More Than Words

by Jill Santopolo

  “Do you want to tell me a story about your dad?” Rafael asked. “Or I can tell you one.”

  “You can?” Nina asked. All of a sudden this felt incredibly important.

  “I didn’t know him, but I heard him speak once. And it actually changed my life.”

  “You’re not serious,” Nina said. She couldn’t believe that in all of their talks, all of their work sessions, this had never come up. “Why didn’t you ever mention that?”

  “I’m completely serious,” Rafael answered. “And I never said anything because I didn’t want it to change your perception of me. I . . . I always wanted you to know that I valued your contribution to my campaign for who you are, not because of who your dad is.”

  “Was,” Nina said, looking over at the body that looked now like a wax museum version of her father. No chest rising and falling, no eyelashes fluttering.

  “Is,” Rafael repeated. “Even if he’s gone, he is your father. He doesn’t stop being your father just because he’s not here anymore.”

  Nina had always thought about her mom in the past tense after she’d died. And in some ways that made sense. Her mom was funny. Her mom was smart. Her mom was beautiful. Her mom loved to take Nina out for frozen yogurt with rainbow sprinkles, just the two of them. But what Rafael said made a lot of sense, too. Phoebe Gregory would always be her mom, no matter how long she’d been gone.

  “Is,” Nina echoed. “I like that.”

  She imagined Rafael smiling on the other side of the phone. “So my story,” Rafael said. “About your dad.”

  “Yes,” Nina said. “Your story.”

  “I was in high school,” he started.

  “Bronx Science,” Nina supplied. She knew his official bio probably as well as he did.

  “Right,” Rafael said. “And I was part of Junior Achievement.”

  “What’s that?” Nina asked.

  “A kind of club where volunteers show kids the options that are out there. They were trying to get us to achieve great things in the future,” he explained.

  “I guess it worked,” Nina said.

  Rafael laughed. “Well, perhaps. But it was more about going into business, not so much politics. It was your dad who changed my mind. He came to speak to the group, and he talked about the fact that creating a business wasn’t just about money—it became who you were, something to put your stamp on, a part of your legacy as a person. Something your children and your children’s children would inherit. I’d never thought about it before, what I hoped to leave behind when I was gone. I decided then that I wanted to become an immigration lawyer, to help people like my dad and my grandma. And I thought about your dad’s speech again before I decided to run for mayor. Basically it’s because of him that we’re having this phone call right now.”

  Nina hadn’t known any of this. “You should’ve told me,” she said.

  Rafael was silent, and Nina could visualize him running his fingers through his hair. “I . . . that’s not why I hired you,” he said. “I want to make sure you know your dad didn’t come into the equation at all. I hired you because I was impressed with your writing. And because you seemed easygoing and smart, like someone I could work with. And because—well, I liked talking to you. I still like talking to you.”

  “Me, too,” she said, softly, trying not to read into his words, wondering if she should. “My dad told me—” Nina didn’t get any further than that. She looked over at her dad, who would never tell her anything again and she started to cry. It was more than tears, she felt her breath coming in gasps, tried not to let Rafael hear.

  “Hey,” Rafael said. “You okay over there?”

  “Not really,” Nina sniffed, when she gained enough control over herself to speak. Pencils, she thought. Paving stones. Street signs. She looked at the clock. It was five A.M. They’d been on the phone for an hour and a half. Sidewalks. Traffic cones. Manhole covers.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come over?” he asked. “I’m only on Central Park North. Not far from you at all.”

  Nina wiped her eyes with her T-shirt again. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she added. “I came up with a kind of poem for my dad.”

  “Yeah?” Rafael asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” Nina answered. “A villanelle.”

  “Highly structured,” Rafael said. “Well thought out. I can see that.”

  They were both silent for a moment. She heard fabric shifting on Rafael’s end of the phone and wondered if he was lying back down in bed, rearranging his pillows or his blanket. Maybe he was on his couch.

  “I think I have one for my mom, too,” Nina told him. “I think she’s a haiku. Her life was purposeful and elegant—and far, far too short.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Rafael said.

  Nina looked out the window again, and the sky was now turning pink, streaked with orange. “The sun is starting to rise,” she said. “I think I should probably make some calls now.”

  “Okay,” Rafael said. “I’m here if you need me.”

  “Thanks for calling,” Nina answered.

  “Anytime, Palabrecita.”

  Hanging up with him felt like it compounded her loss. And it made Nina wish she’d agreed to him coming over. She felt centered now, after talking to Rafael.

  She wondered if she would’ve felt the same way if she’d spoken to Tim.

  27

  After she hung up, Nina tried Tim again, but it still went straight to voice mail. Then she tried Leslie again, who picked up on the first ring this time—she was up and heading to the gym but turned her car around immediately. “I’ll be in New York City by dinnertime,” she said. Nina texted Pris after that, sure there was no way she was up yet, promising more details about the wake and funeral when she had them. And then Nina went to call TJ and Caro.

  She dialed their landline. It was the first number she’d memorized after the one at her own house. It rang three times. Then four. Then she heard Caro’s voice.

  “Nina?”

  “It’s me,” Nina said. She wished she could put her father on the phone. That he could say, I died last night, so she wouldn’t have to say it. He was the one who’d done it, after all.

  You have to take responsibility for your actions, he’d always told her. All Nina could think now was that her father was the one who’d died; he should take responsibility for that. Nina could hear Caro’s breath speed up. “Is your dad . . . ?” she asked.

  “Gone,” Nina said. She still couldn’t say the word. Dead. The shape of it felt wrong in her mouth.

  “Oh, darling,” Caro said. “We’ll be right over.”

  When Nina hung up with them, Carlos came back into the room. “How are you doing in here?” he asked.

  Nina nodded. She didn’t trust herself to talk about how she was feeling. She was worried that if she let herself cry again, it would take far too long to stop. When her mother died, it had felt like she’d cried for hours at a time, whole afternoons filled with tears, and she was unable to stanch the flow.

  It was easier to talk about memories and poetry, speeches and ambitions. She wanted to call Rafael back. She felt it like an ache deep inside her. “TJ and Caro will be here soon,” she told Carlos. “TJ knows everything my dad wants.”

  She looked over at her father again. His face was so relaxed. In real life it never looked like that.

  * * *

  • • •

  Nina sat there, lost in a rubber band of time, until she heard a commotion in the apartment. A door opening and shutting. Footsteps on the gallery floor. “Nina!” It was Caro, walking through the apartment.

  She came into the room, followed by TJ, whose eyes were already red and swollen.

  “Oh, Sweetheart,” TJ said, as he embraced her.

  In TJ’s arms, Nina finally let herself stop ba
ttling against her tears. “I don’t have any more family,” Nina said to TJ, the lump in her throat making it hard to talk, the sobs making it hard to catch her breath. It was the one thing that she couldn’t stop thinking about. Caro answered, taking Nina into her arms next, rubbing her back the way she did when Nina or Tim needed comforting as children.

  “You have us,” she said. “You’ll always have us.”

  Which was true, but it wasn’t the same. Not yet. Nina took a long, shuddering breath and pulled herself away from Caro. I am an adult, she said to herself. I can handle this. But even as she was telling herself that, she knew she couldn’t.

  “Have you spoken to Tim yet?” TJ asked.

  Nina shook her head, wiped her tears. “His phone went to voice mail,” she said.

  “For us, too.” He pulled out his phone and dialed again.

  Nina looked at her father once more, her breath still unsteady, her emotions threatening to breach their dam again. She walked over and kissed him on the cheek one last time, feeling his stubble against her lips, and looked at Caro through a screen of tears. “You can take care of him now,” she said. “With you both here . . . it’s too real. I can’t anymore.” She wanted to stay caught in that moment of time, stretch it even more so she wouldn’t have to deal with everything that came next. But time wasn’t like that. You couldn’t get lost in it forever. It marched onward, pulling you with it, a leash around your neck.

  Nina left the room. She went into her bedroom, shut the door, and let herself cry into her pillow, muffling the animal sounds that came from somewhere deep in her heart. Or maybe it was her soul. That three quarters of an ounce that may or may not exist.

  28

  A while later there was a knock on Nina’s bedroom door. She bit her lip to stop the sobs and ended up taking long gulping breaths instead. “Aunt Caro?” she asked.

  “It’s me,” Tim answered, his voice choked with apology, with sorrow, with love. “I got home late and forgot to charge my phone last night. It ran out of battery. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  Nina got off her bed and opened the door. Tim’s eyes were red-rimmed, his face pale. He bent down to hug her, then lifted her with him when he straightened, so she was clinging to his neck, her feet a few inches off the floor.

  “I’m so sorry, Nina,” he said, as he leaned back over, so she was standing once more. “I’ll never forgive myself. Of all nights.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, feeling the words against her sore throat. “I’m glad you’re here now.” And then she dissolved into tears again, and this time Tim cried with her.

  29

  With TJ and Caro there to take care of everything, Nina told Tim she wanted to go home. To her apartment. Where the ghost of her father wasn’t lurking around every corner. Where his shoes and medications and books and Thanksgiving turkey collection didn’t feel like they were taking up all the air.

  “Will you come with me?” Nina asked.

  “Of course,” Tim said. “I told the office I was going to be MIA for the next week. I’m here to help in whatever way I can.”

  “Thanks,” Nina said. She laced her fingers through his. She wanted to never let him go.

  * * *

  • • •

  When the elevator opened into her loft, Nina took a deep breath. Being here was better. Not great, but better.

  “Did you eat yet today?” Tim asked Nina as he closed the door behind them.

  Nina shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  “How about coffee?”

  “How about we watch my dad’s favorite movie while I deal with your mom’s list?” she countered. Before they’d left, Caro had given Nina a list of the decisions that her father had left to her, and the phone numbers of the people who should hear from Nina directly before the press release went out.

  “What do you want me to do?” Tim asked.

  “Just . . . be here,” Nina said.

  Tim slipped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “That I can do,” he said. “But you do have to eat something at some point today.”

  Nina looked up at him. She thought about all the meals she and Tim had eaten with her father. All the times the three of them snuck to the hot dog stand across the street from the Seaport hotel, even though they knew Caro wouldn’t approve. With Tim, she would have that extra piece of her father. His memories as well as her own. I should just tell him I want to marry him now, Nina thought. But every time she opened her mouth to say the words, something stopped her.

  “So, Dune?” Tim asked.

  “Of course,” Nina said. Her father’s obsession with the movie had caused Tim and Nina to dress as Paul and Chani one Halloween in the late ’90s. No one knew who they were, but they didn’t care.

  As Tim turned on the TV to order Dune, Nina dimmed the lights and grabbed a fleece blanket from her rocking chair. It was blue, with an embroidered Y in the corner, and was big enough to cover two people, if not three. Her father had picked it up at his last Yale reunion and given it to Nina. She held it to her nose, but it didn’t smell anything like him. As the movie started, Tim and Nina sat together under the blanket, Nina’s head leaning against Tim’s chest, his arm around her back. He was keeping her from falling apart—holding her up, literally and figuratively.

  “I love you so much,” she said to him, as she unfolded the list of phone numbers.

  “Me, too,” he answered, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “Me, too.”

  Nina made phone call after phone call, telling practically everyone she’d ever met that her father had died. She accepted their condolences and swallowed everything she wanted to say when one of his longtime squash partners asked her if she was going to see a medium to speak to her father from beyond the grave and when their neighbors in East Hampton launched into a story about how their dog died a week ago last Thursday and how they thought it might be from the pesticide the gardeners put on the hydrangeas.

  “Everyone’s a lunatic,” she said to Tim, who’d been half listening to her end of the conversations and half dealing with the e-mails on his phone.

  “I’m not going to disagree,” he said. “Well, except for us. We’re the only nonlunatics out there.”

  Nina sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “We might be lunatics, too. Do you know if you’re a lunatic?”

  Then Nina’s eyes went to the television screen and she realized the poison capsule in Duke Leto’s tooth was about to kill him. Nina flinched against Tim. This part had never bothered her before, but now she couldn’t watch.

  “Turn it off,” she said. “Tim, please. Turn it off. Don’t let it get to that part.” She heard the panic in her voice but couldn’t stop it.

  Tim fumbled for the remote control and hit pause.

  “He’s Paul’s dad,” Tim said, realizing the problem.

  Nina nodded. “I forgot that happened. Can we . . . can we put something else on?” she asked quietly.

  “Of course,” Tim said.

  Nina laid her head back against his chest and he stroked her hair with one hand while flicking through the options on the screen with the other. “Here,” he said. “How about this one?” He put on Matilda. “You used to like this.”

  “Better choice,” Nina said, her voice small. “Thank you.”

  She took her glasses off and closed her eyes, listening to the familiar dialogue, feeling Tim’s chest rise and fall against her.

  * * *

  • • •

  About an hour later, Nina woke up to the sound of a text message. She looked around and realized she and Tim had fallen asleep on the couch together. Somehow they’d both stretched out so they were lying like spoons, her body just in front of his, his arm draped across her stomach, the fleece blanket pulled up to their chins. She could feel his even breath on her neck.

  Nina
slowly reached in front of her to grab her glasses and phone from the coffee table, not wanting to wake Tim. She slipped on her glasses, flicked the phone to silent, and then looked at the text. There were two. Both from Rafael. They’d come one right after the other. The fact that there weren’t any others meant the press release hadn’t gone out yet.

  Hey, Palabrecita, the text said. Just wanted to see how you were doing. When my dad died, I was a real disaster. And that was with my brother and sister and mom there with me. Hope you have people to lean on.

  The office isn’t the same without you here.

  Nina took a quiet breath. In reading the text, she could hear Rafael’s voice. She could see him, sitting at his desk, texting while drinking a cup of Jane’s horrific coffee. Maybe he’d rolled up his sleeves and anyone who was watching could see the muscles in his forearm ripple every time he moved his thumb to type. Nina closed her eyes and let herself melt against Tim. She shouldn’t be thinking about Rafael.

  She reread his message.

  Should she respond? What should she say? She didn’t want to write anything that would’ve made her father say, You’re smarter than that.

  She’d planned to go back to work at some point before election day. Help Rafael win. But was that even fair, to take so much time off right before an election? And Nina knew her brain wasn’t functioning properly. She’d be no help to him in the state she was in. Plus, there was the connection that they both knew was there, even if they’d never spoken it aloud. It wasn’t smart to put herself in that situation. Even now, thinking about him made her cheeks feel warm.

  She could quit. Focus on the Gregory Corporation. Focus on Tim. Live her life in a way that would carry forth her father’s legacy—the one he cared so much about that he gave a speech to Rafael’s Junior Achievement club about it. Her dad didn’t approve of quitting in general, but this seemed like one of the extenuating circumstances that would make it okay.