Le Grand Canal à Venise, 1875
(Oil on canvas, 54 × 65 cm)
BY Édouard Manet
Shelburne Museum

The boat was about to leave. It was moored just a few steps further down the quay. People were still milling about.

“It’s him,” I said to Simone. “C’mon, let’s get on the boat.”

“Him?” She said, and she looked at me, and I looked at her.

“Hurry,” I said.

Her mouth opened and shut. She read my eyes. I rushed ahead in my panic. And so did she. But the stones were worn and slippery, and behind me she slid and lost her balance. I heard a splash. Somebody screamed. I turned, and saw Simone flailing in the lagoon.

Two men threw themselves into the water. For a second I saw Simone’s face in the foam from the boat. The motor had just started, but people at the rail were screaming and shouting and pointing. I stood on the edge of the stones, paralyzed, hardly able to breathe, watching the swimmers dive down. I waited for one of the men to emerge with Simone. Another man kicked off his shoes and flung himself into the water. The boat turned off its motor. A motorboat sped across the lagoon and the wake washed over my feet. I heard sirens. I was sobbing. A woman in a black dress put her arm around me and tried to comfort me. Two of the swimmers clambered up, shaking water and seaweed off their heads. The third kept diving but it was no use. The metal brace on her leg had kept Simone on the bottom, and only later, when professional divers in wet suits entered the lagoon, and probed the trash and seaweed, were they able to find her body.

Linda blamed me, of course. I was never able to explain why I’d disturbed Simone’s nap and taken her to the quay that afternoon. I just kept telling the truth, that we’d gone for a walk. Anyway, the man I thought was Jack could not have been Jack. Jack had stopped by the apartment, he’d told Linda, but nobody was there, and he’d just assumed she’d taken Simone with her to Torcello, and had forgotten to tell him, so he’d gone home and worked on his novel. He took tender care of Linda and looked at me strangely. I was sent home. Simone’s body was shipped back to New York, but my parents told me that Linda did not want me at the funeral. I never saw her again.

Nothing ever changes in Venice. Was I hoping that a sleek blond head might emerge from the foam and beckon me to jump? I looked at the water for a long time, but didn’t even see a fish.

If I came across one of Linda’s articles in a magazine, I didn’t read it. Just seeing her name filled me with sorrow. My parents told me that she was engaged to Jack Wilson, but then something happened and they never got married. He married a much younger woman, then another and another. I read his third novel, the one published by New Directions, and it seemed to me, from his description of the kind of sex that his anti-hero enjoyed, that he might have been abusing Simone.

But had I interpreted everything the wrong way? Interpretation is subjective, Linda had told me.

What should I have done? I ask myself that question again and again. Last year I returned to Venice for the Biennale, and as I always do when I go back I found the apartment Linda had rented all those years ago. From there, I walked to the quay and stood on the edge where the water was lapping. Nothing ever changes in Venice. Was I hoping that a sleek blond head might emerge from the foam and beckon me to jump? I looked at the water for a long time, but didn’t even see a fish.