She nodded. She knew she’d learn just as much—if not more—by seeing Paris through Emerson’s eyes than she would on any tour bus. “We should tell someone before we disappear, though.”
He pulled out his mobile phone and punched in a number. “Hello, Cynthia?” he began and then relayed their plans to blow off the group for the rest of the day. “You’ll tell Hans-Josef for us, right?” He smiled at Cynthia’s sultry response to the affirmative. (Gwen could hear her voice through the receiver, too.) And when the British woman informed him that she, Hans-Josef and Zenia already reached the first level and were “just waiting for the others to catch their breath,” he said, “Oh, cheers. Well-done. Enjoy yourselves.” Then he snapped the phone shut, ran his fingers through his sandy hair and looked intently at Gwen. “We’re free. Tell me, do you like boats?”
Although not on their original tour itinerary, Gwen had to agree that a boat ride down the Seine on a warm summer’s day was a worthy use of the sunshine. They hopped aboard a privately owned specialty line that ran from the bridge nearest the Eiffel Tower, Pont d’Iena, and worked its way down the river—past Pont des Invalides and Pont de la Concorde, past Quai des Tuileries and Quai du Louvre—all the way to the famous Pont Neuf and beyond.
There they disembarked to check out Notre Dame Cathedral on Île de la Cité, just as Emerson had promised, as well as the street vendors on the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville. They also crossed over into the Left Bank to visit the curious curlicuelike walkways of the Latin Quarter with its quirky little shops and cafés, so near the Sorbonne University. They passed several pleasant hours this way, but none of these stops held Gwen’s interest like their outing to Jardin du Luxembourg, the garden of the French Senate and the largest public park in the Saint Germain district of the city.
Emerson chose a place for them in view of the Fountain of the Observatory, a creation in bronze that was the work of four French sculptors, each who carved or designed a different aspect of the composition.
“My favorite spot in this park,” he told her, as they settled into a nearby bench. “It’s exceptionally calm here. Quiet.”
She’d been patient, knowing Emerson was a man of his word, but she met his gaze when he said this and rubbed her necklace as a nonverbal reminder. Time to talk.
He nodded. “Yes. Right then.” He fiddled with the cap of a water bottle he’d gotten for her in the Latin Quarter, twisting it on and off, as if the container held the genii of his family history and he was trying to decide whether or not to release it. “There, uh, was some weight behind my brother’s words.”
“I gathered that.” She paused, and when he didn’t immediately speak, she added, “What does being a ‘modern man’ mean to you?”
He swallowed. Cleared his throat. Twisted the cap off so fast it made a snapping sound. “It—It’s not so much what it started out meaning, Gwen, but what it turned into. Thoreau and I, as you’ve already noticed, take opposing positions on things sometimes.”
“Often,” Gwen interjected.
He concurred. “Yes, well, our father liked to consider himself a traditionalist, especially in regards to women. He was a true gentleman—old-fashioned in numerous ways, well-mannered, respectful—and my brother, who saw Father as the ideal husband, tried to model himself after him.”
Gwen could see where this was going. She remembered what Emerson had said in Vienna about Thoreau’s too-quick relationship commitments and serial monogamy—a diametric contrast to his younger brother’s bachelor ways. “So, he took on the role of the traditional guy in the family, which left you to be the modern one, right?”
Emerson sighed. “Yes and no.” He scored his fingers through his hair, a nervous gesture she had been seeing with more frequency as of late. “Truth was, Thoreau had to work harder at being ‘a traditional man,’ so to speak, than I did. He tended to overthink the whole thing and come across as a little phony. Not that he wasn’t kind or polite. Just that he wanted to be seen that way so much that he overdid it. He studied chivalrous behavior like you would a school subject. Me, I don’t know ... Mum always said I was more like Father. Had more of his personality and outlook on life. So maybe that was something that simply proved easier for me.”
She ingested this, chewed on the concept as if it were a potential choking hazard. Based on everything Emerson had said about relationships since she’d met him, he hardly took what she’d consider an old-fashioned view on dating. He seemed anything but conventional. It confused her on one level, until she remembered how dramatic he tended to be, and how very committed he was to not stepping into his brother’s territory. “So, you were secretly like your father, but you were trying to act like anything but him because your brother had taken on his version of your dad’s role. Only, you saw the flaws in Thoreau’s act because his performance didn’t ring as natural to you, right?”
“Right. And with our father gone, Thoreau was the only male role model I had in the family during my dating years. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be like him. But it was frustrating because I couldn’t be completely myself either. Because I knew how badly he wanted something I always had—not only to be more like Father, but to have more of Mum’s attention because of it.”
“Okay, but that can’t be the whole story. Something else must have happened, didn’t it?”
He slid his palm across his forehead and winced. “Yes. The Christmas when I was twenty, Thoreau was twenty-five. He was already married and almost done with his doctorate. He had his life mapped out until he was a hundred and twelve. I was still at university, not really knowing for sure what I was doing beyond that week. I had a girlfriend who was more serious about our relationship than I was because she did know what she wanted. But I thought I was managing everything all right.”
He paused and Gwen suspected that what was coming next would prove none of them were “all right.”
“We all met at Mum’s for dinner and Thoreau was in rare form. Acting the father figure, carrying on in a cheeky way to my girlfriend that she would have a tough time getting me to commit and settle down. He was just needling me through her, but I wasn’t in the mood for it that night. I kept getting angrier and angrier, but trying not to show it. I was furious before the meal even started.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “And when we got to the table, Thoreau made this big production out of holding the chairs out for all the women—our mum, his wife, my girlfriend. He had the nerve to criticize me while he was doing it. Said I was being thoughtless and ‘not respectful of the ladies present,’ which was a bunch of rubbish. Pulling out a fucking chair for a woman doesn’t make a man respectful. Listening to her opinion after she sits down in it does.”
Gwen blinked at him. Whoa. Strong feelings on the subject, huh? She elected not to comment. She wanted to hear the full, uninterrupted story and only nodded encouragingly, waiting for him to continue.
Emerson rubbed his forehead again like he was trying to erase a memory. “The cowing bastard wouldn’t shut up with the judgments, though. He got into his psychoanalyzer lecturing mode and said I shouldn’t be such a self-centered loafer. In that teasing voice of his, of course. That if I were really like Father the way everyone said, I would try to act more considerately.” He shrugged. “I just exploded. I’d been constantly compared to our father without having had the benefit of seeing his behavior firsthand for years. I was mightily sick of it. But what was worse was that I was embarrassed. I felt as though Thoreau might possibly be right. I was drifting, not really sure of anything. Or anyone.”
Gwen watched him squeeze the mostly empty water bottle until the plastic container resembled a warped hourglass. “Like your girlfriend?”
“Yes. She looked at me differently then, as if she were suddenly seeing in me all the defects my brother had helpfully pointed out. His ex-wife was always a bitch, so I ignored her censuring glares. But Mum’s reaction was the worst. I could tell she was distressed and disappointed when I shouted at Thoreau. Because of what I said.
That I didn’t want to be like him or like Father. That I wanted to be a modern man who was free from them both. And Mum was hurt even more because she knew, at that moment, I really meant it. It wasn’t a happy Christmas.”
Gwen agreed that it sounded like a perfectly wretched one.
“Anyway, I’m sorry about making such a sodding mess of your morning. Creating a spectacle. Letting my brother get to me like that. It was a low blow on his part—Thoreau knows best how to push my buttons—but I should know better than to react to it.”
She wondered about this. Wondered at the strategy game Thoreau was playing with his (mostly) unwilling brother. She felt Emerson had been truthful with her, but she was just as certain there was much more to the story. One might say an entirely different side, which she would have to seek out from its source. Later.
They spent another hour wandering around the grassy park and talking, the sun slowly sliding between some of the taller buildings in the distance and playing a game of hide-and-seek with a handful of cotton-puff clouds. Gwen glanced at her watch.
“When does the Louvre close?” she asked.
Emerson’s eyes widened as he caught sight of the time. “Bloody hell,” he breathed, grasping her hand and jerking her toward the Rue de Tournon. She followed him as he hunted down a taxi and mumbled something about the Pont des Arts to the driver. “Très vite, s’il vous plaît,” he entreated. Then, to Gwen, “It’s four-thirty. The museum closes at six on Saturdays, and they start shutting rooms down in an hour.” He appraised her silently for a second as the taxi sped across an intersection. “Good thing your aerobic level is so high. We shall need to run some stairs.”
He may have been smirking slightly as he said this, but he wasn’t at all joking. From the moment they passed through the famous I. M. Pei glass pyramid entrance into the museum, they were running. Three different guards warned them to walk. So they slowed down for the duration of a hallway or two but were soon sprinting again.
“Just so you know,” he said, panting a little as they raced to get to the Egyptian “Temple” area on the ground floor of the Sully wing, “most people devote an entire day to this museum, not sixty minutes. You’ll just have to come back for the other seven hours.”
She laughed.
“Not kidding, Gwen. Let me know when you’re going to return and I’ll Chunnel over from London to meet you for the day. What are you doing over the winter holidays?”
“I, uh, well ... December’s a long ways away and, um ... ” she sputtered, all the while ignoring most of what they were zooming by in the “New Kingdom 19th Dynasty” section. Might she be able to see him again post-tour, after all? Just the thought had her pulse picking up speed, never mind their race walking.
He halted abruptly and pointed at a colossal statue in Egyptian antiquities. “Ramesses II,” he informed her. “About 1250 B.C.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He nodded back. “Okay,” he mimicked. “Must show you a few more things down here, then we need to get up to the paintings and sculptures.”
She couldn’t help but be amused by the irony. For the first time, she was in a situation where her “guide” was all but ticking off items on a mental checklist—so efficient of him!—and yet, here she was, wishing they could just slow down and soak it all in.
They zipped through the Michelangelo Gallery in the Denon wing and saw his sculpture The Slave, which brought her experiences in Florence to mind. They also got a quick peek at Eros and Psyche, a sculpture by Canova, who was a new artist to her, before jogging up to the first floor to take a look at Delacroix’s well-known painting, Liberty Leading the People, and Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary Mona Lisa. They then went on to tackle the second floor’s Richelieu wing with Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait, Vermeer’s masterpiece The Lacemaker and La Galerie Médicis by Rubens, which further recalled for Gwen her time with Emerson in Italy.
Aside from the Mona Lisa, though, which shocked her by being smaller than she’d imagined—and was also funnier to look at than she’d thought, but only because Emerson had commented in a matter-of-fact way, “Her full name is Lisa Gherardini. That’s what she looks like,” as if he’d met her personally—there were two other especially memorable pieces.
One they found in the Egyptian department. “An angle harp, sometimes called a trigon,” Emerson said, pointing to the Maritime pine, cedar and colored leather that formed the triangular-shaped antique stringed instrument. Gwen read on the placard that the strings were modern additions but, as Emerson explained, they were probably made originally of gut.
She wrinkled her nose a little at that, yet she couldn’t help but admire the beauty of the harp and marvel that, so many thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians played songs upon it and were even able to tune it so they could precisely match the intended notes.
Emerson reached out and feigned plucking one of the strings. “String theory,” he said, with a smile more smug than even Mona Lisa’s. “It can be demonstrated anywhere, anytime.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
The other was in a different part of the Sully wing: the Venus de Milo. The late second-century BC statue still managed to be majestic, despite her lack of arms. Gwen found herself drawn to the strong, lovely woman made of pure white marble from the Greek isle of Paros. At six feet eight inches, Venus was still a bit petite for the seventeen-foot Florentine David, but in Gwen’s mind, she made them a couple.
She stared at the piece for so long that, when the museum guards started shooing them out of the hallways and rooms, Emerson insisted they make a trip to the gift shop their culminating activity so Gwen could purchase a statuette miniature to take home.
“This one, I think,” she told Emerson, selecting a plaster Venus de Milo about half a foot tall and admiring another plaster copy, this one of the famed Winged Victory of Samothrace that featured the Greek goddess Nike. The second statue, also made of Parian marble in the original, was one she’d seen only in passing as they were rushing between floors, but she’d found that one beautiful and stately as well. Poor Victory/Nike was missing not only arms but a head, too. “Hmm,” she murmured, picking up the second piece. Contemplating whether this might be something Richard would like. It remained regal, even at its diminutive height, so she bought that one, too.
“You’ll have quite a museum in your house,” Emerson commented, as they exited the building and began meandering down the sidewalk along the Seine in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.
“Yes,” she began, but then opted for honesty. “Although, Winged Victory is a gift.” When he raised a brow in question, she added, “It’s, um, for Richard.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding and then looking away. After a half block of silence, he stopped, bit his bottom lip and said, “Hungry?”
Gwen was beginning to realize that no one did meal time like Emerson. If he wasn’t entertaining her or introducing her to regional delicacies, he was tantalizing her senses—every single one of them—by feeding her something. He’d made the eating of gelato and linguini a sensual act in Italy and the nibbling on cake in Vienna into a game of foreplay, so she was hardly surprised that he could elevate the consumption of quiche into something akin to a passionate afternoon tryst.
“All right, love, we have the spinach and artichoke,” he said, pointing to the first quiche tartlet he’d selected from the café’s pastry window. “The mushroom and Gruyère.” He indicated the second one resting in the central position on their outdoor tabletop. “And, finally, the baked ham with red bell pepper and onion.” He looked at her expectantly, a knife poised for cutting in his right hand. “Which should we explore first?”
Gwen swallowed and pointed blindly toward the table. She couldn’t bring herself to glance away from Emerson’s golden gaze. He was so interesting to watch. The flecks of variant color in his hazel irises glinted in the slanting light, matching—if only for a moment—the warm glazed goldenness atop every pastry in the bakery case.
Gwen had never understood her aunt’s foodie fascination ... until this trip.
She took a small bite, and the strong but delectable flavors performed the can-can on her tongue. “Mmm,” she murmured.
“Good, is it not?” he said, his smile a tad too angelic. He was, she realized, casting a spell on her, using European cuisine as his cauldron. If he was employing his creativity and the tools available to him—magic enough—in trying to erase life with Richard from her memory, he was succeeding.
“It is,” she replied, reaching for his half of the tartlet so she could offer him a taste in return. As he took his first big bite, she imagined him at an Iowan picnic. He could make good old American hotdogs, fries and corn on the cob an amorous dining experience, she was sure. A shiver of desire raced through her. “But, then, everything tastes good here.”
He raised a sandy eyebrow, the angelic expression morphing into a slightly wicked one. “You, Gwendolyn Reese, know not how right you are.”
There were still plenty of tourists milling around the base of the Eiffel Tower by the time they finished their meal and reached it, but the buses were mostly gone and the crowds had thinned considerably.
With nothing to prove, they eschewed the vigor of the stairs for the speed of the elevator.
Paris at twilight.
The dusky purples and blues had been brushed with rouge streaks, and a blanket of indigo waited at the edge of the horizon to cover the city. In what remained of the rosy pastel light, Emerson helped her locate from high above some of the famous sites they’d seen since their arrival: the Obelisk of Luxor down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, the Opera House, the church at Les Invalides and, of course, the Louvre. These magnificent buildings in this grand city were reduced to miniatures, just like those statuettes she’d purchased of the marble masterpieces. She felt small again, too. Removed from her life on planet Earth. Even tinier and more powerless than usual.
A Summer In Europe Page 27