“The plan’s on hold for now,” whispers Sumac.
“What plan?”
She grunts in exasperation. “The plan to get Grumps to ask to go live somewhere else.”
Aspen’s face clears and she rocks a little on her spine. “Oh, I wasn’t doing that anymore anyway.”
“Why not?” asks Sumac.
“Slate likes him.”
She frowns at Aspen. “How do you know?”
“Well, I left him in his bed this morning —”
“You left Slate in bed?”
“In Grumps’s bed, duh! And I listened outside the door, I thought it would be hilarious, but actually Grumps just said, Who have we here? and when I looked in a few minutes later he was tickling Slate’s tummy, and I had to do a big fake like, Oo, is that where you got to?”
Sumac grits her teeth. That rat is such a sucker for tickles.
So she’s totally alone, she realizes as she stomps downstairs. Despite what Sic told her last night about how everybody would prefer it if Grumps left voluntarily, Sumac is clearly the only one who’s having trouble putting up with him. She always thought she was pretty kind and tolerant, but it turns out she’s the sourpuss of the family. Not Fragrant but Poison Sumac.
It’s him, she sobs in her head. Grumps made me like this. It’s him and not me.
This afternoon the Lotterys take the Birthday-in-a-Bag picture of Oak, a custom that began because Sic looked so comical when the midwives weighed him in a cloth sling dangling from a scale the day he was born. (It’s harder to do with the adult birthdays, but the Lotterys manage, using a sleeping bag.) Then they stand Oak up against the back of the Shed and paint his silhouette around last year’s smaller one. (Sumac usually loves looking at all nine of her different colored outlines, but not today. Growing up just means you make bigger mistakes and get into worse trouble.)
Next, each of the Lotterys writes Oak a letter about what they love about him — evRyTing, insists Brian’s short note — and they put them in a big envelope in his file. Then they take him by his plumpy creased wrists and ankles to give him the bumps, very slowly wheeing him up toward the sky and down to the ground, twice for age two and another one for luck.
“Do me,” begs Aspen, “do me, really fast and high!”
“Only on your birthday,” says Sic.
“Please!”
“Otherwise they wouldn’t be the birthday bumps, would they?”
After dinner, they wait for MaxiMum to get back from her walk. (Sometimes she has to be alone so her head won’t pop.) PapaDum and PopCorn struggle with the melting icing on the snowman cake, while the others go upstairs to scatter balloons all across the Loud Lounge and let Oak crawl around, biffing them into the air.
Catalpa’s trying out some tricky fingering on her guitar while Wood buries himself in something called the SAS Survival Handbook. Aspen’s cat’s cradling at top speed, trying to teach Brian a way too complicated figure called Cheating the Hangman. Grumps slurps his tea. Sumac reads a graphic novel called Cardboard that she found gripping last time, but she keeps losing her place.
“I bet it’s nearly time to light your two candles,” murmurs CardaMom, scooping up Oak.
“Shouldn’t the c-a-k-e be a surprise for him?” asks Catalpa.
“Oh, but he’ll love watching the candles get lit, the whole procedure…. We’ll call you all down to the Mess when it’s ready.”
“Two?” says Grumps when CardaMom and Oak are gone. “Why two candles?”
“Oak be two,” says Brian.
He frowns at her. “That wee fellow can’t be more than one.”
“My baby brother two today.”
“You’re getting your numbers mixed up, girlie.”
“Not a girlie,” shrieks Brian.
Sumac intervenes. “Oak’s just not very big yet because he didn’t grow much before he came to live with us.”
“But the child can barely stand up.”
Her blood starts to boil.
“Yeah, Oak’s slow,” says Wood coldly. “So?”
“Needs to build up his legs,” says the old man. “Wouldn’t he get around faster in one of those walker things?”
“No, but he’s slow,” says Aspen.
“As in, delayed,” says Catalpa. “Somebody shook him when he was tiny, before we got him.”
That’s the part of her little brother’s story Sumac tries to keep filed away at the very back of her mind. The idea of an adult who was meant to be looking after a baby rattling him hard enough to bruise his brain — “Weren’t you told?”
Wood says what they’re all thinking: “Maybe it slipped your mind?”
“There was some talk of a problem,” snaps Grumps, “but I didn’t think it was the baby was meant, that’s all.”
Now Sumac’s furious. You’re the one who’s a problem, she wants to shout. Oak has problems but he’s not a problem, he’s 100 percent wonderful, whereas this old man is one big stinky problem.
Catalpa stalks onto the landing and shouts down through the house. “Is it time for the cake yet?”