Toronto

Toronto enters the narrative as the destination of Bianca and Marta’s move to live with Gianni, their father, who had lived and worked there for years. The city’s significance lies less in its physical description than in the distance it creates: the move changes Leda’s daily experience of motherhood without ending her connection to her daughters.

Relocation and Domestic Change

When the girls move to Toronto, Leda is embarrassed and amazed to find that she is not upset. Instead, she feels light, as if she has only now definitively brought them into the world. For the first time in almost twenty-five years, she is not constantly anxious about having to care for them.

The change is visible in the house and in its routines. The rooms are neat, almost as if nobody lives there; shopping and laundry no longer press on Leda, and when the woman who had helped with household chores leaves for a better-paying job, Leda feels no need to find a replacement. Toronto is thus associated with a practical release from the repeated labor through which her daughters’ presence had organized her days.

A Relationship Maintained by Calls

Distance does not sever contact. Leda’s stated obligation is to call once a day to ask how the girls are and what they are doing. They speak as if they are on their own, although they live with their father; accustomed to keeping their parents separate even in conversation, they talk to Leda as if Gianni did not exist.

Their answers vary: sometimes cheerfully evasive, sometimes marked by irritable pauses, and sometimes shaped into artificial tones when they are with friends. The calls are usually hurried and can seem unreal to Leda, like scenes in a movie. Yet the girls call her often too, especially Bianca, whose relationship with her mother is more imperiously demanding. She asks for help with immediate matters, such as whether blue shoes will go with an orange skirt or whether Leda can find and send papers left in a book; she also continues to turn to her as someone who can be blamed for anger and sorrow.

Distance, Care, and Relief

Leda responds to these requests and behaves as the girls expect, but the physical distance prevents her from intervening directly in their lives. As a result, fulfilling their wishes becomes a mixture of rarefied or irresponsible gestures. Each request feels light, and each task connected to them becomes an affectionate habit rather than an immediate demand on her time and body.

That altered form of care gives the move its central emotional contradiction. Leda remains available to her daughters, but the separation makes their needs easier for her to meet and loosens the burden she associates with constant responsibility. She feels miraculously unfettered, as if a difficult job had finally been completed. Toronto therefore marks not a clean break in the relationship, but a change in its terms: daily care recedes, while calls and small acts of help preserve an attachment across the distance.