Three Light-Years: A Novel (34 page)

Silvia’s silhouette appeared as she approached from down the corridor, walking along an imaginary diagonal line, veering to the left, then pushed back to the shady side of the hall by the light pouring through the windows. Cecilia didn’t move and Silvia noticed her presence at the last minute, maybe because she didn’t expect to find her sitting out there, maybe because she was preoccupied. She seemed preoccupied as she hugged Cecilia and asked for the latest update, distant and certainly less talkative than usual. Cecilia thought her sister must be upset, like she herself had been a few hours ago (like she still was); she thought Silvia, too, might be afraid that it was starting all over again, just when it seemed to be behind them. She didn’t have an exclusive on terror.

Silvia hugged and kissed and cuddled Mattia, then pulled his pajamas out of her bag, first the top and then the bottoms, and laid them out on the bed next to him, shaping them into a full-length figure. Cecilia and the child watched her, not knowing what she was doing. When she realized it, she took the pajamas and folded them again, then handed them to Cecilia, saying, “Here you are.” She seemed ill at ease. She began joking, saying that if you asked her, Mattia had pretended to faint because he was sick and tired of being in school. Suddenly she went back to being the boisterous sister, chatty as ever. She insisted on a detailed description of the fainting scene, and without letting Mattia finish, told them about how she’d passed out once in college. She had ended up stretched out in front of the lectern with professors all around her, as if she were the subject of an examination. The boy laughed.

When it was time to go, outside the room, Silvia asked if Cecilia had been frightened.

Cecilia said yes, very much so. “And you?”

Silvia didn’t understand.

“I mean: Were you frightened, too?”

“Oh, yes, very much so, me, too.”

“Did you have an argument with Mama?”

“Me? No, absolutely not.”

“You seem strange.”

“I haven’t even talked to her.”

“Do you think she’s worried?”

“I’ll stop by and see her, then I’ll call you or send you a text. Do you want me to bring Michela to spend the night?”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

They said goodbye.

Mattia had started reading the Asterix comic book again. She should find something to say to him, but she couldn’t think of anything. Someone had put a sticker on the closet door. It was very high up, she couldn’t read the inscription around the Madonna’s face, Lourdes or Czestochowa, Fatima or Medjugorje. She took off her shoes and climbed onto the bed next to Mattia’s, but before she got a chance to read the words she saw Silvia reappear in the doorway.

“I forgot something,” Silvia said without asking what she was doing standing on the bed, and motioned for her to come outside.

They went back out to the hall.

“I didn’t know if I should tell you, but then I decided to tell you because I’m afraid of complicating things for you.”

“What is it?”

“That coworker of yours, the one you introduced me to that day…”

“Viberti?”

“Claudio Viberti, right. You know what a screwup I am, I…” She paused, not knowing how to continue.

“Did you say something to him about me?”

“About you? No, of course not. But we saw each other again and … I don’t know how it happened. We saw each other two or three times.”

Cecilia froze, her entire body felt icy cold.

“So?” she asked with a smile, though she didn’t feel like smiling.

“We’re not a couple, I don’t think we’ll ever be, I don’t know what he wants but I’m very confused and…”

Cecilia shook her head, maybe too vigorously. “But you shouldn’t worry about me, he’s just a coworker, why should I be angry?”

“No, actually, I didn’t think you’d be
angry
. I thought I might embarrass you, because I’m the usual screwup, and who knows what your coworker will think of me.”

“He won’t think badly of you, but I don’t know him very well, I’m not sure, right now I’m a little upset about this thing with Mattia.”

Silvia nodded, maybe too vigorously. “Of course, I’m sorry, I mentioned it because I didn’t want you to hear about it from him, or from someone else, and think I’m just being an idiot as usual.”

Cecilia smiled, pretending to be understanding. “I’m certainly not going to judge you.” She wasn’t judging her, but she wished she’d disappear instantly, before the mask she was wearing crumbled. She told her not to worry.

Silvia muttered that it was destiny: “With you it’s my destiny to always be the child; you will always be my big sister.”

“Well, I certainly can’t suddenly become your little sister.”

Silvia forced a smile and finally left.

*   *   *

Viberti had gone to bed with her
sister
, he was attracted to her
sister
, he was falling in love or had already fallen in love with her
sister
. How could he
do it
, how could he even
think of doing it
before he did it? And how did he think he was going to
tell her about it
now? Show up at their table one day and announce the good news? “I started seeing Silvia, and well, she’s not you, but at least she’s in the family.”

The ward was half empty, she’d managed to arrange for Mattia to have a room with two beds with the intention of sleeping there with him. He slept and she paced up and down the corridor, unable to find peace. She pretended to be talking on the phone whenever she glimpsed a silhouette behind the glass doors. They looked like murky ghosts, growing more and more distinct as they approached, until the door opened abruptly and someone appeared in the flesh and looked straight at her.

For an hour she kept the phone in her hand, holding it to her ear whenever a colleague or nurse passed by. Like a crazy woman. So she wouldn’t have to make conversation. Cell phone to her ear, she thought Viberti must have wanted to get even, yet that was impossible because he wasn’t a vindictive type, and so he must have
unconsciously
wanted to get even because she had frustrated him, keeping him tied to her while giving him almost nothing. She also thought that he was free to do whatever he wanted, that she had never asked him for an exclusive relationship and that given their situation she couldn’t very well demand that he be faithful to her, the very word “faithful” made no sense, so what he did was his business.

But not with her sister! That much she could certainly ask, even demand, of him. Not with her sister and possibly not even with a coworker in the ER and possibly not even with anyone from any other department in the hospital. And she thought back to when Silvia had told her: the icy chill she’d felt was very different from feeling a tightness in her chest; at that moment her heart had turned into a vast, frozen arctic sea. At that moment she’d felt nothing, no pain or sorrow, no anger or resentment, not toward Viberti or toward Silvia or toward herself. She just wanted Silvia to go away, as if her reappearance in the doorway had been a mistake in the chronology that drags us all forward, as if by stitching together the moment she’d left the first time with the moment she’d left the second time, that ridiculous confession could be eliminated.

Why had she felt the need to tell her? Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Why was she always so childish and stupid?

An hour earlier, playing cards with Mattia, making all the wrong moves while the boy protested, thinking she was letting him win, she’d begun to doubt whether her sister had actually confessed to sleeping with Viberti. She hadn’t said that, she hadn’t said they’d
fucked
, maybe they went out a couple of times, maybe they’d kissed in the car. But Silvia would never have been so hysterical over a kiss, if it had been only a kiss she probably wouldn’t have felt compelled to confess anything, so it had to be a really shameful thing, that’s the only way it made sense.

At that point she was no longer so sure she didn’t feel anything: certainly she felt incredulity and confusion, she’d thought she knew the internist quite well and it turned out she didn’t know him at all (she’d never again be able to call him “shy”!), she’d deceived herself and deceived him, she didn’t know what she wanted, or she was even less sure of it than before. Even the anger she felt pacing up and down the hall, even there she wasn’t sure with whom she was angry: Viberti, Silvia, herself. But she was sure she felt angry, now. So sure that she was afraid it showed and that pretending to talk on her cell phone wasn’t enough to hide it.

To take cover she went back to the child. The room was in shadow, no one had lowered the blinds, they thought she’d do it. The cars on the avenue in the summer twilight already had their lights on. Some drove around the traffic circle and continued on, others crossed the bridge and disappeared, followed by a train of double red taillights, into the tree-lined area where she and Viberti had sought seclusion the first time, as if hiding in the woods. She was very angry, but also very sad. The whole thing was unbearably sad. But not meaningless, not pointless.

The point was that she had to atone for her wrong in any case. Whatever she’d done, it was wrong and she had to pay for it. The point was that the atonement was ongoing, a lesser purgatory of minor, vindictive retributions such as Mattia’s fainting, and deceitful, grotesque punishments such as Viberti’s betrayal, which technically wasn’t even a betrayal. Mattia was fine, but it was a reminder that it could have been worse; Viberti had cheated on her and she didn’t even have the right to get angry. Of all the women in the world, her sister. If she hadn’t brought Silvia to their table, they wouldn’t have even met. Ridiculous and very sad. She didn’t want to be part of that sad, sad story. The story wasn’t supposed to end that way. The chapter of the story that had begun. Maybe it had to end somehow, but not like that.

For the first time since Silvia left she was tempted to call Viberti. Telling Silvia everything wasn’t possible, talking to him was. She lowered the blinds. She lay down on the bed without even taking off her white coat. Mattia was sleeping all curled up. He was fine, that was the important thing. She would tell Viberti that she’d heard about it or had a feeling about it. It was hard to keep her composure, even just the thought of talking to him and asking “Is it true?” was upsetting.
How much
of it was true?
What
had actually happened? More than anything she felt like crying.

Only now did she feel like crying, lying across from Mattia, as she thought about it and imagined a conversation with Viberti. Maybe because for the first time she pictured Viberti in front of her, ready to listen. She imagined him as indifferent and maybe argumentative, and in the end hostile.

“Let’s try to be adults, we didn’t have a future, you and I, our relationship perhaps never even began, we kept seeing each other because we were afraid of being alone, so this somewhat abrupt, surprise ending is for the best, there’s a part of you in your sister, and it’s as if I’d courted you for two years to get to her, with her there’s no need for courtship, let’s say … not only because she’s more decisive than you, more
uninhibited
, but because I’ve already moved on from that stage; and it’s not like it’s an ending for you, either, it’s a beginning—you can devote yourself to your children, and in time you will certainly find someone and fall in love, probably with a man who’s different from me, he won’t be so insecure and introverted, he’ll be someone more like your husband, but different, better, less self-centered—was your husband self-centered? You’ll find someone who isn’t, your children will be grown and you’ll no longer be afraid of betraying them, you’ll make a new life for yourself. And you know what the best thing about it will be? That we’ll keep seeing each other! Of course, because, after some initial tension, you and Silvia will patch things up and become close again, and given how much you care about Silvia, you’ll care for me as well, and you’ll forgive me for what happened.”

A sarcastic, offensive, brash, long-winded Viberti. Effusive like Silvia. As if he’d been infected by sleeping with Silvia (he’d done it
for sure
) and now he, too, talked like a cat on fire.

But all in all this new internist was improbable, no, she didn’t believe it, he couldn’t have changed so radically in two weeks. A silent Viberti was a more likely Viberti. Speechless, mortified, ashamed, unable to justify himself. Faced with the more probable internist, she would have to be the one to speak.

“I’m trying to be an adult,” she would say, “I’m trying to understand and not judge. But I don’t understand, and even though I’m not judging you, I’m just asking myself: How was it possible? What got into you? Wasn’t there something between us? Wouldn’t it have been better to wait and clarify things with me? I know I have no right. I can’t accuse you of anything, let alone of having behaved incorrectly, but I have to ask you: Wasn’t there something between us?”

Mattia was breathing peacefully in his sleep, the faulty blinds projected bands of light onto the ceiling. Eyes open in the dark, Cecilia thought she should start off with that question, a compelling question: “Wasn’t there something between us?” or better yet as a positive: “Was there something between us?” Any other questions would then follow naturally. Why my sister? Do you hate me that much? What did I do to you? Were you trying to get even? Did you think I didn’t love you? And if I told you that I love you, now, what would you do?

What would Viberti do if she told him she loved him? Probably nothing. Like when she
had
told him, a few months ago, in the café beside the river. Better to speak to him by phone, better to just ask, “Has there been something between us, these past two years?” And hear what he had to say. His version. Unless he remained silent, overcome by shame. The coward, the hopeless incompetent.