Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  But she also remembered the isolation of the assembly line, the continuous cycle of suckling-pooping-sleeping. She remembered the sudden feeling of not being able to be free of it. Half asleep one day, ears pricked for the slightest whimper, a senseless thought had occurred to her: “When the baby leaves home.” She’d repeated reassuring phrases such as “Once this phase is over…” without ever adding the second part: “… there will be another.” In the first three months she’d never left Michela, and even while resting, even when she lowered her eyelids, she saw the baby’s face, like in an old negative. She could still hear the explosive bursts of her wailing. She’d tried to breast-feed the child, she had a lot of milk in the first weeks. Michela devoured her nipples, excruciatingly painful. She’d had to buy nipple shields. She’d bought a breast pump to feed her later with a baby bottle. Luca wasn’t happy that the baby could no longer suck her breast. He’d never particularly loved her tits, even when they’d swelled up during pregnancy. But he’d had a fit of anger one evening when she abruptly tore the child away because of the pain. “What the hell are you doing,” he yelled, “can’t you see she’s crying?” Later he apologized and they laughed about it. Protect and feed the young, an ancient coding in his genetic makeup, his wife’s sore nipples didn’t worry him. One of the first things the shy internist had done, on the other hand, was to suck her nipples with great gusto; if she’d let him he’d have slurped her all up.

  Mattia got up and went into the kitchen, while on the screen Harry Potter flew astride a broom. He came back from the kitchen with a package of cookies and gave it to his sister, who started eating them. He’d gotten up to get the cookies for her from the kitchen. They weren’t for him. Cecilia hadn’t noticed Michela asking him for them, she must have whispered it, without even turning her head. She’d rather not see these things. Michela was telling her brother that her religion teacher had said that Harry Potter’s life was inspired by Jesus’s. The year before, the same teacher had said that Lord of the Rings was inspired by the Bible.

  Five years ago (it seemed like ancient history), when Cecilia had completed her residency and diagnosed her father’s tumor, Michela’s brief mystical crises had reached their high point. They’d sent her to catechism because Luca, or Luca’s parents, felt it was important, even though Luca wasn’t religious, or if he was, he’d never said anything, and in any case he was nonpracticing (unlike his parents). They’d been married in the church because it was customary, but Cecilia hadn’t viewed it as an obligation. Her thinking wasn’t clear on this either, and although her upbringing had been decidedly secular, she had made her First Communion. So why deny it to Michela? Sending her to catechism had seemed reasonable, especially since all the other children in her class went. The mystical crises, however, had scared even Luca, and they’d decided to postpone her Confirmation until she was of age. Mattia, on the other hand, had gone through catechism during the year of their first separation, skipping a number of classes and barely learning the names of the four evangelists. He didn’t attend his First Communion ceremony, because he was in the hospital. The priest gave it to him two months later, a First Communion especially for him, and at least he’d eaten the host (maybe).

  But what did Michela’s mystical crises consist of? When she was around seven or eight, her temper tantrums took on a religious tenor. She couldn’t stand to be restricted or controlled in any way. Cecilia and Luca had called them “mystical crises,” a kind of private joke they could laugh about together. For a while Michela had casually lied about various subjects. Homework, how many hours of TV she watched at her grandmother’s, brushing her teeth at night. When caught, she’d begin crying and screaming, pacing back and forth like a penitent, thumping her notebook on her head and intoning: “Holy Virgin Mary, you know I didn’t do anything wrong, I beg you, stand up for me, make Mama and Papa see the truth.” She prayed aloud in her room at night, kneeling before a creased picture of Our Lady of Fatima. She prayed loudly to make sure everybody in the house could hear her and said things like “Please Holy Mother Mary, protect everyone in my family, my father who often flies, don’t let the plane crash, and my mother who treats sick people, don’t let her catch an incurable disease, and my little brother who doesn’t talk properly, please don’t let him be retarded.” She was very precise in her use of words, a little monster who spoke like an adult. “You’re my incurable disease,” Luca would say, cuddling her on the couch as they watched TV, while Cecilia and the boy observed them out of the corner of their eyes. She prayed for ten minutes, leaving her parents to either laugh at or worry about it, depending on their mood. When Luca or Cecilia went back to her room to look in on her and tell her that she had prayed enough and that it was time to go to bed now, she joined her hands one last time and, without looking at them, still facing Our Lady of Fatima, said: “And please, Holy Mother, forgive those who don’t believe in you.”

  “It’s all simulated, I told you, done on the computer,” she said to her brother now.

  Cecilia couldn’t hear Mattia’s replies.

  “No, it’s impossible, flying brooms don’t exist, I know it!”

  But Mattia, his voice low, insistent, was adamant.

  * * *

  In those sweltering June days, her two sweethearts were going through a difficult time. The shy internist was gloomy and confused, but she didn’t know how to help him. The child, too, was rather gloomy and confused. They had suggested he go to summer camp for two weeks. The place was an hour’s drive from the city, and if need be they could go and bring him back at any time. His best friends, three classmates of his, went there and had insisted that Mattia join them. It was an “adventure and discovery” camp. And the boy really wanted to go, but he wasn’t sure.

  “I’m not sure,” he kept saying.

  “About wanting to go?” Cecilia asked.

  “No, I’m sure about wanting to go.”

  “So you want to.”

  “Yes, I want to.”

  “Then what aren’t you sure about?”

  Was he not sure he could do it, maybe, was he not sure it was a good idea, was he afraid it would be too hard or that they would force him to eat? She and Luca had decided to neither push him nor discourage him. They agreed to adopt this strategy: play down the difficulties, emphasize the fun, respect the child’s decision. If he didn’t feel like going, it was fine. The boy decided he felt like going, maybe because he didn’t want to disappoint his friends. And so they started getting ready.

  Just the two of them were left at home; Michela was already at a “tennis and English” camp, two weeks at the shore. They went out one afternoon to buy a sleeping bag to use at the main camp, on the bunk bed, and for when they would sleep in a tent for a couple of nights. The boy was wearing blue shorts with lots of pockets, and the pockets were full of chestnuts and cypress cones and Magic cards and corks and rocks that he never parted with. Usually it wasn’t noticeable, because he kept his treasures in his backpack, but on weekends and in the summer he looked like a duck, with his skinny shins sticking out from his bulging thighs.

  Cecilia often saw him rummaging in the baggy side pockets and pulling out the small cypress cones, his favorites. He’d told her (or confessed at her insistence) that he gathered them at the foot of a tree in the schoolyard. Cecilia had said that they smelled like cypress, so they’d looked for them on the Internet together and found their real name: not cones, not berries, but galbuli or coccole, cypress “berries.” Cecilia smiled. “Coccole, what a nice name,” since the word also meant “cuddles.” The child made a face, a little irritated. When they dried out, the cones (or galbuli or “berries”) opened up, releasing the seeds that Cecilia found when she turned his pockets inside out before putting the pants in the washing machine. On the inside, the “berries” revealed a delicate, very symmetrical structure, with compact scales attached to a central axis by slender stalks.

  She didn’t dare ask him what those amulets were for, whether they were amulets
, or prompts or mementos or pieces in a secret game. The Magic cards were the most predictable items in the collection. She didn’t want to be a nosy mother, but one day she asked him if it was really necessary to always carry everything around with him, wasn’t there a chance he might lose something? He shrugged, as if the objects weren’t as precious as his mother thought. And she found herself in the no-win situation in which the child often left her, not knowing whether to be more concerned about the fact that her son went around with all that stuff or about the fact that he didn’t seem to value it enough. Michela, who seemed more complex, was an infinitely simpler child. She neglected her things, left them around and lost them, became inconsolable, and acted like a pain in the neck until her mother gave in and bought her new ones. When she wanted something, she wanted it.

  In the car she made the boy get into the front seat, even though the seat belt came up too high, too close to his throat. He seemed proud to ride in an adult’s seat. He swam in it, looking even skinnier, shrunk by too hot a wash cycle along with his T-shirt. He’d always been thin. He had never been eager to eat, he’d never had an appetite.

  When he had started not eating a year and a half earlier, or eating only certain things (yogurt, creamy cheeses, mashed potatoes) and in very small quantities, she and Luca had reacted differently, at different times. Having the boy with her every day, she’d been slower to see it and hadn’t wanted to become alarmed. There were already too many alarms sounding loudly; she was somewhat dazed. She had probed cautiously, buying time, in other words, hoping that the crisis would pass and the child would start eating again. Maybe it didn’t seem alarming to her because the boy didn’t do anything to hide it; he left the food on his plate and didn’t even pick up his spoon or fork. He lied halfheartedly. If she suggested “Did you maybe fill up when you had an afternoon snack at your grandmother’s?” he nodded. His grandmother couldn’t remember how much the children ate at snack time. But at some point Silvia had asked her briefly: “Your son doesn’t eat a thing, is that normal?” Because she was the doctor and everyone thought she should be the first to notice.

  How long had their collective blindness lasted, how long had they ignored the evidence? Three weeks, a month. Hence the need for hospitalization, later. Luca had gone to find her in the ER to have a face-to-face talk. He’d said to her: “Let’s forget everything else.” Luca had been keeping an eye on the child for some time. Since he no longer saw him every day, maybe he had a better chance of noticing it, his eye sharpened by discord, anger, and resentment. The contentious scrutiny of the children, in search of signs of neglect. But no, it wasn’t that, and even if it were, it didn’t matter.

  He’d been the first to notice and had purposely gone to look for her in the ER because he had to do something that would break their routine of tension, silences, and recriminating looks.

  “Let’s forget everything else, there’s a problem here now.” He said that what scared him the most was the child’s remoteness. As if the son were checking on the father and not vice versa.

  “When you ask him why he doesn’t eat, is he the one checking on you?”

  Yes, the child was checking that he was still doing his job as a father, it was obvious.

  Cecilia shook her head, she still didn’t want to face it. Only when she spoke with the pediatricians, when she saw the test results, did she begin to admit the truth. At that point she was no longer a mother, maybe, she was a doctor in familiar territory.

  All of these things (and others as well) had come out with the child psychologist, the one with the Kleenex. To whom Luca, however, hadn’t wanted to go. Curiously, he, too, like the psychologist, considered it a given that the child didn’t eat in order to force them to talk to each other and face the problem together. But the child psychologist claimed it was something else as well. “You haven’t had any deaths in the family, recently, have you?” Cecilia said no. Then she corrected herself. “Well, two years ago, my father. Mattia was very close to his grandfather. But he can’t be reacting two years later.” “Does he ever talk about his grandfather?” “Oh, yes, he talks about him a lot. But not as often as he used to. When my father died,” she said, smiling, proud as usual to tell stories that showed her son’s intelligence and sensitivity, “Mattia was only six years old, but he said something I thought was remarkable: I don’t want to grow anymore, because when you grow up, then you die.”

  The child psychologist nodded without smiling and murmured: “A child who doesn’t eat is in no danger of growing.” She wasn’t heartless, but she’d already adopted the insufferable attitude of psychologists who think they can read your thoughts. No, her father’s death had nothing to do with it, or maybe it did for the sole reason that it anticipated her and Luca’s separation. The separation was the incurable disease that the child wanted to cure.

  Besides, hadn’t they gotten back together in the following months, to show him that they understood, that he was right, that he had won? But she’d never believed it, she didn’t believe it would last and it didn’t last. She did her best to see that it wouldn’t last but that it would end better than the first time. If he had wanted to make them separate in a different way, the child had succeeded. But what if that weren’t enough for him? What if he’d wanted to bring them together forever?

  In the sporting goods store, amid two hundred different kinds of hiking boots and two hundred different kinds of backpacks, there were only two sleeping bag models, a very heavy one and a very light one. The day was too stifling to leave the air-conditioned store empty-handed and go in search of another, so the question had to be resolved then and there. Cecilia said the sleeping bag fit for a polar expedition was definitely better, if he was hot he could keep it open. Maybe she was afraid he’d feel colder than the others; maybe the child understood that but had to come to terms with his fears. Mattia preferred the lighter one because two of his friends had the same one. Cecilia didn’t believe him—he was so distracted, how could he have noticed the brand of sleeping bag? She insisted a little, but Mattia seemed very sure and determined.

  “I won’t go to camp with this one,” he said.

  So she lost her patience, took her cell phone out of her purse and called the mother of one of his friends (the one who seemed more sympathetic and who would maybe understand her since she, too, was divorced). She asked her if the brand and model of the lighter sleeping bag really matched her child’s. The mother was sympathetic, but she confirmed that yes, they matched.

  The child said: “I told you.” He didn’t seem annoyed, though. Cecilia had to smile, a good mood spread through her like a stain on white linen. There was nothing to worry about, the real child was wiser and more mature than the imaginary child who lived in his mother’s head.

  “Try getting into it,” she told him.

  The boy smiled: “You don’t try on sleeping bags.”

  “Go on, try it.”

  “It’s not allowed.” He pointed to a sign she hadn’t noticed: TRYING OUT DISPLAY MERCHANDISE NOT PERMITTED. “It’ll be fine for me, for sure,” he said.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t fit in it,” she smiled, ruffling his hair.

  They headed for the checkout counter carrying the sleeping bag, and halfway there Cecilia stopped to look at a collection of small aluminum flashlights in a glass display case. She remembered that the child had really wanted one of those flashlights; his father had one, she remembered the colorful metal and the grainy handle. She called him back and showed them to him.

  “If you want I’ll buy you a present.”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t need one. They give them to us at camp, for hikes in the woods at night.”

  “Yes, but this will be yours. You really wanted one.”

  “I don’t remember, when?”

  “Can I buy it for you as a gift?”

  “I don’t need one.”

  “Yes, but can I give it to you as a gift?”

  He nodded. “Sure, okay.”

&nb
sp; They reached the checkout counter and paid. She pictured Mattia turning the flashlight on at night, inside the sleeping bag, so he could inspect his amulets or read a comic book.

  “You really don’t remember how much you wanted one?”

  The boy shook his head.

  As soon as they got into the car, however, she saw him take it out of the bag and put it in his pocket, rearranging his things a little, as if to make room for it, to welcome it to the family. And that gesture cheered her up.

  * * *

  She missed the children a lot. She missed Michela, when she’d sit next to her on the couch in the evening and start telling stories about her classmates, stories about other parents; she had a gift for seeing the most comical side of people, she could imitate them perfectly. She was delightful, not always, but she missed her, even in her less-likable moods. She’d driven her to the shore and during the trip they’d talked about a friend of hers.

  “Laura’s parents don’t speak to each other.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Laura.”

  “They never speak to each other?”

  “When she’s there, no, they never speak to each other. Maybe they talk when she’s not there.”

  “Well, they must say something to each other now and then.”

  “Better off separating, then.”

  “Every family is different.”

  “You and Papa talk to each other.”