More Than Words

by Jill Santopolo

  “Well,” Leslie said, “have you tried to talk to him about it? Tell him what you want? Couples do lots of things in bed. You know that game Sextris that Vijay showed me when we first started dating? The one that was like Tetris but with humans? We once spent a week trying every position that made the game pieces disappear.”

  Nina thought about how she wanted to phrase her response. “Do you remember that summer I dated Alex? In D.C.?”

  “Of course,” Leslie said. “The Summer of Freedom. I liked that guy.”

  “I wasn’t Joseph Gregory’s daughter that summer. No one in D.C. really cared who I was. And I let myself do whatever, because it didn’t seem to matter so much—where I went, how I dressed, what I said. But then when I got a job back in New York, and I was with everyone who knew my dad, that part of me kind of went away. Or I didn’t let it out. Tim has certainly never seen it.”

  Leslie honked her horn again. “So what changed?” Her turn blinker was on. Nina could hear it clicking rhythmically. “Last night, I mean.”

  Nina knew the answer to this one. She’d been thinking about it all day. “I found out that my dad had an affair,” Nina said. “And I just . . . I don’t know. I needed to disengage. I feel like I’ve been behaving a certain way for my whole life because it’s what my dad expected of me, and it turns out he didn’t follow the same rules. He held me to a higher standard than he did himself, or something. And now everything feels so complicated.” She was thinking not just about Tim, but about Rafael, too, who’d popped into her mind in the bath. And before then, too. She got the feeling he wouldn’t mind if she touched herself when she was with him. She stopped herself from thinking more about it.

  Nina heard Leslie’s car engine turn off and the doors unlock. She heard her friend take a deep breath. “Well, all relationships are complicated. I’m sure Tim could get used to you wanting to fuck more creatively, if that’s all this is. But I feel like there’s a lot more to unpack here.”

  Nina massaged her forehead. “I don’t know, Les,” she said. “I just feel like the whole world is changing and I don’t like it.”

  They kept talking, and while nothing was worked out, nothing changed, it made Nina feel better knowing Leslie was there, listening, on the other end of the phone.

  46

  A few nights later, Nina was placing the water glasses on the table when the elevator door opened into her living room, revealing Tim.

  Tim had gotten busy with work the last few days, so she’d spent her time looking at balance sheets on her own, calling the heads of the different departments, catching herself up on the business, starting with the most recent year’s results and working backward. She did call Irv, but just to get a rundown of the business from his perspective. She knew a lot just from growing up around the hotels, living with her dad, having conversations with Caro and TJ, all those classes at business school. But there was more to learn—more than she’d let herself believe. Now she was learning it. She was doing it for her father, while at the same time wondering if she’d ever really known him at all. She wasn’t sure if she’d found the thing he’d wanted to talk about, but she was discovering a lot about the company that made her question him even more. The marketing seemed like it was from a different decade. The decisions didn’t quite make sense. Was he really the brilliant businessman everyone made him out to be? And what about TJ? Where was he in all of this?

  “Hey,” Tim said. “That smells delicious.” Nina smiled. For the last few hours she’d been cooking. Chicken sautéed with apples, onions, garlic, and thyme. She’d paired it with an autumn salad and a freshly baked loaf of bread.

  There really was something rewarding about putting a meal together. About following a recipe, measuring ingredients, chopping and dicing, and then ending up with exactly what you’d planned. Nina never made up recipes as she went, adding this, switching out that. For her, the joy was in the rules and the result of following those rules to the letter. Today, though, she’d thrown some hot pepper flakes into the bread. She’d added some pomegranate seeds to the autumn salad. And was embarrassed by how satisfying it felt to see them there, nestled in with all the other ingredients.

  Tim helped Nina bring the dishes of food to the table, then served her before he served himself.

  “Thanks,” Nina said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For making me such a fantastic dinner. Though you’ve never put pomegranate seeds in salad before. New recipe?”

  “Old recipe,” Nina said, “with new flair.”

  Tim looked surprised but didn’t say anything more.

  Nina picked up a forkful of salad, her mind still on the conversation she’d had with the head of marketing. Jeff had told her he’d been hoping to increase their social media presence and their ad buys in a handful of key markets, but his request had been denied. She wasn’t going to suggest any changes to TJ yet but wanted to know what each department would want, if they could have anything. Some of the items seemed easy to provide. But she knew that nothing in business was ever as simple as it seemed at first glance. Changing the soap in the bathrooms, for example, meant negotiating a whole new partnership, perhaps new costs. Research into that company to make sure they weren’t using child labor to make their soap into the shape of hearts or donating to lobbyists who were working to deregulate waste management. And even as she was trying to think about that, in the back of her mind she kept seeing her father, cheating on her mother. Indirectly causing her death. She couldn’t get it out of her head.

  “So how was your day?” Tim asked.

  Nina shrugged. “Busy. Interesting. Vaguely destabilizing.”

  “Destabilizing how?” Tim asked, getting up and taking a bottle of Cabernet out of Nina’s wine rack.

  “I guess . . . I don’t know,” Nina said, trying to get her feelings to cohere into sentences. “I realized today that there are business decisions my dad made that I might’ve made differently. And when things like that happened in the past, especially when it had to do with the company, I’d just assumed he was right and I was looking at things the wrong way. But I think . . . I think there are some things he could have done better. And I’m not sure why he didn’t see that. I would have expected him to.” Nina took a sip of the wine Tim had poured her.

  “Nobody’s perfect,” Tim said. “But your dad was great. He took what his father started and made it even more successful. Do you know how many people in your father’s position would’ve just coasted on what already existed—or even worse, run it into the ground? You see it all the time.”

  Nina took another sip, letting the flavor settle on her tongue. “That might be true,” she said. “But it’s about more than his business success. It’s what we found out up in the country, too. And now I feel like—I was anchoring myself, my life, to a rock that wasn’t as solid as I thought it was.”

  That was really what had been bothering her most. Her father wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. She had created a version of him that, in this moment, felt imaginary. Like the Great and Powerful Oz. Or the Emperor without any clothes. And not only had the “real” Joseph Gregory, the one who was so much more flawed than she ever knew, been hidden from her, but now she’d never have the chance to know him.

  “Well, you can anchor yourself to me,” Tim said, smiling. “I’m the most solid rock around.”

  Nina had to force herself to smile back. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that night, Nina and Tim were in bed. Nina had just put her phone away, but not before seeing that Rafael had texted to ask how she was doing, to see if she wanted to get together for coffee. She put him off but couldn’t bring herself to say no. She didn’t want to think about what the reason was, especially not when Tim was here in her bed. Not when they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together. Not when she was afraid to let herself go
around him, to tell him what she wanted. Not when their relationship felt like it was changing, had been changing, in a way she didn’t quite understand.

  47

  The next morning, the doorman called up from downstairs. It was TJ Calder, there to see her. Nina was worried he was coming by because of the conversations she’d been having with all of the department heads. She hadn’t spoken to him yet. She felt too weird about the fact that she would basically be his boss. It would be like telling her father what to do. Incomprehensible. Impossible.

  “Nina, Sweetheart,” he said when the elevator door opened. He looked better than he had the last time she’d seen him. His eyes weren’t swollen, his face didn’t seem as hollow. “How are you?”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. It was how she’d decided to answer that question. It was the truth, and also didn’t invite more discussion.

  TJ sat down at the island in the middle of Nina’s kitchen. “I brought muffins,” he said, placing a bag on the counter in front of him. “Apple cranberry’s your favorite, right?”

  “It is,” she said. And then she found herself getting choked up. TJ knew that about her. He’d remembered. It was like having a second dad. A bonus, a backup. Maybe he could retire. And then she wouldn’t have to be his boss. After she married Tim, she could just be his daughter. Maybe she should talk to Tim about that. She opened the bag of muffins and brought some napkins over from the pantry.

  TJ took a lemon–poppy-seed muffin and rested it on a napkin in front of him. “I’ve been trying to stave them off, but the board of directors would really like to meet with you. I came in person because your dad would want me to impress upon you how important this is.”

  Nina thought about the last time she’d planned to meet with the board. Her meltdown. She was afraid to put herself in front of them until she was more sure of herself, more sure of the business. “Can’t I take another week?” Nina asked. She was unwrapping her muffin, not looking at TJ. She needed to figure out what she wanted to do. And that meant with TJ, too.

  “This week would be better. There’s a lot of talk about what’s going to happen to the company now that your father’s gone. It would be helpful if you held a meeting. I’ll be there with you. I can limit it to fifteen minutes. Twenty tops.”

  Nina massaged her temples. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try for Friday.” Even though she knew she wasn’t likely to be ready by then.

  “That sounds good,” TJ said. “You remember Ned? He’s been grumbling about having an investment banker evaluate strategic options.”

  She knew what that meant. The board was thinking about trying to convince her to sell her majority stake in the company.

  Nina felt herself physically recoil. It was a gut instinct. Intuitive. “I’m not selling,” she said immediately. “That’s my family’s company. That’s my name. No one else can have it.”

  Then she heard TJ sigh. “I know,” he said. “But are you ready to run it?”

  “I will be soon,” Nina said. “Maybe you and I can sit down tomorrow and talk about your vision for the company. The next three years. Five.” Maybe he would tell her that he wanted to retire, now that her father was gone. Then she wouldn’t have to bring it up.

  TJ sighed. “I know you’re capable of running it, Nina. And I know your father expected you to, but I’m going to ask you something he never would: Do you want to?”

  She was supposed to. That was what she knew. It was her responsibility. A job she was born to do. The future she’d always known she would have. And she’d accepted it. She expected it. It was part of who she was.

  “Just think about it,” TJ said, getting up to give Nina a hug. “I have to go to the office.”

  She hugged him back and insisted he take the rest of his muffin with him, wrapping it up in tinfoil. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” she said.

  “Call Rita,” he told her. “She’ll find time in my schedule.”

  “Oh wait,” Nina said. “Before you go. I was flipping through the financials my father gave me. From 2008 to 2011 there’s a $60,000 fee paid to a consulting firm each month. Manxome Consulting? Do you have their reports? I’m curious to see what they said about the business. They don’t seem to have a website.”

  An expression Nina couldn’t name crossed TJ’s face. “I’m not sure where they are,” he said. “I’ll look into it and let you know if I can locate them.”

  “Thanks, Uncle TJ,” she answered.

  “Of course.” He tightened the scarf around his neck before heading to the door.

  After she saw him out, Nina went back to the balance sheets. She wondered if her dad had chosen the firm because they’d named themselves after “Jabberwocky.”

  Whether or not running the Gregory Corporation was something she wanted to do, it was something she was going to do, and at least for now, that was enough.

  48

  Three weeks had passed since her father had died and even though on one hand it had felt like no time, on the other hand it was getting harder for Nina to remember the exact timbre of his voice and the specific feel of his hands on hers. Her emotions weren’t quite as raw, quite as ready to erupt at the strangest moments. And her brain was starting to function again at its usual speed. She felt like she could reenter the world.

  Nina picked up the newspaper from her breakfast table. There was an article on Rafael. He was planning to march in the Village Halloween parade at the end of the month, about a week before Election Day. She wondered how everyone at the campaign was doing. Whether she should stop by and say hello. To Jane, who’d been texting every few days to see how Nina was. To Jorge, who maybe would do his touchdown dance if she asked. To Rafael, who had texted her a few more times, offering to talk, to meet up. She had responded enough to be polite but still hadn’t made any concrete plans. Instead she ran along the Hudson River, with breaks to admire the bravery of the people taking trapeze lessons on Pier 40. She spent hours wondering what the hell her father was thinking when he cheated on her mother, spent a few more debating with Tim as to whether or not they should ask his parents what they knew about the affair. And now Tim was asking her when she thought it might be the right time to tell everyone else about their engagement.

  “The old Nina would be so excited,” he’d said the other night. That was how he started a lot of comments now. “The old Nina wouldn’t have put pimentos in this sandwich.” “The old Nina wouldn’t have gone and gotten her ear cartilage pierced in the middle of the day.” Which Nina had done. Two days after she’d spoken with TJ and realized that her dad was definitely not the star businessman she’d always assumed he was. The day she’d put off her meeting with the board.

  It turned out TJ had been making most of the decisions, doing his best to keep the business in the black while her father networked and hobnobbed and was the figurehead of the corporation. He was the publicity driver, but TJ had done the real work. And he’d done it in a way that Nina didn’t always agree with.

  She’d felt like she was living in a house of mirrors, where up was down and left was right. Then, for some reason, she remembered back to when she was sixteen and wanted to get the cartilage at the top of her ear pierced, and her father had told her no. That it looked low-class. She didn’t agree. She’d made a list of girls at school who’d gotten their cartilage pierced. But he’d still said no. So now, seventeen years later, she’d done it herself. And her fiancé hated it just as much as her father would have.

  As Nina took a bite of her English muffin, she wondered if maybe she could volunteer at the campaign. Just a few hours a week to help out. It might make her life feel more grounded, less like she’d walked into a movie about herself, where the best friend became the fiancé and the main character was left rudderless, floating in a sea of half-truths and outright lies.

  Then her phone rang—it was campaign headquarters.

  “Hello?” Nina said, wonde
ring who she’d find on the other end.

  “Nina? It’s Christian.” Other than coming to her with a few introduction requests, Nina and Christian hadn’t had a ton to do with each other while she was working for Rafael.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  Christian made a noncommittal sound on the other end of the phone. “Well,” he said, “we were hoping that Marc Johnson’s donors would come on board after the primary, but they haven’t. At least, not in the way we’d hoped.”

  “Oh,” Nina said, “I’m sorry to hear that,” while her brain spun, wondering who had donated and who hadn’t, whether her calls might make any difference. “Do you want me to try to convince some people?”

  Christian cleared his throat. “Your father used to host fund-raisers at The Gregory Hotel,” he said. “A thousand dollars or more a head.”

  Nina was nodding. “Right,” she said. “He would raise a few hundred thousand dollars for the candidate.”

  Christian cleared his throat again. And Nina realized: “You want to ask me if we can do that for Rafael?”

  “Perhaps next week?” Christian answered. “I wouldn’t ask except . . .”

  “Except you need it. Rafael needs it. I understand. Let me make some phone calls. I’ll see what I can pull together.” She wondered if Rafael had authorized this ask. He must have. Maybe that was why he’d been wanting to meet her for coffee.

  There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. “Thank you,” Christian said. “So much.”

  Nina said good-bye and then called Caro. After explaining what they wanted, Nina said, “What do you think, Aunt Caro? Is this possible?”