“Personalized like with names?” asks Sumac, puzzled.
“Like with everything! You send in your kid’s photo and Mrs. Zhao cobbles together the right hair, skin, shirt, scans the face right onto the fabric….”
“Sinister,” says Catalpa, checking her phone.
“They’re selling like hotcakes,” he tells her.
Aspen starts “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” — she likes to sing campfire songs faster and faster as she cat’s cradles — but halfway through, Sic switches to “Flea Fly Flow Fiesta.” Sumac has to join in with that one.
Kummaloda Kummaloda Kummalod Vista
Eenie Meenie Desameenie, Ooo Wadda Wadda Meenie …
CardaMom’s the first adult to crack: “Enough!”
“Eenty teenty figgery fell.”
They all turn toward Grumps.
The old man mutters the words more than singing them, staring into space. “Ell dell doman ell, turkey turkey torry rope, am tam toory jock, you are IT!” Pointing at PopCorn. “That’s how we’d choose, for Hide and Seek.”
“Back in Glasgow, this was?” asks MaxiMum.
“Load of tosh,” says Grumps, instead of answering, and his face is all closed again.
Sic’s phone plays something ironic. “Oh, hey, Jag, thanks for getting back to me! Just hanging, yeah …” He wanders away from the group.
“If that Jag was PapaDum’s brother Jagroop,” says MaxiMum loudly, “you should call him Taya, just like you call his younger brother Chacha.”
“Why do Hindi family words have to be so complicated?” complains Catalpa.
“Family is complicated,” PopCorn tells her with a grin. “English just obscures that fact by using so few words for it.”
CardaMom says goodbye to the homeless guy and turns back to the family with a “Come on,” as if it wasn’t her keeping them waiting. “Sic can catch us up.”
“I’ll wait out here,” says Grumps when they reach the sign that says Toytally Awesome.
“Have you ever even been in a toy shop, Dad?” PopCorn asks him.
“Not that I recall.”
“Yeah, I recall a lot of playing with stones.”
“Stimulated your imagination, didn’t it?” says Grumps.
“Then let’s walk around the block to stretch our legs, Iain,” MaxiMum suggests.
“My legs are long enough.” He takes up his position against the wall.
Sic canters up to them.
“No luck with Taya?” asks Catalpa, reading his face. “Are you planning to phone up everyone you’re related to in the Greater Toronto Area and pester them into teaching you to drive?”
“Everyone he knows,” MaxiMum corrects her. “I heard him earlier giving the spiel to his old tennis teacher.”
“Your big brother’s a dog with a bone,” PopCorn tells Oak, planting kisses all over that sweat-sticky baby head.
“This reminds me of a Whac-A-Mole game,” sighs Sic, “with all of you dashing my hopes, bam, bam.”
“Why don’t you figure out something you can trade for lessons,” suggests CardaMom, “so you’re not being a parasite?”
“What a parasite?” asks Brian.
“When you jump out of an airplane, it stops you smashing to death,” Aspen tells her.
The Lotterys can’t help laughing even though Brian’s looking distinctly alarmed.
“That’s a parachute,” says MaxiMum, “and none of you are to jump out of any airplanes —”
“Not till my eighteenth birthday,” puts in Sic with a grin.
“A parasite is a user, someone who’s all take and no give,” says CardaMom. “Like a bloodsucker, or a tapeworm living in your gut.”
“Great, now you’ll really give Brian nightmares,” says PopCorn. “We were better off with the jumping out of airplanes.”
“Park your fire truck outside the store now,” Sumac reminds Brian.
“You guard it?” Brian asks Grumps.
He doesn’t say no.
Brian lifts it off — luckily she’s got an undershirt on — and places it beside him warily.
Oak comes in with them, but he’s easy to distract. If he seems to be enjoying a toy, one of them says, “Hey, Oak, Oaky-doke, look at this one,” and lifts him away while someone else smuggles the first thing to the cash register.
“Nothing made of wood, moppets,” PopCorn pleads. (Because last year Dadi Ji and Dada Ji gave Oak a set of antique-looking alphabet blocks and he threw one of them and it split Catalpa’s lip open.)
“Does bamboo count as wood?” asks Sumac.
“Well, it’s pretty light, as wood goes,” says CardaMom.
Sic reads the handwritten label hanging by a ribbon: “Sustainably sourced shakers with lovingly knitted organic covers.”
PopCorn’s crouched over a puppet theater, letting out cooing sounds. Sumac is tempted to shush him, but he’s in such a state of bliss….
“A set of cardboard prisms, pyramids, and dodecahedrons?” she suggests.
“Oak will suck them and make them gooey,” Aspen objects, very sensibly for her.
Sumac knew that, really; she just wanted them for herself.
“Forty-nine dollars ninety-five cents for a bib?” says Catalpa. “Suckers!”