On the tour in Italy, the wife only wanted to add a few “excursions.” The first was a gondola ride in Venice. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said like something in our 36 years of marriage was missing…

We were on a tour with 31 other Americans. A few couples, lots of parents with college-age children, several sets of female 30-something friends traveling together. I thought we would be the youngest of the crowd — this tour looked like every other ad in the AARP junk mail.

We were by far the oldest of the group. Most of them were closer to the age of our son.

After a hot day walking the streets of Venice, the group was hiding in what I remember as the only small spot of shade in all of Venice — about 100 feet from the “gondolas.”

As usual, the tour guide was forever counting in Italian. This time putting groups of 4 in each boat. The wife was wandering around looking at the water and not listening — as usual (teachers make the worst students).

“We need 3 people for the two boats with the musicians,” Anna, the tour guide, pleaded. “The boats can’t have more than 5. We only have enough boats for everyone if we split up.”

Our group was grumbling. No one wanted to take a musical ride in a gondola with a “stranger.” Most of the couples were still young enough to dream about “romance.”

It had been a long day. Our crowd was getting “ugly”. A few potential Karens were complaining about the lack of planning. Turning their heads and talking in their hands, “can’t they count”. No one was willing to go.

“Per favore, please, please,” Anna was saying, over and over. “We will all be together. Please, Please.”

The wife spent a lot of time on this trip showing off her pigment. While the pigment impaired (like me) hid in the fading shadow of a building, she wandered out into the sun, near the back of the line for the next boat. Blissfully, unaware of the rising tension behind her.

“Take her,” I shouted to Anna. “She can be the third.”

The shadow group laughed. “That’s her husband sending her away…”

The wife looked up — a feint protest in her face.

“Go, go,” I said. The laughter egging me on. “Have a good time with your new family, honey.”

“Love you too,” she shouted back, with the soul-crushing sarcasm I’ve come to respect. Anna was “thanking us” repeatedly in several languages all at once.

“We have been together 37 years,” I told my new adoring crowd. “I’ve seen her on a boat.”

A young woman traveling with her mother volunteered to be the other group of “odds”.

“We’ll take Kieran.” I had no idea what their names were. Ashamed she knew mine so easily, I just tried to gloss over my ignorance. I later learned she teaches first grade. A lovely little person who helps to make everyone happy, and can still learn 30 new names in half a day. The only kind of person who would have tolerated me.

The wife no longer teaches first grade. She long ago moved on to 7th, and with it has come her “fuck this-junior-high” attitude that often comes out with a cynical smile.

“I told Ryan and Mara, we will always have Venice,” the wife said. “It will be a great romantic picture with the three of us.”

Gondoliers filled the canals with all the songs the “tourists” love. “Ohh Solo Mio,” “Mombo Italiano”, and most of all “Volare” bouncing off the ancient walls and bounding off the bellies of the low, curved bridges.

I thought those songs would be “jokes” to the Italians, like “Lucky Charms” and “Leprechauns” to the Irish. Dean Martin slurring his way through stereotypes hardly seems like the stuff of national anthems. But the gondoliers belted them out like they really cared — or they are very good actors.

Later, the wife asked Ryan and Mara how long they had been together. “This is my dad,” Mara said. “So, I guess you would say we have been together my whole life.”

“Ohh good,” the wife responded. “I just thought he was a creep.”

Not content with putting one foot in her mouth, the wife re-stirred her “romance” every time we heard “Volare”.

And we heard “Volare” again and again. On Anna’s playlist on the bus, in the background music at the next group dinner. And with the live musicians the last night in Italy.

“Ryan/Mara” they are playing our song,” the wife would shout, again and again. “We will always have Venice.” And she would run across the room to give them a big hug.

Ryan and Mara, a fine father and daughter from Wisconsin put on their midwest “nice” and learned to ignore her. But we laughed and laughed — especially as the wine poured and poured. The more they cringed, the more the wife carried on, and on.

I would have joined the joke with my romantic boat mates, the little first grade teacher and her mother, but I never could remember their names. Just not as fun to yell, “hey you and your little mama — we will always have Venice.”

On the bus out of Venice, Anna handed out the “gondola pictures.” There was the wife and her romantic cruise with Ryan and his daughter Mara. There is the little first grade teacher, her mother and a red-faced, pigment-impaired, fat biker in a floppy hat sinking the back half of the boat.

I’d love to show you those photos, but we left them on the bus.

“Sorry Ryan and Mara,” the wife said. “I guess the romance is gone.”

At least we found out, if anything’s missing in this marriage, it was not to be found on a gondola in Venice…