More Than Words

Nina’s father pulled her in for a hug. “Well,” he said, “I guess you could say that.”

* * *

• • •

And then later that night they’d gotten word that her mother’s car had slipped on the ice and crashed into a tree. The paramedics did all they could, but they hadn’t been able to revive her. Nina had asked her father, over and over, but she’d never found out who that gift was from or why her mother left. And eventually, in the chaos of all that came next and the anguish of her grief, she’d forgotten about it. Now that she remembered, she wanted to pick up the phone and call her dad, ask him what really had happened the day her mother died. Why he’d never told her. She’d had all these chances over the years, millions of them, but hadn’t thought about it. And now, now that it seemed so important, she didn’t have any chances left.

Nina had the urge to press her foot down on the gas pedal, zoom forward, and fly, fly like nothing else mattered, like she could leave her whole life behind and start fresh, somewhere new. Her foot moved, the car sped up. Faster. It felt so good that it scared her.

But then she tapped on the brakes. She could handle this. She would handle this. She wasn’t going anywhere.

38

When they reached the house, Nina brought the car to a stop. A deluge of memories washed over her. She remembered much more than she’d thought she did: the rosebushes that she wasn’t supposed to touch, the wild strawberry patch that grew berries so small they looked like doll food, the deep red and bright orange of the autumnal leaves. Wave upon wave of memories hit her, a tsunami of words and images.

“Shall we?” Tim asked, after they’d sat in the driveway for a while.

Nina turned the ignition off but didn’t make a move to get out of the car. The urge to fly took over. To race out of there. But she suppressed it.

Instead, she gathered her courage like she did her memories, pulling them in close, and willed herself to open the door.

Their feet crunched on the stones of the driveway. The porch creaked, and so did the hinges of the door.

“We should oil that,” Tim said.

Nina nodded. Then she saw the kitchen. The granite island in the center, the framed advertisements for 1950s brands of soap and salt and soda lining the wall. She remembered herself dancing with her parents in that kitchen, wiggling around to “Twist and Shout,” the whole family relaxed in a way they never felt in Manhattan.

Tim walked through the French doors into the living room, stopping in front of the fireplace. “We made s’mores here,” he said.

“Did we?” Nina asked, but then she remembered marshmallows on wooden shish-kebab sticks, the smell of roasting sugar as they turned brown and gooey.

“Mm-hm,” Tim said. “I think that was the same trip we made that gingerbread castle.”

“That was here?” Nina asked. She remembered making the castle with him, but her memory had placed it in New York City. On Central Park West. In apartment 21-B.

“I’m pretty sure,” he said.

Tim’s memory of their childhood was always a little better than Nina’s, maybe because he was two years older. “Wait, those chairs,” Nina said, combing her memory of making the gingerbread castle with Tim. “Did we make it at that table?”

“I think so,” he said. “I remember those chairs, too.”

“Wow,” Nina said. “I feel like my whole sense of our childhood is shifting. I can’t believe I forgot all of this. I can’t believe my mind moved those memories to Manhattan.”

Tim shrugged. “Not talking about your mom. Not ever coming back to this place. It’s easy to see how those memories would fade—or that your mind would alter them.”

“I guess,” Nina said, wondering what else her mind had changed, what other memories weren’t quite true, suddenly not trusting her own history.

She walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Empty. Literally empty. The pantry too. No one had eaten a meal here in decades.

“We’ll need some food,” Nina said. “If we stay more than a few hours.”

“Do you want to?” Tim asked. “Stay more than a few hours?” They’d packed clothes, just in case.

Nina looked around. She was pretty sure she remembered sitting on that couch while her mother read her Caps for Sale. “Yeah,” she said. “How about we stay the night?”

“Works for me,” Tim said. “I saw a grocery store in town. I can take a walk and get us some provisions while you explore your new old house a little more.”

“I can come,” Nina said, not sure she wanted to explore the house alone, but not wanting to admit it. She was tired of feeling so fragile, of letting anyone—even Tim—see that fragility. “We can drive, it’ll be a lot quicker.”

“We’re Manhattanites,” Tim said. “We walk places. Besides, I could use the exercise.”

Maybe he was right; maybe exploring the house would be better without him. It would give her space to process her emotions. “Okay, go for it,” she said. “I’ll check out the second floor.”

Once Tim left, Nina headed upstairs. She opened the first door on the right and saw her bedroom. As soon as she walked in, she remembered the white wallpaper with silver metallic polka dots and the lavender gauzy curtains. The furniture was all white wood, and so was the floor, with a lavender circular rug underneath her canopied bed. There were three books from her Baby-Sitters Little Sister series sitting on the dresser that she must’ve ended up rebuying in the city. There was even a pair of her elementary-school-sized snow boots in the corner of the room. It was a house stopped in time. Everything was covered in a light layer of dust. Nina wondered how long ago her father’d had the place cleaned. She continued down the hallway and found the bathroom, the guest room, the office, and—at the very end—her parents’ room. She remembered the striped wallpaper, the brass bed frame. The television on the dresser was small and boxy, clearly from when George Bush was president. The first one.

Nina sat down on the bed. She didn’t have a ton of memories of her mom, but sitting here, she remembered one she was pretty sure she could trust. It was summer, so her mom wasn’t teaching, and Nina wasn’t in school. They’d come up to the country for a long time, just the two of them. A few weeks, maybe a month. And her dad came up on the weekends, but not all of them.

“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.