Three Light-Years: A Novel (12 page)

She’d thought the children would no longer react. But one day, out of the blue, Michela told her that she should get a new bed now. Now that their father had
really
gone, she should get a single bed. If she was no longer married she couldn’t sleep in a double bed. “Who says I won’t get married again?” She didn’t say that. You couldn’t joke like that, or at least she couldn’t. She would have to learn. If she’d had the presence of mind to say, “Maybe I’ll get married again, I might need room for another man,” with a playful smile on her lips, her daughter might have been less obsessed. Or maybe she’d have become even more insufferable. Or maybe the problem wasn’t Michela, and the desire to get a single bed was written on her face; maybe her daughter had simply read it aloud.

Where could she have gotten such an idea—that a mother doesn’t have sex? At a certain point, she’d lost the urge. She’d stopped feeling like it during all the fighting three years ago. It had returned during the separation, but maybe it was just anger in another form. It had gone away again. “It comes and goes,” that, too, was pretty funny, though not as funny as “once the novelty wears off again…” “It comes and goes,” patients said that often. The pain comes and goes, not even pain is consistent. Sleep comes and goes. She remembered a woman, sixty years old, who came to the ER accompanied by her husband at three in the morning, dressed in her Sunday best. Written on the triage chart was the notation:
Can’t sleep
. She’d gotten scared because she couldn’t sleep. It had never happened before.

*   *   *

Between traffic lights, she often thought about the shy, reserved internist. Or she recalled the sleepless nights and the chain of thoughts she had spun out during the night, lying motionless on her stomach in the dark. Later she would relate some of these thoughts or anecdotes to the internist, who would inquire discreetly, subtle and cautious, probing only where he perceived no resistance.

For example: while eating a slice of watermelon, the boy had started laughing over something silly his sister had done, and a small piece got sucked up his nose from his throat. After a while it came out through a nostril and the girl screamed: “Mattia’s nose is bleeding watermelon!” The watermelon nose was funny because the boy suffered from frequent epistaxis. Citing harmless disorders was comforting to her as well as to the shy internist listening to her.

If Viberti hadn’t encouraged her to tell the story, and hadn’t recalled and mentioned it occasionally as a small sign of their closeness, the episode would have faded and then vanished; instead it fed off repetition and over time grew more resilient. The internist was reserved, but curious. He had a nice way of inquiring, without being intrusive, and he didn’t get much, because she didn’t tell him anything important. But he was omnivorous, interested in any topic, any small incident, maybe just to hear her talk. Or maybe just to see her. There, that’s where her morning’s rumination had been heading as she drove to the hospital. The shy internist was in love with her.

The idea bloomed in the car like an overpowering perfume (the aftershave or cologne patients doused themselves with before coming to the ER). Too big a car, like the bed she’d left an hour and a half ago without getting back to sleep, a double bed of a car. All the cars moving in a row from one traffic light to another were extensions of beds. People at the wheel or sitting on a bus or waiting to cross the street, their eyes sleepy or worried or absorbed, but she especially noticed the eyes that were irritable, grumpy, like those of children dragged out of bed.

If she had the morning shift she left before the children, who were then taken to school by the housekeeper or their grandmother. It was better for her to go and pick them up, later on; picking them up was the hardest part. The main hitch after school was Michela with her numerous social engagements: there was always a friend to invite or another friend’s invitation already accepted, arrangements made with complete disregard for the needs of others.

But before picking the kids up at school, at lunch she would see the shy internist. Who was in love with her. That’s what she called him to herself, the shy internist, while in public she called him Viberti. At the hospital everyone spoke in familiar terms, but doctors were addressed by their last names, nurses by their first. For patients first and last names were reversed: Santi Luciano, Rocca Vincenza. Hierarchies. Every now and then, in her own mind, she called him “my sweetheart.” She wasn’t one hundred percent sure he was in love with her. He was shy so he hid it. There was an eighty percent chance he was, or was ready to fall in love at the first sign of encouragement from her. Encouragement that she intentionally didn’t offer, nor did he ask for any. He was content to see her at lunch, and that was hard to understand. A man of forty.

In the early days, when Mattia was hospitalized, the internist couldn’t hide his joy at seeing her. Joy, excitement, whatever it was, he was awkward and content. He was extremely happy to see her and didn’t hide it; either he couldn’t hide it or he didn’t want to. About a month, more or less, after their first meeting, something happened, he’d become more cautious. Someone had told him that Luca had come back home. That same someone might have told him that they’d separated again, this time for good. But he hadn’t pressured her recently, on the contrary. Should he have? What did she expect from him?

If she expected him to court her more insistently, she should maybe think again, she was likely to be disappointed. Let’s suppose that’s what she expected. And let’s suppose he was merely a decent man, concerned about the child and consequently about the mother, a childless man who had never been interested in children, but who now kept asking about Mattia as if deep down he’d adopted him. Or maybe he was so partial to the table behind the column that he didn’t want to give it up at any cost and that’s why he continued to show up for lunch with her. Just maybe.

There was an eighty percent chance he was in love with her, but a twenty percent chance that he was fond of the child or the table in the café, whereas she needed to feel desired. In that case it was possible that she needed to be courted and needed to lay herself open to the mute adoration of someone, anyone, like a statue of the Madonna. And it was possible that the realization that Luca no longer desired her (she realized it, somewhat surprised, each time he came to pick up or drop off the children) wasn’t at all as liberating as she told herself it was.

The trees along the avenues were sprouting tender little green leaves that didn’t yet hide the skeleton of the branches, young trees all skin and bones. She liked the shy internist. Yes, he was a nice man. Nose and mouth were nothing special. But the eyes fooled her. They seemed sad, the sad eyes of a dejected dog. Then all of a sudden they stared at her and they were arresting, full of passion. Serious, committed passion; not a game. A sad dog who could look at you intensely. Making promises that maybe he couldn’t keep. Completely different from Luca, or completely different from how Luca was with her. Luca was convinced he had a situation under control, even when he didn’t. The internist was so insecure that she often felt like hugging him or patting him encouragingly on the shoulder. So let’s suppose she needed to be loved by a man who was insecure. For how long would the insecure man continue to love her in silence, content with her Virgin Mary–like apparitions in the dim café?

She found a parking space. She headed for the ER. An insecure man, in love with her, wouldn’t impose conditions on his love. Was that what she was thinking? For example: if she were to tell him the entire story, just as it had happened, he wouldn’t think badly of her. Was that what she wanted? Fortunately as soon as she entered the hospital she wouldn’t be able to keep thinking; six hours of respite lay before her like a vacation.

*   *   *

The beach seemed bigger, but it was the same as always: white and gray pebbles and darker gravel along the shoreline, a handful of black, shiny rocks on one side and in the center the rusty iron frame of a small pier whose blue wooden planks were still missing. The summer crowd hadn’t arrived yet, and there were no rows of umbrellas and lounge chairs to regulate the distribution of families and groups of friends; Mattia had noticed it immediately. It was a long holiday weekend: April 25, Liberation Day, gorgeous weather, the water extremely cold though some were already trying to swim. After months spent cooped up in stuffy rooms with artificial lighting, the brightness and fresh air were overwhelming, all that sky seemed to crush you.

Sitting a few yards from shore, Cecilia and her mother were exchanging remarks in a slow-motion dialogue, while the children had run off down the beach to play. After a moment Mattia had come back excited and out of breath and said, “There are no umbrellas, there are no chairs.” They started laughing. “No, there aren’t.” An excellent opportunity to steer the conversation onto less problematic terrain, to talk about the child without talking about his problems. They hadn’t been to the shore at this time of year in three years and he couldn’t remember the beach being deserted. “How sweet, he thought it stayed the same all year.” “He’s intelligent, that boy, he notices things, and he knows his multiplication tables so well, Michela couldn’t recite them that well.” It didn’t take a great deal of intelligence to notice that there were no umbrellas, but the conversation seemed to have set out on the right track.

However, regardless of the starting point, the stations along the way always led in the same direction: Mattia’s intelligence, Michela’s likability, Michela’s temperament, Michela’s similarity to Aunt Silvia, Silvia’s being alone, Silvia’s work problems, Silvia’s problems in general, Silvia will never marry. A coworker of Silvia’s had called the house a couple of times; Silvia got angry because he was a pain in the neck. Then, one day when they were on the bus with the children, her mother had noticed a young man looking at Silvia. That’s just what we need, she thought, someone “normal.”

Cecilia laughed. “Since when do you notice men who look at her? Did you do that with me, too?”

When she felt like she was being made fun of, her mother didn’t return her smile. “You always had very discreet admirers, I didn’t notice them.”

“Tell me, did you notice boys watching us even when we were little girls?”

She didn’t smile. “You always played with respectable children.”

That is, as long as they’d been under her jurisdiction. Cecilia laughed but didn’t feel like pushing it. She wanted to feel good, and to feel good she had to make her mother feel good. “Do you also notice when men look at you?”

Finally her mother smiled and told her to quit being silly. She was smiling, she wasn’t offended.

Nevertheless she immediately resumed her plaintive litany: she’d made a mess of things, she knew it, she’d made a lot of mistakes with Silvia when she was a child, when she was a girl. “I was too strict, but I wasn’t ready for her, you spoiled me.”

Cecilia laughed, though she was beginning to get irritated: “Well now, Mama, don’t tell me it’s my fault.” Then she quickly added: “I don’t think you were too strict, far from it, you always let her have her way. Still, the truth is I don’t remember.”

And she really didn’t remember. But her tone was the same one she used with certain patients, to deny the obvious: “I don’t think you’re too fat,” as if she were trying to sell a suit.

Now she had to set them off in another direction, to prevent her mother from falling back into the litany of “Silvia single, you divorced, me a widow.” A safer course was the latest news of their relatives, old furniture in need of restoration, household chores, fatigue, low blood pressure, quick medical advice, reassurances.

“No, don’t worry about SARS. There’s no need to wear a protective mask.”

It was nice sitting on the beach and chatting with her mother, nice to feel the sun on her face and arms, unbuttoning her blouse so her neck and breasts could tan, nice to take off her shoes and socks and get her feet wet, nice that her sister wouldn’t arrive until that evening, not because she didn’t want to see her, but because in Silvia’s presence her mother became much more difficult to handle. Especially nice to see the children playing in the distance, having fun and yelling excitedly. Even nicer when they ran back to her every now and then, taking turns. But that happened rarely now. At one time, when they were little, those return visits were the most delightful part of a day at the beach. Every twenty or thirty minutes, one of them would race back and collapse on top of her, clinging to her. And she’d pretend she was tired and that they were heavy, all the while smiling as she pretended to be impatient and somewhat irritated. Now she would give anything for one of those appearances, and when it happened she had to contain her joy. They arrived and demanded attention because they were thirsty, because they were hot, because they’d been mistreated, because they had something to tell her or because, like Mattia, they had to complete a thought begun an hour earlier: “But without chairs and umbrellas there’s room for fewer people, because they’re less orderly.” Yes, his grandmother was right, he was a very intelligent child, and she adored him.

As usual, they disappeared when it was time to leave and she had to go looking for them. She couldn’t find them. All the other children had gone, where had hers ended up? She began searching near the cabanas; one row was made of stone and so hadn’t been dismantled like the wooden ones. She thought they might have gone off with her mother when she went up to the house to prepare lunch. She turned back to the water and saw them behind the rocks. She shouted to them; they didn’t hear her. So she walked over to them, approaching from behind. They hadn’t yet noticed her. Mattia was sitting cross-legged, facing the rock wall, being punished, at least that’s what it looked like. Michela was standing, looking toward the beach, keeping an eye out to make sure no one was coming. She had no idea what they were doing, if they were doing something. She called them. The girl turned to her, startled. Had she surprised them in a secret game? Mattia stood up somewhat wearily and passed his mother without taking his eyes off the rock.