(published in -- an anthology of student writing)

I can only see the sky if I look straight up; the restof my visual field is full of cobbled streets, Renaissance architecture, andhuman bodies. I hear snippets of conversation in scores of tongues over thesoft sound of water lapping against stone walls. The smell of humid decayhovers over the stir like a nearly forgotten memory.

“Americano!” I hear a woman’s voice cry out. I turn tosee her gesturing wildly, like a living Italian caricature, as an overturnedbasket spills strawberries over the street. They catch in the cracks of thecobblestones. A middle-aged man, lacking the color and vitality of Italians,stares at her, clearly wishing the stones would separate and swallow him,saving him from the awkwardness of this cross-cultural faux pas. 

“Americano!”the woman says again, the term clearly meant pejoratively despite the elegantcurlicues of her accent. She angrily bends over and begins to pick up herspilled produce. The man continuesto watch her. We hang back, not wanting to be associated with this maladroittourist. We are culturallyliterate “travellers,” as opposed to hapless “tourists” like this man. Surely we don’t deserve to be lumped intothe same category as him and his clumsy ignorance. We stay huddled in our patriotic cliques – the Venetianoppressed by rampant capitalist tourism, the American oppressors, and thepolite Canadians, too certain of their own resented presence to do anything.

Venice is a city built on a slowly sinking woodenskeleton, a position as precarious as its economic status. Clinging to theremnants of its opulent past with one hand and grasping at the fickle touristdollar with the other, Venice struggles to project an image of timelessness.Venetians have learned to quietly slip into the background and let theexploitation of their past musical, artistic and architectural glory bring inthe customers.

It’s hard to imagine the constant presence of crowds -- pushypeople clad in khakis and sunglasses with cameras slung around their necks --not being silently resented by the largely unseen locals. The city has a feelof an enormous stage set; the idea that there are actually real Venetianshidden in the labyrinthine streets, spending ordinary days at work and school,seems implausible. All that seems real are the high prices and perpetualdiscord: the clashing of reality and fantasy, today and yesterday.

Aswe sit crammed together in a vaporettowith strangers from all over the world, no one speaks, each of us silentlytrying to preserve the same idealized vision of Venice in our minds that thecity itself tries so hard to project. Unaware of the importance of pretentiousness, a little girl approachesus without fear or prejudice and begins to chatter in Italian. She’s confused when we reply in English– “water,” “boat,” “backpack.” Hearing our muddled communication, her fatherencourages us all to sing the only English song this little girl knows:“Imagine all the people / Living life in peace....” 

The boat, shifting gently on the current of the Grand Canal,suddenly becomes much cosier, as everyone seems to relax. If only for a second, it’s clear thatwe are not entirely resented.

(published in the Spring 2009 issue of -- a biannual anthology of student writing)

1. Today youforgot to meet me for coffee. I waited for an hour but you didn’t show up. Iwas worried because it was so unlike you, but eventually I left the coffee shopand drove to your house. You had gotten the days wrong. We had a good laugh andcoffee in your kitchen.

2. There are toomany buttons on the VCR, you say. You used to muddle through, punching almosthaphazardly, until you managed to record “Fawlty Towers” for Grandpa. Thesedays you just look at the machine intently, hoping it will somehow reveal itssecrets to you. To clear things up I write detailed step-by-step instructionsso you can manage. You curse this “newfangled technology.” We have a good laugh,and joke about getting you a Blu-ray disc player.

3. Your keys keepgetting away from you. You put them down, then they mosey off, nestling in somecoat pocket or ash tray or shoe. Eventually you always find them, with the red“#1 Grandma” keychain sticking like a flag out of the most unlikely places. Grandpatalks about getting you a metal detector for Christmas. We have a good laugh.At least usually.

4. Someone told methey saw you running a red light. You had always been a careful driver. Toocareful. We always had a good laugh over it, particularly when the threeo’clock traffic got lined up behind you and you felt it was your civic duty toflash them the middle finger. You tried to take the driver’s test again, butthree tries were enough. I told you I would drive you wherever you needed togo.

5. The other dayat the store you forgot your PIN number. You looked at me, panicky. I handedthe cashier a twenty. We didn’t laugh.

6. You wake up at foura.m. because you’re afraid you’ll be late for the dentist. You’re convinced theclock is lying. And the calendar. And Grandpa, when he finds you fully dressed,coat and shoes and all, staring at the clock. He told you that you didn’t needto be there till after noon, but you wouldn’t go back to bed. You waited there,jaw clenched, for eight hours.

7. Yourhandwriting had always been perfect, the product of an age before computersmade legibility obsolete. The letters all slanted evenly, thirty degrees to theright, the loops of the Gs and Ls as perfectly formed as a full balloon. Nowthe writing shakes and scraggles off the page.

8. You stopsinging halfway through “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” because you’ve forgotten thewords. It has been your favourite song since you were sixteen.

9. You yelled. Younever yell.

10. Grandpastarted locking you in your room at night after he found you shivering outsideone October morning. “The flowers are all dead,” he said, trying to make youlaugh. “No need to water them.” You look at the brown leaves in the flower bedand give him a confused smile.

11. We watchJeopardy every day. On one of the days when you know the answer to everyquestion, you remind me that you never want to be a burden.

12. There’s notenough room for everyone in a publicly funded health care system. We stand infront of a jury, presenting evidence in a trial where the only crime is growingold. We try to out-senile the other people. We win.

13. You look at melike you’re trying to place me as a nurse fluffs your pillow. When I smile, yousmile back, vacantly. We still laugh, but for no reason. I play the piano foryou and you hum along, every note wrong.

Yourfeet fading into the long grass is the last thing I see before I wake up, yourpink hair writhing in the breeze like tentacles, even though you kept your hairshort, and it was always fuschia, you said, not pink, you would clench yourteeth when people called it pink, and you’d hide behind boxes or benches orwhatever you could find until people understood you again, so I look for youthere, between cracked teapots and broken ironing boards too useless for thethrift store, everything forgotten and lonely like you thought you were, butyou weren’t, not while I was there, because you were always everything I needed,even when we’d fight over the Barbies or the ice cream or whatever the spoilsof the day were and you were my enemy, but I knew it would be okay by the timewe said our prayers and were tucked into our twin beds, with only the nighttable between us we’d whisper about boys and clothes and movie stars and thefighting downstairs and the way the sunlight fell on the floor of our room atsunrise and the poor children on TV with flies in their mouths and how theymade us feel guilty, sitting on the living room floor in pajamas with bowls ofLucky Charms, cozy in our complacency, until you didn’t come home one day,after we had a fight, and I thought you were still mad so I looked and lookedbut you didn’t want to be found, and you never were, only your shoes and yourbackpack and some teeth and bones they said were yours.