Sisterchicks in Gondolas! (21 page)

“Look at that tile,” Sue said. “And the marble pattern
between the levels. The tour book said the arches and tile work are the best example of Veneto Byzantine design. I was curious to see what that meant.”

“It’s impressive,” I said.

We tried the front door and found it locked. A sign indicated the open hours; we had arrived during the afternoon siesta. Walking around to the shady side, we studied the archways that lined the structure.

“Stand in one of the archways,” I said. “I’ll take your picture. Pose like a statue.”

Sue went for my suggestion and struck a pose. No one was around. She went for another pose, this one like a cupid on a lacey Valentine.

“Your turn.” She took the camera from me.

I struck an Atlas pose inside the hollowed-out arch along the side of the church. The alcove was the perfect size and shape for a statue. I wondered if in years past magnificent statues had sat in these shadowed places and, if so, had they been carried off as spoils of war?

We heard people coming our way, and that put a freeze on my modeling career.

“These pictures are perfect.” Sue reviewed them on the digital screen.

“Perfect for what? Who are you going to show them to?”

“Jack. He told me to take lots of pictures, and I’ve hardly taken any.”

“So? Start snapping. Or, better yet, give me the camera,
and I’ll start snapping. Jack isn’t going to want to see me in a bunch of pictures. He’s going to want to see you.”

“Take pictures of everything then,” Sue said. “All the interesting things that Jack would enjoy.”

Sue didn’t know what a great assignment she had given me. I never had realized how much I enjoyed taking pictures until Sue gave me full liberty with her camera that day.

I
loved capturing Venegia’s
many faces and moods on camera. And I loved watching Sue as she and Venezia interacted with each other.

All I can say is that it’s a good thing Sue was photogenic. It was an even better thing that her camera was digital. I took hundreds of pictures and deleted dozens. Since deleting was easy, I didn’t hesitate to press the button at will.

The most interesting part for me was watching Sue transform. In front of the camera, she switched from the timid observer of her surroundings to the bold interpreter. She started seeing things around us in light of how she wanted Jack to see them and positioned herself to best take in the surroundings.

A bridge, like many that we had plodded across during the week, suddenly became a “subject” to Sue. She wanted
to capture various angles and did everything but throw herself over the side and into Murano’s Grand Canal in an effort to set up just the right composition.

This newfound shared hobby only fanned the flame of Sue’s innate map-reading and puzzle-solving skills.

The gifting it uncovered in me was the opportunity to be “in the moment,” which I loved, without being “in the spotlight,” which never had been my forte. My only regret was that the camera was a still camera. Sue was so into our new roles that I wanted to catch some of her moments on a video camera.

I did capture a wonderful picture of Sue on the vaporetto during our return trip from Murano. The island of the glassblowers was in the background, and Sue’s face was set, jaw forward, toward Venezia. Her expression was peaceful yet pensive, as it had been on the balcony earlier. She looked as if she were trying to figure out something.

Surprisingly, she hadn’t asked once if her hair needed attention.

What I liked about the pictures was that she was looking ahead, not looking back. That might have been more symbolic for me than for Sue, but it came through in her posture and expression. Filtered sunlight made its way through the thin clouds and warmed the murky water. The lighting gave Sue’s skin a luminous glow. She looked young and full of life, with the wind in her hair and a dancing smile on her turned-up lips.

As I studied the last picture on the digital screen, I told her I didn’t think I’d seen that expression on her face once during the past five years. Maybe never.

Sue didn’t respond to my comment. It could have been because the vaporetto was pulling into dock or because I’d embarrassed her. Regardless, it turned out to be a fantastic photo. Jack now has that picture framed and on his nightstand.

What followed the discovery of my delight in shooting pictures and Sue’s delight in virtual tour guiding was an insane footstep frenzy. We felt we had to tromp all over Venice and capture everything on film.

Instead of taking our usual straight route back to the palace, Sue did a quick study of the map and led us a long way around, through a neighborhood that had beautifully restored buildings along a canal. So much of Venice was dilapidated and past due for repairs, but this area had received special attention and care. Colorful geraniums cascaded from planters on the balconies. I captured a picture of the flowers clashing with Sue’s hair as she stood in the foreground.

We more or less circled Venice by foot, shooting pictures every few minutes along the way. At Sue’s suggestion, we avoided San Marco Square. It was the middle of the afternoon, and if all we had heard was correct, the crowds would be at their thickest.

“We’ll make tomorrow our San Marco day,” Sue said.
“We’ll start early and have time to take it all in.”

That plan was fine with me.

We came upon a sunny piazza with a corner bookstore that looked inviting. At the outdoor café across the way, a small man was playing a large accordion while diners ate under widespread café umbrellas.

Sue and I looked through the books displayed on the table in front of the bookstore. Many of them were in English. I picked up one of the books of photographic studies of Venice. The text was printed in English along with Italian, French and German. For most of the pictures, though, a written description in four language wasn’t necessary. The photos spoke for themselves.

“That’s gorgeous,” Sue said, looking on with me.

An aerial view of Venice made it easy to see all the canals as well as the tops of the sienna buildings.

“How much is this book?” she asked.

I turned it over so she could see the price of 20 euros. Sue thought it was a little high, so we looked through other books. Even though quite a few photography books of Venice were on the table, none of the volumes seemed to overlap. Venice wore so many masks and had so many facets that each book covered different locations. The common themes repeated in a variety of ways in each book were the gondolas and the pigeons at San Marco Square.

“We’re going to have to take a gondola ride.” Sue gazed at one of the pictures. She had gone back to the original
book with the higher price tag. All her attention was on a picture of a craftsman who was hand-polishing a long, upside-down, black gondola balanced on a sawhorse inside a workshop.

“It says here that two hundred years ago Venice had ten thousand gondolas, but now there are less than five hundred. Each one is handmade, and they’re painted black with six coats of special paint.”

I quietly reached for the camera. Stepping back, I took a picture of Sue looking at the book about Venice while standing in Venice.

“Did you just take my picture?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I wasn’t looking.”

“I know. But you’re going to buy that book. I know you are. Jack is going to ask where you bought it, and now you’ll be able to show him.”

“You are a better salesperson than the man at the glass display room. What makes you so sure I’m going to buy this?”

“Because you’re going to get home and try to tell Jack all these details like how much a gondola weighs—”

“A half a ton, it says here.”

I gave Sue a pretend flustered look for the way she cut me off.

“I’m sorry. You were saying?”

“You’re getting that book, Sue. And now you’ll have a
picture of you looking at the book before you bought it.”

She looked at it again, this time with her chin slightly elevated and her profile tilted toward the best light. “Go ahead and take another shot, then. Just in case the first one doesn’t turn out.”

I think it’s fun to periodically support a friend’s fleeting moment of vanity. We spend too much time tearing ourselves down and keeping mental lists of our flaws. When the chance comes to nurture each other’s finer points, I’m all for it.

That must explain why it didn’t bother me to keep taking shots of Sue as she posed this way and that. She could be strikingly photogenic when I caught her in just the right light and position.

Sue bought the book, of course, and we continued our walking tour, eyes open, camera snapping, drinking it all in. Whenever we found ourselves in a passageway thick with tourists, we went another route. Sue’s sense of direction was extraordinary.

My sense of smell was what impressed Sue. I sniffed out something delectable and led us to a pizzeria where the most enticing fragrance of garlic and artichoke wafted out its open door.

We stepped inside the small, dimly lit pizzeria and saw the wood oven where the pizzas were having the garlic breath baked out of them. A couple of Italian words, a thumb and finger visual for “due,” and a couple of euros
bought us huge slices of flat-crusted pizza that we walked outside with to enjoy.

“How strange that there’s no cheese,” Sue said. “It’s all tomato sauce and a garden of vegetables.”

I didn’t respond. I was too busy sliding the pointed end of my Italian vegetable garden into my happy mouth. “Mmm.” As soon as I swallowed, I said, “A ten. Definitely a ten. Do you realize this is our first taste of Italian pizza?”

“It’s okay.” Sue dabbed the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Okay? Just okay?”

She nodded. “It’s no tiramisu gelato.”

“Therein lies the difference in our choices of comfort food. I am a bread woman rather than a sugar mama.”

“That’s because you’re a Midwestern born-and-bred baby. I, on the other hand, was raised on sweet tea.”

Sue had heard more than once how I felt about her Texas sweet tea. I called it “hummingbird brown beverage” and avoided it.

We had been walking while we ate. I think our legs were on autopilot. Across from us was a narrow canal spanned by an unusually wide bridge. The edge of the bridge was wide and low enough to sit on without fear of falling backward.

I led the way, and we sat down to finish our late afternoon snack. A lone gondolier floated down the canal in
our direction, as if he had been summoned. I grabbed the camera and snapped his picture.

“Gondola?” he called out with a welcoming smile.

“No thanks,” I said.

He floated on. I took a picture of his back to catch the motion of the wide ribbons fluttering from his straw hat. The sunlight sliced through a gap between the buildings and illuminated his form.

“It’s remarkable the way they stand at the back of the gondolas, isn’t it?” Sue said. “Do you know how they stay balanced?”

“No, but I’m guessing you know.” I snapped another shot.

“I read it in this wonderful book that my sister-in-law talked me into buying.”

“See? You’re glad already, aren’t you?”

Ignoring me, she pushed ahead with her lesson in gondola structure. “They don’t have keels or rudders. The bottoms are fairly flat to move over sandbars. They’re designed so the prow curves to the left. That offsets the gondolier’s motion with the oar and keeps the gondola from going in circles.”

I watched the gondolier’s steady movements as Sue talked. He did a poetic sort of dance, a smooth and soundless waltz across the shallow waters of the glassy canal.

“The oars are curved in a special way as well,” Sue continued. “The balance between the prow and the oar is what
makes the gondola go straight without the gondolier’s having to switch the oar from side to side with each stroke.”

“Amazing.”

“Do you really mean that, or are you teasing me and I just can’t tell the difference anymore?”

“No, I’m serious. That is amazing.” Putting down the camera I turned to Sue, who still was nibbling on her pizza. “Does it seem like I’m teasing you too much?”

“No. I like the teasing. I like the way you’ve been having so much fun on this trip and including me in everything. At home we’re both so much more serious. I like it the way it’s been.”

“Me, too.”

“In that case, do you want to hear one more little-known fact about gondolas?”

“Yes.”

“Really really?”

“Yes, really really. Tell me.”

“This piece of info is actually about the gondoliers, not the gondolas. When a gondolier dies, the license to operate a gondola is passed on to his widow.”

That tidbit didn’t seem spectacular, so I waited for Sue to continue.

“Don’t you see? It means that the gondola trade has stayed within the same families for hundreds of years. It’s like Steph was saying about Paolo’s café. These gondoliers are all from long lines of gondoliers.”

Again, as if on cue, another gondolier came our way and called out,
“Bella donnas!
Beautiful ladies! You are waiting for me, no? You are ready for a gondola ride.”