Read Online What Casanova Told Me by Susan Swan - Free Book Online Page B

middle-aged women like herself envied girls like Luce, that envy of the young was part of growing old. No, it was pity she felt looking at Luce’s vulnerable, long-limbed body. Pity and a great weariness. She left Luce a note at the reception desk and set out to find the old waterfront apartment she’d lived in with Luce’s mother on the Riva degli Schiavoni during their last winter together; Kitty Adams had been teaching at the university, and she had tagged along on a research grant.
    Despite the crowds, she made her way there quickly and stood gazing up at the huge, blank windows overlooking the Basin of San Marco. Who was enjoying its splendid view of San Giorgio now? And its huge, light-filled rooms with the breeze from the Adriatic always fresh through its hallway? The stay in Venice had been their last happy time together, despite the exhibitionist who had singled Kitty out at the university. For two weeks, the man had stood buck naked in the window of an apartment across from Kitty’s classroom, as chubby as a Ducal Palace cupid. It was soon apparent he was visible only to Kitty lecturing on her dais; the students couldn’t see him. One morning, when her class was on break, Kitty leaned out her window and lifted up her shirt to reveal her bare breasts. The man retreated into the shadows, wearing, Kitty told her later, a lookof immense sorrow. He didn’t reappear. “I have ‘breasted’ a man,” Kitty told Lee. “The way explorers breast a river.”
    How like Kitty to tread wittily through unpleasant situations, she thought. Kitty had joked that the exhibitionist was lucky he could satisfy his longings so simply.
    Lee turned her back on the apartment and set off down the boardwalk, her face mournful. Did anyone understand the depth of love she had felt for Kitty? Sometimes she found herself wondering if Kitty herself had understood. If Kitty had known how to handle her moods, perhaps she wouldn’t have driven off without her and died. But that was rubbish. She, Lee, was the guilty party.
    She supposed Luce, too, was still finding things hard. Beatrice, Kitty’s sister, had told her that Luce had been obliged to rent out rooms to students in her mother’s old house to defray costs. The money coming to Luce in the form of a trust wasn’t hers until she turned thirty-five. How old was Luce, anyway? She’d forgotten. Almost twenty-eight? When Lee was the same age she had already secured a tenure track position and was teaching students who stumbled about campus wearing the same glassy, distracted look as Luce.
    Of course, she didn’t really know Luce. Kitty had been protective and secretive about her relationship with her daughter, but Lee knew a deep love had existed between them. Then she and Kitty had left Luce behind when they set out on their travels, going back to Toronto only occasionally when Kitty wanted some time with her daughter. The last occasion she had seen Luce had been at Kitty’s funeral.
    A year after Kitty’s death, an archivist at the Miller Archives and Rare Books had telephoned Lee and explained that she was worried about Luce who had become withdrawn since her mother’s death. The archivist, a friend of Kitty’s, had asked forLee’s help, and Lee had replied brusquely: “Not my business.” What could she possibly do for a young woman she barely knew? When Kitty died, Lee had taken early retirement and gone to live in Brooklyn. She had no idea what Luce was thinking or feeling.
    And she knew even less about being motherly. Nor was it easy to learn at this stage, she told herself as she left the boardwalk, heading for the Piazza San Marco. She’d considered herself too much of a solo operator to put up with a family—even Kitty’s family. Still, she had decided to try for Kitty’s sake.
    Looking across the square, she spotted Luce reading at a café near the basilica. Luce was what used to be called a strapping girl, Lee thought. And yet despite the boyish crop cut and broad