The Unsinkable Greta James(37)

There was more to write. But that would mean saying goodbye.

And she wasn’t ready to do that yet.

Still, what else could she have possibly played that night? What else could’ve meant half as much?

She was okay at first. Her throat was thick as she moved through the opening, her voice brittle as she began to sing. But music had always been her refuge. It was a place to go when the world was dark, a reliable shelter in any storm. She could walk this tightrope, then go back home to her apartment, crawl under the covers, and close her eyes again.

But as she made it to the end of the chorus, she noticed the sign in the audience, held up by a solemn-looking white guy with a beard, who stood swaying beside his equally solemn girlfriend.

It said: GOODBYE, GRETA’S MOM.

Up until then, she hadn’t cried. Not at the wake or the funeral or on the floor of her mom’s closet. She hadn’t cried on the trip back to New York, though she’d felt like she was leaving her actual bones behind, or when she’d broken up with Luke the next morning. She knew it was something she could outrun for only so long, that the dam would burst eventually. She just didn’t expect it to happen on a stage in Brooklyn with nearly three thousand upturned faces holding what seemed like three thousand phones with cameras in them.

But staring at that sign, she felt like a balloon with a pinhole, all the air slowly seeping out of her. The oddest part was how aware she was, how her thoughts matched up so precisely with what her body was doing. Now my legs are going slack, she thought as her foot came off the pedal. And now my fingers are frozen, she thought as the pick fell onto the stage.

Simple. Mechanical. Inevitable.

Behind her, the two backup musicians—Atsuko on the drums and Nate on the keys—continued to play even after Greta had stopped, bent forward like someone who’d been punched in the stomach, all those eyes tracking her as she tried to catch her breath. She didn’t even know she was crying at first, not until she felt a tear travel down the bridge of her nose, and by then, Atsuko and Nate had stopped too, and it was silent in a way that no music venue should ever be, in a way that felt wholly and entirely wrong. A murmur broke out, and she knew they were still with her, the audience, sympathetic and concerned and maybe even a little touched to see someone being so real, a little excited to bear witness to such a raw display of authenticity.

But then something shifted, and as she continued to cry, as the silence yawned between them, she could feel it going on too long, could feel it stretching out painfully, so she forced herself up to the microphone again, hoping to summon an inner strength that was surely there—because wasn’t it always there in moments like these, if you dug deep enough?—and she started again, playing without a pick, singing without breath, and what came out was so scratchy and out of tune that she couldn’t even pretend to keep it up. There was another silence, less forgiving this time, and she opened her mouth to apologize but found she couldn’t even do that.

The crowd stared at her, and she stared back at them.

Then, without another word, she simply turned and walked off the stage, feeling the heat of all those cameras following her.

Howie insists it wasn’t as bad as she thinks.

But it was. She knows, because she’s seen the video. It’s everywhere.

What was hardest to swallow wasn’t the fact that she’d melted down in front of a large crowd or even that the footage had spread so far and wide. Given the circumstances, it was an acceptable sort of failure, one wrought by grief, and most of the articles about it said as much.

The part that knocked her totally off-balance was the pity that came along with it. Pity for her collapse, for her moment of weakness, for her vulnerability.

And pity for the song itself, which was the worst part of all.

Rolling Stone called it “maudlin and sentimental—at least what could be heard of it.” Pitchfork said it was “more nursery rhyme than song, a saccharine ballad out of step with James’s usual vibe.” New York magazine was blunter, dubbing the whole thing “an utter disaster from top to bottom.”

Greta had always come to the stage from a place of power. It was where she felt most confident and in control. A thick skin is a requirement in this line of work, especially as a female musician—a female guitarist, no less—and she had long since learned how to take criticism. She has no problem dealing with heckling. She can brush off insults and disapproval and snark.

But the tidal wave of sympathy—not just for her situation, or even the performance, but for the song itself—was what really flattened her.

The label was furious. They were in the middle of a rollout for her second album, which they’d been promising would be even more explosive and exciting than her first. And then she went and stood up onstage and cried her way through an overly sentimental ballad, which was now the top result when you searched for Greta James.

They wanted her to do another show right away. A chance to quickly wipe the slate clean and move on. But Howie—who had flown overnight from L.A. to New York and shown up at Greta’s apartment the next morning with coffee and bagels—convinced them it would be better to take a pause, even just for a week. That week, of course, had turned into a month. And then another. Soon, everything had to be pushed back: the single, the album, the tour, all the publicity. Even so, it took a long time for Greta to begin paying attention again, to start to worry about any of it—not because the other, greater loss had faded but because she knew if she lost this too, she might never recover at all.