Three Light-Years: A Novel (15 page)

She wanted to remove the obstacle as if the obstacle were the one and only source of her rage. But if that were the whole story she could have avoided telling Luca. Guessing his reaction, and having no intention of discussing it, she could have lied to him and taken care of it herself. Instead, she’d dug in her heels and crossed her arms, or her legs. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she watched him smile in his sleep and waited for him to wake up. She told him she was pregnant and, without giving him time to appear surprised or happy or concerned, she added: “I can’t keep it.” So he was forced to react to the second piece of information; the first had been left behind. The unplanned pregnancy, the possibility of a third child, they’d never talked about it. Saying “I’m pregnant and I can’t keep it,” she’d dictated the terms of the conversation. “What do you mean you can’t keep it?” “I don’t want to keep it.” He sat up, he was silent, letting the news she’d just thrown down between them settle. “But why?” he finally muttered. And she told him angrily, “Because I don’t want to.” “It’s something we need to talk about calmly, we can’t just decide like this.” She wanted to say, “
We
can’t? I’m the one who’ll decide, we’re not deciding together,” but she kept silent.

There was nothing she could do about it. Or maybe there was, maybe she could have discussed it with him and persuaded him to accept the decision
she
’d made. If she’d cared about him. Only then did she realize that she had no desire to and no intention of sitting down and talking to make the decision easier for him. He had to accept it and that was that. Wasn’t it
his business
? Well, it was also his business, he was her husband, how could she deny it? If she didn’t want it to be his business, it meant that something had changed and she hadn’t noticed, she hadn’t wanted to notice. So let’s say it was also his business, but she would rather it wasn’t. And getting to the point of learning that she was pregnant and realizing that not only didn’t she want to be pregnant in general, but that she especially didn’t want to be pregnant by
him
—getting to that point made her furious.

What had happened to their love the last few years? It seemed like nothing had really happened, but that wasn’t true. Luca had agreed to take on a big client in Rome, he was never home, and on weekends he often shut himself up in his room to work. He’d been very uncertain about whether to take on that responsibility. He’d agreed primarily because she’d told him that they would manage (she was used to saying it, she was programmed to give that response). But at the time she’d said it, she didn’t know what she was saying. Or maybe she did, maybe she knew very well and had said it to encourage the dissatisfaction that was beginning to germinate in her to take root and grow stronger.

And as she continued thinking about the death throes of their marriage, she tended to date the beginning of the end further and further back; sooner or later she’d have it coincide with the starting point, in accordance with the principle whereby only the origin is whole and uncorrupted and cells begin dying at birth. Luca’s absence had brought out the worst in both of them. Just as she was completing her residency, just when her father fell ill, just as Michela began taking catechism seriously enough to worry them, just when Mattia, who spoke little and poorly at four years of age, had to go to a speech therapist. Instead of bringing them closer together, instead of making her feel she couldn’t do without him, Luca’s absence had flipped a switch in her head so that when he was around she felt an appalling urge to fight with him. And still she wondered: How could such ordinary things (distance, fatigue, worries about work and the children) have estranged him from her? There had to be something else.

So she went further back. Mattia’s birth, imagining that Luca didn’t love his son as he loved his daughter, that he didn’t want to care for him, imagining that he saw him as a rival. But even that wasn’t enough. So she went further back. The fact that she worked, that she’d insisted on continuing to work: despite the fact that he pretended to be proud of her achievements, like all men, Luca would have preferred a wife who was a replica of his mother. No, that still wasn’t enough. It was all too insignificant. How could all these insignificant things produce so much? How could nothing produce all that?

“We can’t talk about it calmly, it’s something I need to decide quickly.” Luca looked bewildered, he continued touching her, turning her face toward his, putting his arm around her shoulders, searching her eyes as if he didn’t recognize her. “There’s something you’re not telling me—you’ve had tests done and there’s something wrong with the baby.” Always quick to suspect doctors of bad faith, of having black souls, not to be trusted given their innate ability to lie. “There is no baby, so there can’t be anything wrong with it. What’s wrong is me. I can’t keep it.” But he wanted time to talk about it calmly. How much time did he need? She wasn’t willing to give him any more. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, thinking about a rolling pin bashing in Luca’s smiling mouth, she’d already made her decision.

It had been almost three years ago, but she remembered it perfectly. The image she’d had of his shattered mouth, gums and teeth reduced to a bloody pulp. Something she’d seen at the hospital? Of course. Even though emergency surgery was separate and they never saw the injured accident victims when they arrived. But of course, no use denying it, she’d seen a young man whose face had been smashed by a hammer.

And she clearly remembered all the rest as well. She wouldn’t forget it, she wasn’t asking to forget it. But she’d have liked to talk to someone about it every now and then, not to ease her conscience, but just to talk about it, because if she didn’t tell it, the story made no sense. If she didn’t tell about the abortion, Luca’s reaction didn’t make sense, their divorce didn’t make sense. Not that the abortion was the cause of their divorce. It was a harbinger, but a cryptic harbinger. She’d aborted her love for him and no one knew it. Not her sister, much less her mother. She was certain that Luca had never told anyone, it was too momentous.

To her this momentous thing was an object with a form and shape, it was tangible and had a substance of its own. It was an object to be examined, observed from a suitable distance. How to talk about it was a mystery to her, as was how to think about it. Should she feel guilty, as Luca wanted her to, as he thought was natural? She couldn’t seem to. Should she feel like a monster? She couldn’t seem to. At a certain point, so that she could imagine at least a part of herself as readmitted to human society, she would have liked to view the other part as monstrous. Was there something wrong with her? And she’d go over the whole story from the beginning again.

She’d had two children, desired, adored, by a man she loved, children she cherished more than anything. She became pregnant again by a man she no longer loved (even though she didn’t yet know it at the time) and had had an abortion. Had she done something sinful? No. Had it been painful, devastating, violent? Yes, of course, for her, painful, devastating, violent. She still thought about it, in fact, in those dreaded morning hours. But she didn’t understand. She’d have liked to talk about it, talk to someone about it. When Mattia had been hospitalized, she’d been advised to speak to a psychologist. Therapy for the child wasn’t expected, it was expected for the parents. Luca wouldn’t hear of it. She’d been the one to go. And she’d burst into tears in front of the young woman who had just gotten her degree and who was five or six years younger than she. A child with a box of Kleenex ready on her desk. Prepared. Instead of talking about Mattia, she’d burst into tears during the first session and told her about the abortion.

Talk to someone about it, she wanted to talk about it. To the shy internist, naturally, because he knew how to listen. He was nervous about matters of his own, at that time. Not that he avoided her, he couldn’t, but he was anxious. He was in a state of anxiety again, like when he’d met her. She’d have liked to tell her whole life to the shy internist, so she could read it in his eyes. He was an open book, he wouldn’t be able to hide anything from her.

*   *   *

When the day of his declaration came, Cecilia thought about how blind she’d been, how strongly she wanted everything to remain as it was, for nothing more to happen in her life, for each day to be like every other, each action indistinguishable from that of the day before, for the children to always be children. The shy internist declared his love and she thought about the fact that Michela would soon have her first boyfriend.

That morning she’d started laughing when a patient looked at her, standing with a female colleague and a resident, and asked: “When will the doctor get here?” Later, distracted and preoccupied since the day before, she’d placed the stethoscope on a patient’s back and said, “ER,” as if answering the phone. All three women had had to leave the examining room so they wouldn’t be seen having a laughing fit. What was she doing now in that café, fortunately deserted, why hadn’t she come up with some excuse? She knew very well the reason for the meeting, and she’d gone to face the music without trying to avoid it. Before leaving the hospital she was about to quip to her colleague: “I’m heading out, there’s a guy who wants to hook up with me.” She’d stopped herself just in time, it wouldn’t have been nice to make fun of him like that.

If she’d asked him to postpone the talk, maybe he would have changed his mind; afraid of losing what they were able to share, he might have backed off. Instead, there he was in front of her, stammering. He said he’d kept quiet for a year, thinking everything would work itself out; he talked about it as if it were a health issue. For a year he’d been coming to look for her in that café, as if the fault of having dragged things out to that point were his alone, as if she had always ended up there against her will. For a while she wasn’t able to react, crushed by the weight of yet another mistake. Her life studded with mistakes that sparkled like the Virgin’s halo, the Virgin Mary, who for a year had appeared to the shy internist in the steamy café. “Holy Virgin Mary, you know I didn’t tell a lie,” Michela wept during her mystical crises. Under the illusion that she never made mistakes, she’d made another mistake.

Without doing anything to discourage him, she had soaked up that silent worship, had fed on his ever-deepening love. So when he seemed to have exhausted his speech (if it had been prepared, it was badly prepared and even more poorly delivered) Cecilia thought: What have I done? But given that she’d made a mistake, and that she was used to correcting her mistakes quickly, she thought that by this time it was too late to play the part of the innocent virgin, and also too late to play a virgin indifferent to the attentions and attractions of others, and that if she didn’t want to be a
complete shit
she had to save their friendship, or rather transform that relationship into friendship. She didn’t want to lose the man who sat in front of her, whatever he was to her. She felt the blood return to her face, she must have turned pale, she felt like she was blushing, but it was because she was recovering.

She thought lying was the lesser of two evils and told him she truly hadn’t been expecting it, that she’d been going through a difficult time and was worn out, maybe that’s why she hadn’t realized it (it wasn’t true that she’d been going through a difficult time, it was the most stress-free time in three years). She said she’d never thought of him in that way, but that she thought about him a lot. That little word game, which she would have been proud of on another occasion, seemed completely fatuous to her and sapped her of the strength to go on talking. She imagined standing up and saying, “I have to go now,” she thought of escaping. Instead she remained seated and started confessing part of the truth. She told him how important those lunches were to her. And gradually the tension melted. They started talking as they never had before, with a pleasure and connection discovered at that moment. For that reason, when the time came to leave, Cecilia had the distinct feeling that she’d manage not to lose the shy internist’s friendship; in fact she thought she’d already managed it.

For a few days they talked a lot. Cecilia even told him something about the divorce. She was amazed at how everyone was used to those kinds of stories and no one seemed incredulous when they heard the predictable reasons which, for her, had constituted such an ordeal (“We started fighting”). Even adults accepted the excuse that had worked with the children, which the children hadn’t even dreamed of challenging, because in fact it was terrible enough to be acceptable: Mama and Papa don’t get along anymore, they still love each other but they can’t live together any longer. In the end everything was entirely plausible and she was the only one who thought about the
real
reason, who thought that was actually the root cause of all the consequences, rather than just a consequence like any other.

She was also amazed to find herself talking to Viberti about something she really never thought about: how her children judged her, what they thought of her, what they thought of the divorce. Maybe it was so she could find out what
he
thought of her and her divorce. But Viberti was too guarded to let anything slip.

Viberti talked about his mother, he talked about his ex-wife, and he talked about himself as though he were a prisoner in his apartment building. When he said to her one day, “You’re the first person who hasn’t immediately asked me ‘Why don’t you move?’ because though I actually should, maybe, I don’t like having everyone remind me of it,” she was so touched she felt like kissing him.

*   *   *

After their trip back on the highway, Mattia made up a new game. He lined his toy cars up along the hallway in the house and made them pass one by one through a barrier he’d built with Lego bricks, a tollbooth. Cecilia watched him as she went from the kitchen to the bedroom and stopped to listen to him from behind the partly closed door. Mattia mimicked the metallic voice of the automatic toll-taker: “Insert ticket,” “Insert card,” “Thank you, have a good trip.” He also said “Ticket expired” or “Card over the limit” or “Watch out for fog,” “Fasten children’s seat belts,” “If you’re tired, pull over and take a nap.”