Three Light-Years: A Novel (44 page)

“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.

*   *   *

She thought of confessing to Cecilia that she knew everything. In her head she tried out several things she might say to approach her. She never got beyond the introductory phase, in which she struggled at length to justify Luca’s choice, as if her brother-in-law’s decision to tell her everything incriminated her as well, as if she, with her weakness and frailties, had forced him to break the vow of silence.

But each time she found herself in Cecilia’s presence, even before she started to speak, she was certain that she would not raise the subject that day. There were more urgent things, things that were more interesting, less difficult. She had to wait for the right occasion. And not cause additional, unnecessary friction between Luca and Cecilia. She kept telling herself that if she didn’t talk to her about it, it was out of a sense of responsibility, not because she didn’t have the courage.

Still, she felt a little less like a black sheep; her sister had become more human and fallible in her eyes—a tragic figure, a Medea. And she realized that she loved her dearly, she realized that she cared about her and the children the way you care about a real family. Except superstitiously, to ward off the possibility, she never gave serious thought to the idea that Cecilia and Luca might break up; they were fated to be together.

*   *   *

The day Silvia discovers she’s pregnant, Stefania stays over at her house. They talk for an hour in front of the muted TV set. Every now and then they get up to look for information on the Internet. They search for whatever essential facts they need concerning the timing and methods for terminating a pregnancy. They open and close pro-life and pro-choice sites after just a few seconds. They go to bed early; both of them sleep very badly.

The next day is much better. Stefania goes to the office. Silvia phones the editor for whom she’s revising the book on Hindu mythology. The editor lets her persuade him to give her two more weeks with surprisingly little argument. Most likely he’d lied to her about the schedule. No matter, the news fills her with joy and gives her an unjustified confidence in the future. Everything will work out.

So the following night, the feast day of the city’s patron saint, she goes out with Carla to watch the fireworks. In the middle of the bridge across the river she confesses the truth. Carla wants to know all the details. She wants to know who he is. She wants to know if it’s out of the question for them to continue seeing each other. Then she tells her she has to talk to Cecilia about it. In any case. Whatever she decides.

“Have you decided?”

She shakes her head: “I can’t think straight.”

“Do you want to keep it?” It doesn’t even seem like a question; Carla manages to say it in a perfectly neutral tone so that the words don’t express opinions, judgments, prejudices, or fears.

“I can’t think right now. But I don’t think I have any choice given my situation.”

“Talk to your sister. Promise me?”

“Why do you all want me to talk to my sister?”

“Because she can help you, she can make it less painful.”

She looks at Carla, not comprehending.

“You know in whose hands you could end up? You hear stories about women treated like criminals.”

“But I haven’t decided anything yet…”

“Of course. But, in any case, you should decide.”

Talking to Cecilia becomes a way to buy time and reach the inevitable decision. As though Cecilia, as a doctor, possesses enough natural cynicism to state flatly that there is no other choice.

“I’ll wait another two or three days. I want to be able to think about it.”

On Friday morning she does the third test, just to use it, since she bought it. It turns pink, then blue, then blue.

She decides to go to the shore with Stefania. Staying in the city, she’d spend two days at home going around and around the same subject. At the shore she spends two days at the beach going around and around the same subject. Stefania again urges her to talk to Cecilia. No matter what she decides. “All right, I’ll go see her on Tuesday,” she says, to stall for one more day.

She works very efficiently all day Monday. In the evening she imagines possible ways to broach the subject with Cecilia, possible ways the conversation might develop. She talks about it at length on the phone with Francesca, who not being face-to-face with her is perhaps more sincere. She tells her that raising a child alone seems like madness, “even though you’re not alone, we’re here, you know,” but she’s referring to the other two, since she isn’t actually there.

The next day she gets to the ER, goes inside. But when she sees Cecilia at the end of the hall she turns on her heels and flees. Outside it’s a normal late-June morning in the city. It’s already hot, the sky is overcast, there’s not a breath of air. A short walk restores her courage and enables her to return to the ER. But the more she thinks about it, the more difficult talking to Cecilia about an unwanted pregnancy seems. If Cecilia hides her feelings, she won’t be able to bear seeing her impassive face. If she crumbles, she won’t be able to bear seeing her emotional face. And she isn’t even sure she wants advice from her.

She walks for ten minutes, headed back home. She’s no longer upset, she no longer feels pregnant. She feels drained, as if it were already over. She’s tired, so she gets on a bus, lets her thoughts drift, lets her gaze wander over the city. Despite the grimy, rattling window, the world has never seemed so vivid, its contours so clear and sharp.

If she stayed on that seat for a whole week maybe the jiggling would make her lose the baby. Maybe she’ll lose it anyway. She skips her stop, she doesn’t feel like getting off, going home, to do what? She continues riding to the last stop, then retraces her route.

She passes the pedestrian zone where Rumi’s club is. Rumi has red hair like Enrico Fermi, but unfortunately he’s not Enrico Fermi. Enrico Fermi introduced her to so much music! If she were to go to him now, if she confessed everything, maybe he’d take her back. He’d put on “Sweet Song” by Blur and they’d dance in each other’s arms in his studio apartment. But the truth is she doesn’t want to get off that bus.

*   *   *

The year her father died, following Luca’s confession, she’d continued her raids even after her mother left for the shore with the grandchildren and the house wasn’t being restocked with fresh food. One day, pacing back and forth in the dark corridor, she began smiling and talking—acting as if she were welcoming a guest to the house and inviting him to sit in the living room, and she pictured herself as the mistress of that house, a person with a real job and a real love life, and in any case something to talk about. The game didn’t last long, but she liked it so much that she went back the following day. She imagined discussing with an architect how she wanted to renovate the apartment, she imagined the architect falling in love with the house and with her. (Many years later, she would want her son to become an architect, and her son would disappoint her, would end up reconstructing different architectures.)

She didn’t have the courage to enter her father’s room. She stayed in the kitchen and recalled epic fights with her mother. There was a crack in the wood table where her gaze had retreated during those battles. She stood up and went to sit in her father’s place, trying to remember how she looked at sixteen, the clothes she wore. Her father would stand on his head to side with her without irritating her mother. She remembered when she’d invited Enrico Fermi to the house on a Saturday afternoon, thinking her parents wouldn’t be back before Sunday night; he showed up with a tray of pastries, some they ate, some they threw out the window at passing cars, and some they eventually used in a food fight waged throughout the entire house. Until her mother, whom they hadn’t heard come in, appeared in the doorway. The moment their eyes met, Silvia read not anger and disapproval in her mother’s stare, but only shock, and realized that if she had caught her fucking on the kitchen table it wouldn’t have been more consequential.

She did well in school, so in the end her father forgave her everything. Because he was proud of her, he was very proud of her. And it was in that kitchen that Silvia had found the whole family gathered when she came home from her thesis defense (she hadn’t wanted them to go, maybe her father had been offended): Cecilia with her big belly, pregnant with Mattia; Luca; little Michela running around the room; her father and mother. She couldn’t remember hugging her mother after that day, not even a few months ago, when her father died. She hugged the air four times, repeating the gesture she’d made. Everyone congratulated her; she’d received honors and her thesis had been recommended for publication.

Then she resumed her pacing around the house, passing the closed door of the master bedroom, each time putting off the act of placing her hand on the handle and turning it. Among the tacky objects her mother adored were two sconces that had cast a dull light in the entry hall from time immemorial: two arms of gilded, worm-eaten wood, the arms of an angel or an infant, which looked like hunting trophies and held the base of a flame bulb in their closed fists. So sweet and disturbing, they might have been cut off some naughty child. Or the child may have been walled up, except for the arms, to keep her still, so she wouldn’t leave the house anymore to go who knows where or with whom. Impossible to know what her father thought of that eyesore. She should have asked him and she hadn’t. Not that he would have said a word.

She walked resolutely toward the closed door, opened it with an angry gesture, and went inside. Overwhelmed by her father’s smell, which rose above the mustiness and the odor of illness, she raised the shutters and opened the window before her strength failed her. She lay down on the bed covered with a white sheet, rested her head on the pillow without a pillowcase, and closed her eyes. She wished she never had to get up again.

*   *   *

Her father’s worldly possessions weren’t many. The clothes in the closet. A boxful of his works in the attic. A library of science fiction volumes. A rolltop desk with three drawers full of odds and ends. On the bedside table, half buried by packages of medications, Isaac Asimov’s
Foundation
trilogy. Her father had told her the story many times, from when she was little: the Galactic Empire is in decline, a dark age lasting millennia is in store for humanity, or at least that’s what Hari Seldon thinks, a mathematician who has developed a surefire system of equations to predict the future. Seldon establishes a colony on a distant planet, as far away as possible from the center of the galaxy (where the capital of the empire is located) and names it the Foundation. The Foundation must safeguard human knowledge through the dark age to come, and attempt to shorten its duration. Things go according to Seldon’s plan for several centuries, until the appearance of the Mule, a mutant endowed with higher psychic powers. The Mule is the unexpected, that which no future science will ever be able to anticipate. The Mule defeats the Foundation in battle and conquers what remains of the empire. The only hope for free men lies in an ancient prophecy: for centuries it had been rumored that Hari Seldon founded not one but
two
colonies, and that the Second Foundation, hidden away
at the other end of the galaxy
, would save the first one.

When she was a little girl she barely understood it and at the end she would regularly ask if the Mule was good or bad, and if he was bad, why? It wasn’t clear to her even now. But her father never answered. The Second Foundation was the high point of the story, for him. The important thing was that she understand clearly
where
the Second Foundation was. Why? That, too, continued to remain obscure. Her father would join the tips of his index fingers together and say: “If the galaxy is made like this,” and he twirled his fingers in the air in opposite directions, moving them apart as if following the thread of a large screw, “like a spiral staircase, see? And the First Foundation is here,” he had no fingers left to point with so he touched his left hand with his nose, “where will the Second be?” After a while, she’d learned to answer: “In the center.” That is, not on the other side, on the right hand. The opposite extreme was the center, the space between his hands (and yet in the galaxy that was where the old capital of the empire was). This story was very important, for some mysterious reason. Listening to her father always generated two conflicting sensations: a feeling of being unique, because he was telling her something he considered important and had chosen to tell it to her; and a feeling of embarrassment, because she was almost certain (not quite) that it was a bunch of crap. And so her anxiety grew, the pins and needles in her fingertips, the shortness of breath.

The same pins and needles, the same shortness of breath that she now felt lying on her father’s side of the bed, as the summer evening’s air mingled with the air in the room and caressed her bare legs. How many hours had her father stared at the same patch of blank ceiling? In that bed, too, like in the galaxy’s spiral, the location of only one of the Foundations was known. The Second was silent, its position was unknown, nobody knew if it really existed, or if it was just a legend.