Sisterchicks in Gondolas! (7 page)

“A
re you hungry?”
Sue pulled away from our rooftop shame-off-you session.

“Hungry?”

“I’m hungry. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? My mother used to say if you would rather eat than weep it means you’re feeling better.”

“Then let’s go eat!”

We made our way down the stairs, changed into cooler clothes, and took the paper with the name of the restaurant Steph had recommended. Sue made sure we had a map and all the house keys, which was a good thing, because my thoughts were on my limited options of cool clothes. I wished I had a flattering skirt to wear like Steph and some of the other women we had seen earlier. Sunday afternoon in Venice just seemed to call for something other than
chinos or jeans. In a supreme effort to pack light, all I’d brought was one pair of each. I also had packed one sleeveless blouse, which I wore now to the restaurant. Shopping was definitely going on my to-do list this week.

Shopping in Venice
. I smiled at the thought.

We didn’t pass any shops on our way to the
restaurante
. We did pass several other restaurants. Each of them offered outdoor waterfront eating at small tables. Dozens of afternoon diners were caught up in what we soon learned was a delight of Venetians: long, luxurious dining with friends.

Sue and I were shown to a table for two at the water’s edge and were handed small menus.

“This is nice.” I took my seat, feeling a warm breeze rise from the expanse of salty sea.

Sue nodded and used her menu to fan herself. “I should have worn a short-sleeve shirt like you. Mine all need to be ironed. This is a different kind of heat than we have at home. It feels more penetrating and not as humid.”

I made agreeing sounds and scanned the menu. Everything was listed in Italian, but the names were familiar: lasagna, ravioli, and manicotti. This was going to be easy.

The waiter stepped up and asked something in Italian.

Sue jumped in and said, “Hello. I’d like the lasagna,
por favor
. Oh, wait, that’s Spanish again. How do y’all say ‘please’ in Italian? By any chance do you speak English?”

He pinched his thumb and first finger together. “A little.”

“Good. I would like the lasagna and sweet tea with lots of ice.”

I mentioned to Sue they wouldn’t have sweet tea here. They might have hot tea, but iced tea, sweet or otherwise, wasn’t a likely beverage to find in Italy.

She looked back at the waiter. “Just a bottle of water then. Lasagna and water with lots of ice.”

I ordered the lasagna and water as well. After our waiter stepped away, I tried to explain to Sue why it also wasn’t likely she would be served ice with her water. Unless things had changed considerably in European dining since my last visit, ice rarely was served. I told her about one time in Belgium, on a record-breaking summer afternoon, when a friend of mine begged for ice for her drink. The waiter brought a serving bowl with big chunks of icicles to her, as if he had just chipped the frost out of a freezer with a hatchet. After that we learned to adapt to warm soft drinks.

“Guess I have some adjusting to do.” She didn’t sound thrilled at the thought. “If you don’t mind my saying it, Jenna, you didn’t tell me how limiting things were going to be here in the deep end.”

I leaned in closer. “But you’re lovin’ it, aren’t you?”

“I’m adjusting,” she said ambiguously.

A luxurious cruiser boat motored past our restaurant,
carrying what looked like a family, including a dog with his snout to the wind and a grandma who sat in the back, wearing a scarf over her hair. The dad at the helm was using one hand to steer and the other hand to express his feelings to his son, who was standing up and appeared to be arguing with his sister. The boy sat down and folded his arms in disgust. It could have been a Rockwell painting of any family on their way home from vacation, but this family just happened to be going home on a boat instead of in an old Ford station wagon.

Sue looked past all the Sunday afternoon boating traffic. “I wonder if that island over there is the island of Murano. I read about that one in the tour book. It’s where they make glass, with the craftsmen demonstrating how glass is blown the ancient way. I’d like to go there if it works out. Oh, wait, I still have the map.” Sue pulled it out and pointed to the island across the water from us. “Is that it?”

“Isola di San Michele,”
I read the words on the map. In parenthesis was the word
“Cimitero.”

“Cimitero,” I repeated and went scrounging for my Italian phrase book. Looking up at Sue, I announced, “That’s the cemetery.”

“The whole island?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. A lot of people have lived in Venice for a lot of years.”

“Creepy,” Sue said, giving a little shiver. We found Murano on the map and were happy to see that it was just
the next island over from the cimitero. We even figured out what vaporetto we could take to Murano and the best time of day to observe the glassblowing.

In the midst of our planning, our waiter arrived with lunch. The water came in a tall plastic bottle with two glasses and no ice. We put away the map and tour book and dove into the lasagna. The meat sauce was flavorful with sausage and herbs and a wonderful balance of light cheese and marinara sauce. I counted seven layers of thin lasagna noodles that were cooked just right. Sue and I both agreed we never had eaten such good lasagna.

“I think I have a new favorite hangout,” Sue said, looking around. “Waterfront dining even. Although we still have to put this place to the true test and try some of their gelato.”

Sue asked our waiter, in what I thought was a too-loud voice, “What do you think is the best flavor?”

“Fragole.”

Sue looked to me for approval or for a translation; I wasn’t sure which. I had no idea what fragole was, but I was willing to be surprised, so I gave a supportive nod. Sue ordered
“do-aye fra-goal-ee”
without any idea what we were getting.

The colorful dessert dishes were delivered with a triangular-shaped wafer stuck in the side of a smear of what turned out to be strawberry gelato. I say smear because it looked as if the waiter had taken a small spatula and
packed the gelato into the dish rather than scooping it with a rounded spoon.

Sue tried her first taste with an exacting, discerning air. Smacking her lips, she tried a second taste. “Superb. Bright taste. The strawberry flavor comes through clear and sweet without being overpowering.”

I laughed. “You’re going to turn into a gelato snob, I hope you know.”

“There are worse things.”

“You know, Sue, I’m wondering if you need to develop a scale system here.”

“Why? To see how much I weigh before and after I sample all the gelato?”

“No, you nut. I mean a scale of one to ten to rate your favorite.”

“Excellent idea. I give this one a 7.5. No, an 8.” She pulled out her notebook. Her unabashed love affair with Italian gelato was in full bloom as she listed her rating.

“What do you rate this
fra-goal-ee
flavor?”

“I’d give it a five.”

“Only a five?”

“Okay, a 5.5 but that’s my top score. It’s nice, but I’m not wild about strawberries.”

“You’re kidding! I never knew that. What about berries in general? Blueberries?”

I shrugged. “I can take them or leave them. Now, when it comes to apricots …”

“Look it up,” Sue said. “Look up the Italian word for ‘apricot.’ We’ll see if they have it.”

I flipped through my book and read the word
albicocca
.

Sue made a joke out of the way I pronounced it. “All right, then. You be a Coca Cola and ahl be a Pepsi.”

It took me a minute to catch her joke. The waiter approached as I was laughing, and Sue cracked me up even more when she said to him, “Excuse me, sir, but do y’all have
ahl-be-a-coca
ice cream? I mean, gel-ah-toe?”

He looked to me for translation, and in between swallowing my laughter, I formulated the request in a combination of English and Italian and pointed to the word for ‘apricot’ in my phrase book.

“No.” His answer was clear and simple. He walked away.

“Okay, then,” Sue said. “We’ll just take our gelato business elsewhere. Maybe our Paolo has apricot gelato.”

“Do you want to walk back there now to find out?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? I’m ready to walk back to our palace and take a princess-sized nap. Aren’t you tired?”

“I could sleep.”

With our stomachs satisfied and the heat of the day rising, Sue and I meandered back to our “palace” and worked the key in the front entry. We stumbled our way across the dark, dirt floor and slowly hiked up the three flights of
marble stairs. Unlocking the front door took a little more effort with the persnickety locks. But all our work was rewarded when we entered the beautifully cool palace. Instead of winding down the hall to the princess beds, we made a beeline for the two couches in the sitting room. It was the coolest room in the house and immensely inviting.

We didn’t even close the shutters to the mid-day brightness. In tandem motion, both of us spread out on the comfortable couches and drifted into our afternoon siestas as if we had been raised on the custom.

The sleep I experienced that day was deep. Deep, restorative, and sweet. I slept for three hours, dead to the world, and woke feeling refreshed.

Sue was still sleeping when I stirred. It looked as if she hadn’t moved a muscle from the way she first had lain down. Something impish in me wanted to tiptoe over and find a feather to tickle her nose or her bare feet.

Instead of disturbing her, I studied the frescos on the walls and then turned over and eyed the paintings on the ceiling. The clouds looked light and dimensional, as if they actually puffed out from the ceiling a few inches more than the rest of the painting. I loved the shade of blue in the sky. It was a soft, soothing, reflecting-pool blue and added coolness to the room.

From the open windows rose the echoing call of a young child. The voice was so loud that Sue’s eyelids fluttered. She turned over and went back to sleep. Rising and
going to the open windows as quietly as I could, I looked down on the piazza. The ancient capped well in the center of the cobblestones had become the meeting place for two women and four busy children. Two dark-haired boys wearing shorts and brown leather lace-up shoes with white socks were riding tricycles in circles around the well. Two girls had a rope and were organizing a skipping game, with the taller girl calling out her instructions with universal big-sister authority. Her loud voice had found its way to our quarters and echoed off the high ceilings.

“What time is it?” Sue asked.

“Ten after four.”

“You’re kidding. Wow, I can’t believe how long we slept.”

“You have to come see this,” I said from where I stood by the window looking down on the piazza. “Look at these children.”

The two mothers stood with their arms folded across the front of them, chatting, nodding, and keeping a maternal eye on their little ones. The skipping rope game was in full swing, and the tricycle racers were picking up their speed.

I don’t know what Sue was thinking about, but I guessed it was the same thing I was thinking. We were mothers of young children once. And now they are grown. I thought back to when my daughter, Callie, was that young. She was twenty-six now, as independent as all
get-out and yet faithful to call me regularly. She had been to Dallas four times to see me in the two years I’d lived there.

Callie and I “grew up” together, just the two of us, tucked into a tiny house in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. She and I moved into the cottage when she was five. It had been my grandparents’ summer place, and they had left it to me in their will with a request that I never sell it but give it to Callie. I did, and she still lived there with a fat cat named Max and a steady stream of houseguests every summer.

When Callie was seven she asked if she could “paint” her room. She painted a bright yellow sun in the top corner and lined the bottom edge with rows of blue and red posies. From the ceiling she hung five paper butterflies on fishing line that fluttered about whenever the windows were open, welcoming the breeze off the lake. That was apparently the start of her graphic arts career, which was now in full swing at a greeting card company only twenty miles from home.

I remembered all the afternoons Callie and her friends would ride their bikes the four blocks to the lake. I would stand at the front window watching until their bobbing ponytails turned the corner on Mercury Avenue. Callie was an independent thirteen-year-old, and I was a nervous cat. I would make myself busy for an hour or less before I returned to the front window with furniture to dust or
laundry to fold while I continued my vigil.

“Women are the same the world over, aren’t they?” Sue stood beside me and looked out the window with a tender gaze.

“Yes, we are. And you know what I think? I think what those women are doing right now is a beautiful work of art. Someone should make a tapestry of that or paint a wall with scenes of mothers watching their children play.”