The Unsinkable Greta James(33)

Now the ship groans beneath them, rolling from side to side. Greta stands and walks over to where the door is ajar, the room suddenly too warm again. She inhales deeply, wishing for the first time in a while that she had a cigarette.

“She should be here,” she says, scanning the blue-black water. “She was the one who took care of everybody. I’m not good at this stuff.”

Conrad lifts his head to watch her with feverish eyes. “Neither am I.”

“I know,” she says, amused. “Remember when Asher broke his wrist playing hockey and you didn’t believe him?”

“I wouldn’t exactly put it that way.”

“You told him to walk it off,” she reminds him as she returns to the chair by his bed. “You only took him to the doctor later because Mom made you.”

“It was just a stress fracture.”

“He says it still hurts when it rains.”

“Good thing it wasn’t you.”

“Why?”

He looks at her as if it should be obvious. “Because how could you play the way you do with a bad wrist?”

Greta blinks at him, not used to this version of her dad.

“What?” he asks with a frown.

“Nothing. It’s just…that almost sounded like a compliment.”

He lets out a little grunt. “You know how good you are.”

“I do,” she says with a smile. “I’ve just never heard you say it.”

“That’s not true. Remember your eighth-grade talent show?”

“You’ll be happy to know I’ve improved a bit since then.”

He turns onto his back, eyes on the ceiling. “I’ve never understood how you could move your hands that fast. You certainly didn’t get it from me.”

“Hey, I’ve seen you chop an onion,” she jokes, but he looks thoughtful.

“I used to do card tricks, you know.”

This is such a wildly unexpected thing for him to say that Greta can’t help laughing. But right away, his face darkens, and she presses her lips together again.

“I’m serious,” he says, as if he isn’t always. “I knew a lot of tricks when I was younger. But I never really had the hands for it.” He holds his up, examining the wrinkles and veins. “I could shuffle okay. But sleight of hand was never my strong suit.”

“Maybe you should’ve invested in a rabbit and a hat.”

“I probably would’ve, if I’d had the money. I really loved it.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t believe you never told me this before.”

“I was a kid with a hobby,” he says, giving her a curious look. “But I moved on. Most people do.”

This last part hits just the way it’s meant to, and Greta can’t help marveling how even when he’s sick, his aim is impeccable. Before she can say anything in response, he lurches for the garbage can and retches into it, then wipes his mouth with a towel. When he lies back again, his face is pale and a little sweaty. Greta grabs a water bottle off the desk and hands it to him. It takes him too long to untwist the plastic cap.

“Dad,” she begins, watching his throat bob up and down as he takes a sip. Some of it dribbles down the front of his pajamas. “Maybe you should—”

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I laid eyes on your mother?”

Of course, she wants to say. Only about a million times.

But she feels sorry for him right then. She thinks of the guy who refused to read her letters, the one who was later forced to hear her lyrics—who could never unhear them—and he seems like an entirely different person from the one desperately missing his wife, heartsick and lonely and stuck in bed on a trip they were meant to be taking together.

Which is how she finds herself saying, “Tell me again.”

“I used to cut the grass for her parents,” he says with a distant smile. “They had this huge house and an even bigger yard. It would take me hours to get through it. I’d seen their daughter around, obviously. She was a couple years younger than me, probably sixteen at the time, and she was beautiful, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Totally out of my league.”

Not as it turned out, her mother would always say at this point in the story, and the empty space where her voice should be feels so stark right now—like a missing line in a play, a forgotten note in a song—that Greta almost says it herself.

“I was always daydreaming about what I’d say if I got to talk to her,” he finally goes on, “even though I was just this poor kid with a terrible haircut from the wrong side of town, sweaty and covered in grass clippings. Then one day it finally happened, and you know what brilliant thing I said to her when I got my big chance?”

Greta smiles. “You sneezed.”

“I did,” he says with a laugh. “And then I said, ‘Pollen.’ That’s it. Just…‘Pollen.’?”

“It was a good line,” Greta teases him, “as it turned out.”

But his smile fades, replaced by a worried expression, and he twists sideways and reaches for the garbage can again. For a few seconds, he holds it there in front of his face. But the moment passes. He sets it down again, relieved, and leans back against the pillows.