ALL THE cousins except Martie were sitting at the patio table while Aunt Brenda, holding a tumbler of wine, showed them a couple of scrapbooks from one of the boxes of stuff Grandma was making her go through. Emily somehow sensed him there, glanced over her shoulder, and scooted over to make room for him on the bench.
“This is the front page of the paper the day after the men’s gymnastics team won gold in 1984,” Aunt Brenda was saying. “Yes, children, in the olden days we cut things out of actual newspapers and put them into photo albums.”
Alex climbed halfway across the table to look. “Did you have a crush on one of them or something?”
“No, honey. Well, maybe Mitch Gaylord. We were just really proud, as a country.” She turned the page. “Oh,” Aunt Brenda said to Kyle and Taylor, “here’s all of us sending your dad off to college.”
It was a Polaroid of young Grandpa Baker with massive sideburns, and Grandma, and Uncle Mike and Aunt Brenda in high school or maybe junior high, standing around in an airport.
“Cool outfit,” Taylor said with a laugh, pointing at teen Brenda in a paisley shirt two sizes too big, which she wore over long johns.
Kyle studied his eighteen-year-old dad, skinnier than Kyle had ever known him to be, with a bushy head of blond hair and an uncomfortable expression on his face that Kyle recognized.
“Looks like you,” Emily said to him quietly.
“If I never cut my hair.”
Aunt Brenda pulled the album closer. “That was when you could go right to the gate to meet people or send them off. You went through a metal detector, but it was fast and easy and you could be there when someone you loved stepped off a plane.” She shook her head and took another sip of wine. “So much for those days, I guess.”
Her mood had changed; Kyle could feel Emily tense up next to him. Aunt Brenda flipped through a dozen more pages, mostly of her with her theater friends in high school and college, in plays and working on the stage crew. All she said about each of them was the name of the play; then she’d turn the page.
“Twelve Angry Men . . . well, Twelve Angry Jurors.
“Sweeney Todd.
“Anything Goes.
“Glass Menagerie.
“Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Emily said, “The Glass Menagerie was the first one you directed, right?”
“Yep. I hated that play, but it’s a small cast, so my teacher thought I could probably handle it.”
“Did you ever do West Side Story?” Kyle asked.
“Twice! Once in college as a member of the chorus, and then I codirected it for the San Jose Light Opera a few years ago.”
“You did?” Emily asked.
Brenda turned some more pages in the book. “You had the flu. I guess it was more than a few years ago. I probably have a program or a clipping in here somewhere. . . .”
There were a few blank pages, and then one with a picture of a young woman, maybe high school age, black, with bell-bottoms and an embroidered blouse, smiling at the camera. Aunt Brenda stared at it, expressionless.
“Who’s that?” Kyle asked.
“Loreen.”
Taylor pulled the album closer. “Who?”
“Your dad never told you about Loreen?” Aunt Brenda asked, looking from Taylor to Kyle.
“No.”
She drained her glass of wine. “Loreen used to babysit for us. I barely remember her, but Jeff was older, he should remember.” She touched Loreen’s face. “She died at Jonestown.”
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
“There was this cult that got big right around here,” Aunt Brenda said. “For a while they were in Santa Rosa. That’s when Loreen’s parents got involved. Anyway, later on, a bunch of them went to this place in South America to start, like, a commune, and Loreen went too. And . . .” She closed the photo album. “A lot of people died. Way before you were born, Al.”
“How did they die?” Alex asked.
“Brenda, don’t.” It was Uncle Dale. He’d come out of the house and stood behind Kyle and Emily.
“She’s old enough. She hears about the news every day.”
“Mom . . . ,” Emily said.
“Okay, fine.” She looked the table. “The world is very shitty sometimes. And this is why I need each of you to swear to me you will vote in the next election. That you will always vote. Local, national, special elections, everything. Not all shitty things are preventable, but some are. Such as electing a criminal president.” She slapped her hand on the table. “Promise!”
Taylor said, “We promise.”
“Okay, Brenda,” Uncle Dale said. “Save up some of your righteous anger for the rest of the week?”
Emily stood up and put her hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“I don’t like it when she gets like that,” Emily said.
They were walking to the pond. “She’s passionate.”
“Oh, that’s fine and I agree with her and she’s right. But watch. The whole rest of the night she’s going to sit in a corner drinking, and if anyone tries to talk to her, she’ll do that the-world-is-shitty speech again and not be able to get out of her bleak mood until after a pot of coffee in the morning.”
“I can’t believe that thing about their babysitter,” Kyle said, in a little bit of a mood himself. “Loreen. Like, why has it never come up before here?”
“Bakers don’t like to kill the party vibe. I know. It’s depressing.”
They’d reached the gazebo, far enough from the pond to avoid the clouds of gnats and mosquitos that hovered over the layer of green scum on the water. Emily jumped up onto one of the gazebo benches and leaped from it to another bench, then back again, her arms open.
“Who am I?” she asked.
“Liesl, obviously.” From The Sound of Music. Except in cutoffs and a T-shirt instead of a floaty dress.
“That makes you Rolf.”
“I don’t want to be Rolf. He was a Nazi and a traitor!”
“But for a minute he was cute and they were in love.”
She jumped to another bench, seeming oblivious to the awkwardness of what she’d just said, and Kyle tried to think of a joke or a line from “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” to sing that wasn’t too weird. Then one end of the bench sort of collapsed under Emily. She squealed and leaped out of the way, landing in a squat.
“Oh my god,” she said, laughing.
“Are you okay? The wood is rotting.” He reached out his hand; she took it and he hoisted her up. Her hand was warm and strong. She pulled it out of his so she could brush off the back of her shorts. They stood close.
“I feel happy when I’m with you,” he said. That was okay to say, right?
“You’d better,” she joked. “It would kind of suck if we did all that texting and everything and then we didn’t feel happy while we’re actually here.” She grabbed his arm. “Look.”
The sun had dipped part of the way behind the hills in the distance. Kyle felt Emily’s fingers on his forearm, her breath calming down after jumping around the benches.
The gazebo would be gone soon too, added to the inventory of losses.
But this moment, this moment he didn’t have to lose.
He tried to stay in it, inside every micro moment within the moment, and not think about how it would feel at the end of the week, when they’d have to say goodbye.