More Than Words(33)

“Are you thinking about tomorrow?” Leslie asked, when Nina had gone quiet.

“I’m thinking . . .” Nina said, “about kids. If I have kids, they won’t know my dad. My mom either.”

Leslie picked up one of the glasses of wine she’d poured for them. “Cole never met my mom,” she said. “But he still knows her.”

Nina lifted her wineglass and took a sip. She’d had more to drink today than she’d had in any twenty-four-hour period in her life. The low-grade buzz helped, though. It dulled everything and made her understand why people took Xanax. “I guess it’s the same with my grandparents,” Nina said, thinking more about it. “I know their stories—how the first painting my grandmother bought was a Lee Krasner. How my grandfather stole his teacher’s grade book in seventh grade to try to hide a B in history.”

“Exactly,” Leslie said. “We put my mom’s picture on Cole’s dresser. And he knows that his name starts with a C to honor her. Whenever we go swimming we talk about how she loved to swim so much that Jodi and I were convinced she was a mermaid when we were kids. I almost cried in the middle of a Target a few months ago when Cole saw a mermaid doll and asked if we could buy it because Grandma Cheryl probably would have liked it.”

Nina smiled at that. “He’s a sweet kid.”

“Thank goodness,” Leslie said. “Imagine if I gave birth to an asshole?”

“Not possible,” Nina told her.

“So what would you tell your future kids about your dad?” Leslie asked after another sip of wine. “What would you want them to know about him?”

Nina leaned back against one of the pillows, her head cradled by its softness. She thought about her imaginary children. In her mind now they always had Tim’s auburn hair, her mother’s freckles, and her father’s blue eyes. Maybe she would make sweet potato pie with them, using the recipe her dad liked. Maybe they’d start their own turkey collection. And their own traditions in his honor.

“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.