Home > The Unsinkable Greta James(41)

The Unsinkable Greta James(41)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

   She’s about to tell Bear that it’s really none of his business, but she can feel the woman with the compass hovering nearby, phone in hand.

   “Sorry, but do you think I could get one too? To be honest, I don’t know who you are, but I figure my daughter might. She’s into…” She waves a hand around vaguely. “Pop culture.”

   In spite of herself, Greta smiles. “I’m a musician.”

   “She’s a rock star,” says Bear.

   The woman snaps a photo, then studies it for a moment with benign interest. “Cool,” she says with a shrug, then walks off to join her husband, who is gazing out at the glacier through a pair of enormous binoculars.

   The other two canoes are still faraway specks of orange on the water, so their group begins the hike in a small cluster, moving slowly across the hard-packed sand and scattered stones. The glacier is starting to feel like a mirage, like no matter how far they sail or row or walk, they’ll never actually reach it. But after a few minutes, it looks less blocky and more intricate, like some sort of confection, delicate as a meringue.

   Conrad is nearly there, his shadow tiny against the sheer bulk of it. Everyone else peels off, following Bear over to the opposite end of the glacier’s broad face, where a small cave has formed in the ice. But Greta keeps walking straight ahead, her eyes on Conrad, who has stopped to take it in. His life jacket is still buckled tight, like he might have to hurry back to the canoe at any moment, and his hands are on his hips, and he looks somehow both irretrievably lost and entirely at home.

   When she’s close enough, she clears her throat. “Dad,” she says, but the word is returned to her by the wind. She steps up beside him and tries again: “Hey.”

   This time he turns to look at her, his expression inscrutable.

   “It’s beautiful, huh?” she says, her eyes roving over the ice. From afar, it had looked clean and white, but now she can see that it’s streaked with dirt and sand. Underneath that, though, the bluish tint is even more brilliant up close, like the whole thing is glowing from the inside out. And the size of it is staggering; the column in front of them—so unremarkable from a distance—is as tall as a two-story house, glinting in the abundant sunshine.

   It takes Conrad a second to answer. “I can’t decide,” he says, his head tipped back to take it all in, “whether it’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen, or the least.” He turns to her. “It’s obviously a natural wonder. But it’s also just a bunch of ice, you know?”

   Greta smiles at this. Down by the water, the second canoe is coming ashore. Excited voices tumble across the barren stretch of beach, carried by a gust of wind. Farther along the glacier, the rest of their group is posing for pictures, which Bear dutifully takes for them, squatting to get the best angles.

   She nods in their direction. “Should we…”

   But Conrad doesn’t answer. Instead, he walks up and lays his bare hand flat against the ice. It looks like a piece of abstract art, its curves not governed by any sort of logic except for the water streaming down in rivulets, forming muddy pools along the base of it.

   “Listen,” she says, “I’m sorry about…”

   “What?” he asks, turning to her, his eyes shadowy beneath the brim of his cap.

   “I know it bothers you when people recognize me,” she says with a shrug.

   He squints back up at the ice. “Not everything is about you, you know.”

   “I know,” she says. But then, after a pause, she can’t help adding: “Though, in fairness, it feels like most things are. When it comes to you, anyway.”

   He turns to her again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

   “Just that we obviously have our differences.”

   “And?”

   “And you like to point them out.”

   There’s a pause, and then a funny smile appears across his face. “I think I preferred your sullen teenage years.”

   Greta can’t help laughing at this. “That’s because I hadn’t discovered therapy yet,” she says. “I just put all my feelings into terrible, overwrought songs.”

   “Which you played incredibly loudly at all hours.”

   “Come on,” she says with a grin. “You have to admit that ‘Life Sucks Hard’ was kind of a classic.”

   Conrad shakes his head. “For a comfortable suburban kid, you sure had a lot of angst.”

   “Well, the good news,” she says, “is that I figured out how to make a living off it.”

   Right away, his face shifts. And right away, Greta feels herself bristling in response.

   “Just because I don’t sit behind a desk all day,” she says in a hurry, forever on defense, “doesn’t mean it’s not hard work.”

   “Hard work?” he repeats in a voice heavy with scorn.

   “Yes.”

   “You play the guitar.”

   Greta balls her hands into fists at her sides. “Yeah, Dad, I play the guitar. Every single day. For hours and hours. I also write my own songs. And produce them too. I’m in the recording studio, and I deal with the business end of things, the branding and the publicity, not to mention that I’m on the road two hundred days a year and—”

   “Not anymore.”

   She narrows her eyes at him. Her nose is running from the cold, and she swipes at it with the back of her hand. “What do you mean?”

   He shrugs. “You’re not on the road anymore.”

   There’s a knot in her stomach, and it winds itself tighter now. She didn’t think he’d noticed. She didn’t think he’d been paying attention.

   “I know you canceled your shows for the past few months,” he continues, raising his voice over the wind. “And that you postponed your tour.”

   Greta swallows hard. “So?”

   “So,” he says with infuriating patience, “if this dream job of yours is to play music, and you’re not even doing that, then what are you doing?”

   “That’s not…” she begins, then realizes she isn’t sure how to finish the sentence. “That was…temporary. I’m playing Governors Ball on Sunday.” Before he can ask what that is, she adds, “It’s a festival. In New York. A big one.”

   He studies her for a moment. “And what happens,” he says eventually, “if this doesn’t go well either?”

   It’s bad enough, thinking about that last show she played.

   It’s a million times worse hearing about it from her dad.

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