A Summer In Europe (31 page)

“Which are—what?” she asked.

“Which are, among other things, whether the player expressed the feelings he or she wanted to share. Whether that simultaneous sense of release and connection happened. Whether the act of playing itself was an emotional one for the player. The world may call a man a ‘good’ musician, even a ‘successful’ one, but if he hasn’t expressed the truth in his heart, how good could the performance really be?”

She thought on this for a moment. “I think it would be easier to express the truth if one hit the correct notes.”

“Probably.” He paused, seeming to study her. “Your soul shined through when you played, Gwen. It
meant
something to you, and you were honest about expressing it. The violin itself means something to you. I saw a glimpse of the real Gwendolyn Reese just now. I can’t judge your performance as a creator, only as a listener, but—to me—it
was
good. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you expressed through it what you most wanted to. Either way, it’s obvious you have the spirit of a musician. You shouldn’t hold yourself back from playing.” He reached for her right hand and tenderly rubbed her fingers. “You’ve got a solid base. Why not take violin lessons again?”

Why not, indeed?

Only, perhaps, because she’d wrapped up her musician’s heart and soul in sentimental brown paper and unbreakable string, and tucked the package away with her other dusty daydreams, the memories of her parents and the carefree childhood that had gotten cut short when she was far too young. She did not mention this.

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

I
t 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.