Three Light-Years: A Novel (31 page)

Now, however, she searched the Internet for similar stories. There was little material on the subject, whereas murderous mothers, along with all kinds of discussions about them, abounded. Mothers in forums who wrote: “A mother who kills her own children deserves to die.” Mothers terrified of being tempted to kill their insufferable children. But the murderous mother was almost always a violent killer, it isn’t every day you come across the kind of cold-bloodedness or ignorance or stupidity that lets a child starve to death. She remembered the cat who pushed away the puniest kitten when she suckled. She found pages and pages on male hamsters who killed their young so that the females would be ready to mate immediately. They didn’t just kill them, they devoured them, leaving only the heads on the plate (so to speak). She turned off the computer, unplugging it. The air was sucked up by the dark screen, for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

Don’t make me mad
. When she said it she was already pretty mad, on the way to getting good and mad.
Don’t make me mad
was a bad sign for the kids and worked much better than
Stop it
. She’d been sure she was a good mother, too permissive a mother, but one day, in third or fourth grade, Michela had come home with an essay in which she’d written: “When we’re good my mother is like a beautiful angel, but if we make her mad she swoops down on us like a crow.” Dr. Angel and Mother Crow.
Swoops down on us.
In the long run, the fear of being regarded as a creature with a long beak and long glossy feathers who punishes naughty children gave way to the fear of being viewed as a pure, angelic being with white, gauzy feathers, who protects and cares for good children
only
.

She remembered the shy internist’s dismay and rebellion, the day of the infamous declaration of love, at hearing himself described as a fine person and a good friend, a decent, amiable man. She also recalled his irritation at being called Dr. Anorexic and Mr. Bulimic. If anyone was incapable of having a split personality it was him. Instead of telling her to go to hell, he was stuck in his mute worship like a broken record. And she was in big trouble.
Otherwise there’ll be trouble
. There was trouble already. For a couple of months she’d been resisting the temptation to make love to him. She knew resisting was the right thing to do, she wanted to find out whether the attraction was really serious, whether it wasn’t just pent-up desire. Or rather, she thought it was pent-up desire and wanted to prove to herself that if she could just hold out, the attraction would go away.
Serious trouble.
The attraction wasn’t going away, and besides still wanting to make love with him (especially on sleepless nights, when the children were at their father’s and she found herself alone in the house), she felt a tightness in her chest. A tight chest wasn’t one of the known cardiological symptoms, nevertheless it existed, as the patients in the ER knew. It didn’t matter if it was a nervous contraction of the muscles at the pit of the stomach. In fact, with a tight chest you were never hungry.
To bed without supper!
The threat she could never use with her children.

*   *   *

Moments when she found herself alone in the house in the middle of the day, free because she’d finished her shift or free because she hadn’t yet started it. She’d close the door behind her and immediately be tempted to go back to bed. Instead she started straightening up. The deserted, silent house, even when it showed signs of the children’s presence, seemed like someone else’s. For some reason they had learned to put the milk back in the refrigerator. They didn’t put anything else back where it belonged, their rooms were a mess, yet they put the milk carton back. The house always needed straightening up and it was a more relaxing activity than hiding under the covers, provided that it was ultimately productive.

One morning Luca called to let her know about a business trip: three weeks in Rome and Sicily, he wouldn’t be back for the weekends.

“Almost a month away, how come?” she asked, surprised by her frightened tone, even before realizing that his departure really did frighten her.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry, if you want, when I get back I’ll take the kids two Sundays in a row, but I can’t do anything about this.”

She told him it wasn’t about the weekends, it was about the children, they would miss him.

“Well…” He seemed embarrassed. “It’s very sweet of you to tell me that, I’ll bring them back a nice gift, I’ll find a way to make them forgive me and, listen, if you need anything, there are always my parents.”

Cecilia giggled nervously and told him she hadn’t meant to be sweet, she’d only said the truth, the children adored him. They fell silent. The times when he used to insult her were so long ago. One day he’d told her that she was
obviously
in
no position
to raise children. How distant, that violence.

Then Luca suggested planning a dinner at his place before he left.

When she hung up, Cecilia thought she had every reason to be worried; she could solve the logistical problems without him, but his absence would have consequences for the children. She wondered if she was jealous: two weekends away, maybe it meant that Luca had someone else. But she decided that no, she wasn’t jealous, she never had been. Besides, if there
was
someone else, better that she was in another city.

They tried to make up for the distance with lengthy phone calls. During the first week Luca called every night. Michela described her days to him in detail, and because her father could never remember the previous installments, she yelled at him and made him listen to an even longer rundown of the news of the day. As she talked, she ran through her whole assortment of funny faces and expressions; listening to her, Cecilia and Mattia laughed and exchanged meaningful glances, though they’d already heard the stories. When it was his turn, Mattia answered in monosyllables. After a few days Michela completely dominated the conversation, while the boy ran off to the bathroom the moment it was time to take the phone and talk to his father. On Saturday, Luca phoned twice and the second time spoke with Michela for thirty minutes. The call took place in the kitchen, where Michela talked while looking out the glass door, one foot resting on top of the other, balancing. Seeing her come back to the living room, Cecilia assumed she was bringing the cordless phone with her to pass it to Mattia, but she had already hung up. “Papa says hello,” she told her brother. Cecilia kept silent on the couch, arms tightly folded, moving her eyes from the TV screen to the back of Mattia’s neck, as he lay motionless on the floor in front of her. She didn’t want to notice these things, but the boy’s indifference frightened her.

That night she began to think that Luca was making a mistake. She would tell him so. He should talk to Mattia when he called, and even if Mattia didn’t seem interested in talking, he shouldn’t fall into the trap. Above all, he shouldn’t delegate his communication with Mattia to Michela, as if there were a pecking order between them. She began to think that the child would become one of those people who do nothing to bridge distances. The distance that separated him from his father existed, she wasn’t dreaming it up. He would always insist that others make the effort. He wanted to be loved for what he was. He was a perfect cat, an obese, furry cat in the body of an undernourished child, more catlike even than she was, and that’s why he beguiled and bewitched the shy internist. The whole world was captivated by the child’s silent power; everything always seemed to revolve around him (even Michela, of course, even Michela, precisely because she believed she controlled him).

The shy internist had been very fond of the child, then he’d become very fond of the child’s mother. And the child’s mother was very fond of the shy internist. She was enormously fond of him. She reached under the covers to her left and to her right, wondering how it would feel to hear someone asleep beside her again, breathing quietly or snoring loudly. And the thought flashed through her mind: maybe she was in love with Viberti, maybe those fantasies were a sign that she was no longer able to interpret. She had to talk to him, she had to make up her mind. The idea was disturbing, and to stop thinking about it she got up, with the excuse of checking to see if the children were tucked in.

She took the pasta that Mattia hadn’t eaten out of the refrigerator. She never knew what to do with leftovers, often she threw them out and sometimes she saved them. It was easier to throw away larger amounts, she saved the smaller, less-risky portions, in case anyone wanted to check. She heated the pasta in the microwave, added a little oil, and ate it quickly.

*   *   *

The next day she was on the evening shift, four hours from eight to midnight. She took the children to school, did a little shopping, and prepared for the prospect of a whole day off ahead of her. At home she hung the wash out to dry, one of the household chores that made her by far the most irritable, or, in some cases, determined. She’d always hated extracting that intestine-like skein of clothes from the belly of the washing machine, the coils immediately unwinding as though contact with the air caused an instantaneous necrosis of the tissue. She hated the smell of laundry. She scattered socks and underwear from the bathroom to the drying rack in the room down the hall (since she always forgot to take the basket with her). After a while there was no more room on the drying rack, maybe she didn’t make the best use of it, or maybe she didn’t feel like rearranging the pieces that had already been hung. Often she abandoned a last tangle of clothes, hoping that someone (the housekeeper or Luca) would see to it. Since Luca no longer lived with them the loads to be washed had gotten smaller, his countless shirts, all identical, had disappeared, and there was always room on the rack now, and still the laundry wasn’t arranged properly.

Luca had always been better at loading the dishwasher, hanging clothes, and packing the trunk of the car. She had a vague idea of the reasons for this shortcoming of hers, something that had to do with being methodical, something that men seriously took to heart, that women didn’t have time to take to heart, or even (let’s admit it) something that women’s minds weren’t suited for. Who cares. Think of Viberti’s obsession with rules. She thought of asking him to write out rules for loading the dishwasher and rules for hanging the wash. She thought he would do it for her. She thought that no matter what she thought about, Viberti popped into her head. And it was too bad she didn’t have the courage to tell him so.

She would never have the courage.

She wasn’t brave, she was timid and cowardly. Fear of being left alone drove her to delude a man who asked nothing of her and who loved her. She had to tell him that she loved him, too, and that it was best they not see each other anymore.
That
was what she urgently had to tell him.

A damp tablecloth fell out of her hand, went plop on the floor. She left the laundry half-hung and went out into the hallway, not knowing where she was going. She found herself in the living room, sitting on the couch with her back straight, her legs together, her hands on her knees, like at a job interview. The moment she realized that she was frozen in that rigid, ridiculous position, she slumped back against the sofa. The living room was a mess from the night before: newspapers on the floor, games left unfinished, videos and DVDs scattered around, the battlefield after the surrender and after the children had agreed to go to bed. She felt like she was suffocating, but she wasn’t upset. Well, maybe she was. She wanted to talk to Viberti. Tell him over the phone? No. Wait until the next day? No. She pictured them at the café. Announcing that they should no longer see each other in the same café where he had confessed to being in love was pointlessly cruel. Among other things, she wasn’t sure he would agree not to see her anymore. He might insist. Was she hoping he would insist?

She called him. He was at the hospital, she told him she had to see him at once. Right away, immediately. She couldn’t go too far from home because the boy was sick, and it wasn’t a complete lie, he’d been coughing for three days. Referring to Mattia continued to be a trump card with Viberti. She told him she had to go to pay the dentist and asked him to meet her halfway. Why it was so important to lie each time, she couldn’t say.

The fact that Viberti agreed to all her conditions made her feel better. She went into the bedroom and instead of getting ready she slipped under the covers, dressed. She imagined what she would say to him, she imagined him nodding in silence. She couldn’t make herself move from the bed until five minutes before they were supposed to meet.

Viberti’s cheeks were red from the cold and he looked a little comical; who knows why he’d left the hospital in his white coat. He looked very anxious, he had a solemn, regretful air, as if he had some bad news for her. Seeing him, sad or cheerful, serene or gloomy, put Cecilia in a good mood. They retreated to a café; it was their destiny. Instead of telling him they shouldn’t see each other anymore, she told him that she thought about him often and that maybe she was in love with him. He remained silent, waiting for the follow-up to those words (there was no follow-up), as if he hoped or feared that she had something more to say. But the admission, whether true or false, had drained her, the effort at sincerity or at imagination was exhausted. If their relationship had become a problem, she didn’t have any solutions. After a while she realized that she was clutching his hand like a fifteen-year-old girl (the age Michela would be in two years), but she didn’t loosen her grip. She confessed that she got up at night “to go and see if the children are breathing,” and to make sure they were covered by their blankets. Now she was the one who was uncovered, but Viberti wasn’t skillful enough to take advantage of it. He hadn’t had a sister to argue with, a mother to try to control.