Aspen bursts out laughing.
“He’s lost his marbles.” Sumac’s nearly shouting it. “Our grandfather. That’s what Brian means, he’s got dementia, and she thinks —”
Grumps narrows his eyes at Sumac as if she’s the rudest person in the world.
Her whole head goes hot.
Aspen chases in all directions, picking up fistfuls of marbles and making a bag of her T-shirt to hold them.
The woman from the store is looking appalled.
“I finded just one in the playground only small,” sobs Brian, tears scudding down her face.
“Losing your marbles, that just means you can’t think too clearly,” MaxiMum is saying to Brian very quietly.
“That why I tookeded them! There be big boss ones so Grumps can think extra well —” Then Brian remembers the ripped bag is empty and shakes it tragically.
“Gotcha,” Aspen says. She’s facedown in the gutter, snatching a handful from the brink of a storm drain.
“What do we owe you?” PopCorn asks the store owner.
She flaps her hands. “That’s all right.”
“No, no, ma’am, you’re very kind, but …” He hurries back toward Toytally Awesome at her side.
MaxiMum lets out one of her long meditation breaths. “Right. Every last marble off this street before someone falls over one and breaks a hip.”
The Lotterys collect them all, or nearly.
“Did you know the more you cry the less you have to pee?” Sumac tells Brian, to cheer her up.
“That interesting,” Brian admits, sniffling.
She goes over to Grumps with one huge marble.
He looks at it as if it’s a dog poop and turns away.
I hate him, thinks Sumac. Relieved to let herself say it, even if it’s only in the privacy of her own head.
Aspen insists on tying a knot in her T-shirt to hold the marbles in, jogging home with her tummy and ribs showing below a bobbing attachment like some kind of tumor.
Sumac catches up with CardaMom. “I only explained about the dementia so the woman wouldn’t think Brian’s a robber,” she says in a small voice.
“I know.”
“If it’s a true thing, why is it a secret?”
“It’s not, not exactly. It’s a touchy subject,” says CardaMom.
PopCorn catches up with the Lotterys.
“What’s that?” asks MaxiMum, pointing at his elegant paper bag sealed with a ribbon.
“She wouldn’t let me pay for the blasted marbles, kept saying what a ‘sweet little person’ Brian is, so I had to grab the first thing I saw, which was the fifty-dollar thirsty bib.”
Sumac almost laughs, but swallows it so her throat hurts.
*
On Thursday it’s even hotter. Aspen comes down to dinner stark naked. When CardaMom tells her to put some clothes on, Aspen says, “FYI, your Mohawk ancestors — the kids traditionally didn’t wear anything in the summer.” With a glance at their grandfather to see if he’s shocked.
“Well, this is a nontraditional household, so you can wear my apron,” says CardaMom, slipping it over Aspen’s head before she can object. It’s the huge sparkly one that says That’s Opportunity Knocking, So Don’t Complain About the Noise! and it comes down nearly to Aspen’s ankles.
Disappointingly, Grumps is ignoring the whole thing; he’s tucking into PapaDum’s twelve-layer lasagna as if he’s starving. Sumac supposes Italian doesn’t count as what he calls ethnic food.
She hardly eats any lasagna herself because she’s nervous about her presentation.
“Scored a driving coach, by the way,” announces Sic, very blasé.
“Seriously?” asks Catalpa. “You’ve guilted or tricked some adult into —”
“I have entered into a mutually beneficial arrangement with a local entrepreneur,” he interrupts, “which incidentally is going to look fantastic on my résumé. In exchange for a complete overhaul of her antiquated website, Mrs. Zhao will be putting me on her insurance as an Occasional Driver and taking me out three evenings a week.”
Amazement all around. “In the Poop Cube?” asks Sumac.
“The salesman told her it was called Bitter Chocolate Pearl.”
“What’s all the hoo-ha?” Grumps wants to know.
PapaDum explains.
“Driving, that’s useful, anyway,” says the old man.
High praise, indeed: Sic waggles his eyebrows at Sumac. “Our gracious neighbor’s a tough negotiator,” he adds. “I argued that web design of my caliber is a way more specialist skill than driving, but she pointed out that I need this deal at least twice as much as she does … so I have to do two hours’ work for every hour she takes me on the road.”
“We should go talk to her,” says CardaMom to the other parents, “check she’s not just being nice.”
PopCorn snorts. “Nice? This is Mrs. Zhao we’re talking about.”
“Well, it proves that anything’s possible,” says PapaDum.
“Or maybe that there’s nothing Sic can study that’ll get him farther than his powers of persuasion,” says CardaMom.