“He — we stopped the game because he called me a cheater. He plays by different rules.” Even as Sumac says it, she can hear what it sounds like: bogus.
“Meaning, he’s forgotten the rules,” says MaxiMum. “I’m sorry, Sumac, but his test results are all back, and they show a lot of cognitive deficits. Gaps,” she says. (For once, without telling the kids to look it up.)
“He doesn’t remember who the prime minister is,” says PopCorn miserably.
“Who cares?” says Aspen. “I don’t know that.”
“Me neither,” says Sumac. That’s a lie, actually. Of course Sumac knows who the boss of Canada is, but most nine-year-olds wouldn’t. Like, at the playground the other day, Isabella and Liam were sure it was Barack Obama.
“Will his brain bits grow back, like his eyebrows?” Aspen asks.
The parents all look at each other, then shake their heads.
A tear runs down Sumac’s cheek, startling her. It’s not about Grumps. It’s because this whole summer’s down the toilet, and she wishes it was over already.
The next day, the one marked on Grumps’s calendar, the parents have a record-breakingly long Dull Conversation — around the Trampoline, so Oak can entertain himself by rolling around on it. Then the moms go around the corner to grab falafel and bring it back for lunch while the dads explain the situation to the old man.
Sumac is huddled on the stairs with all her siblings, listening to the fight in the Grumpery. There’s nothing dormant about their grandfather anymore: He’s an erupting volcano now, spewing out gas and ash and lava in all directions. “Robbers,” he roars.
Oak is practicing stairs. He prefers to crawl down rather than up, because then gravity’s his friend, but he hasn’t factored in the face-plants, so his sibs keep having to scoop him up at the last minute and flip him around so he’s heading upward again. Luckily he finds this funny rather than annoying.
“Abductors!” screeches the old man.
“LOL,” Opal screams from the Mess. “LOL!”
Sumac feels so sick, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to manage any falafel.
“Where the doctors?” asks Brian puzzledly.
“Abductors,” Sic tells her.
“Like, kidnappers,” says Wood.
Brian’s eyes cross slightly. “Where the kidnappers?”
It’s too hard to explain, so nobody does.
“What if the neighbors call the police?” asks Aspen.
Catalpa groans. “I bet it was Mrs. Zhao who phoned Social Services last year because of your bruises.”
That was the most embarrassing moment of Sumac’s life so far, when the social worker turned up to ask how Aspen had got so many aspendents.
“Ye take my car away,” Grumps thunders now, “hustle me onto a plane, trap me in this weirdy commune! Elder abuse, that’s what it is.”
“Poor Grumps,” murmurs Catalpa.
Sumac scowls at her. Wasn’t her big sister the one who objected most loudly to the dads and moms shipping in some random old guy in the first place? So why is Catalpa posing as all nicey-nicey now?
PopCorn’s voice, from the Grumpery: “Dad, do you remember what the doctor said about —”
“You,” the old man interrupts, “sitting in judgment on my sanity, I like that! All daubed with tattoos, with your oddball lifestyle and your pack of mongrels —”
“Don’t speak to your son that way!”
The kids all stiffen because that’s PapaDum, sounding angrier than they’ve ever heard him.
Oak lets out a squeak. Sic blows little raspberries on his head.
PopCorn’s professional counselor voice, all low and lulling; Sumac can’t make out what he’s saying.
“But we’ve only got one mongrel, that’s Diamond. She’s not a pack,” says Aspen. “Maybe Grumps thinks Kipper from the apartment building is ours? But he’s nearly all yellow Labrador.”
“Us,” hisses Sumac. “We’re the mongrels.”
“Don’t sweat it,” says Sic with a shrug. “Mutts make the best dogs.”
“But —”
“It’s a fact: We’re a raggle-taggle, multiculti crew. Grumps was raised on racism, homophobia, all that jazz. Nineteen thirties ring a bell at all? Hitler? Ex-ter-min-ate!” Sic adds in a robotic voice.
But Sumac’s seen ninety-year-olds boogieing on floats in the Pride Parade. “Yeah, well, he’s had decades and decades to grow out of being like that. At this rate he’ll still be narrow-minded when he’s a hundred.”
Silence falls as the kids consider that.
“I’m so hungry I could eat my own fist,” says Wood.
“I’ll run down the street and see if they’re coming,” offers Aspen.
“Sh,” says Sumac, listening hard, because the voices in the Grumpery are rising again.
“We’ve taken you in, Iain,” PapaDum’s saying, “and in return, you could have the common courtesy to —”
“Who asked you to take me in, Saint Gandhi?” roars Grumps. “Didn’t want to be taken in, did I? Wanted to stay right where I was!”
And then the front door scrapes open and MaxiMum calls up, “Lunch,” so the kids all clatter down the stairs, Wood lugging Oak over his shoulder, firefighter-style.