If I Stay

Now Kim is listing all the people who are at the hospital or who have been, during the course of the day, ticking them off with her fingers: “Your grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins. Adam and Brooke Vega and the various rabble-rousers who came with her. Adam’s bandmates Mike and Fitzy and Liz and her girlfriend, Sarah, all of whom have been downstairs in the waiting room since they got heaved out of the ICU. Professor Christie, who drove down and stayed half the night before driving back so she could sleep a few hours and shower and make some morning appointment she had. Henry and the baby, who are on their way over right now because the baby woke up at five in the morning and Henry called us and said that he could not stay at home any longer. And me and Mom,” Kim concludes. “Shoot. I lost count of how many people that was. But it was a lot. And more have called and asked to come, but your aunt Diane told them to wait. She says that we’re making enough nuisance of ourselves. And I think by ‘us,’ she means me and Adam.” Kim stops and smiles for a split second. Then she makes this funny noise, a cross between a cough and a throat-clearing. I’ve heard her make this sound before; it’s what she does when she’s summoning her courage, getting ready to jump off the rocks and into the bracing river water.

“I do have a point to all this,” she continues. “There are like twenty people in that waiting room right now. Some of them are related to you. Some of them are not. But we’re all your family.”

She stops now. Leans over me so that the wisps of her hair tickle my face. She kisses me on the forehead. “You still have a family,” she whispers.

Last summer, we hosted an accidental Labor Day party at our house. It had been a busy season. Camp for me. Then we’d gone to Gran’s family’s Massachusetts retreat. I felt like I had barely seen Adam and Kim all summer. My parents were lamenting that they hadn’t seen Willow and Henry and the baby in months. “Henry says she’s starting to walk,” Dad noted that morning. We were all sitting in the living room in front of the fan, trying not to melt. Oregon was having a record heat wave. It was ten in the morning and pushing ninety degrees.

Mom looked up at the calendar. “She’s ten months old already. Where has the time gone?” Then she looked at Teddy and me. “How is it humanly possible that I have a daughter who’s starting her senior year in high school? How in the hell can my baby boy be starting second grade?”

“I’m not a baby,” Teddy shot back, clearly insulted.

“Sorry, kid, unless we have another one, you’ll always be my baby.”

“Another one?” Dad asked with mock alarm.

“Relax. I’m kidding—for the most part,” Mom said. “Let’s see how I feel when Mia leaves for college.”

“I’m gonna be eight in December. Then I’m a man and you’ll have to call me ‘Ted,’” Teddy reported.

“Is that so?” I laughed, spraying orange juice through my nose.

“That’s what Casey Carson told me,” Teddy said, his mouth set into a determined line.

My parents and I groaned. Casey Carson was Teddy’s best friend, and we all liked him a lot and thought his parents seemed like such nice people, so we didn’t get how they could give their child such a ridiculous name.

“Well, if Casey Carson says so,” I said, giggling, and soon Mom and Dad were laughing, too.

“What’s so funny?” Teddy demanded.

“Nothing, Little Man,” Dad said. “It’s just the heat.”

“Can we still do sprinklers today?” Teddy asked. Dad had promised him he could run through the sprinklers that afternoon even though the governor had asked everyone in the state to conserve water this summer. That request had peeved Dad, who claimed that we Oregonians suffer eight months of rain a year and should be exempt from ever worrying about water conservation.

“Damn straight you can,” Dad said. “Flood the place if you want.”

Teddy seemed placated. “If the baby can walk, then she can walk through the sprinklers. Can she come into the sprinklers with me?”

Mom looked at Dad. “That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “I think Willow’s off today.”

“We could have a barbecue,” Dad said. “It is Labor Day and grilling in this heat would certainly qualify as labor.”

“Plus, we’ve got a freezer full of steaks from when your father decided to order that side of beef,” Mom said. “Why not?”

“Can Adam come?” I asked.

“Of course,” Mom said. “We haven’t seen much of your young man lately.”

“I know,” I said. “Things are starting to happen for the band,” I said. At the time I was excited about it. Genuinely and completely. Gran had only recently planted the seed of Juilliard in my head, but it hadn’t taken root. I hadn’t decided to apply yet. Things with Adam had not gotten weird yet.

“If the rock star can handle a humble picnic with squares like us,” Dad joked.

“If he can handle a square like me, he can handle squares like you,” I joked back. “I think I’ll invite Kim, too.”

“The more the merrier,” Mom said. “We’ll make it a blowout like in the olden days.”