“What, never?” he asks with a kind of horror. “Ye stay at home all the time?”
Sumac shakes her head. “We learn by doing, mostly. Like, tomorrow’s outing, it’s to Buskerfest.” PopCorn’s challenged Sumac to interview a performer about how they acquired their skills and edit it into a five-minute video. She knows exactly who she’s going to ask too: an amazing woman she saw last year who can spin seven burning hoops around her arms and legs at the same time. “You know, buskers? People who play music and stuff, and pass a hat around?”
“Beggars, they were called in my day.”
Sumac tries something else. “PapaDum said maybe you’d like to join us for a stroll this evening, to see the neighborhood?”
“I was down the shops already this morning. It all smells a bit Third World.”
“That’s only because it’s so hot and they were collecting the garbage,” says Sumac, on the brink of losing her temper.
Grumps’s eyes are shut now, and he’s rubbing his papery forehead as if it hurts.
“Are you tired? Do you need to go to bed early? CardaMom said you might nap in the afternoons, like Oak.”
The eyes crack open again, blue as ice. “Like what?”
“Oak, our baby.”
“Young lady, I’ve never had a nap in my born days.”
Sumac makes a final effort. Stick to the past, not the present. “It was World War II you were alive in, wasn’t it? What was it like?”
“None of your beeswax, nosey parker.”
Sumac doesn’t have to stand here and take this abuse, so she walks out without another word.
On Saturday morning, Sumac finds MaxiMum way at the back of the Wild, cross-legged, sitting. (That’s what Buddhists call meditating, like skateboarders just say skating.) Topaz is pressed against one of her knees.
“Need something, Sumac?” asks MaxiMum, eyes shut, when Sumac’s still about three meters away.
“No, sorry,” she whispers, backing away.
“It’s OK, I’m done,” says MaxiMum, standing up in one fluid twist and stretching her endlessly long arms above her head. Topaz stalks away, offended.
“Two questions,” says Sumac, improvising so it won’t seem as if she interrupted the meditation for nothing.
MaxiMum drops into a squat, then stands and bends backward so her voice comes out upside down. “First question?”
“How come you can see us with your eyes shut?”
She laughs. “You each breathe differently. Aspen’s the easiest because there are always sound effects as well.” MaxiMum straightens up and jiggles on the spot as an illustration.
“Second question,” says Sumac, very quietly. “You didn’t vote yes, did you?”
MaxiMum doesn’t pretend she doesn’t know what Sumac means. Instead, she shrugs. “Four parents … I can’t expect to get my own way more than seventy-five percent of the time.”
Sumac frowns. “That’s bad math.”
MaxiMum winks, holding one foot behind her now, arching like the medieval bow Wood’s been working on all summer.
“And anyway, I bet PapaDum voted no too, which means it must have been fifty-fifty,” says Sumac. What she’s working her way around to is, now they’ve seen what the old man is like to live with, can they have a proper Fleeting about him, this time with all the Lotterys voting on whether he stays or goes? “So what I was wondering is, what if —”
“Sumac.” MaxiMum puts a hand up to stop her. “The four of us don’t exactly vote on things. We decide together the best we can.”
Yeah, you decide by leaving us kids out.
“You’re not a big fan of change, are you?”
“I am sometimes,” Sumac protests. She tries to think of an example. “Adopting Brian and Oak, that was totally my idea.” (She wanted to be a big sister, for once, instead of always the little one.)
“I’d forgotten,” says MaxiMum, grinning. “And that worked out, didn’t it?”
But that was different, because the Lotterys all had a pretty good idea it would be fun to have more kids. Whereas an old man who never opens his mouth except to say something grouchy …
“I’m going to have my shower now,” says MaxiMum.
Sumac sighs. “I should pack my bag for Buskerfest.”
“Ah, change of plan: We’re going to Pedestrian Saturday at Kensington Market instead,” says MaxiMum. “We thought, a bit less crowded, and Iain might like the leather place, or the canning store. Plus, there’s tango dancing with a live orchestra.”
Sumac presses her teeth together hard. Is she the most bad-tempered, unwelcoming Lottery? Or is she the miner’s canary — the first to notice how this old man’s wrecking everything?
*