A Summer In Europe (32 page)

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 planetarium 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.

“My brother’s childhood and mine were quite different,” Emerson agreed.

Their coffees came and Gwen knew she could easily change the subject. He had not asked about her parents and, unless someone chatty, like Connie Sue or Hester, had told him, it was a part of her history that she really could keep to herself, just as she’d planned.

Only, suddenly, she didn’t want to do that. Suddenly, she wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. That she really and truly
understood
what he’d experienced.

“My mother died when I was twelve,” she said, blowing gently on her demitasse cup of coffee. It smelled heavenly but looked very much like tar. She wondered briefly how it would taste. If it would be bad for her health. She wondered things like that a lot—too often, perhaps. “A brain aneurysm,” she added. “ Totally unexpected.” She ran her finger down the side of the cup and glanced up at Emerson, letting him see fully into her sadness. “I never ... ever ... got over it. Even now. It still doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Oh, Gwen. I’m very sorry,” he said on a sigh, catching her gaze and holding it.

If she’d feared him pitying her, she was wrong. The look he gave her wasn’t laced with pity (like that of her teaching colleagues), or sympathy (like Richard’s default expression), or even empathy (like her experience with the few girls she’d met in college who’d also lost a beloved relative).

No. Emerson’s gaze was instantaneous and comprehensive understanding. It was utter recognition of the hole in her childhood. Of the gap that could never be filled. And, somehow, the simple knowledge that
he
understood
her
softened the very edges of that crater of loss in her heart.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “For both of us.”

He then told her a few tales about Thoreau, as if trying to lighten the conversation. About how his brother “dated demonically” all through his university years, was a serial monogamist and had gotten engaged to his ex-wife long before it would’ve been advisable.

“He kept trying to replicate Mum and Father’s marriage,” Emerson said with a (sort-of) laugh. “I always thought that to be unrealistic, but he was more of an optimist in that regard.”

Gwen couldn’t help but remember their first discussion on this topic, back at Festival del Gelato in Florence. Only she had more information now. More insight into how and why he thought as he did.

“You don’t want to commit to a relationship because that would mean being like Thoreau,” she blurted. “Having yet another area of competition between you.”

The two men, she realized, had sectioned off the universe, as if by subjects, and stamped their names on the pieces in which each claimed superiority. Thoreau had already called “marital commitment” as
his;
therefore, Emerson had to excel at its opposite—“dedicated bachelorhood.”

Emerson’s lips twisted into a smile. “You think you know me so well,” he chided, taking a sip of his coffee. He motioned for her to do the same.

Strong!

She swallowed, blinked a few times and reached for the nearby glass of water.

He chuckled and said, “Drink as much water as you need. The waiter will keep replenishing it, whether you want it or not.”

“Why?” She gulped about half a glass more after taking her second sip of Viennese coffee. The stuff must have been brewed in asphalt.

“Tradition,” he explained. “They bring additional water unrequested through your visit. It’s an unspoken message that you’re a welcomed guest, not one who should feel pressured to leave for other patrons.”

Gwen could appreciate that and, as if on cue, their waiter headed over to them with fresh waters. Emerson thanked him and requested something from the dessert menu called
Sachertorte
. “You must try this. Trust me.”

As they waited for it, a clock in the distance struck seven p.m., and live piano music drifted out to the patio to greet them.

After listening to the café pianist for a few minutes, she said, “You play just as well, you know. Quite possibly better.”

“Thanks.” He drank more of his coffee. “The music means a lot to me. When I’m not trying to show up Thoreau, when I’m just thinking about the notes, there’s no competition. Not against some stranger playing in a coffeehouse. Not even against myself. It’s just me, in harmony with the song. You understand what I mean?”

Gwen hadn’t played in public enough to have felt the sting of competition (a couple of recitals for her family and a few of her parents’ friends when she was ten or eleven hardly counted), but she had experienced acute self-consciousness when playing for Emerson and the gypsy violinist and also, as with the impromptu singing on the trip, whenever she was asked to join a group in song. There were nights, back at home, though, when she was listening to her favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtrack in the car or in the kitchen and she would lose herself in the music so completely—even singing along in full voice—that it would startle her when she realized she’d been harmonizing aloud. Even though no one could hear her, just the thought of an imaginary audience listening in and, possibly, judging her was enough to make her heart race and her palms sweat. Enough, actually, to silence her. But the moment of deep immersion just before that awareness was bliss.

“Yes. Sort of,” she told Emerson, remembering, too, what he’d said in Budapest about how the experience of being the creator of the music was different from merely being a listener. That a listener could rate a performance as “good” or “bad” based on the sharpness of his ear and his prior background in music. But that the person playing had a more complex task—whether or not he expressed through the song what he most desired. Whether or not the music touched the heart of the performer himself. Or, in this case,
herself
.

The waiter returned again with a large piece of very chocolaty-looking cake. Two forks.

“Sachertorte,”
Emerson said simply. “Taste it. You’ll adore it.”

She picked up one of the forks and speared the moist tip of the cake. “Mmm. It
is
good,” she said after the first bite. “There’s a filling of some sort in it. I can’t quite figure—”

“Apricot,” he said in that know-it-all tone of his.

He was smirking at her while speaking. So very cosmopolitan, was he. So very worldly and sophisticated and experienced. So very sure of himself. She couldn’t help but grimace and, in an effort to make him act marginally less victorious, she scooped up another forkful of cake and stuffed it in his mouth.

He looked surprised but not displeased as he chewed. Then he picked up the second fork, heaped it with more cake and decorated her lower lip and chin with the chocolate glaze until she gave in and opened her mouth for it.

She found herself laughing, her hands half covering her face like a mask. He was so
goofy
. So youthful, even at age thirty-five. So uninhibited that it was starting to rub off on her.

He was laughing, too, of course, and attacking the remaining cake with his fork to try to score the biggest scoop. She battled him with her fork on the plate, as if in a duel.

She had just managed to wedge another forkful between Emerson’s lips when, in a move so quick that time must have been fast-forwarded, he leaned across their little table as if to kiss her.

But he stopped. His chocolate-smeared lips hovering close to hers, but not quite touching.

He swallowed his bite of cake, took a breath and pulled back a few inches. “Gwen ...” he murmured.

She gazed up at him, time instantly having been switched to pause, and tried to express through her eyes her strong
liking
of him. And, yet, that liking was at odds with the life plan she had mapped out for herself. She was thirty, after all. It wasn’t prudent to live without direction. But she also couldn’t shake the disquieting suspicion that what she thought she’d always wanted might no longer be the case.