*
Grumps spends all Wednesday and Thursday in his room, giving the Lotterys the silent treatment. He still gets on Sumac’s nerves even when he’s out of sight.
On Friday morning, she and Aspen are down in the Saw Pit making a meter-wide mud, twig, and pebble model of Toronto in 1954. Of course Sumac’s doing most of the work, but Aspen can concentrate on things surprisingly well if they’re morbid or disgusting. Once his sisters are done, Wood’s promised to help them re-create Hurricane Hazel and the flood that killed eighty-one people across the city.
When the whine of a drill cuts through the air, Sumac follows it upstairs to the Grumpery, where she finds PapaDum up a stepladder drilling a hole in the ceiling. Their grandfather isn’t there, but the room has his musty oldie smell. His cases have disappeared, which gets Sumac excited for a minute, but then she figures out that he must have unpacked them.
“Is he …” She stops herself from saying gone, because that’s just wishful thinking. “Out?”
PapaDum nods. “PopCorn took him to the shoe store for orthotics to make his feet comfier.”
Why doesn’t Grumps just swap his steel-toe boots for sandals, Sumac wonders? “What are you doing?”
“Putting an exhaust fan in the ceiling to suck smoke out.”
“But smoking’s against the rules.”
A sigh. “Well, this would be what’s called an accommodation, beta.”
That confuses her. “Isn’t the whole house an accommodation, because people live in it?”
“The word also means making space for someone.” The drill screams, then PapaDum goes on: “Bending a rule, meeting halfway, splitting the difference.”
“So Grumps is allowed to smoke now?” Sumac asks, squeaky with outrage.
“The fan should keep it from spreading.”
Accommodation means that you cave, basically. (Like giving Brian chocolate mousse after she’s had a tantrum and banged her head on the table.) Splitting the difference, so nobody’s going to be happy: The Lotterys would rather not have foul toxins leaking through their house, and Grumps would prefer to live somewhere he could smoke whenever he liked.
And then Sumac’s pulse starts speeding up, because she’s had a stroke of genius.
Places where he might be happier, MaxiMum said, meaning one of those homes that are like orphanages for oldies. CardaMom called it being looked after by strangers instead of his people, but that hasn’t worked out, has it, because Grumps thinks of the Lotterys as weirdy abductors, not his people at all.
So Sumac doesn’t need to change her parents’ minds. All she has to do is get Grumps to say that if he’s not allowed to go back to Yukon, he’d rather live in one of those homes, where he’ll be at least a bit happier, because the other orphan oldies will probably flush the toilet every time.
She hears a commotion, so she hurries out into the Hall of Mirrors. CardaMom — Oak in her arms — is supervising on the stairs while Aspen sweeps up broken glass. “Brian, not with your hands!”
“I helping,” says Brian.
“Hold the brush pan steady for Aspen,” says CardaMom. “That’s helping.”
The front door opens and PopCorn steps in, followed by his father. “What’s all the hullabaloo?”
“Some wineglasses smashed their selves by accident,” Aspen tells him.
“Not how it was,” says CardaMom.
“I was doing a physics experiment to see if gravity would make the water wick from one glass to another all down the stairs, but then Slate tickled me, so I tripped over the yarn.” Slate’s head pops out of Aspen’s collar.
Grumps gives the whole scene a disgusted glare.
All this chaos is splendid, Sumac decides. The more the old man is appalled by life at Camelottery, the easier it’ll be to persuade him to demand to move out. She sidles over and says, almost in his ear, “Sometimes she sings the same jingle for” — half an hour? hours? — “days on end.”
The old man jumps. “Who?”
“Aspen.” Sumac points, in case he’s forgotten which girl is which. “She doesn’t even notice when she picks her nose and wipes it on the wall.”
“I don’t care for tattling, Little Miss Perfect.”
Sumac is stung. “I didn’t mean — I mean, we’ve all got faults,” she stammers. “Wood teaches the parrot filthy words, and Sic’s feet stink like you wouldn’t believe, and Catalpa’s bone idle, and I’m” — she tries to pick just one of the things her siblings have accused her of — “I can be a pompous smart-ass.”
Grumps lets out a snort.
She doesn’t mean to amuse him. This is deadly serious. “It must be pretty hideous, living with us instead of on your own,” she says. “I mean, we’re used to us and don’t know any different, but even we get bugged by us.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Aspen’s repeating cheerfully.
“In between accident and purpose there’s a gray area called negligence,” says CardaMom in her lawyer voice.