and-white photo. It wasn’t a passport photo, but a real portrait shot in a studio where a photographer had taken pains to pose his model, looking for the best angle and the best lighting, completely unnecessarily since the forty-year-old woman was beautiful regardless.

  Viberti explained that Maria Rita was Marta’s real name, which she had always hated; all her life she had insisted on being called by that diminutive of sorts (which was also a real name). “Así que no es su hermana,” Angélica said, suddenly understanding. “Niente hermana,” no, not her sister. Viberti shook his head. The new twist was that Marta hadn’t remembered the name recorded on her birth certificate and was convinced she’d found a sister’s ID. “Wait,” Viberti said, “let’s do a test.”

  He went back to his mother and told her he’d found her old ID card in the house: “See, it has your real name, Maria Rita.” Marta took the document as if seeing it for the first time and exclaimed emphatically: “I always hated that name!” Then she immediately marveled at how young she was in the photograph, and shook her head, laughing; no one knew why she found it so funny.

  They sat in the kitchen and drank iced tea, Marta still chuckling to herself, looking at the photograph. Viberti wondered if Cecilia had yet read the letter, which he’d slipped through a crack in her locker. He was almost sure the envelope had been firmly inserted in the locker’s frame and that when she opened the door, Cecilia wouldn’t be able to miss it, but he continued to imagine possible mishaps, scenarios in which the letter might have fallen to the bottom of the locker and gotten buried among old sandals and schedules from past shifts in the ER.

  “I remember perfectly when I had this photo taken,” Marta said. “I remember perfectly” had become one of her favorite expressions and Giulia never failed to point it out to him. “The photographer’s studio was downtown and I’d never been there before; he was a shady-looking little hunchback who infuriated me by making me stay in that pose for an hour, taking me by the chin to turn my face from side to side and putting his hands on me to arrange the folds of my dress. When I told Stefano about it he got really angry and wanted to go there and make a scene.” The eccentric uncles everyone used to have, and the friends who were a little crazy or disabled or hunchbacked, but unique and unforgettable, don’t exist anymore. Among my mother’s girlfriends there wasn’t one who was normal. And my father had a whole tribe of protégés and dependents, who continued to seek protection and charity even after his death. My friends and I, on the other hand, are apparently normal people, forgettable and interchangeable, our disabilities concealed, our humps internal.

  Viberti smiled at the idea of his father causing a scene, ignoring the fact that his mother had called him Stefano. But Marta added: “He had just finished playing tennis and said he’d smash the racket over his head.” She laughed happily, quite content, and Viberti made an effort to laugh with her. Instead of stopping to think twice and deciding to let it go, he said: “I didn’t know Papa was so jealous.”

  “Oh, no, no, I really did mean Stefano Mercuri. Your father wasn’t at all jealous. Stefano, on the other hand, made such scenes…” She laughed again, maybe only because she was happy to have shown her son that she could still remember something. She didn’t seem at all concerned or aware of what her words implied. And Viberti knew he shouldn’t attach any importance to that strange, unintentional confession. How many times had he thought to himself that there was something between Mercuri and his mother? How many times, as a boy, had he hoped that Mercuri and his mother would get married? Hoped or feared.

  To escape the awkward situation, he stood up and went out on the balcony, glancing around the courtyards, noting that from that side of the building the part-time hermit’s cave truly was well protected and hidden. It was entirely possible that Marta had been raving deliriously. But wait a minute, he thought, they’d been talking about a time when his father was still alive and well, a period, in fact, when his parents had been married only a few years and he was little. Maybe Marta wasn’t raving, and Mercuri had been her lover before and after she married. But Viberti didn’t look anything like him. Then again he didn’t look like his father either. He looked a lot like Marta.

  As soon as he left his mother he went to look for Giulia on the third floor. She had just returned from the hospital, she didn’t know anything about the mix-up with the ID card. They talked a bit about Marta’s new anxiety attacks, which worried them both, and discussed the best dosage for her sleeping pills and tranquilizers. Then Viberti, smiling with feigned nonchalance, told Giulia about Marta’s mistake, how she had attributed to Mercuri the jealousy of a husband.

  Giulia shrugged. “You’ve always thought that, too, haven’t you?”

  Viberti’s smile immediately faded. “Well, but we’re talking about the sixties here.”

  “I see,” said Giulia.

  Viberti kept his irritation in check.

  “I have to go,” he said, and left before Giulia could add anything else.

  * * *

  He did not try to call Silvia Re that night or the next day. Silvia left him messages but he didn’t call her back. It was Friday, and on Saturday morning he would take Marta and the two caregivers to the house in the mountains, where his mother would spend the rest of the summer away from the sweltering city. He wouldn’t be able to see Silvia over the weekend, so he might as well put off calling her until Monday. Maybe he should call to tell her, but he kept putting that off, too. All he could think about was how Cecilia would react to his letter. He hadn’t heard from her, hadn’t seen her at the hospital or at the café. Maybe the letter really had fallen to the bottom of the locker and disappeared forever. Maybe Cecilia had read it, had liked it or hadn’t liked it, but since it didn’t change anything, since it didn’t solve the issues that kept them apart, she thought she’d talk to him about it later.

  By five in the afternoon Viberti was tempted to go back to his wicker chair and watch the courtyards from up there, but something held him back, as if it were no longer possible. Still, the temptation was strong. Watching the courtyards he’d be able to think about the affair between his mother and Mercuri, about how bitter and sad it made him feel.

  Soon after, Cecilia called him. She sounded excited, happy. She’d read the letter, she’d found it very moving, she wanted to get another one just like it that very instant. Then she said she wanted to have dinner with him that evening, she recalled that one day, months ago, Viberti had told her about making a pasta with a special sauce.

  “Yes
,” he said, “I can make it again anytime,” and she laughed.

  “Then you’re inviting me to dinner? When can I come?”

  “Whenever you like, I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “I’ll be there around eight.”

  He hurried to take a shower, but when he was undressed, instead of getting under the stream of water, he ran naked into the kitchen and started pulling the ingredients for the sauce out of the fridge, setting the table with a nice white tablecloth and some elegant dishes, never used, that had been left to him after he and Giulia had divvied up the wedding gifts. The sauce was simmering, a bottle of white wine was in the refrigerator, he already had what he needed for a special salad, but there was no bread, he had to dash down and buy it. He realized that he was naked, that the French door was wide open, and glanced at the buildings across the way: no one was interested in an exhibitionist cook at that hour on a Friday in July.

  He showered, changed his shirt, and ran out to buy bread. He bought several kinds of bread: whole wheat, raisin, sesame, small rolls to go with the salad. Two salads, he decided, one wouldn’t be enough: valerian lettuce with walnuts and parmesan cheese and fennel with oranges and anchovies, even though oranges weren’t in season, grapefruit might be better, where do citrus fruits come from in July? Remember the saying “You are what you eat”? That threat of sorts reminds me of another expression, “One day all this will be yours”: as a child I didn’t really understand it and thought the phrase was “One day all this will be you,” and I figured that sooner or later my father would take me aside and tell me, word by word, who I would become, as if he could know beforehand, as if his dreams could become my memories. He ran from the bakery to the fruit-and-vegetable stand and on the way he stopped to buy ice cream; Cecilia might bring something, wine or ice cream, it didn’t matter, better to have a spare in the refrigerator. When he returned home he prepared the salads and a fruit cocktail and in addition decided to make an omelet with marjoram, mint, and St. Peter’s herb. He showered again and threw on another shirt. He looked at his watch: it was just seven.

  Cecilia appeared at the door at half past eight with a large bouquet of red roses. Viberti was speechless, breathless, without a vase to put the flowers in. He rummaged through the house, opening and closing cabinets, knowing full well he wouldn’t find anything appropriate. No one had ever given him flowers, he’d never bought himself any, the vases had probably ended up at Giulia’s. In the end Cecilia found an oval skillet, used for frying fish, in the pots and pans cabinet: it had been left to him, for some reason. She filled it with water and arranged the roses in it with their vermilion heads resting on the edge and the stems soaking. Back in the kitchen, Viberti didn’t ask her how she’d managed to find the cabinet with the pots and pans so quickly; he suspected it wasn’t a very intelligent question, and instead stared at the roses lying there in their voluptuous abandon, picturing Cecilia naked in his bathtub.

  “Are we expecting anyone else?” she asked with a smile, pointing to all the food Viberti had laid out on the table, in addition to the pasta that he’d tossed into the boiling water as soon as he heard the intercom buzz. “Were you worried I’d starve to death?”

  “I was worried, yes,” Viberti mumbled.

  “Don’t tell me my sister is coming?” Cecilia added, laughing.

  Viberti looked dismayed and she hugged him to cheer him up; she was only joking.

  While the pasta was cooking, Cecilia asked to see the house, and the balcony overlooking the courtyards she’d heard so much about. Viberti had been hoping they’d sit down and sip the white wine that he had already poured into two glasses, but Cecilia picked hers up and went into the hallway.

  The blue five-seat sofa sat in the center of the living room, facing the television. There were no armchairs, no table and chairs. There was a tall breakfront with lots of drawers, never organized, which held ten years of bills, receipts, tax returns, certificates, and other documents.

  “What if you have guests, if you want someone to sit down?”

  “We all face the same way, and the worst seat is the middle one.”

  “And a table?”

  “I eat in the kitchen.”

  In the first bedroom the double bed had been left behind. One of the two nightstands was wrapped in protective padding, as if they’d decided to leave it at the last minute. A lamp and a stack of newspapers stood on its black marble top, the only part that had been unwrapped. The doors to a large, half-empty wardrobe were missing.

  “She had them painted by a friend, a huge landscape with hills, trees, flowers, cars. I don’t know if I cared for it. In any case, she took them with her.”

  Another room with no furniture, full of old magazines piled on the floor, against the walls. In a corner, a toy garage bought by mistake two years ago. “The children’s room.” Spoken without irony.

  The study: a desk with a computer, a swivel chair, a stand with a printer, a stereo.

  The bathroom, at least, didn’t lack for anything.

  A room with a washing machine. Underwear hung out to dry.

  Cecilia didn’t say a word, she didn’t ask why he hadn’t replaced the furniture, didn’t ask why he hadn’t bought new doors for the wardrobe, instead she held Viberti’s hand tightly throughout the tour, as if she were the one guiding him. They went out on the balcony. The balcony looked like a jungle, Cecilia said, it was crammed with plants and flowers, how did he find the time to care for them?

  “I don’t, in fact, every week one of them dies, but I buy another one immediately.”

  “You admit it.”

  “Yes,” he laughed, “it’s a kind of terminal ward.”

  “Silvia says we doctors are unbearably cynical.”

  Viberti lowered his eyes. There was a silence.

  “Okay, we won’t talk about her again,” Cecilia said.

  A light breeze cooled the air.

  “Why don’t we eat out here?”

  “Out here? But what would we lean on?”

  “We don’t need to lean on anything, come on. You sit here, on the stool, and I’ll take the wicker chair.”

  Viberti looked at her, smiling.

  “I want to sit in your chair.”

  “All right. I’ll go drain the pasta.”

  They ate with their plates on their laps, setting the glasses on the floor. Cecilia told him about some phone calls to the children, they were fine, they were big now and independent and they no longer needed her. She was struck by the fact that, for the first time, both of them had asked her, “And how are you, Mama?” She smiled. Then she said she didn’t like it when people said that Mattia was really okay now, she was afraid that talking about it would bring the problem on again. Then she said they would return from their summer camps tanned and in great shape and that they would spend some time with their grandmother. They were used to having everything planned so they wouldn’t get bored.

  “Did you get bored?”

  “As a boy? I went to the school of boredom.”

  “They’re always saying, ‘What should we do now?’ Every now and then even my mother calls to ask me, ‘What should they do now?’ when the children are with her.” They laughed. Cecilia asked if he used to sit in the wicker chair and watch the courtyards when he got bored as a child.

  No, Viberti said, the chair went back to high school and, especially, his university days, when he would study out on the balcony. He told her about the mnemonic system he’d used to remember the elements of a subject, assigning each to different areas of the courtyard. They talked about the various methods they’d used to memorize the more difficult subject matters; Cecilia had filled notebook after notebook with keywords. They talked about the anatomy exam, because all doctors sooner or later start talking about the anatomy exam. They talked about the mental foramen, the infraspinatous fossa, the round pronator and Penfield’s homunculus. And Viberti was able to name all the bones of the hand.

  Then Cecilia stared at him with a
serious expression, and Viberti slid the stool away, knelt down and began kissing her. A long, passionate kiss. A few pauses to take a breath; he went on kissing her for ten minutes, even though his knees hurt.

  Then she told him to sit back on the stool, she had something to tell him.

  “I’m not saying it’s the reason we separated, Luca and I, but it’s something that happened, four years ago, and you should know about it.”

  She told him she’d been expecting a third child, that she didn’t want it, she didn’t want another child and she didn’t want one with Luca, so she’d had an abortion. She told him in a few words and then fell silent and looked out over the rooftops of the houses across the way, toward the hill.

  Viberti took her chapped, red hands, kissed them, rested his head on them like a pillow.

  “What do you think of me?”

  Viberti said he didn’t think anything; it must have been terrible for her, but he didn’t feel he could judge her, he didn’t know enough about it.

  “You don’t think I’m a monster?”

  He looked at her, confused. No, he didn’t think she was a monster.

  “What if I did it to you. If I decided to abort your child.”

  What troubled him the most was the way Cecilia spoke to him, with that contained anger.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “To hurt you.”

  Viberti shook his head. For a moment he was afraid he hadn’t understood. Because in fact he hadn’t understood a thing, up until that moment. But it was possible that he had no hope of understanding, ever, not even when faced with the evidence. “Then I’d be worried about that, that you would want to hurt me. Did you want to hurt your husband? What did he do to you?”