Three Light-Years: A Novel (42 page)

One sunny, windy spring afternoon she stationed herself behind the trunk of a chestnut tree in front of the building she’d lived in for twenty-two years, her parents’ house, the house where her mother now lived alone. She had to wait until her mother left to go and pick the children up at school; it was a day when Cecilia had the afternoon shift, and it was the only one of her mother’s errands whose duration she could calculate exactly. She watched her walk away, waited another five minutes, and then headed briskly toward the imposing cherrywood door whose reddish grain formed two large wide-open eyes.

She opened it with her old set of keys. The last few times she’d come to see her parents she hadn’t used them, buzzing the intercom to emphasize her position as an outsider. She took the elevator up to the fifth floor and didn’t run into anyone, but even if a neighbor had suddenly appeared in the dim vestibule, in the uncertain light of the landing, what would he have suspected? Her mother didn’t associate with anyone in the building, no one could report having seen her younger daughter enter the house (specifically, the one she argued with all the time, you could hear them on the ground floor).

The apartment hadn’t changed over the years. With two exceptions: when the first daughter had married, her old room was used by her mother on nights when their father would not stop his unbearable snoring (therefore every night; only by snoring could he express his rebellion); when the second daughter left home, her room had been set up for the grandchildren to nap and play in. But since these changes were confined to two inner rooms that were basically hidden, the rest of the house seemed even more changeless and eternal.

No sign of the husband and father’s death. It had been two months. Her father had been a drifter in a foreign land where he was barely tolerated, a migrant. With his illness he’d become a minority in a ghetto: assigned to his own cramped space. Her mother had no intention of repossessing the master bedroom where her husband had slept alone until the last night before the final trip to the hospital. The marriage was dead, the husband was dead, the room was dead. The door was closed, the room condemned, and Silvia had no desire to open it, enter it. She roamed around the rest of the deserted house without turning on the lights, without touching anything, careful not to leave any trace. Like a thief, she thought, but that wasn’t quite right, because she actually
was
a thief; she roamed through the house like a stranger, a person to whom those rooms meant nothing.

She’d brought plastic bags from home, to put the food in. From the fridge and pantry she took meat, vegetables, packets of pasta, biscuits, bread. Her mother would notice the theft, of course. She would immediately think of her and wouldn’t accuse anyone else. Maybe she would talk to Cecilia about it, and she and her older daughter would exchange a meaningful look, just a quick glance, and wouldn’t comment any further because it would be too ridiculous and painful. Or maybe not, maybe she was overestimating them. They would talk about it at length and her mother would make Cecilia look into it. Cecilia would look into it and she would confess immediately. Cecilia would say, Don’t be silly; she’d give her some money. And she would live on her sister’s charity until her next assignment. And she’d start working full-time again, and would at least have enough money to get by.

After filling the two plastic bags and setting them near the door, she lingered in the house. She tried to feel some emotion. She tried to cry, but it was no use. Maybe she thought the house itself would move her, that it wasn’t necessary to enter her father’s room. But she realized for the millionth time that her father had lived in that house as a guest. This was confirmation of it: she hadn’t been looking for it, but she’d found it.

She left the building with her shopping bags, without encountering a soul. She walked unhurriedly to the corner, turned it, and found a deserted street in front of her, the promise of a clean getaway, a successful venture, and thought maybe she wouldn’t do it again. It had been a childish thing to do.

Instead she continued doing it. She went shopping at her mother’s house at least once a week for several months, till autumn. If her mother noticed it (how could she not notice?), she hadn’t told anyone. She hadn’t told Cecilia, or if she had told her, Cecilia had suggested that she act as if nothing had happened (Cecilia often suggested acting as if nothing had happened, besides, it was better that Silvia steal from her mother than from a supermarket).

*   *   *

The horror and fascination of being late; she can’t remember the first time she felt that shiver, but she knows it’s by far the strongest emotion she can afford to feel these days. Motionless on the couch for weeks, after the death of her father, she went through a period of indulgence. On the phone with editors at the publishing houses, she engaged in orgies of excuses, hopelessly entangling herself in a web of lies. At that point being late had become a way like any other to get by, to let the world know she was still alive. As Cecilia fed her sashimi and yogurt and cooked broths and baby pastina and semolina soups for her, she went on accruing missed deadlines. She came up with the most improbable excuses to put off for hours or days the consignment of work that she wouldn’t be able to complete even in weeks or months. It’s taken her years of diligently meeting deadlines to make up for that month of madness and win back the publishers’ trust. When she misses a day of work and the specter of being late rises up in front of her, waving its white shroud and rattling its chains, she feels a stab of fear in the pit of her stomach. And she starts counting the number of pages again, updating the daily quota that will allow her to finish on schedule.

It’s been twenty days since her fling with the nondescript Viberti and she still feels like she’s fallen behind, even though the fling itself didn’t consume any of her working hours, since it took place entirely in the evening. Chalk it up, perhaps, to the usual tangle of meaningless thoughts, as well as to that damned tome on Hindu mythology, that meteorite she allowed to hit her, which she has to finish polishing up by mid-July. If she’s behind schedule, those three harmless nights aren’t responsible. She has thirty days of work left, she could add a weekend to make sure she finished on time.

She’s therefore planning to work on a certain Saturday afternoon when she suddenly falls into a deep, dreamless sleep on the couch, and sleeps like a log for three straight hours. As far as she knows, only children nap like that. A phone call from Cecilia wakes her at six. She’s confused, dazed, but pretends to be wide awake, as if she were afraid of being yelled at, by her sister moreover, for having wasted the afternoon. Cecilia doesn’t notice anything, she’s excited about her own news, she wants to tell her that she took the boy to summer camp, even though he’d been in the hospital twelve days earlier.

“Good for you, Ceci, he won’t have any problems, you’ll see.”

“He’s been playing soccer every afternoon.”

“Really.”

“Going to camp meant so much to him. But, you know, the minute I leave him I get anxious.”

“You’re an hour’s drive away. But there won’t be any problem … And Michela?”

She manages to get Cecilia’s mind off Mattia by having her tell her about Michela’s study holiday and then finally gets rid of her.

She takes a shower. Her breasts are swollen; she must be getting her period. She gets dressed, she goes out with her girlfriends and some other people, they go to eat and then to see
The Day After Tomorrow
. She’d been the one to insist on it, she chose the film and persuaded everyone that it wasn’t the usual apocalyptic trash. After ten minutes, however, she slumps down in the seat. Stefania wakes her when a new ice age has descended over the world and the actors are moving around in the blizzard, muffled up in bulky yellow snowsuits.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m working too hard.”

She works all day Sunday without ever going near the couch or the bed for fear of falling into a stupor again. Ever since morning, she’s known exactly what she’s going to start thinking once she calls it quits. As if an unwelcome letter had been delivered and she hasn’t wanted to open it all day.

At seven she saves and closes the file she’s been working on, makes some tea, and picks up her datebook. The nondescript Viberti had been careful. She’d told him to be careful. She saw him. She saw him the second night. She saw him the third night. Traces of that precaution were left on her sheets. The first night, they’d made love on the floor, in front of the couch. Right afterward he’d gone to the bathroom, presumably to wash up.

She’s never kept track of the date of her last period, ever, in her whole life. Cecilia, of course, is the one who marks a little cross on the calendar. Though Stefania, unpredictably, does, too. Carla is so regular she doesn’t need to.

The hell with it, it’ll come. Still, just to pass the time while the tea steeps, what day was it? A Monday morning, toward the middle of May: she’d awakened at six with stomach cramps and stained pajamas. She’d gotten out of bed, trying not to fully wake up, toddled into the bathroom, rinsed off, got a tampon and clean panties. She’d been about to go back to bed, sleep until eight. But something drew her to the living room window. At night she keeps the shutters lowered only in the bedroom, she likes the light coming from the other room in the morning. Outside it was daylight, and there was a gray cloud in the pale sky above the rooftops that was constantly changing shape: a flock of birds that swelled and contracted rhythmically in the morning air.

So, it was five weeks, almost. So she is late. She’s been eight or nine days late before. She could be late even longer. She could be late by a month and still not be pregnant. She suspects it’s just a way to neglect her work, to create excuses for herself, to sabotage the mammoth book of Hindu mythology, substituting one delay for another. She’ll wait a week and then think about it. But since Thursday is a holiday and she might decide to go to the beach with Stefania (if she’s caught up with her work), since it could ruin a couple of days in a bathing suit, she’ll get it on Wednesday night, it’s bound to happen.

The next day she tries not to think about it, she’s able to work well but her breasts are still swollen and she’s tremendously sleepy; she’s worried. She sleeps wearing panties and a tampon. Nothing happens.

Tuesday morning at eight she shuts off the alarm clock without thinking and goes on sleeping. She sleeps until ten, gets up with anxiety buzzing in her head like a persistent fly. At ten twenty she goes to the pharmacy and buys a pregnancy test; it’s the first time, it’s not the pharmacy she usually uses. They ask her if she wants two, she doesn’t get it, she says no. Afterward she realizes it was a trap (to see if she was
worried
about being pregnant or
trying
to get pregnant).

She returns home. She opens the box: the object looks like a marking pen, the morning seems like a normal workday, but instead of editing proofs with a highlighter, like you used to do—coloring the uppercase letters that should be lowercase and vice versa pink or blue—she’s about to take a pregnancy test. She’s thirty-two years old and it’s never happened to her before. She hasn’t considered herself particularly fortunate because of it, but maybe she has been?

She removes the cap, holds the tip under the stream of urine for five seconds as instructed, leaves the bathroom, and waits. The tip turns pink, the first control line in the display window turns blue. The second one turns blue as well. Surely it’s wrong. She has to do it again. The reason she’s never gone to that pharmacy is because they’re unreliable, they have old merchandise, expired stuff.

She goes out again, she feels a little dizzy, she stops for coffee and a croissant, she can’t manage to drink the coffee, the aroma alone makes her feel like throwing up. She orders a cup of tea, sits down, tells herself: Calm down now, okay? Calm down. Stern, angry. Eyes fixed on the marble tabletop. She drinks the tea, eats a bit of the croissant.

She goes to her own pharmacy. She asks for the test kit, mortified. The pharmacist smiles, asks if she wants two. “Of course,” she says. She also buys a toothbrush.

At home she repeats the test. It’s a different brand, but that one also looks like a highlighter. It turns pink and then blue. Then blue again. Why always those colors? Who decided? It’s not possible, she can’t be pregnant.

She’s shaking. It’s eleven fifteen and she hasn’t started working yet, the Hindu mythology book stares at her from the desk. Never mind looking inward, thousands of Bodhisattvas are pointing their finger at her.

She thinks about doing the third test right away, but instead she calls Stefania at her office, asks to have lunch with her. The moment she says the word “lunch” she feels nauseous. Stefania can’t meet her, she asks if something happened, if something’s wrong.

“No, everything’s okay, talk to you later.”

She hangs up and the next instant she panics. She calls Stefania back, tells her she’s afraid she’s pregnant, she had a fling with someone she’ll never see again, she’s a moron, she screwed up, can’t she see her right away?

Stefania asks how it could have happened, doesn’t wait for an answer, tells her to take a pill, half a pill, she’ll be there as soon as possible. If she really is pregnant, maybe taking a Xanax isn’t the best idea.

She does a search on the Internet, ends up on a site where she reads testimonials written by pregnant women subject to panic attacks: some say you can take Xanax, others say you can’t. She jumps up from her chair, paces the length of the room breathing heavily.

Stefania calls her back, tells her not to take Xanax, that maybe you’re not supposed to.

She lies down on the couch, gets up again. She slips a Japanese cartoon that the children gave her into the DVD player. It’s called
My Neighbor Totoro
, and it’s so slow that it’s relaxing. One deep inhalation; one deep exhalation. She tells an imaginary companion the story of
Totoro
. Once upon a time there were two sisters and a daddy; their mommy was sick.