“Him least of all.”
“Hard to be sure of that, because we’ve never heard Mr. Zhao speak any English, and other languages often sound angry if you don’t know them,” CardaMom points out.
“But remember that Christmas I went over with a plate of PapaDum’s quadruple chocolate cookies, just out of the oven,” says PopCorn, hurrying down the steps, “and Mrs. Zhao claimed they didn’t eat cookies?” He starts fiddling with the combination lock of the bicycle cage. “Is it SWIFT? SWEAT? I thought a word would be easier to remember than numbers.”
CardaMom grins, pushing him aside. “You know too many words. It’s SPEED.”
Brian comes down the steps one at a time, carrying a big plastic shovel and pail.
“Guess who gets to ride in the high seat today?” PopCorn reaches for her.
A shake of the fuzzy head as Brian backs out of range. “I ride my red bike.”
“Yeah, but the thing of it is, tsi’t-ha,” says CardaMom, “we’re cycling a long, long way along the boardwalk to the beach, and —”
“Ride red bike no training wheels!”
“Honeychild —”
Aspen pops back out of the house, holding up a sandal and a rubber boot. (Both lefties, Sumac notices).
“That’s my boot,” roars Wood.
“She’s not going to wear your boot,” MaxiMum tells him. “OK, Aspen, stay in your rollers, but pass me the gizmo to take the wheels out, at least.”
Aspen’s eyes go vague.
“Isn’t the gizmo on the hook just inside the door, where it lives?” asks CardaMom.
“It definitely was,” says Aspen.
CardaMom leans her head against MaxiMum’s bony shoulder for a moment. “Marry me and take me away from all this,” she groans.
MaxiMum strokes her hair. “Aspen will wear her rollers, and if the wheels get bunged up with sand, she’ll have learned something useful.”
It always takes so long for the Lotterys to leave the house, Sumac really should have asked for screen time so she could go back upstairs and do another twenty-minute strawberry on Mesopotamian customs.
But an hour later, as she stands up to her waist in Lake Ontario, reading Tintin in Tibet, she has to admit that this is a good place to be. A whole day stretching ahead without the new grandfather in it …
Back on shore, Sumac finds PopCorn trying to nap under a wonky tepee of sarongs stretched over driftwood, with the New Yorker magazine over his face. Oak keeps burying PopCorn’s enormous feet in the sand and choking with laughter when the toes reappear. Brian won’t wear her sun hat, so her head’s all slippery with sunblock, except for patches where sand has stuck to the fuzz.
CardaMom press-gangs Sumac into some complicated ecological game in which Brian’s playing the invasive zebra mussel, Wood’s a rare bald eagle, and Sumac’s the native sturgeon fish he’s trying to catch. (Aspen was the sturgeon, but now she’s way out in the lake, floating on her back.)
“What be Oak?” Brian wants to know.
“Ah …” Sumac considers her little brother in the sand. His crawling’s getting much faster.
“The water,” suggests CardaMom.
“You water, Oaky-doke. Wavy wavy!” Brian mimes it for him.
He waves his sandy fist. Wood strolls up to grab a banana.
“Oh, I have a joke,” says Sumac, remembering.
Wood makes a sound of pain.
“Maybe it’s a bit too hot for jokes,” murmurs CardaMom.
“No, it has to be now because it’s to do with bald eagles,” says Sumac. “What’s the only bird that needs to wear a wig?”
“Threw it away again,” Wood tells her, shaking his head in disgust. “If you hadn’t said in advance about the bald eagle, that would almost have been funny.”
Sumac scowls.
Bringing her book over to where PopCorn lies in the shadow of the driftwood tepee, she flops down beside him. From the sound of his breathing she can tell he’s not actually asleep. Remembering the population of Faro, she finds a pencil in the swim bag and does long division in the margin of his fallen magazine. (She could use the calculator app on a parent’s phone, but she needs the mental exercise.) “Did you know for every Faro neighbor your dad used to say hi to, in Toronto there’s … seven thousand two hundred and eighty-nine people.”
“Huh,” says PopCorn. “When you put it that way —”
“No wonder he’s a bit out of sorts. Good point, Sumac,” calls CardaMom from behind a music score.
Was that her point?
CardaMom goes on, “Think of having to leave everything you know five thousand kilometers behind, with no warning….”
That’s even worse than having to move bedrooms, it occurs to Sumac. She’s suddenly so sorry for Grumps she feels a bit sick.
“Who?” says Aspen, practicing headstands beside PopCorn.
“My dad,” he says.
“How much longer’s he staying?”
Sumac sighs. “Do you never listen?”