“Remember that year you came home for Thanksgiving with me?” Nina asked.
Leslie nodded. “Our junior year. After my mom died. I didn’t want to go back to Massachusetts.”
“Mm-hm,” Nina said.
“Your dad went all out for Thanksgiving that year.” Leslie shifted so she and Nina were both resting against pillows, facing the painting on the other side of the room. It was something Nina had bought at a gallery on a whim when she and Tim had gone to an opening a couple of months ago. It looked like a Kandinsky, but with more attitude.
“He went all out for Thanksgiving every year after my mom died.” Since Nina’s mom had died on Christmas Day, for years afterward, she and her father couldn’t look at trees or twinkling lights or listen to Christmas carols without falling apart. So Nina’s dad decided that their big family holiday would be Thanksgiving. He made it a full-day affair, with an early-morning party to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade out their window, and breakfast, lunch, and dinner for anyone who stopped by at any point in the day. He decorated the apartment with turkeys—first with the ones Nina had cut out using her hand to shape the turkeys’ bodies in lower school and then later on with an absurd collection he’d pulled together from antiques shops. Once they’d heard about it, people started gifting him with turkeys; he eventually had so many that they took up an entire cabinet in the dining room.
“That first year,” Nina continued, “he wrote a note to everyone who’d helped us, telling them how grateful we were for them. It went over so well that he kept doing it—a note each Thanksgiving for everyone in his orbit, thanking them for whatever it was that the person gave him—friendship, advice, help, a clean apartment, a recommendation for a new wine to try. If I’m being honest, I think it became part of the persona he cultivated, where everyone thought he was their best friend. I like to think it meant something anyway, though. That the messages were heartfelt, even if they had another purpose.” She turned to Leslie. “Do I give him too much credit sometimes?”
Leslie shrugged. “Is the why more important than the what?”
Nina sighed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for most of my adult life. . . . Maybe I’ll start writing notes. I’ll make Thanksgiving a big deal with my kids.”
Leslie raised her wineglass and turned to Nina. “To your dad. To Thanksgiving.” They looked at each other and clinked glasses, keeping their eyes locked until they took a sip. Years ago, Leslie’s sister Jodi had told her that if you broke eye contact, it would mean a year of bad sex. Leslie had taken that superstition very seriously in college—at least until she met Vijay. But she and Nina had been doing it out of habit ever since.
Leslie must have been thinking about that, too, because she said, “I know this might not be the most appropriate time to ask this, but now that we’re alone: What’s going on with that former boss of yours? Because the tension between the two of you was thick enough that even I blushed when you were together.”
Nina put her hand to her face, feeling her cheeks get hot again. “Oh God,” she said. “Did everyone think that? Did Tim see?”
Leslie refilled Nina’s wineglass. “I don’t think so. And no one else knows you like I do, so they probably wouldn’t have picked up on what I did. But—whoa!” Leslie fanned herself with her hand.
Nina cracked a brief smile. “Nothing untoward has happened, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But?” Leslie prompted.
“But he’s . . . made it pretty clear he’s interested. And I’ve . . . I’ve imagined a lot.” Nina couldn’t look at Leslie when she said it. It felt horrible to admit. A confession that even while she was dating someone she imagined her future with, her mind strayed. When Leslie didn’t respond right away, Nina looked up and saw her friend looking down at her wineglass.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Nina asked.
“I don’t want to say the wrong thing,” Leslie said. “So I think I’m going to shut up for once. Maybe Vijay’s right. You’ve been a good influence on me.”
Nina groaned. “You never say the wrong thing. Sometimes it’s not the thing I want to hear, but it’s never wrong.”
“I’ll just say this, then.” Leslie turned so she was facing Nina again. “When I was dating Vijay, there wasn’t anyone else I was imagining anything with. There still isn’t, twelve years later.”
Nina tipped her glass of wine so she could get the final sip that was sitting at the bottom. Fortified with that last bit of alcohol, she decided to tell Leslie about Tim’s aborted marriage proposal. But she found she couldn’t do it. What she ended up with was: “I shouldn’t be imagining anything with anyone either. It’s just . . . it’s not rational.”
“Love isn’t always rational,” Leslie said, carefully. “You know you don’t have to date Tim if you’d rather be with someone else.”
Nina didn’t say anything. She knew that. Of course she knew that.
Nina wondered, again, if her dating life would have been different if her mom were still alive. When Nina brought her high school and college boyfriends home to meet her father, he’d spent the next week talking about their flaws, why they weren’t good enough for Nina—not smart enough, not successful enough, not driven enough, not wealthy enough. Her father had been concerned that part of why her college boyfriend, Max, was interested in Nina was her trust fund. And maybe it was part of it. She hadn’t thought to worry about that before he’d said it.
And that was the thing. After her father brought up these concerns, Nina began to see what he saw. Her high school boyfriend wasn’t as polite and respectful as she’d wished he would be. And Max did seem to start arguments with her father whenever they went out to dinner.
“Your grandfather would roll over in his grave if he knew you were dating someone so arrogant and ill-informed,” her father had said after one particularly contentious dinner. “Can you imagine how badly he’d reflect on our family if you took him with you to the Met Gala?” Which Nina hadn’t done, at her father’s request, but she did take him to a family friend’s wedding, which caused perhaps the third worst argument Nina and her father had ever had.
Joseph Gregory disliked Max so intensely that Nina didn’t introduce the man she dated during business school to her father at all. But that felt wrong, too. And Nina realized then that no matter how exacting her father might be, she could never be with someone long term that he looked down on. And he’d practically given his blessing to Tim.
“Nina?” Leslie asked, softly.
“I think it’s time for bed,” Nina said, regretting the fact that she’d brought any of this up. “I’m drunk. And tired.”
“I know,” Leslie said, opening her arm for a hug.
Nina leaned in to her friend. “Thanks for staying the night again,” she said.
“Stop it,” Leslie said. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
That night Nina fell into a fitful sleep, without Tim by her side. He’d wanted to give the two women time alone together, but that meant Nina was by herself in bed. She tossed and turned, saw images of her father and her mother merging into one. Stood alone on a barrier island, water lapping at her feet. The ocean became a sea of numbers, which she knew was a test she had to ace or her father would die. And then her father did die. She woke up at four in the morning, her pillow wet with tears and her head aching. That was what she got for going to bed drunk the night before her father’s funeral.
She squinted at her phone and saw she had a new text message. Her stomach flipped and she slid on her glasses to see what it was: just a note from her cell phone carrier saying her bill was ready. And she felt deflated.
She’d been hoping it was Rafael.
She fell asleep wondering what her father would have thought of Rafael if the two men had met.
33
The next day, after her father’s funeral, after TJ spoke a
bout his legacy, his success, his power, after his grave was filled, after her heart felt like it was wrung out and squeezed dry, but somehow still full, Nina knelt down next to the freshly turned dirt and laid her hand on top of it. There was an early fall chill in the air. She hated the idea of leaving him there in the cold; it was his body, even if it was just a husk of who he’d been. Dampness seeped through her skirt where her knees were resting on the ground. There would be circles on the crepe when she stood. Still she stayed.
After a few moments, Nina felt a hand on her back. Then Tim was kneeling next to her.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said quietly.
“I know,” she answered, just as softly.
And in her head, she knew it was true. But her heart was finding it hard to believe.
Tim’s arm wrapped around her shoulder and squeezed.
Nina slid her arm around his back.
And the two of them knelt there together, each lost in their own mind for a moment.
“You ready?” Tim asked.
Nina nodded, and they stood, twined together like the hawthorn trees next to the Gregory plot, their arms wrapped so tightly around each other, it was hard to know who was holding up whom.
Maybe they both would’ve fallen long ago if they hadn’t grown together that way.
34
“I had an idea,” Tim said the next night. Nina was going through the Gregory Corporation financials, trying to find the thing her father had wanted to talk to her about. But the numbers wouldn’t stay in their columns. She couldn’t concentrate.
Nina put down the spreadsheet.
“What’s your idea?” she asked. Tim had been trying so hard all day, ordering breakfast from Nina’s favorite brunch place, making a photo book of her and her dad online and ordering it to arrive the next day, going to the nearest Duane Reade and buying her every single butterscotch candy they had in stock. Things that would normally make her smile, but this time it wasn’t working. Still, she loved Tim for trying; she loved him for knowing what she loved.
“Okay, it was actually Priscilla’s idea,” he said. “She called while you were in the shower and I picked up your phone. Anyway, she thinks the four of us should go to the Dining Room at the Met tonight. She remembered how much you loved it in high school.”
She felt lucky to have them, Tim and Priscilla. But even so, she was in no shape for a night out. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s a great idea, though.”
Tim scratched his beard. Then he snapped his fingers. “The Temple of Dendur,” he said. “Forget the Dining Room. They opened it to everyone in June, so it’s not as special anymore anyway. But you love the Temple of Dendur.”
Nina thought about the room that held the temple. The water, the windows out to the park, the ancient structure that always felt so solid, so stable. “There are always so many people on the weekends,” she said. “I’m not fit for the public right now.”
Tim smiled, triumphant. “Leave that to me.”
A few hours later, they were in a car on the way to the Met. Tim had made a few phone calls, pulled some strings, called in a favor, and secured them a half hour of private time in the temple, along with Priscilla and Brent.
“So what did you say on the phone?” Nina asked, as the car drove up the West Side Highway, knowing that even for them, this was a crazy thing to do.
Tim shook his head. “I just said it was for you. You’ve got a lot of power in this town, Nina Gregory. Especially at the Met.”
“Not true,” Nina said. But she thought about his words. In New York City, money was power, and she did have a lot of it. Or at least she would soon. At one of the events she’d gone to with her father in the Met’s rooftop garden, a woman had cornered her. “Just look around,” the woman had said, swooping her arms around the party, her champagne sparkling along with her beaded dress. “Look who’s here. We run this city.”
Was that Nina now? Was she one of those people who would drink champagne on the roof of the Met, absorbed in her own importance?
* * *
• • •
“Quarter for your thoughts?” Tim asked from his seat next to her in the car. They’d decided years ago that the penny hadn’t ever been adjusted for inflation, so they’d made their own adjustments.
“Just thinking about power,” Nina said.
“The measure of a man is what he does with power,” Tim said. “A woman, too.”
Nina looked at him for a beat. He wasn’t usually someone who quoted Plato—quoted anyone but Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs, actually. “So you’ve used yours to close the Temple of Dendur for us?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve used yours. But I can’t think of anything better to do with power than make the person you love smile.”
He slid his hand into hers and held on tight. The car merged into the traffic to cross through the park on 79th Street, and she looked at the trees her father would have seen from his bedroom, might have been looking at just before he died.
35
A few days later, the board of directors of the Gregory Corporation were having a meeting. Nina knew she should go. She should show her face. She should show them how much she cared. How much she’d absorbed just by growing up as her father’s daughter.
Nina got up. She stood in front of her closet staring at the rows of grays and blues and blacks and browns and creams. Pantsuits and skirt suits and sheath dresses and blouses.
“Do you need help choosing?” Tim asked, already dressed, on his way to the kitchen.
“I have nothing to wear,” she told him.
He laughed, but she didn’t crack a smile. “Of course you do,” he said. “Look at this closet. You have everything.”
And Nina started to sob. “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t have everything. I don’t have my dad.”
Tim paled. “I didn’t mean that. Nina, I didn’t mean—” He tried to hug her, but she pushed him away, fought her way out of his grasp.
“Go away,” she said. “Just go away.”
He took a step back and she melted to the floor, her arms wrapping around her knees, curling herself into a ball.
“Go away,” she said again.
And she sat there on the floor of her walk-in closet and cried.
She didn’t make it to the board meeting that day.
36
Later that week, Nina was at her father’s apartment with Irena, packing up boxes of his clothes to donate to Housing Works. Nina wasn’t getting very far, though, because she kept remembering the last place her father wore that tie, or that tuxedo, or that striped button-down with paisley cuffs. She hoped whoever bought that button-down would love it just as much as her father had. He’d worn it to his birthday dinner this past year.
Nina folded the shirt, first fastening every other button, then pulling the sleeves toward the back and bending the shirt in three, with the collar and buttons on top. She realized that she folded shirts like her father. So much of the way she lived her life was the way he did. He talked about his legacy, about keeping the Gregory legacy alive, but Nina realized that as long as she lived, so did he. He would be alive in her every time she folded her laundry, made coffee, celebrated a holiday, took a ski trip, went for a swim, ran a race. And so, so much more. He’d always be there. Except that he wouldn’t.
Nina put the folded shirt into a box, then went to his dresser to sort through his T-shirts and shorts. She thought about the ten years’ worth of Gregory Corporation finances that she still hadn’t managed to get through. The numbers swam whenever she looked at them. Even with a ruler, she couldn’t keep the lines straight, couldn’t keep the strings of profits and losses clear in her mind. But she had to. Soon. She would, she promised herself. She’d figure it out tomorrow.
* * *
• • •
TJ had said he needed to talk
to Nina about her father’s will, so she’d told him to come over after he finished work. When he got there, he looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. He was running the corporation on his own, handling the board of directors until Nina got up to speed, until she took her rightful place as daughter and heir. She felt bad about how hard he was working, but she could barely string two sentences together. She kept walking into her kitchen and finding a stack of Post-it notes in the refrigerator or a carton of milk in the freezer, completely unsure of how they’d gotten there. She wasn’t ready to do much of anything—certainly nothing having to do with her family’s business.
“You doing okay?” he asked her.
Nina shrugged. She was still standing, still moving, still living. Though her relationship with Tim felt strained. It wasn’t his fault. In the past week, the smallest word, the most innocuous sentence could set Nina off into a spiral of sobs or shut a conversation down completely. Her emotions surprised both of them. Her mind felt like a minefield and he was treading as cautiously as he could. He was treating her like she was fragile, unstable, about to explode at any moment. And even though she felt that way, she didn’t want to be treated like that. So she’d started spending more time alone, with books, on the phone with Leslie. “As well as can be expected, I guess,” she said. “I’m dressed. I ate today. I’m sorting through his race T-shirts without melting down completely.” She shrugged again.
TJ nodded. She figured he probably felt the same way. He didn’t say anything more, as if he were conserving his strength for something else altogether.
“Want to sit over there?” she asked, pointing toward the table and chairs on the other side of the great room. This, for some reason, felt like a conversation that needed a table.
“Sure,” TJ said, walking over and putting the folder he’d had under his arm on the table. Then he rubbed his puffy eyes. “So,” he said, “I have your father’s will.”
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