“Ah, hi. CardaMom wanted to remind you to take your medicine.”
Grumps jerks his head a little. Does that mean he’s already taken it and doesn’t need reminding, or he has no intention of taking it? He’s got a cigarette half-hidden behind him.
“Did you forget?” asks Sumac, pointing.
He looks at the cigarette as if it’s somebody else’s.
She scrunches up her nose. “Remember you have to go outside for that?”
“I didn’t forget anything, missy,” says Grumps. “I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business what I do in my own room.”
Sumac chews her lip. “Smoking kills.”
“Who cares? I’m eighty-two,” he says. But he steps back and stubs the cigarette out on a saucer.
Doesn’t he realize he’s probably giving all the Lotterys cancer, especially Oak, because he’s closest to the ground, where the smoke hangs? Sumac takes a tiny step into the room that’s so nasty now. “And here’s more of the special cream to help your eyebrows grow back faster.”
He rolls his eyes. “What call have I for eyebrows, at this point?”
Sumac is thrown by the question. Why does anyone need eyebrows? Are they to stop sweat running into our eyes? Or rain?
He takes the tube out of her hand anyway. “What’s all the clatter and banging at this time of the evening?”
She explains about Garbage Night.
But she must not have done a very good job of it, because the old man is goggling at her. “Ye grub around in folks’ rubbish?”
“It’s scavenging, like a treasure hunt,” she says, “and it’s, you know, kind to the planet, especially as we clean up with trash pickers and pooper scoopers as we go along. We’re like the Wombles.” Would he ever have read the Wombles books? “Little bears who reuse and recycle?”
He snorts. “Gadzillionaires — have ye no shame?”
Sumac is suddenly very tired. There’s that smell again, sort of stale and sweetish: She thinks it’s him. “Why haven’t you put anything up except your flower calendar?” He’s drawn a line through seven of the days now.
“Won’t be here much longer, will I?” says Grumps.
“Won’t you?” That sounded way too eager. “Oh,” Sumac tries again, in an almost regretful voice. What could he mean? Her eyes lodge on the purple flower of the calendar again. “What’s the circle?” she asks, pointing to the thirty-first of July.
“D-day. D for Departure,” says Grumps with satisfaction.
Her pulse starts to go bang-bang. That’s a week from today. “Where are you departuring — departing to?”
“My own wee house in Faro, of course. A couple of weeks, on a trial basis, they said, and we’ll see.” The words are pouring out now, and Grumps’s lip is spotty with spit. “When the fortnight’s up, they’ll have to admit that it’s all been a botch and a bungle, because I’m fighting fit. Mens sana in corpore sano.”
“Is that Spanish?” Sumac wonders.
“Do you not have a word of Latin?”
“I know some Sumerian,” she says in a small voice.
Grumps thumps his chest with a hollow sound, then knocks on his head. “A healthy mind in a healthy body is what it means. Maybe not as sharp as I used to be in this department” — tapping his head again — “but that’s par for the course. Getting older’s not a disease! I’ve gone along with all this testing nonsense, let the whitecoats poke and prod and nag me, just to set Reginald’s mind at rest that there’s nothing serious the matter. I’m as compos mentis as he is — it’s not me who believes in star signs and auras!”
It’s the most Sumac’s ever heard this old man say. Grumps sounds almost happy, for the first time. “You say you’re compost —”
“More Latin: compos mentis. Look it up, as your colored mum’s always saying.”
Sumac steps out and shuts the door behind her, quite loudly: nearly a slam. He deserves it for calling MaxiMum colored in that sneery tone.
She marches upstairs to the treadmill desk and fingers through the big dictionary. Compos mentis. It sounds like minty compost. Found it: Of sound or composed mind.
Oh. So Grumps doesn’t believe he’s losing his marbles at all, or only a normal amount for eighty-two. Could it just possibly be like that time the doctor was worried MaxiMum might have a kidney stone, but then she got the all clear?
It’s true, PopCorn did say something about a couple of weeks. If all the rest of it is true — if it turns out it’s all been a mistake about the dementia — then Grumps can go home, and everything at Camelottery can go back to normal! (Of course, he’d scoff at the idea that anything here is normal. How things used to be, then.)
Sumac jumps up and down on the treadmill. Egg salad, as Brian would say!