More Than Words

by Jill Santopolo

  “Oh, Sweetheart,” he said, slowly. “These days, my love for you hurts all the time. I feel like by getting sick like this, by dying, I’m somehow letting you down. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  Nina crossed the space between her chair and her father’s bed. She bent down and hugged him carefully; he felt so fragile. “Of course you didn’t,” she said. “And you’ve never let me down.”

  “I want you to listen,” he said. “I don’t know how long I have, and there are some things I need to make sure you know. I’ve been thinking about this all week.”

  Nina sat on the edge of his bed. “I’m here, Dad.”

  “You know your grandfather always said that you’re nothing without your name.” Nina could hear the strain in his voice, the way there was just enough air in his lungs to make it to the end of the sentence. “When you take over the business, remember that. Everything you do, it’s not just for you. It’s to honor me, to honor your grandfather. We created something that will live on after we’re gone, and it’s your job to take care of it. You know how important that is to me.”

  “I know, Dad,” Nina said. All her life, her father had talked to her about the Gregory legacy. What her grandparents had done to build it, to secure it. How her grandfather wanted the Gregory name to mean success and luxury, and how her grandmother wanted it to mean elegance and culture. That was why she started her art collection and joined the board of the Met. Nina’s father built on what both his parents had done. He grew his mother’s collection, expanding it from its home in the Hamptons to his apartment and the lobbies of the Gregory hotels. And he stepped into her spot on the board of trustees at the Met after she died. Later, when he took the helm of the Gregory Corporation, he expanded on his father’s success, too, and added power to their family’s legacy, innovation. Nina wasn’t sure yet what she’d contribute, but she felt the weight of it. The weight of the pride her father felt in being a Gregory. The gravity of the mission he felt he was giving her.

  “Have you read through the financials yet? The envelope I gave you last week? Did you bring it with you?”

  Nina sighed, feeling a squeeze in the pit of her stomach, the one that came from disappointing her father. “I haven’t had a chance yet, Dad. I’m sorry. It’s at home. The campaign’s been crazy.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “In that case, I just want to say: If you find anything . . .” Her father faltered.

  “What do you mean, Dad?” Nina asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing.” He looked so defeated. “We can talk after you go through the numbers.”

  “Should I be looking for something?” she asked. She wondered if this was a test. If he’d put something in there so he’d know she could do the job. His way of making sure her intelligence was at the $2000 level.

  “We’ll talk this weekend,” he said. “Sooner rather than later, okay?”

  Nina’s stomach squeezed harder. “The doctor said you’d be okay until January,” she said. “We’ve got so much time to talk.” She kept telling herself that. She had to keep telling herself that.

  “It’s not an exact science, Sweetheart. You’re smarter than that.”

  It stung. Those words always stung.

  “And there’s one more thing.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “I don’t want you to be here, at the end of your life, and regret anything.”

  “Do you?” she asked, the squeeze in her stomach still there. “Regret anything?”

  He moved his head in such a way that Nina couldn’t quite tell if he was nodding yes or shaking it no. “I just wish . . . I wish I’d had more time with your mother. I wish—” he said, and then stopped.

  “Me, too,” Nina whispered, so quietly she wasn’t even sure if her father had heard her.

  He took another deep breath, his face set like he was about to say something important, essential. “You know,” he said. “Timmy loves you.”

  “I love him, too,” Nina said.

  “When we spoke last night, he asked me . . . well . . . I don’t want to ruin anything. TJ and I had always hoped this would happen.”

  Nina blinked. Did that mean what she thought it meant?

  Joseph Gregory reached out and grabbed his daughter’s hand again. “I’m so happy you’ll have someone to take care of you. Someone who can look out for the company. Someone who understands us.”

  Nina nodded, too surprised to respond. She and Tim had only been dating for eight months. But her parents had gotten engaged nine months after they’d met. Nina wondered what her mother had thought about her and Tim when they were babies. Did she think they were meant to be together, too, from the time they were born? Or would she have pushed Nina to explore the world and see who she met on the beaches of Barcelona or Rio or Tel Aviv? Not follow the safer path.

  “I’m sorry, Sweetheart, but I’m a bit tired,” Joseph Gregory said to his daughter. “I just . . . feel weak today.” Cansabil, Nina thought. Tired and weak. The word came easily, with her mother already on her mind. “How about picking out a movie? It’ll be like old times. You can watch a movie in my room until you fall asleep, and then . . .”

  “And then you’ll carry me into my room so I can wake up in my own bed,” Nina finished, so aware that her father could never carry her anywhere now. He was clearly aware of it, too. She saw him brush a tear off his cheek with the back of his hand. Ignoring that, Nina put in The Princess Bride. The two of them had watched it together countless times, dissolving into laughter at the lines Anybody want a peanut? And Have fun storming the castle! Lines that perhaps weren’t funny to anyone else but had once made her dad laugh so hard that the club soda he was drinking bubbled out of his nose.

  Another line they liked—I hate for people to die embarrassed—took on a more somber note now. She half paid attention to the movie while her father fell asleep. Then she left the room, the movie still running—the Ancient Booer doing her thing.

  Nina wished she’d brought those financials with her today. Then when her father woke up, she could tell him she’d read through them. They could talk about whatever it was he wanted to, and she wouldn’t have to see disappointment on his face. After everything he’d given her, the least she could do was not disappoint him during his last months on Earth.

  21

  When Tim arrived, Nina was in the kitchen, surrounded by cookbooks. Cooking relaxed her. At least in the kitchen she was in charge. After catching Nina up on what her sons were up to and her new grandtwins were doing, Irena had left to change the bed linens. Nina had gone through the cookbooks looking for soup recipes. She figured that while she was cooking dinner, she could make her father broth if nothing else. And she could make him enough for the next few days at least. Maybe more, if she froze it. How much more would he need?

  Nina hadn’t taken a psych course since she was nineteen—but in the recesses of her mind she remembered something about how knowing the outcome of a particular event made people more comfortable. It was why New York City had installed those time clocks on most of the subway lines. The trains didn’t come more frequently, but passengers could see when they were supposed to arrive, and knowing that they had to wait four or seven minutes made them less agitated. They were able to plan. Their faith in the transit authorities increased. The whole city was slightly calmer during rush hour. It was a smart psychological move.

  Nina wished she had a time clock for life. If she knew she had a month left with her father, she would act one way. Two months would be something else. Three months. Four. She knew it probably wasn’t much longer than four months, but if it was, it would change her approach.

  In our ignorance, we are at a loss, she thought. Without the facts, there’s no way to create a solid path. But the truth was, she had no idea how much time she had left either. Perhaps all her planning, all her father’s planning was for naught. For all she knew, she could die tomorrow.r />
  “Hey,” Tim called, as he let himself in. Nina heard his voice echoing down the hallway. “Smells good in here.” When he walked into the kitchen, he wrapped his arms around Nina. “Mm, you smell good, too, like raspberries. It’s been too long.”

  “I missed you, too,” Nina said, resting her head briefly on Tim’s chest. She felt relaxed around Tim. Calmer. Like her blood was pumping at the right speed when he was there.

  Then she rose up on her toes to reach the spices in the cupboard. “I got it,” Tim said, as he pulled down the onion powder she’d been reaching for.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Want to tell me about your day, while I cook?”

  “Not much to tell,” he said as he watched her boiling and chopping and seasoning, following the recipe with precision. “I think the investors are interested. Darren, you remember him—the investment banker who’s helping us secure funding? He asked if we wanted to have dinner next week.”

  “I could probably make that happen,” Nina said, checking the recipe before adding the peppers to the stir-fry. “It’ll depend on the campaign, though.”

  Tim walked up behind Nina and slid his arms around her, cupping her breasts in his hands. “I’m going to be so happy when that campaign is over,” he said, kissing her neck. “I’ll get so much more time with you.”

  Nina wriggled out from Tim’s grip. “Tim! We’re in my dad’s apartment!”

  “What?” Tim said. “It’s not like he’s going to catch us.”

  Nina froze. Tim saw it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s fine,” Nina said, and kept stirring the vegetables. But it wasn’t fine. Not really. Even though she was living through her father’s illness with Tim. And even though they’d been friends forever, he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand how it all made her feel, like she was a table with a wobbly leg. She could prop herself up sometimes with a matchbook—a lot of times, really—but when the matchbook slipped, the whole table wobbled and everything on it threatened to crash to the floor.

  He stroked her hair. “Hey,” he said. “I really am sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “I know,” Nina said. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, relaxing into the feeling of Tim’s fingers on her hair, stroking the length of it.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, tentatively.

  She did, she realized. But not with someone who didn’t get it. She wanted to talk to Leslie. To Rafael. “Nah,” she said. “I’m managing okay.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. As she turned and looked at Tim’s face, Nina wondered about the timing of death. About the when and the why of it. When her mother died, a few people told Nina that it was just her mother’s time. She’d taken comfort in that then, like the rules of the game had been set long ago, and now her mother was just following them. But since then, she’d wondered. Was saying that just a coping mechanism, a way to make sense of a horrific event? Because if there isn’t a reason for people to die, if there isn’t a god who is calling people home or deciding it’s their time, it’s harder to understand, harder to accept.

  “Your hair is so pretty,” Tim said. He was still stroking it, but Nina wasn’t paying attention to him. Her mind was off on its own odyssey, spinning.

  If life is a series of random events, she was thinking, then her mother randomly had a car accident and died, her father randomly developed cancer, he randomly relapsed. Life is a crapshoot, a game of chance. And if you follow that logic, her father could’ve gotten sick ten years ago or ten years from now. Nina tossed the one-inch cubes of chicken into a pot with a quarter cup of oil and the already cooking onions and peppers. If that was the case, she figured, she should be grateful that her father didn’t die when her mother did. Or when he was even younger. She should be grateful that she had all the time with him that she did. She should try to focus on that.

  She stirred the vegetables in the pot.

  And yet she couldn’t focus only on that. She was not only grateful but angry. At life, at the way things turned out, and, illogically, at her father. How dare you leave me before I’ve figured out my life, she thought. How dare you leave me before I’m ready to let you go.

  The vegetables sizzled.

  Tim rubbed her shoulders.

  And she took the food off the stove so they could eat.

  22

  A little while later, Nina peeked into her father’s bedroom.

  “Tim’s here, Dad,” she said. “How about we have dinner in your room?”

  Nina opened the set of French doors between her father’s bedroom and his sitting room and set three places at the mahogany table in the corner. He used to sit there to drink coffee and read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every morning. Now it was empty. The newspapers were on his bedside table and hadn’t been opened.

  Once the table was set, Tim came in carrying a tray filled with food.

  “Timmy!” her father said, a grin spreading across his face as Nina helped him to a chair. “Will you go get the bottle of Macallan on the top shelf of the bar? This seems like just the right time to drink it.”

  Tim retrieved the bottle of scotch.

  “To having dinner with two of my favorite people,” Joseph Gregory said, once Nina had handed him a glass.

  “And to you, Uncle Joe,” Tim said, raising his glass in a toast.

  “Yes, Dad, to you,” Nina said.

  She had to concentrate on the sting of the scotch so she wouldn’t cry.

  After the Macallan and a few spoonfuls of soup, Nina’s father winced.

  “Is something wrong, Dad?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing, Sweetheart,” he said. “Sitting up’s not as comfortable as lying down.”

  Within a few more minutes, he couldn’t take the pain anymore, and Nina insisted on giving him another lollipop as Tim helped him lie back down in the bed.

  Then she looked at Tim.

  “If you don’t mind, Uncle Joe,” Tim said. “I’m going to steal your daughter and bring her into the dining room for dessert.”

  “Oh, steal away,” Nina’s father said. She could detect a smile on his face, in spite of the pain.

  When she and Tim dropped their dishes back in the kitchen, Nina said, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Watching him like that—it’s horrible. It hasn’t been this bad before.”

  Tim put his spoon in the sink and then looked at her. Nina could see the concern in his eyes. Tim was quiet for a moment.

  “We should get married,” he said.

  Nina stared at him. “Pardon?”

  “I spoke to your dad about it. He and I were going to go this weekend to the safe-deposit box to get your mother’s engagement ring. But . . . now it seems like too long to wait. We could get married tomorrow, or the day after. Your dad could be at our wedding. We could get his friend—that judge, what’s his name?—to come and marry us in the apartment.”

  Nina’s lungs felt constricted. That vine around her torso was back. She couldn’t marry Tim tomorrow. “We haven’t even been dating a year,” she said.

  “Long courtships are for people who haven’t been best friends their whole lives,” Tim said. “There’s nothing more you can possibly learn about me at this point. There’s nothing more I need to learn about you to know that we should spend our lives together. It just—it makes sense. We’ve always made sense. We should’ve been together for years by now.”

  But they hadn’t been. After Nina and Tim had gotten together in January, she’d had a series of long talks with Leslie about it.

  “Are you sure this isn’t because your dad is sick again?” Leslie had asked. “I mean, I guess it’s fine if it is, as long as that’s not all that it’s about.”

  Nina had thought about it. Some of it had t
o be, of course. All decisions were affected by the time in which they were made. Nothing existed in a vacuum. But it was more than that. She’d never wanted to risk their friendship before, but with her dad’s diagnosis, it felt like . . . like time was running out. For everyone. And maybe the risk would be worth it.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I think we were afraid,” Nina said to Tim, holding a dirty dish in her hand. “If we tried to date and it didn’t work, it would change us.”

  “Well, it turned out there was nothing to be afraid of,” Tim said. “And now we can make it official. You and me forever.”

  Nina worked hard to control her face, to smile, to nod, though inside she felt panicked. He was right. She loved being with him, spending time with him. She always had. He’d been the person she counted on ever since she was a kid.

  Tim looked at her, his head cocked sideways. “You want a big wedding, don’t you,” he said. “The dress, the ballroom, the dancing—the publicity for the hotels. Me too—we should make a big splash with our wedding like your parents did. But we can do that after. Do something small now, for your dad. And do something bigger later, for everyone else.”

  He made so much sense. He always made so much sense. And though her brain agreed with him completely, her heart—her uncontrollable heart—didn’t feel the same way. She heard Leslie in her mind; she knew what her friend would say.

  “That makes sense,” Nina told Tim. “But do we want to get married because it makes sense?”

  Now Tim’s face was starting to pale. “Do you not want to marry me?” he asked.

  “No!” Nina said, putting down the dish and taking his hand. “I just . . . I guess I was hoping for a proposal that was more about us than about my dad.”

  “Of course it’s about us,” Tim said, kissing Nina on the top of her head. “I thought that was a given.”

  Nina wrapped her arms around Tim and heard his heart beat. Say yes, it was saying, over and over. Say yes, say yes, say yes. She was about to, but he spoke before she did.