Chapter Thirteen
It takes several minutes for the door to open, and when it does, Greta finds herself face-to-face with a version of her dad she’s never seen before.
She stares at him. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” he asks, staring back.
He does not. His face is pale and his hair is greasy and he’s wearing a set of wrinkled gray pajamas. Even from the hallway, the room feels humid and stuffy, and it has a slightly sour smell to it.
Greta peers around him to where the curtains are pulled shut in the back. “Why don’t you open the door to get some fresh air?”
Conrad gives her a weary look. “I don’t have the energy to stand here explaining to you why I don’t have the energy to do anything beyond make it to the bathroom and back.”
“I’ll do it,” she says, moving past him into the room. She tries to hold her breath in a way that isn’t obvious as she yanks back the thick beige curtains and pushes open the door to the veranda. The night air rushes in, bringing a welcome chill. Greta stands there inhaling it for a moment, still a little drunk, then turns to see her dad crawling back into the bed.
“Much better,” she says as she begins straightening up the rest of the room. There are towels strewn everywhere, and three empty cans of ginger ale on the small table by the couch.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Conrad says with his eyes closed. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Has anyone been in to check on you?”
“A cleaning crew,” he mutters. “And a nurse.”
“And?”
“Nobody else is sick,” he says. “So it’s not the food.”
“Good,” she says, and when he opens one eye, she shrugs. “Well, for the rest of us anyway.”
He groans and tugs the covers up to his neck. “You have to go. I’m still quarantined.”
“For how much longer?” she asks, pulling out the desk chair and sitting down beside the bed.
“Twenty-four hours after the last time I…” he trails off. “You know.”
“Right,” she says. “How long has it been now?”
He struggles to free his arm from the sheets and checks his watch. “Two.”
“So twenty-two more hours?”
“Thank god I spent all those paychecks on a math tutor,” he says, and then shifts around under the covers and lets out a sigh. “This is awful.”
“At least we’re at sea tomorrow.”
“Trust me, the only thing worse than having the stomach flu is having the stomach flu on a ship,” he says. “These waves are killing me.”
“I only meant that hopefully you won’t have to miss another stop.”
“It’s Glacier Bay next,” he says, his voice pained. “Do you know how long we’ve—” He stops abruptly. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking forward to seeing it?”
“Worst-case scenario,” she says, motioning to the window, “at least you’ve got a balcony.”
He closes his eyes again. “It’s not the same. I wanted to go up to the crow’s nest and see what the view is like. I wanted to hear the lectures from the geologists and naturalists. I wanted to take pictures with Davis and Mary and Todd and Eleanor.”
“Dad,” Greta says gently. “You’ll still get to see the glaciers.”
“You don’t even know which ones we’re seeing. I bet you haven’t read anything about them.”
“I like to be surprised,” she says, unzipping her rain jacket. Conrad looks alarmed to see her settling in. He opens his mouth, but before he can say the word quarantine, she shakes her head. “It’s fine. I have a hardy constitution.”
He snorts. “You have the constitution of a Dickensian orphan.”
“Hey,” she says, but she can’t help laughing. “They’re your genes.”
“Don’t blame me. I’m not usually this pale. That’s all your mother.”
Greta notices that he’s shivering and gets up to close the balcony door. It’s after nine now, and the ship’s engines are beginning to whir to life again. Across the water, the mountains are turning to silhouettes. She leaves the door open a crack, unable to part with the fresh air entirely.
“Is there anything you need?” she asks. “Did they give you medicine? Something bland to eat?”
“No food,” he mumbles into the pillow. “Please don’t even say the word.”
Greta sits down again. “Do you want a book? Or a movie?”
“No, no,” he says, and then: “I just…I really miss your mom.”
“I know,” she says quietly.
The ship moves over a swell, and she leans back in the chair and looks around the room, awash in yellowy light. On the wall, there’s a painting of a log cabin covered in snow. Conrad’s breathing grows steady, so steady it’s hard to tell whether he’s still awake.
“What would she do?” Greta wonders after a minute, not entirely sure whether she’s asking him or talking to herself. She doesn’t expect an answer, but he shifts beneath the blanket and his head appears again.
“She would’ve told you to go,” he says. “So you don’t get sick too.”
“No, I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” His voice is harsher now. “But she’s not here, so what good does it do to think about it?”
Greta’s heart cracks a little at this. She closes her eyes, trying to picture her mother, and the image that surfaces is of Helen in the front row at one of her shows, bright-eyed and loose-limbed and grinning. Conrad has only seen Greta play once in the last ten years: at her album-release party, which he came to under protest, less than thrilled about missing a work conference. Afterward, when she asked what he thought, he shrugged. “It was pretty good,” he said. “As these things go.”
But Helen—she didn’t just love seeing her daughter perform, she loved the actual shows too. She always had, ever since the days of middle school talent shows and gigs at local restaurants. The first real performance she saw was years ago, before the EP, before the album, before anything really, when Greta flew her out for a short set at a small but enthusiastic venue in Seattle. At the time, Helen was still a school nurse and kept delightedly telling everyone—taxi drivers and waiters, hotel clerks and other musicians—that she was on spring break. Greta had picked her up from the airport and suggested they go shopping for something more concert appropriate, something where she wouldn’t stand out so much in the crowd. But of course, Helen insisted on wearing her usual khaki pants and cardigan and loafers.