“Frida somebody, a painter who got literally speared on the handrail of a bus,” says Aspen with relish, thumping her seal onto the baking sheet.
“I’ll put her with … Sherlock Holmes,” says Isabella. “And Mr. Mandela, who would you like to dance with today? Let’s say … Jane Austen.”
That makes Sumac hoot.
Isabella comes over to look at Sumac’s cylinder. “Shouldn’t you add your grandfather to the banquet, though, so he doesn’t feel left out?”
Wood doesn’t say anything. Nor Aspen, for once.
“There’s no more room,” says Sumac through her teeth.
At dinner on the Derriere, the Lotterys who went wreck diving can’t talk about anything but the Sligo. Wood’s sulking that he didn’t get to go because the wreck was twenty-one meters down, and he hasn’t gotten his Junior Advanced Open Water certification yet.
“It’s a triple-masted schooner from 1860,” Sic tells their grandfather, “with a nearly intact hull. We saw its actual stove and wheel!”
No answer from the old man. Maybe he’s a bit deaf? By the time you’re eighty-two, Sumac figures, bits of you must be worn out.
“It was deeply mysterious,” says Catalpa, “apart from dumb divers swarming all over it and posing for selfies.” She’s wearing so much eyeliner this evening, she looks damaged.
“Deeply,” repeats Aspen with a snigger. “The shipwreck at the bottom of the lake was deeply mysterious! Get it?”
Catalpa closes her eyes for a second, which is code for Somebody take this child away before I smack her.
“Get it?” asks Aspen again.
“We all get it, beta,” murmurs PapaDum, lifting pieces of sizzling meat with the long tongs. (He upcycled the barbecue out of a wheelbarrow they found one Garbage Night. It’s really handy for wheeling the ashes to the compost.)
“Piece of chicken, Dad?” asks PopCorn. “Sausage? Halloumi kebab? That’s cheese.”
The old man shakes his head.
“FYI, I caught the pike in the lake this morning,” says Wood.
The fish sits frowning on a platter, as if it’s offended that nobody wants to eat it.
Grumps drinks from his glass, then chokes. “What kind of grapefruit do you call this?”
“Watermelon,” says Catalpa, “freshly squeezed, from the community garden MaxiMum runs.”
“Helps run,” MaxiMum corrects her.
The old man nudges his glass away from him.
Sumac meets Catalpa’s eyes, and they share a grimace. He doesn’t have to drink it, but it’s rude to shove it away as if it’s toxic slime.
The grilled cubes of halloumi are scorching hot, but Sumac loves their saltiness. Brian pants and chews frantically.
“Pelinti,” cries Sic.
“What does that mean?” asks Sumac, nibbling chicken off the bone. Sic’s like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass: He enjoys taking words out for exercise.
“Don’t encourage him,” Catalpa tells her.
“Since you ask,” says Sic, “pelinti is a Ghanaian word for shoving food around with your tongue while your mouth is open, to avoid getting scalded.”
Sic is such a clever-clogs, Sumac thinks, he makes her seem nearly normal.
“I’ve got pics of the Sligo,” he says in their grandfather’s direction. “I need to edit them down from like five hundred —”
“After dinner,” several parents chime, so Sic reluctantly puts his phone away.
Grumps has accepted a steak and a few vegetables.
“Any treasure on board the Sligo?” asks Wood glumly.
“Just limestone for road building,” says PapaDum. “She sank in a storm in the last months of World War I.”
“Were you in that one, Grammy?” Aspen cries suddenly.
Everyone stares at her. Grammy?
“Tell us about life in the olden days, do!”
Freak, Wood mouths at Aspen … who rolls up her tongue and pulls down her lower eyelids to show him the red bits.
Sumac figures it out: That was Aspen’s quoting tone. They must be lines from the video she watched about dementia. Aspen usually seems to be goofing off instead of paying attention, but stuff sticks in her memory like chewing gum on her shoes. “Technically he’d need to be about a hundred and twenty to have been in World War I,” Sumac whispers to her.
“Technically you sound more like fifty than nine, you know that?” Wood tells her.
“Let’s keep it civil, and eat up,” says MaxiMum. “How were your guide dogs this morning, Catalpa?”
“So smart. Like, if you give them the command to go forward but they see danger, they have to refuse, because their job is to know what’s best for their human.”
“Huh,” says CardaMom. “Sounds like parenthood.”
The grandfather doesn’t seem to find that funny. He lets out an awful Gollumy cough. He’s piling all the pieces of grilled eggplant way over on one side of his plate, Sumac notices, as if they’re dirty.
Oak’s wedged an entire corncob into his mouth. “You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, baby,” CardaMom tells him, tugging it out.
“Ghah,” says Oak.
“May I get down?” Aspen asks from the lawn.