The Unsinkable Greta James(51)

She remembers the first time she played “Told You So” for her mom, the way her mouth had tightened as she listened to the music come thumping out of Greta’s phone. The opening notes were harsh and propulsive; the opening lines too: Here’s to all the haters / the ones who didn’t think I’d get here. By the time they reached the chorus, Greta’s hands were damp, and she couldn’t bring herself to look up. It didn’t matter, anyway. Helen, her gaze fixed on the phone, was frowning as she listened to the song, which was tinny and vibrating and full of anger, a middle finger in musical form.

When it was over, the silence felt loud. Greta was already brimming with arguments in her own favor; she’d been preparing her case ever since those first few lines came to her on a trip to London, when she sat in a café and watched a father patiently teaching his daughter how to draw a caterpillar on the back of a children’s menu and thought: That’s the way it should be.

It spun through her head, that thought, until it eventually became a song. One she had every right to play. One she’d earned many times over.

But when Helen finally looked at her with a face full of disappointment, all of Greta’s defiance melted away, and her face went hot and prickly.

“I would never tell you what to feel,” her mom said slowly, each word precise, “and I would certainly never tell you what to do when it comes to your music.”

Greta dug her nails into the palm of her hand as she waited for the next part, the part she’d known would be coming ever since she’d jotted down those first few words.

“But what I will tell you,” Helen said, “is that this will hurt him. And before you continue down this road, I just want to make sure you know that.”

Greta nodded once without meeting her mom’s eyes. “I know” was all she said, and they never talked about it again. Not when it was released as the first single off her debut album and squeaked onto the very bottom of the indie charts. Not when the video dropped and the song continued to gain momentum. Not when the album came out and her parents flew to New York for the launch party, and she saw the way her dad looked so out of place in that bar, with his jeans and plaid button-down, scanning the room like he already knew what everyone was thinking: that the song they were all there to hear was about him.

And he was right.

She’d expected to feel triumphant. See? she imagined herself saying to him that night. I did it. You didn’t think I could, but I did.

I told you so.

But instead, she was surprised to feel sad.

Everyone there knew Helen as the mom with the sign.

They knew Conrad as the dad in the song.

The “Told You So” guy.

Standing there on her big night, she tried to summon all the feelings that had gone into the song, the memories she’d thrown into it like kindling. There was the time he marched her guitar out to the garbage can after a fight. The time he told her he wouldn’t help with college if she planned to study music. The time he didn’t show up to the sixth-grade talent show. The application for a business program he left on her pillow in high school. The pride he took in Asher becoming manager at the bank. The indifference when Greta told him about her own achievements.

He wasn’t on board with any of this. She knew that. In a way, she even took a sort of pride in it, wearing his disapproval like a coat of armor. It was meant to steer her off course, but instead it only made her work harder all those years. It made her try more, care more, play more. It gave her something to push against. It just hadn’t occurred to her until that night that without all that friction, she might not be where she was. She might not be who she was.

But it was already too late for them.

Her mom had insisted on a toast. “To dreams coming true,” she said, beaming at Greta as she lifted her glass. “I always knew you could do it.”

They both turned to Conrad, who held up his beer a little awkwardly. “Congrats,” he managed, and for once, he sounded sincere. But later, when it was time for her to play, she noticed him standing stiffly in the back, and when she segued into the first notes of “Told You So” and a huge cheer went up in the room, he bent his head to Helen, then slipped out the door.

Now the sun moves behind the clouds, and her dad’s face darkens along with the sky. Behind him, she can see the crags in the glacier, ragged and hollow. Farther down the beach, the rest of the group is still busy exploring the ice cave, their voices thin in the distance.

“You wrote that song about me,” Conrad says, his eyes flinty, “and then expected me to come to the party and smile about it? How was I supposed to feel?”

“Proud,” she says. “You were supposed to feel proud. That was a huge night for me. It wasn’t about you.”

He laughs, a humorless laugh. “You made it about me when you decided to release that song.”

Greta stiffens. “Art is about telling the truth. And expressing how you feel. That’s all I was doing. It isn’t personal.”

He gives her a look like Come on, like they both know that isn’t true. “You wrote a love song for your mom,” he says. “And I get that. Believe me, I do. If I had the words, I’d write one too. But what you wrote for me…it was more like a battle cry. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”

“Dad, you act like you’re blameless in all this,” she snaps at him. “Like that song came to me out of thin air. Maybe if you’d been more supportive—”