More Than Words

by Jill Santopolo

  “What would you think about taking a trip to Colorado?” her mother asked. “You know you have a new baby cousin out there.”

  “I do?” Nina said. She knew her mom had grown up in Colorado, that her aunt and uncle and grandpa lived there, but they hardly ever visited. Her dad didn’t like it out there. He didn’t get along with her mom’s father or her younger sister very well. They thought that he’d changed her—turned her into someone who wanted to live in a world that made them uncomfortable. His gifts were never appreciated, which hurt him. It might have been why her father always wanted Nina to date men who traveled in the same circles she did. He didn’t want her to repeat his mistakes, make her life more difficult than it had to be. Even if making money didn’t matter to her the way it did to him, it was still there. It was still the world she knew.

  “You know, Ballerina, you’re not just a Gregory. You’re a Lukas, too,” her mother told her that summer. “That was my last name before I married your dad. Maybe we could make some plans to spend time in Colorado soon and you could get to know that part of the family better.”

  “Okay,” Nina’d said. “And I can play with my cousin.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Only it never happened. They didn’t visit Colorado over the summer, and then her mom died that Christmas, and Nina had never met her cousin. Actually, after her mother’s funeral, she’d only seen her aunt once more—and had never seen her grandfather again. When she’d asked her dad about it, he said, “They don’t want to be a part of our world.”

  “But I want to be a part of theirs,” Nina replied. Her aunt Daphne sounded just like her mom when she talked. They had the same laugh. And she always hugged Nina extra hard when they saw each other.

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “I promise. They don’t like us.”

  And that was what she’d grown up thinking. That her mother’s family didn’t like them. But was that true?

  Nina wondered, now, if the time she and her mom spent at the country house that summer was an indication of something she hadn’t realized then. Something that was wrong in her parents’ marriage, that made her mother think more about her own family, about visiting them with her daughter and not her husband. Something that reached its apex on Christmas Day.

  Nina walked to the closet, hoping to find something there. What, she didn’t know. Perhaps a dress that would rekindle a memory. A bottle of her mother’s perfume. A book she’d forgotten existed but had once loved.

  With her heart beating hard, she opened the closet door. And there was something inside. But not what Nina hoped. A few pairs of jeans. Some sweaters. A pair of sneakers. Clothing she didn’t remember at all. She was getting a small piece of her mom back, after all these years, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Nina pulled out the jeans and held them up to her own legs. Her mother was shorter than she was, Nina discovered, by about an inch. She’d never wondered if she’d grown to be taller than her mother. In fact, she’d always assumed she hadn’t. In her mind, her mother always seemed so tall. Nina was only a year younger, now, than her mother was when she’d worn these clothes. Nina wondered if her mother felt as confused as she did sometimes. As conflicted. She wished more than anything that she could ask her. Mom, she thought, I wish you were here with me.

  Nina hung the jeans back up and opened the drawer in the night table she remembered was on her mother’s side of the bed. Inside she found a drawing she had no recollection of making. It was a yard with grass and two bunnies. Nina had written Hoppy Sunday! on it. And she’d labeled all of the items in Spanish and English with arrows—tree arbol, her younger self had written, bunny conejito, sky cielo, sun sol, lawn cesped, flowers flores. She wondered now if it was a project her mother had given her, the Spanish professor helping her daughter learn, or if it was something Nina had created on her own to make her mother happy.

  Either way the drawing made her smile. She wondered if Rafael had made similar drawings, or if it was different, growing up bilingual, two languages being an innate part of who you were instead of learning the building blocks of a second language one by one. Nina pulled her phone out of her back pocket and snapped a picture of the drawing.

  Then she looked around the room some more. There was her parents’ wedding picture standing on the dresser next to a picture of her mother holding an infant Nina. Both of them were asleep on a couch, Nina on her mother’s chest, her hands gripping her mother’s wavy, dark hair. Nina picked it up, trying to see herself in the tapering of her mother’s fingers, or the tilt of her neck. She thought maybe the shape of their earlobes was the same.

  It was mind-blowing to be here. This place she grew up in but didn’t. This house she had known but forgotten. It was a place where memories lived. Where they’d been stored up waiting for her, but she never knew. And now that she did, now that she’d found them, the one person who’d been keeping them from her was the only person she wanted to share them with.

  39

  There was a knock on the door, and Nina went downstairs to answer it. Tim was back, carrying two bags of food.

  “You wouldn’t believe what I found,” he said as he walked into the kitchen and put them down on the island.

  Nina began unpacking and smiled, realizing Tim had bought everything he usually bought for his own apartment. Roasted chicken, kalamata olives, cheddar cheese. At least dinner would be easy. “What did you find?” she asked.

  He pulled an elaborate gingerbread kit out of the second bag of groceries. One that would look like a castle, with a drawbridge and parapets and four different turrets. “Just like the one we made a million years ago. The store was unpacking these when I got there—the first holiday shipment of the season.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “This is looking even better than our castle did when we were kids,” Tim said, later, as he held two gingerbread walls together so that Nina could pipe icing on the outside corner.

  “I don’t know, that was a pretty good one,” Nina said, concentrating on keeping the icing straight and even. “If my memory serves.” Though, of course, now she was wondering if it did.

  “We had fun when we were kids, didn’t we.” Tim moved on to the balustrade, icing the bottom so it would stick to the top of the terrace before Nina added the piping. “We’ve always made a great team.”

  Nina thought about the epic sand sculptures they built on Georgica Beach with their dads’ occasional directions, the surprise party they made when they found out that Richard, who took care of the house in East Hampton, was turning forty, roping in all the adults to celebrate and getting the cook they had that summer to make a cake in the shape of a football, since that was Richard’s favorite sport. She remembered, too, how Tim joined her under the table during the first Christmas without her mom, when she couldn’t face the adults anymore, with the sympathy in their eyes. Tim had crawled under the table with a plate of cookies. “Thought you might be hungry,” was all he’d said. And they’d stayed there eating cookies until she was ready to come out again.

  “We did. Nina and Tim, Friends Until the End—isn’t that what our parents used to say?”

  Tim paused in his icing to look at Nina.

  “Okay, I’m too gooey,” she said. “I have to wash my hands or I’m going to stick to the piping bag.” Nina got up from the table, but Tim stopped her with his hand on her wrist.

  “Wait,” he said, his voice serious. She sat back down. “I want to say something. I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this the right way ever since the conversation we had in your dad’s kitchen.”

  Nina’s heart sped up. She knew what was coming next. Unconsciously her eye went to her left ring finger. She licked off the tiny bit of frosting that was on her knuckle.

  Tim cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, with your dad gone, with our lives changing. It’s been hard, and I know I haven’t always sai
d the right thing or done the right thing, but Nina, I don’t want to lose you. I keep thinking about what would happen if you died, how shattered I’d be. I know, it’s morbid and awful, but I can’t get the image out of my mind. And I keep thinking about being here with you now, being with you at your dad’s funeral. I want to always be with you. The world seems more manageable when we travel through it together. This is what I should’ve said before, but it took me a while to figure out how to say it.

  “I’ve never loved anyone else the way I love you. When I dated other women, I was always looking for what we have, the closeness, the comfort, the unconditional support. When I think about children, I think about having them with you. When I think about living out the rest of my life, I think about doing it with you by my side. That awe I felt when I first met you, when you were fifteen hours old and I cried when they made me leave you—I don’t know if it’s ever gone away.” His eyes were wide, open, almost pleading. He got down on one knee and pulled a ring box out of his back pocket. “I couldn’t get to your mom’s ring,” he said, “because of the will and everything. So . . . I bought you a new one. And maybe that’s better. It’s our story, not anyone else’s.”

  “Oh, Tim,” Nina said. She looked at him, the person she’d known and loved her entire life, and took the box from his hand, opening it up as she did. Inside was an exquisitely beautiful ring. A round diamond surrounded by sapphires, with smaller diamonds set into the platinum band that would encircle her finger. The sapphires were the same color as the drop her father had gotten her, the same color as the bracelet, as her eyes. Of course she would say yes. Of course she would.

  “Nina?” he asked, softly, as he stood. Then he reached over and brushed frosting off her cheek and she laughed, sliding the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.

  “I’m a mess,” she said. “But yes. Of course yes. And, Tim, this ring is gorgeous.”

  Tim kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him. And she started to cry.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” Tim said, wiping the tears from her cheeks with his fingers. His breath smelled like the gumdrop he’d just eaten. “We’re going to make it okay.”

  “I know,” she said, leaning her head against Tim’s chest, feeling its solidity and warmth. Feeling his heart beat so strong and steady. He knew her. He was the man her father had always wanted her to be with—whom he’d given his permission to the day before he died. Maybe this was her dad’s last gift to her.

  40

  That night, Nina had wanted to sleep in her old bedroom, so they made up her double bed and climbed into it, under the white eyelet canopy. Nina took the ring off and put it next to her on the bedside table. She often slept in jewelry, but that ring took up a solid third of her finger. It seemed too big to sleep in, like she could hurt herself with it.

  “Everything’s going to be better from here,” Tim said.

  They’d decided to keep their engagement secret for a while, even from his parents. It didn’t seem like the right time to announce something joyful, so close to her dad’s death.

  Nina answered Tim with a kiss. Then they snuggled and cuddled, running their fingers up and down each other’s bodies, along the curves of their torsos. In other relationships Nina had been in, physical attraction had been one of the main drivers of the relationship. She’d dated Alex the summer she lived in D.C. after finishing her MBA. They would spend whole weekends without putting on clothes. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. In photos he would smile serenely while secretly sliding his hand along her backside or, if they were sitting at a table, between her legs. The last night, before she headed back to New York, they’d gone to the Lincoln Memorial at two A.M. and had sex in the shadows of the monument, her sitting on his lap, a long skirt keeping them shielded from any passersby.

  They’d both gone into that relationship knowing it would be a summer fling. He was joining the State Department, heading to Moscow in September. And she was fine with that. Sometimes the intensity of their attraction scared her. She found herself doing things she knew she shouldn’t—calling in sick to work so she could spend the day with him, blowing off plans with college friends because all of a sudden his night was free. Alex never asked, never pressured her; she wanted to do these things to be with him, and that was what she found frightening. Tim never made her feel that way. He made her feel safe. In control.

  Nina ran her fingers up his chest, under his T-shirt, through the tangle of hair there, feeling the smoothness of the skin around his nipples.

  Tim followed suit, running his hand across the bare skin of her stomach, trailing his fingers under her silk cami, across her breasts.

  This felt right. It felt like what was supposed to happen, how she was supposed to spend her life.

  Then the pressure of his hand disappeared, and it was on the hem of her shirt, a question.

  Nina answered by raising her arms so he could slide it over her head. After Tim took off her shirt, he removed his own, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

  His hand played along the waistband of her lace underwear, dipping to touch the warm skin beneath it.

  She reached for him under the covers, freeing him from the confines of his cotton boxers and then stroking her fingers along the length of him.

  “Oh, Nina,” he breathed, then slid his underwear down.

  She did the same to hers.

  And then he was inside her, moving slowly, purposefully. She joined in the rhythm of his rocking, and it felt like a slow dance, the two of them moving in time with each other to the music playing just for them.

  Nina felt a pressure swelling inside her. “Right there,” she whispered.

  She was close, so close.

  But then Tim’s body stiffened, his mouth forming a perfect O as he groaned, and whatever was about to crest inside her faded away, receded like waves on the beach.

  “Did you . . . ?” he asked.

  She’d been getting there. Almost. Not quite.

  She shook her head. “But it’s okay,” she said, relaxing against the pillow. “It still felt good. I don’t always.”

  “I know,” he said, reaching under the covers to find his underwear and slip it back on. “But I like it better when you do.”

  She laughed. “Me too,” she said, patting the blanket in search of her own underwear, then thinking better of it. “I don’t see any tissues in here. I’m going to go to the bathroom to clean up.”

  “Okay,” Tim answered, laying his head down. “In case I’m asleep by the time you get back, I’ll say I love you now. And sweet dreams.”

  “You, too,” Nina said, and she kissed the tip of his nose before she got out of the bed.

  After the insanity and sadness of the past weeks, there was something so nice about being here with Tim, as if crossing the city limits made the rest of the world disappear. But she knew eventually they’d have to go home, and she’d have to run the Gregory Corporation. Eventually the rest of her life would start. And maybe, once it did, she’d figure out how to tell Tim she wanted to orgasm, too. Every time.

  41

  It was 3:22 A.M. and Nina was still awake. Tim’s arm was wrapped around her as if she were his security blanket. She knew she needed sleep, but her mind was awhirl. She stared at the lace canopy on the bed, trying to find shapes in the fabric the way she and her mother used to do with clouds on a summer day. When she closed her eyes, her thoughts kept spiraling through her mother’s death and her father’s death and marrying Tim, and not being able to tell her father, and all the new memories she’d unearthed by coming to this house. Memories she wasn’t sure if she could trust but wanted to just the same.

  Nina pulled her phone into bed with her and went to her photos to look at one of her father. He had been gone barely a week, and she was already afraid she’d forget what he looked like, the exact shape of his eyebrows, the depth of the wi
dow’s peak in his hairline. She brought him up on her screen, and immediately her eyes began to fill.

  Nina wiped her tears and scrolled through more pictures. And then she got to the photo she’d taken that afternoon of the drawing she’d made for her mom. The one that made her wonder if Rafael had ever made something similar. Rafael, who might be awake now. She thought about the conversation they’d had the night her father died, how he’d offered to listen if she ever needed someone in the middle of the night. Even though Tim was here, she felt like she needed someone. Someone else who could help her untangle all her thoughts. Rafael would be good at that. But then she remembered what he’d said to her at her father’s wake: We can be whatever we want to be. She wouldn’t call him.

  The photo was blurry. Even though she wouldn’t call Rafael, she might want to send him the picture, say hello. So Nina lifted Tim’s arm off her stomach and slid quietly out of bed. She padded into her parents’ bedroom and opened her mother’s drawer. When she lifted the drawing to photograph it better, she discovered a sealed envelope underneath. Nina picked it up and flipped it over. It was addressed to her father in her mother’s loopy handwriting.

  Nina felt her heart race. Without giving it a second thought, she slid her finger underneath the envelope’s flap and opened up the sheaf of handwritten pages inside.

  December 25, 1992

  The day her mother died.

  Dear Joseph,

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it got this bad.

  Nina stopped reading. She folded the letter back up and slipped it back into the envelope. She didn’t want to know. This was private. Between her parents. For her father’s eyes only.