A Summer In Europe

by Marilyn Brant

  Instead, she shrugged, managed to smile at him and squeezed his hand quickly before letting him go. “Maybe I will,” she said before they reentered the smoky bar.

  It was interesting, though, that she didn’t tell Emerson about her background or explain any part of her sad history to him at a time when it would have been most logical to do so. She’d had many conversations with Richard about the loss of her mom and dad and, in his typically soothing tones, he’d kindly comforted her. However, she’d almost never broached with Richard the subject of her love of music. At most, she might mention her love of musicals—but that wasn’t exactly the same thing. She’d expected him to infer her passion. Understand it. Yet, it was clear after talking to Emerson that Richard hadn’t understood. Perhaps that was why she never tried to go deeper into the topic with her boyfriend.

  With Emerson, by contrast, she’d delved headfirst, by her standards, into sharing her adoration of music with him, but she hadn’t revealed much of her personal history. Was it that she didn’t trust him with that knowledge?

  No.

  She’d trusted him with every element of her being when she’d played for him. She couldn’t have exposed herself more if she’d stripped down and pranced around the streets of Budapest in her bra and panties.

  It was not a matter of trust. Not exactly.

  It was that she didn’t want him seeing that other side of her. That lonely, overly structured schoolteacher she’d become thanks to nearly two decades of fear. She knew she could never pull off an air of being sophisticated and worldly—he would’ve had to have been blind and deaf to ever believe that—but at least she felt she wasn’t being viewed by him with pity.

  Richard, for better or worse, knew this sadder side of her being and, for the most part, wanted to be with her anyway. It was probably not right, just for that reason alone, to yearn for a romantic relationship with Emerson. Perhaps such intimacy was best reserved for Richard—a man who knew some of the deeper, unpleasant truths about her—even though he, too, didn’t understand all of her. Recognizing her passion for music, after all, couldn’t be as important a nugget of personal knowledge as grasping the magnitude of the loss of her parents. Could it?

  However, she had begun to get the unsettling sensation that she might also need a friendship with someone like Emerson, in addition to her bond with Richard. A different kind of relationship for a different side of herself.

  It reminded her of something Aunt Bea had said once when Gwen asked her why her friends were from so many walks of life. Her aunt didn’t mingle just with the seniors she met at the community center, or just with her longstanding neighborhood pals, or even just with the S&M club members. Unlike Gwen, Beatrice talked to everybody—young or old, male or female, Midwestern or foreign, slim or chunky. She picked up new acquaintances like the Pied Piper picked up street children.

  She told Gwen, “No one can be your everything.” She said people needed multiple close friends in their lives to share their assorted interests. Even when Uncle Freddy was still alive, Aunt Bea always made time to hang out with the bingo ladies or the classics book club or the kids at the pool. “Makes my life richer,” she added. “No one person can complete me—that’s just nonsense. I’m a complex women. A full mosaic. I want every side of me to shine, not just one or two sides of me.”

  And that, Gwen realized with sudden insight, was the hidden gift her aunt had been trying to give her by offering her this European trip. The chance to polish a few pieces of her personal mosaic. Aunt Bea had left it up to her to choose which sides she wanted to work on, but she’d subtly given Gwen the task of buffing up a handful of muddied, dust-covered fragments of herself. Chipped slivers of multihued ceramic that had been left untouched for years.

  Gwen had only to select them and spend the summer making them sparkle.

  8

  The Bold, the Beautiful and the Bad-Boy Brothers

  Monday–Thursday, July 16–19

  It would come as no surprise to most anyone that Gwen watched very little daytime TV. She caught the news during the evening and the occasional movie of the week, but she did not go out of her way to watch programs such as soap operas—unless coerced.

  It would likewise come as no surprise that Aunt Bea was, in Gwen’s opinion, freakishly fond of soap operas, and nothing could have equaled her delight when she came across The Bold and the Beautiful on Vienna cable the following night, dubbed in German. She had no scruples whatsoever against squealing down the hall, rousing Hester, Connie Sue and Zenia from their near slumber and coercing them (and Gwen) into watching it with her in their hotel room.

  Well, in Zenia’s case, there really was no coercion involved.

  “This might just be the most beauteous thing I’ve seen since that Moroccan weave scarf I once held in my grandma’s house,” Zenia pronounced in awe as she watched Ridge, eldest son of the wealthy Forrester clan (although, biologically, he was actually the offspring of billionaire shipping magnate Massimo Marone, who’d had a one-night tryst with Ridge’s mother Stephanie prior to her involvement with Forrester patriarch Eric, who married her because she was pregnant with his child—or so he’d thought), explain in perfect Deutsch his latest ploy to dominate the world of upscale fashion, outwit the Spencer media moguls and, simultaneously, vacillate between his attraction (which led over the decades to multiple marriages, divorces and remarriages) to the ever-scheming Brooke Logan and the wildly promiscuous Taylor Hamilton Hayes.

  Gwen knew all of this, not because she understood a word of the dialogue, but because her aunt talked about these characters as if they were real people and because Austria was, apparently, several months behind in their broadcasting of the soap—having had to take time to dub the episodes and all—so Zenia and Aunt Bea could cheerfully enlighten the rest of them on the characters, their convoluted relationships to the others and, occasionally, on their stated (and unstated) motivations.

  “You see,” Aunt Bea explained to her captive audience, “Ridge’s relationship with his half brother Thorne was already extremely competitive, but their rivalry was complicated further by the family’s discovery of Ridge’s paternity some years back, which made their mother, Stephanie, even more protective of Ridge. And her husband, Eric, still showed favoritism to him, despite the two not sharing a drop of DNA. Thorne was incredibly jealous. But, even before Thorne found out about the paternity test, he and Ridge had tons of battles over women. One night, Thorne got sick of feeling like the underappreciated younger brother, took a bunch of sleeping pills and tried to shoot Ridge with Stephanie’s handgun... .”

  “I should watch this show to get me some more good ideas for my murder mystery,” Hester interjected.

  Zenia nodded. “It’s the best.”

  Gwen paid scant attention to the backstory surrounding the soap, but she couldn’t help but superimpose what little she knew about Emerson and Thoreau’s family history onto the ruthless maneuverings of the Forrester clan. Sure, the Edwards brothers weren’t known for attempting to commit acts of homicide (at least she hoped not!), but Gwen had certainly inferred that some of the tension between them stemmed from perceived differences in parental treatment. A common enough complaint, even in non-TV families.

  She remembered Thoreau mentioning way back on their bus ride to Florence that Emerson was too used to getting his way with their mother. And he’d let other things slip, too. That Emerson’s personality was more like their father’s and, as a result, their mother was extrasoft on Emerson after their dad died. That Thoreau always had to be the responsible one. That neither liked to be in second place but that Emerson had “a real complex about it,” at least according to his older brother.

  But Emerson had given her a few clues, as well. He’d hinted that he wasn’t respected as much as Thoreau by their family as a whole. That he was considered a handsome enough kid but not an accomplished one for too many years, in his opinion. That his elder sibling got more of their dad’s attention before he died, while he
had to be content with “just being more like the man, without getting to know him.”

  Even Cynthia chimed in once and, in an aside to Gwen, admitted that the brothers were a bit intimidating, even for her. That if Gwen thought Emerson could be a pain to deal with for just a few weeks, imagine what it was like working with him all year....

  Gwen couldn’t imagine. She realized in the pulse of the moment how quickly this trip was going by. That this Grand European Adventure was a mere blip in time, yet another reminder that she might never see Emerson—or any of the Brits—again after it was over.

  She tried to shove that thought to the edges of her mind as they went on sightseeing excursions through Vienna, however.

  This latest stop on the tour further awakened in her stirrings of wanting to play the violin again. It would have been impossible to avoid this in a music city like Vienna. Songs and musicians were everywhere—on every street, every corner, every open space large enough to hold a crowd. The pedestrian mall-like walkway in the Innere Stadt, the old city center, was littered with practicing music students. And even on the broad boulevard surrounding the historic heart of Vienna, the Ringstrasse, the casual listener could often hear the strains of a string quartet rehearsing classical works for the enjoyment of passersby. Aside from Budapest, she had never been in a place that so revered music. It set her spirit aloft.

  Hans-Josef was, at last, fully in his element. He was translating everything from the German, speaking with joy in his voice and a spring in his step, reveling in being back amongst his countrymen.

  “I hope you enjoyed your visit to Schönbrunn,” he said enthusiastically, prattling for a good twenty minutes more about the famous Viennese palace and gardens, which had once been the Hapsburg monarchs’ imperial summer residence. Meanwhile, Guido tried to steer the bus out of the packed parking lot and in the direction of their last major site of the day.

  Gwen’s eyes were blurry. They had already spent hours seeing the Hofburg, a palace that now served as the President of Austria’s official residence. Taking photos of a famous statue of Johann Strauss II, who wrote both the famous waltz “The Blue Danube” (the actual river looked more like a murky gray to Gwen’s eye, but she was careful not to mention this) and the operetta Die Fledermaus, which Hans-Josef was quick to remind them they’d heard some selections from while in Budapest. Driving by Beethoven’s grave at the Central Cemetery and the well-known St. Stephen’s Cathedral. And, finally, visiting Schloss Schönbrunn with its breathtaking gardens, endless and extremely decorative palatial rooms and the Tiergarten, the world’s oldest existing zoo, founded in 1752. They’d even gotten in on a short, late-afternoon classical concert featuring the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart while at the palace.

  A musically inspirational day, yes, but also an exhausting one.

  Their final stop was the Prater—Vienna’s principal park and home to the Riesenrad, the city’s legendary Ferris wheel. Guido let them out close to the entrance so they could stroll along the park’s main avenue, a street closed to motorists and lined with gorgeous horse chestnut trees. Despite her fatigue, Gwen felt the now-familiar pull back through time that she’d gotten so often in Europe. Save for the clothing of the tourists, she might have believed herself to be back in the eighteenth century.

  “Look around. Explore,” chirped Hans-Josef with an almost outrageous level of cheerfulness. “Take a ride on the Ferris wheel. Visit the planetarium or museum in the park. Or just stop for refreshments at one of the restaurants or coffee shops. Guido will meet us in one hour and a half to return us to the hotel for the night. Or, if you prefer to stay longer”—he looked at them as if they’d be insane not to want to stay indefinitely—“it is easy to find a taxi there.” He pointed toward the road they’d driven up on. “Okay? Ja? Off you go now.”

  And Cynthia, who had been hovering close to their tour guide, and who had been inseparable from him since their bar night in Budapest, nodded enthusiastically.

  Hans-Josef winked at Cynthia (that’s right, winked at her) and offered her his elbow. They linked arms and took off like a single unit in the direction of the Ferris wheel. Looked like they’d both finally found the on-tour romance they were seeking.

  Louisa watched them walk away with a smile that was half happy for her friend, half wistful for herself. And Gwen watched her watch them. Sometimes it was obvious to outsiders what made a person happy:

  Hans-Josef loved his native language and his home country, people who were prompt and well dressed, activities that were efficiently planned and well organized.

  Cynthia lived for being perceived as special, as important enough to be paid attention to and, while she’d accept that heightened interest from a woman, she found it irresistible when it came from a man.

  Davis and Ani—though separated by age, race and nationality—were united in their adoration of strategy games and their determination to be the best at them.

  Zenia embraced anything artistic and did so with her whole heart.

  Back at home, Richard got a bolt of satisfaction from filing claims with care, getting his deskwork done early, patiently handling concerned customers.

  Aunt Bea desired little more than conversation with a wide range of people—the mere interpersonal interaction was enough for her.

  Thoreau got a charge out of analyzing everyone’s actions and, in the case of his brother, using that deep understanding to play mind games.

  And Emerson—enigma though he was—had let her glimpse into his soul a time or two, enough so she could see the way he enjoyed merging the mathematical with the musical, the scientific with the poetic, the historic with the artistic.

  But what of Gwen? What did she love?

  Was it enough that she appreciated structure? Was clinging to that the same as the way she lost herself within the beauty of a melody? Rhythm and meter were structural elements, after all.... Yet, the precision she clung to in her daily life was not, she feared, related to her ability to keep time in music. That was not what she had been doing in these past two years since her dad died. In songs, the underlying beat provided a constancy within the composition that allowed the melody to soar freely. By contrast, in her real life, her persistent routines were less like tempo and cadence and more like oppressive steel bars—vertical measures that kept her spirit trapped by the tedium of her habits.

  “Do you wish to go on the Riesenrad?” Emerson asked her, throwing around the German word just because he could.

  “Have you been on it before?” she asked him.

  He nodded. “It’s rather nice. A bit different from the usual carnival ride in that you can walk around in the box, as opposed to just sitting as it spins but, really, if you’ve been on one Ferris wheel ...”

  She smiled, remembering going with her parents to the Iowa State Fair when she was about six. She and her mom went up in the Ferris wheel just after sunset, the smell of buttered corn and roasting hotdogs wafting up toward them. The surprising coolness of the metal restraints after the heat of the day. The stickiness of pink cotton candy still on her fingers. And she could recall looking out over the lights of the city when their swinging basket reached the top. Glittery palm-sized globes of light sparkling as night washed over them.

  She was little then, but she’d felt even littler. Just thinking about it brought back those same feelings of both awe and insignificance. What did it matter ... the life of one young American woman? What could she do that was at all special?

  She blinked back a sudden and surprising tear, wiping it away—she hoped—before Emerson could see it. “Thanks, but I don’t think so. I think I’m going to find a café and try some of this famous Viennese coffee.”

  He studied her expression for a moment, calmly. “Would you welcome company?”

  She studied him back and realized yes. Yes, she would. She wanted nothing more than some quiet “alone” time with Emerson.

  So, after a quick word to Thoreau and Louisa, who were debating whether to go to the p
lanetarium with honeymooners Peter and Sally or to the museum with Dr. Louie and Matilda, Gwen and Emerson trooped around the park until they came across a small, family-owned coffeehouse, Café Danube. They soon found themselves seated comfortably on the patio outside, an Austrian newspaper on their table.

  “Going to read the headlines to me?” Gwen asked, after their waiter served them each a glass of cold tap water and took their beverage orders.

  He laughed. “I shall do it, if you really want me to, Gwen. But you should know, I’m more of a romance-language lover. My brother, on the other hand”—he wrinkled his nose—“is the go-to gent for German.” He flipped through the newspaper without really reading it. “It was hellacious being related to him when we were schoolboys,” Emerson admitted. “He was irritatingly good at everything. And five years ahead of me to boot.”

  She nodded. This was a persistent theme in the relationship between the brothers. It seemed that even now, even when Emerson should have felt as though he’d proven himself as an incredibly accomplished adult, he wasn’t really over the years of competition that had existed between him and Thoreau. Who had fostered this rivalry?

  “How old were you when your dad died?” she asked.

  “Thirteen.”

  Just a year older than she had been when she’d lost her mom. “That’s—that’s very young.”

  He cleared his throat. “It is.”

  “So, Thoreau was actually an adult then. Already eighteen,” she murmured, recognizing the gulf between the brothers at this gross disparity in experience. She would’ve given anything—anything—to have had her mother in her life through adolescence, through high school. She understood immediately the depth of Emerson’s loss.

  Her own brothers, of course, really got shortchanged. They’d been so very young—six and four at the time Mom died. Her youngest brother barely remembered their mother. But Emerson’s situation was similar to her own. They’d both been young enough to need a guiding parent of the same gender to help them transition through a tough stage of childhood and, yet, old enough to know acutely what they’d be missing by not having this.