Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  “I forgot something,” Silvia said without asking what she was doing standing on the bed, and motioned for her to come outside.

  They went back out to the hall.

  “I didn’t know if I should tell you, but then I decided to tell you because I’m afraid of complicating things for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “That coworker of yours, the one you introduced me to that day…”

  “Viberti?”

  “Claudio Viberti, right. You know what a screwup I am, I…” She paused, not knowing how to continue.

  “Did you say something to him about me?”

  “About you? No, of course not. But we saw each other again and … I don’t know how it happened. We saw each other two or three times.”

  Cecilia froze, her entire body felt icy cold.

  “So?” she asked with a smile, though she didn’t feel like smiling.

  “We’re not a couple, I don’t think we’ll ever be, I don’t know what he wants but I’m very confused and…”

  Cecilia shook her head, maybe too vigorously. “But you shouldn’t worry about me, he’s just a coworker, why should I be angry?”

  “No, actually, I didn’t think you’d be angry. I thought I might embarrass you, because I’m the usual screwup, and who knows what your coworker will think of me.”

  “He won’t think badly of you, but I don’t know him very well, I’m not sure, right now I’m a little upset about this thing with Mattia.”

  Silvia nodded, maybe too vigorously. “Of course, I’m sorry, I mentioned it because I didn’t want you to hear about it from him, or from someone else, and think I’m just being an idiot as usual.”

  Cecilia smiled, pretending to be understanding. “I’m certainly not going to judge you.” She wasn’t judging her, but she wished she’d disappear instantly, before the mask she was wearing crumbled. She told her not to worry.

  Silvia muttered that it was destiny: “With you it’s my destiny to always be the child; you will always be my big sister.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t suddenly become your little sister.”

  Silvia forced a smile and finally left.

  * * *

  Viberti had gone to bed with her sister, he was attracted to her sister, he was falling in love or had already fallen in love with her sister. How could he do it, how could he even think of doing it before he did it? And how did he think he was going to tell her about it now? Show up at their table one day and announce the good news? “I started seeing Silvia, and well, she’s not you, but at least she’s in the family.”

  The ward was half empty, she’d managed to arrange for Mattia to have a room with two beds with the intention of sleeping there with him. He slept and she paced up and down the corridor, unable to find peace. She pretended to be talking on the phone whenever she glimpsed a silhouette behind the glass doors. They looked like murky ghosts, growing more and more distinct as they approached, until the door opened abruptly and someone appeared in the flesh and looked straight at her.

  For an hour she kept the phone in her hand, holding it to her ear whenever a colleague or nurse passed by. Like a crazy woman. So she wouldn’t have to make conversation. Cell phone to her ear, she thought Viberti must have wanted to get even, yet that was impossible because he wasn’t a vindictive type, and so he must have unconsciously wanted to get even because she had frustrated him, keeping him tied to her while giving him almost nothing. She also thought that he was free to do whatever he wanted, that she had never asked him for an exclusive relationship and that given their situation she couldn’t very well demand that he be faithful to her, the very word “faithful” made no sense, so what he did was his business.

  But not with her sister! That much she could certainly ask, even demand, of him. Not with her sister and possibly not even with a coworker in the ER and possibly not even with anyone from any other department in the hospital. And she thought back to when Silvia had told her: the icy chill she’d felt was very different from feeling a tightness in her chest; at that moment her heart had turned into a vast, frozen arctic sea. At that moment she’d felt nothing, no pain or sorrow, no anger or resentment, not toward Viberti or toward Silvia or toward herself. She just wanted Silvia to go away, as if her reappearance in the doorway had been a mistake in the chronology that drags us all forward, as if by stitching together the moment she’d left the first time with the moment she’d left the second time, that ridiculous confession could be eliminated.

  Why had she felt the need to tell her? Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Why was she always so childish and stupid?

  An hour earlier, playing cards with Mattia, making all the wrong moves while the boy protested, thinking she was letting him win, she’d begun to doubt whether her sister had actually confessed to sleeping with Viberti. She hadn’t said that, she hadn’t said they’d fucked, maybe they went out a couple of times, maybe they’d kissed in the car. But Silvia would never have been so hysterical over a kiss, if it had been only a kiss she probably wouldn’t have felt compelled to confess anything, so it had to be a really shameful thing, that’s the only way it made sense.

  At that point she was no longer so sure she didn’t feel anything: certainly she felt incredulity and confusion, she’d thought she knew the internist quite well and it turned out she didn’t know him at all (she’d never again be able to call him “shy”!), she’d deceived herself and deceived him, she didn’t know what she wanted, or she was even less sure of it than before. Even the anger she felt pacing up and down the hall, even there she wasn’t sure with whom she was angry: Viberti, Silvia, herself. But she was sure she felt angry, now. So sure that she was afraid it showed and that pretending to talk on her cell phone wasn’t enough to hide it.

  To take cover she went back to the child. The room was in shadow, no one had lowered the blinds, they thought she’d do it. The cars on the avenue in the summer twilight already had their lights on. Some drove around the traffic circle and continued on, others crossed the bridge and disappeared, followed by a train of double red taillights, into the tree-lined area where she and Viberti had sought seclusion the first time, as if hiding in the woods. She was very angry, but also very sad. The whole thing was unbearably sad. But not meaningless, not pointless.

  The point was that she had to atone for her wrong in any case. Whatever she’d done, it was wrong and she had to pay for it. The point was that the atonement was ongoing, a lesser purgatory of minor, vindictive retributions such as Mattia’s fainting, and deceitful, grotesque punishments such as Viberti’s betrayal, which technically wasn’t even a betrayal. Mattia was fine, but it was a reminder that it could have been worse; Viberti had cheated on her and she didn’t even have the right to get angry. Of all the women in the world, her sister. If she hadn’t brought Silvia to their table, they wouldn’t have even met. Ridiculous and very sad. She didn’t want to be part of that sad, sad story. The story wasn’t supposed to end that way. The chapter of the story that had begun. Maybe it had to end somehow, but not like that.

  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 see
ing 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).

  So she wouldn’t start thinking about it again, she got out of the shower and went into the kitchen to look for something to eat. There was a bowl of leftover rice salad, she lifted the plastic wrap and ate a few forkfuls standing in front of the open refrigerator, its chill encircling her. She caught herself picking out the tastiest toppings without eating the rice, a thing she always scolded the children for. She put the fork in the sink and took some water from the fridge; the frosty bottle reminded her of one of her first deaths, one that had the uncanny ability to summarize them all, because afterward she’d learned to forget them. She could take her time, but if she stopped she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get moving again. So she hung the robe in the bathroom, walked down the hall naked and, seeing herself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom, felt a sharp pang of desire for Viberti, the bastard.

  * * *

  In Pediatrics, Lorenzi told her that the internist had stopped by during the lunch break to see the boy.

  Cecilia hadn’t imagined he would show up in the ward without being asked, as if he now considered himself part of the family
, as if he weren’t at all concerned about her reaction—or more likely didn’t yet know she knew—and thought he could act as if nothing had happened, believed he could put on an act in front of her when she knew him so well. He’d come by, but Lorenzi didn’t know what he’d done. He must have spoken with Luca. And with the child, of course. What had the boy said to him, had he recognized him, had he remembered him? She pictured the internist’s pleasure, but she no longer felt the tenderness that her son’s friendship with that solitary, childless man had once aroused in her. At least trying to imagine him with the child kept her from imagining him with Silvia.

  Once they left the hospital, the boy cheerful and in good health, and got to his grandmother’s house, thinking was no longer an issue: Michela had two days’ worth of stories saved up, and was eager and excited to see her brother again. In the car she’d started talking at breakneck speed; twice she used the expression “we were so worried,” turning to look at Mattia, who sat quietly and contentedly in the backseat.

  Cecilia cut her short: “Everything’s fine, it happens, Mattia is growing.” She was the doctor and people believed her, even when she spoke in clichés, indeed, when she spoke in clichés they believed her all the more because they understood what she was saying. Michela went on chattering, and to shut her up Cecilia announced that they would be allowed to eat in front of the TV to celebrate the homecoming.

  At the end of the meal, however, when she got up from the couch to clean up, Michela followed her into the kitchen, shuffling along in the turtle slippers her aunt had given her. She began talking about a classmate who pestered her by acting like a jerk and about how relieved she was that school was almost over and she wouldn’t have to see him for a few months.