Sisterchicks in Gondolas! (6 page)

And why couldn’t I? What’s stopping me?

I think that was the first moment in all my years of singleness that I realized how utterly free I was. I could go anywhere. Do anything. There might even be places in the world where I could live and serve with no one really caring that I was divorced.

A new sense of hope stirred inside me as Sue and I made the beds. If I truly was entering a season of new beginnings, it seemed the first step would be a reshaping of how I viewed the opportunities before me and myself. Was I really bankrupt because of my “limitations”? Or was I rich in options? These were all new thoughts, but each thought planted a seed of hope in my heart.

“I’m not done yet,” I said aloud.

Sue gave me a strange look at my offhanded comment. “I know. We have three more beds to make.”

I didn’t try to explain. Instead, I went about making the rest of the beds as if it were the most important work I’d ever done. I was in training for something, but I didn’t know what it was.

I
t took Sue and me
nearly an hour to make up all the beds and sort out the towels. We placed a folded set of towels on the foot of each bed and organized the kitchen a bit.

A drooping cobweb hung from the high ceiling above the sink, so I went to the storage closet in search of a long-handled broom to knock it down. Once again, the view into the darkness above the stairs inside the closet intrigued me. I felt around on the wall for a light switch but didn’t find one. Carefully taking the first three steps up, I came to a small landing where the stairs turned and made an angular ascent into the darkened shadows. If this was where the laundry was carried up to the roof, I imagined the maid of a Venetian nobleman had taken this journey with a basket of washed clothes on one hip and a candle in the other hand.

It was a safe guess that my organized sister-in-law had packed a flashlight, and I had a penlight in my purse. I considered going back down to fetch a light, but the Nancy Drewness of the moment urged me onward. I was on a quest in the darkness.

Four more steps up my eyes began to adjust. Two more steps, and my head bumped against what I thought was the ceiling but turned out to be a door. I found a thick metal latch. The cool metal didn’t feel like any sort of closure found in this century. Or maybe even in the last two or three centuries. I tried pulling on it. When that didn’t work, I gave it a yank to the right and then to the left.

“Jenna?” Sue’s voice sounded far away. I guessed she was still in the kitchen.

“I’m up here, in the broom closet.”

I could hear her shoes tapping across the marble floor, coming in my direction. She entered the storage room and in a confused voice asked, “Jenna, are you in here?”

“Up here. Up the stairs.”

“In the dark?”

“I’m trying to open the door to the roof Steph told us about.”

Sue climbed up the stairs behind me. “I can’t see a thing. Where are you?”

“Only another five or six steps.”

“I feel like Nancy Drew.”

“I do, too!” I said. “Which book was the one about the
creepy old mansion? Was that
The Hidden Staircase?”

“I don’t remember.” Sue was on my heels now. “So, where’s the door?”

“Here.” I tried to lean back to give her space to wedge in beside me. “Can you feel this ancient latch? I can’t figure out how to make it open.”

Sue reached up, and we worked together in the dark, our hands tangling together, as we tried to figure out the medieval lock. We somehow managed to turn it just the right way and were rewarded with a promising click.

“Should we open it?” Sue said.

“Of course. Come on. On the count of three, push.”

Blinding midday sunlight gushed into our narrow cavern and caused us both to look away. Instant heat flooded the cooled space and invited us to take the final steps to the roof. I climbed out onto the sunroof and shielded my eyes from the intense brightness.

“Sweet peaches! Look at this.” Sue emerged right behind me. “It’s like our own secret hideaway.”

The flat area was only about ten feet long and maybe six feet wide. It was level and had drainage holes in the side of the raised wall that was about four feet high and protected the open space on three sides. The fourth side was the elevated extension of the roof that went up another six feet or so and had various odd looking spouts and vents cut into the red tiles.

“I feel like we’re on top of the world.” Sue’s hand
shielded her eyes from the direct sun as she surveyed our surroundings. “This is incredible!”

“It is.” We could see over the side of our building into the small square that formed the only open space between our apartment building’s backside and the other three buildings. In the center of the cobblestone square stood an old well that had been capped. It was easy to picture life in this small, secluded piazza hundreds of years ago. The women would come to the well while the children tagged along and played games. Their cries and laughter would have echoed off the buildings. I imagined this as a happy corner of Venice.

“Look over there.” Sue pointed to the neighboring buildings that also formed a square. “They have trees.”

Sue was right. Sprouting up to rooftop level was an immense tree or perhaps several trees that spread their green goodness in a comforting canopy. We’d already seen at Campo Apostoli how rare trees in Venice were and how shade was at a premium.

Straight ahead of where we stood, beyond the rows of red-tiled rooftops and tall, saffron-colored buildings, we could see blue water. In the midday brilliance the blue wasn’t the playful aqua I’d seen that morning on the Grand Canal. This blue was deep and brooding. It was the blue of the Venice lagoon where waters from the Adriatic Sea flowed in to greet this fleet of anchored islands. Sue took in the sweeping vista of our quiet neighborhood. “This is amazing.”

“It is!”

“I’m having a hard time comprehending how all these buildings, all these huge, intricate structures, have been here for hundreds of years and are built on man-made, or at least man-assisted, islands. The buildings look like a row of dominos, don’t they? Take one frontline building, tip it far enough, and the whole row of structures could crumble into the sea.”

“I know,” I agreed. “It’s all so precarious, yet so settled and established. What a strange and wonderful place.”

“Well, Nancy Drew, it seems you have another mystery to solve. How does Venice keep from falling into the sea?”

I leaned against the edge of the roof ridge and thought for a moment. “I have no idea. But you know what amazes me, Sue? I was thinking of this earlier today. Or yesterday, I guess, when I was looking out the plane’s window. I’m amazed that God holds all of this together. Not only Venice, but also earth. And us. Everything could crumble in a flash if God took His hand off us, if He removed His presence. But He doesn’t. He holds everything together.”

Sue surveyed the ancient world below us. In a quiet voice she said, “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels as though God removes His hand.”

I knew she was referring to her husband’s car accident.

“You know,” Sue continued, “everyone said God had protected Jack and kept him alive and brought him out of
the coma after all those months. But my husband is going to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.”

“I know,” I said softly. I had been there every step that took Jack on the journey of recovery over the past two years. My brother’s accident was what prompted me to move to Dallas. The hours Sue and I spent together had cemented our friendship. I knew how awful it had all been and in many ways still was.

“So,” Sue said, pulling back and folding her arms across her middle, “I’m not sure I’m as convinced as you are that God still holds everything together. God could have stopped that driver from running Jack off the road, but He didn’t. I can’t explain why God didn’t do that.”

“Neither can I.”

“Jack says it’s okay, you know. He says he’s accepted it and I should, too. While he watched me pack, he said he was glad I was moving on because that’s what he’s doing. He’s moving on. Adapting.” Sue paused, looking out over the rooftops. Her voice lowered as she confessed, “But you know what, Jenna? I don’t want to adapt. I want my husband back all the way. I wanted God to be there at the moment of that accident and to hold everything together so Jack wouldn’t be hit. That’s what I want. But that’s never going to happen.”

I stood close, listening. For years our conversations had been around the facts, the details, the medical schedules. Sue rarely talked about how she felt. She just took each day as it came.

Not sure what to say or do, I reached over to pat her comfortingly on the shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Sue pulled away. “No, it’s not okay. I’m not okay. Why does everybody keep saying that? My life is not okay, and it’s never going to be okay. I will never be able to accept what happened. Not the way Jack has.” Sue raised her arms, and in a razor-sharp voice she added, “I am so mad! There, I finally said it. I am so screechin’ angry! What happened to my husband wasn’t fair. That accident didn’t just happen to Jack; it happened to me, too.” She thumped her chest with her clenched fist. “That irresponsible driver changed my life, too!”

Backing up a step, Sue leaned against the side wall, as if for support, while the confession continued to leak out. “This isn’t the way my life was supposed to go. I never expected something like this. I never prepared for this. Nothing is ever going to be the same.”

I wanted to tell Sue how I once felt the way she did now. I once said practically the same words she was saying. I’d never told her about when I hit bottom at the age of thirty-six and was so depressed I didn’t think I could go on. That’s when I decided to seek out a professional counselor. Once a week I spilled my guts, and by the grace of God and the skill of the counselor, I came around. My perspective changed, and I was able to be honest with myself.

The experience allowed me the chance to come to terms with how emotionally demolished I’d been after the
divorce. I remembered feeling each week that I’d made a big mess with a lot of words in the counselor’s office. Somehow I felt like I should mop them all up before I left. I wanted Sue to feel she had the freedom to make that big a mess around me now.

Turning to me and taking in my sympathetic expression, she said in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Jenna. I shouldn’t have said all that. It just sort of spilled out and …”

Sue was doing exactly what I’d done in my counseling sessions—verbally trying to mop up her words.

“I’m glad you let it out,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have. You don’t need to hear that from me. I didn’t realize. It’s just … I’m … I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I know those feelings, Sue.”

“Yes, but …”

“Really, Sue, I know those feelings. I didn’t expect my life to go the way it did, either.”

She tilted her head, as if looking at me through new eyes. “You do know what I’m feeling, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Different circumstances. Similar feelings. You can say whatever you want to with me anytime.”

She drew inward and lowered her eyes. “Thank you, Jenna. But I feel so bad when I let my feelings take over. I shouldn’t have …”

“Sue?” I waited till she looked me in the eye. “Shame off you.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Don’t let even a pinch of shame settle on you. You’re doing the right thing by being honest with yourself. I’m a safe person for you to talk to. I understand. There’s nothing you need to apologize for. So, shame off you.”

The implication settled in like balm on her open wound. All the mama-sister-best friend sympathy that grows large in the heart of a native Texan exploded from Sue. She opened her arms wide and wrapped them around me. We hugged each other as two strong women who had weathered demolishing storms, and yet we were still standing.

“Jenna, Jenna, Jenna, where would I be without you?”

“Well, you wouldn’t be in Venice, standing on a rooftop.”

“No, I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t be clothed and in my right mind, I can tell you that. I would be locked up somewhere in a padded room. Jenna, you’ve been there for me through all of this. Thank you. Thank you for being strong for me.”

I kissed my sis-in-law on top of her fluffed-up red mane. “Suzanne, you’re going to make it through all this. You’re not going to be carted off to a padded room. You may feel like it some days, but you’re a strong woman of great faith and hope.”

She managed a hint of a smile. “I don’t feel that way.”

“That’s okay. Feelings aren’t everything, you know.”

Sue sighed.

We stood side-by-side, gazing out toward the brooding blue water in the distance. Sue leaned her head on my shoulder.

“Shame off me,” she whispered, and I smiled. I knew the power those words had held for me many years ago.

We remained like that for a while. Silently holding each other up, feeling the heat of the Italian summer day massage our heads and shoulders, urging us to relax. I decided then that a good recipe for healing any sort of broken heart started with equal parts truth and acceptance. Add the patient understanding of a true friend and then let those ingredients rise under the Italian sun. The results were bound to be delicious.