Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [86]
I agreed and we entered the shop. Immediately, a well-dressed man with coiffed silver hair approached us. “May I help you?” he asked.
Vivian showed him the bracelet and explained she was interested in turquoise earrings. “My husband bought the bracelet here and I thought you might be able to match the color.” Vivian and I were then seated in chairs before a glass case on top of which were flat black velvet pads. The man left, returning with a small case of turquoise earrings. I could see at once they were not at all the same color as Vivian’s bracelet. Vivian could, too, but was polite enough to try on one of the earrings before pointing out the difference. When she did, the man became annoyed.
“But that is as close as you can get, signora. If you know turquoise you know this is a good match.”
“But I have seen turquoise in just the shade of my bracelet,” Vivian said.
“Well, perhaps, signora, you should buy that turquoise,” the salesman said curtly, removing the turquoise earrings from the black velvet pad. He was dismissing Vivian. And she knew it.
“That would never have happened if I’d been with Hal,” she said, walking back to the hotel. “Or if I were a younger woman.” She sighed. “That’s the worst thing about growing older. People dismiss you. As though you were a child.”
“Oh, Vivian, you’re much too much of a force to be dismissed,” I said. My reassurance, however, did not cheer her. For the first time on the trip, she looked tired.
As I lay in bed that night I thought of Vivian’s remark about optimism. Or, more to the point, her observation about the difficulty of maintaining optimism as you grow older. I thought about the bittersweet feelings I had in Milan as I watched Carolyn go off to begin a new life. Everything was ahead of her, I had thought then. Including the idea of time as an infinite presence. Unlike me, she had not yet heard the faint sound of a clock ticking.
But as I lay in bed in Venice, thinking about the people I’d met on this trip and the challenges and excitement that each day brought, I heard no ticking. Instead I thought about how I had surprised myself this year by jumping in to reshape my life before life stepped in to reshape it for me.
And, I reasoned, if I could reinvent myself once, I could do it more than once.
The next morning brought a surprise. When I arrived at Florian’s for my cappuccino, the Piazza San Marco was almost entirely under water—in some places by as much as a foot. To allow pedestrians to cross the square, catwalks had been set up on metal trestles that rose a few feet above the water. Fascinated, I watched as people struggled to navigate the narrow wooden planks. Since pedestrian traffic flowed in both directions like a two-lane highway, crossing required not only balance but nerve. Particularly disadvantaged were the new arrivals to Venice, those just deposited by vaporetto and searching for their hotels. They had the added burden of dragging their luggage with them across the makeshift platforms.
“It’s the acque alte,” said the waiter, standing next to me in the arcade outside Florian’s. “The high waters from the lagoon.”
I had read about the acque alte. I knew that each year, usually between October and April, exceptionally high tides poured through the three gates and into the city. The Piazza San Marco was particularly vulnerable, the waiter told me, because it is the lowest point in Venice.
After watching for several more minutes, I mounted a plank that would deposit me near the less-crowded Castello neighborhood. The group was leaving for Florence after lunch, and before we left I wanted to check out an inexpensive pensione recommended by a friend. I already knew I wanted to spend more time in Venice, and this place sounded quite nice.
Sadly, I never got there.
Halfway across the catwalk a major pile-up occurred when some school kids, out for a joy walk, decided to play a version of “chicken” on the narrow planks. After