She makes sure the projector is aimed right at the big white sheet hung up on the brick wall of the house — and gets MaxiMum to swap chairs because she’s so tall she might block Grumps’s view.
When everyone’s settled, Sumac presses play. The song starts over an image of the Yukon mountains and the little house and old-fashioned car, with a younger Iain standing beside it in a hard hat like PapaDum used to wear on construction sites.
She sneaks a look at the old man, but she can’t tell anything from his face as he sips his water.
Now comes PopCorn’s mother in her polka-dot bikini, and the singer’s saying he doesn’t know much geography or trigonometry or algebra. There’s one of her digging in the garden, with Baby PopCorn lying beside her putting his toes in his mouth — A crash. Grumps has shoved back his chair so fast, he’s almost toppled off the Derriere into the lilac bushes.
“Dad,” says PopCorn, jumping up, “are you OK?”
But the old man’s pushing past the kids — stepping right over Brian — and stalking into the Mess. The door thumps shut behind him.
The song’s going on about one and one being two, and here’s little PopCorn (still pretty ugly) riding a trike, with his mother running along behind him….
Sumac turns off the slideshow with a single tap, so the big sheet on the wall is just a sheet again.
“What’s up with him?” asks Aspen. “Was that from being dementored?”
PopCorn’s got his hand pressed to his mouth.
Sumac’s voice comes out tiny. “It was meant to be like a scrapbook.”
“My bad,” says CardaMom with a sigh, reaching across the table for Sumac’s hand. “I said that Iain would maybe want to talk about long ago more than nowadays, but I didn’t mean we should force it.”
I didn’t force him to do anything, Sumac thinks furiously.
“Sometimes people aren’t in the mood for remembering,” says PapaDum.
PopCorn picks up the almost-empty water jug and walks into the Mess.
“This is really only day one of his stay,” says CardaMom. “I bet he’ll warm up to us in no time.”
“A stay’s just another word for a visit, isn’t it?” Sumac asks, her voice suddenly wobbly.
“That’s … still under discussion,” says MaxiMum, looking at PapaDum.
“We’ve agreed to see how it goes,” he says in a not-particularly-happy voice.
Hang on. Sumac went to Yukon to help cheer the grandfather up and find him a new place to live there. Eleven people live in Camelottery already, just counting humans. Grumps has come for a stay with them, but it doesn’t mean he can stay.
She slaps the laptop shut.
6:13 A.M. on Sumac’s clock. She can hear male black-capped chickadees singing their two-note tune — da, da — the only birdsong she always recognizes because it’s the G and F above middle C. The screen door squeals and bangs as CardaMom goes out onto the grass behind Camelottery, like she does every morning, to call out her Thanksgiving Address to the natural world. Mrs. Zhao next door sometimes gets cranky about it and puts up the radio really loud.
Then Sumac remembers about upsetting the new grandfather with her slideshow last night, when she was really trying to be nice to him. She curls up in a ball. Did he stay mad for long, she wonders? Dementia makes you forget things, which could be quite handy if the things are the kind that make you feel bad.
Above her, she can hear the bump that means Brian jumping out of bed. Why do the smallest feet always sound the loudest?
Sumac goes upstairs and through the dads’ open door. “Budge up, make room,” PopCorn cries.
“Sh.” PapaDum beckons her into the bed, where Brian and Oak are already curled up like puppies between the dads’ big bodies.
“Oak! Oaky-doke,” says Brian. “Roll over!”
PapaDum shushes her.
“Oh, my dad can’t expect a family this big to be quiet as the grave,” says PopCorn.
“He stinky,” says Brian.
“Not nice,” PapaDum tells her.
“That’s tobacco. I used to love the smell,” says PopCorn nostalgically. He inhales Brian’s shaved head. “Now you, you smell as sweet as jam.”
Sumac tries a sniff of Brian. “Strawberry. No, raspberry.”
“Eating jam in the night?” PopCorn asks Brian. “Out at some wild party, were you? Kicking up your heels with the Twelve Dancing Princesses?”
“I be the prince,” she tells him. Brian has never actually claimed to be a boy, but she won’t let anyone call her a girl either. “Where you?”
“Last night? Camping on the moon, of course.”
“Nah!”
“Wood sleeps outside in the summer, doesn’t he?” asks PopCorn. “Well, I sleep on the moon.”
“Liar pants on fire,” says Brian.
“Tickle fight!” Aspen yells from the bedroom door: She dive-bombs painfully across all five of them.
“No breaking our baby,” roars Brian.
Aspen digs Oak out of the pile and holds him in the air, helicopter-style.
He giggles, his dribble a spiderweb dangling. She tilts him over PapaDum on purpose.
“Get him off!”
“I know a joke about a bed,” Sumac mentions.