Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [85]
“Oh, there are moments when I think of someone and find myself missing him,” I said. “But I don’t know if it’s love I’m feeling. In a way, it seems more like feeling the absence of love.”
“That’s interesting, although I’m not sure what it means,” Vivian said.
I laughed. “I’m not so sure I know what it means either.”
Earlier that day Vivian and I had spent part of the afternoon visiting the Peggy Guggenheim collection of twentieth-century art. We had taken the vaporetto across the Grand Canal to Dorsoduro; from there we walked along the narrow calli to the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where Guggenheim had lived until her death in 1979. Now her modern art collection is there, existing side by side, like a debutant among dowagers, with the High Renaissance art at the stately Accademia Gallery.
Although Vivian and her husband had visited Venice several times, she’d never seen the Guggenheim collection. “Hal and I were not much drawn to modern art,” she told me as we entered the quiet, shady courtyard at the rear of the palazzo. Vivian often linked her observations to those of her late husband, Hal; occasionally she would accidentally slip into the present tense. I had the impression that part of Vivian lived in the past; that often what she enjoyed or did not enjoy was linked to memories of traveling with Hal.
I understood this. Although Mother had been dead for almost ten years, more than once on this trip I’d had the urge to phone her: “Hello, Mother,” I could hear myself saying, “you won’t believe it, but today in a private garden I saw the most beautiful three-hundred-year-old yellow rose growing against a pink brick wall.”
But Vivian, I found, was also capable of enjoying new experiences. When we emerged from the Peggy Guggenheim museum, she was genuinely enthusiastic about the collection. I told her I admired her for being open enough to let go of her prejudice against modern art.
Her answer was not what I expected. “I just wish I weren’t so prejudiced against the future,” she said. “At my age it’s a constant struggle to look ahead and be optimistic.”
If appearance and energy were any indication, Vivian could be in her fifties. However, certain biographical facts mentioned by her suggested she was closer to seventy. Marta, who liked Vivian, leaned toward the higher figure. “I think she’s had a facelift,” Marta said. “It’s subtle, but there’s something about the mouth.” Bernie, who said he didn’t know from facelifts, said, “What does it matter? I’d be happy to have that kind of energy at any age.”
It was true. Vivian seemed tireless.
“Let’s walk back to the hotel,” she said after leaving the Guggenheim collection. She was suggesting a walk of at last two miles; more, if we got lost in the narrow, winding calli that snaked through Venice with no obvious beginning or end. Walking in Venice, I had found, was like white-water rafting: once you entered the eddies and swirls of these small streets the only thing to do was go with the flow. To me, being swept along to some mysterious destination was part of the city’s magical allure.
After forty minutes of walking, we emerged from one of the narrow calli onto the vast open space of the Piazza San Marco. Vivian didn’t seem or look tired. In fact she suggested we stroll around the arcade and do some window-shopping. A few shops down from Florian’s, Vivian stopped in front of a window display of expensive jewelry. She told me of her husband’s habit of buying her a gift, usually jewelry, on each of their trips. In Venice, he had surprised her with a turquoise bracelet.
“The one I’m wearing,” she said, raising her arm to show me a lovely blue-green rope of turquoise. “He bought it here, in this