“Talk about rewarding a tantrum!” Sumac didn’t mean to say that out loud.
They all turn to look at her.
Under her breath: “He stomps on Oak, and he gets pie?”
“Sumac,” says PapaDum, “your grandfather hasn’t had anything to eat since yesterday, and hunger makes people irritable. He’ll be more prepared for a serious conversation after he’s gotten his blood sugar up.”
“He’s got a tin of toffees under his bed,” says Aspen, standing on one leg and leaning over to make a letter T.
PapaDum’s eyebrows go up. “And what were you doing under his bed?”
“Just looking for something….”
“Yeah, like toffee,” says Wood.
“Time for ice,” says CardaMom. She approaches Oak with the soft blue ice pack, but he crawls away under the table. “OK, your views are clear,” she sighs.
“Listen, kids,” says PopCorn, “what happened last night was our fault.”
“The fault of us parents, he means,” says CardaMom. “Responsibility’s a hammock.”
“Huh?” says Aspen, upside down in a handstand again.
“It’s nice that it’s flexible, that we can take turns being in charge,” she explains, “but if the hammock stretches too far and somebody falls through …”
“Should have stayed in the Loud Lounge while I was on the phone,” says Wood gruffly.
“No, it was me,” wails Catalpa. “I should have seen Oak crawling out of my room. I just turned my back for a minute to show Aspen a crochet website….”
“One of us big people should have been there too,” says MaxiMum. “Iain’s eyesight is pretty good, but chasing games can be dangerous.”
So nobody’s thought to tell them about the blindfold. This would be the moment for Sumac to do that. She opens her mouth to speak —
Nothing comes out.
PopCorn hands Sumac a fragrant, oozing slice on a plate.
Sometimes love is a pie. There just isn’t enough to go around. Or OK, maybe there is enough love, but not enough time and attention, so you have to grab your piece, and then the pie smashes and you’re fighting for crumbs….
What if Sumac had a tiny family? Maybe two parents, one sibling. Or what if she was an only, like Isabella. Something neat and simple.
She closes her eyes. Wishes she could drift away to the ancient land of Sumer.
And then Sic comes galloping back into the Mess, gasping, “He’s gone.”
* * *
They check all thirty-two of Camelottery’s rooms to find where Grumps might have hidden himself. All the bikes are still in the cage out front. The Wild, the Tree Fort … No sign of him. Wood takes Diamond off to search the Ravine.
Sumac’s looking in all the closets and spaces big enough for a person to curl up in. When she throws open the linen cupboard, startling Quartz, they both let out a yowl of fright before the cat shoots down from her bed of towels and out the door.
In the Grumpery, the animal heads on the wall stare down at Sumac.
She can hear MaxiMum in the Hall of Mirrors making two search parties of teens and adults to go off down the street in each direction, asking at doors.
The old man’s handful of droopy clothes is hanging up in his closet. Ashtray empty. Nothing looks any different.
Maybe Grumps has gone to jump off a bridge, because that would be better than living here.
Pink flowers on the August page. When a monarch butterfly needs a milkweed bush, that’s what she heads for, because no other plant will do.
“The airport!” Sumac shrieks. She runs out into the Hall of Mirrors and bumps right into PopCorn. “He’s going to fly back to Faro.”
He stares at her. Then turns and shouts, “The airport!”
Confusion, consultation, calling a taxi. PopCorn’s going because he’s his son. And MaxiMum, because Grumps seems to dislike her the least. Sic and Catalpa, long-legged teens for running around the terminal. “I’ve got super-long legs too,” says Aspen, waving one and then the other.
“I can run faster than Catalpa any day,” says Wood.
“I’m going too,” insists Sumac, surprising herself.
“There won’t be room,” PapaDum tells her.
“I don’t take up much.”
“I can’t stay here, not knowing,” says CardaMom, Oak bouncing in her arms.
“Oh, let’s all go,” says PapaDum, grabbing PopCorn’s phone and hitting redial. “Hi, we just booked a cab…. Could you make that two vans?”
Sumac piles into the taxi with the moms (after a brief tussle with Brian, who wants to keep her fire truck on, especially as this is an emergency). They peer out the windows, in case Grumps didn’t have enough cash for his own fare and got dropped off a few blocks away. (Or in case I’m wrong, Sumac thinks wildly: What if I’m leading us all in the totally opposite direction from the bridge he’s jumping off?)
Once they’re on the highway, there are no pedestrians, but Sumac stares at the verges anyway, looking for a tall bearded man stomping along in his work boots. The ride to the airport takes less than half an hour by the clock in the dashboard, but it seems to last forever.
Terminal 1 is an elegant glass eye. The cab slows, passing the Inuksuit stone giants on guard outside Departures. The Lotterys spill out and thump up the escalator.
Under the curved ceiling of Level 3, the check-in hall is vast, full of people. Even if Sumac’s right, how will they ever find their grandfather?
“OK,” says MaxiMum, pressing Sumac, Aspen, and Wood into a tight cluster, “you’re base camp. I’ll ask at the ticket counters, and CardaMom will check the washrooms and café.”
“You’re not allowed in the men’s,” Wood reminds CardaMom, and races off.
Aspen leaps up and down on the spot.
“Could you stop making a baboon of yourself for one minute?” asks Sumac.
“I’m trying to spot Grumps over the crowd,” Aspen tells her.
Racing toddlers, mothers and grandmothers in saris, Orthodox Jewish men with their hats and dangly ringlets, Mennonites in prayer caps and long dresses…. Sumac stands staring in all directions, feeling utterly useless. No, worse than that.
“Do you think there’s like a Lost Person area?” wonders Aspen.
“He’s not lost,” snaps Sumac. “He just wants to go home.”
Come back! She wails it in her head.
Last night, she should have said loud and clear that Grumps stepping on Oak’s finger was a total accident. The kind of thing that happens in a big chaotic house all the time; the kind of thing that’s nobody’s fault.
But this is Sumac’s fault: Grumps running off. He’s had so much to put up with. Getting his eyebrows burned off, being yanked away from his own life and plonked down in the middle of an unrecognizable one. The unflushed pee, crippled pets, strange vegetables, doors banging, kids underfoot, everybody talking at the same time in smart-ass ways about things he’s never heard of. Losing his marbles and being humiliated and poison ivied. Grumps put up with all that, with everything, until Poison Sumac, plotting to stick him in a so-called home, told the whole family that he was a brute who deliberately stomped on their little boy’s finger….
She’s sweating with panic, despite the chill of the airport.
Grumps is probably feeling just as awful, for different reasons. Guilty about Oak, and miserable about everything, and stressed out by these hordes of people. Right now he’d be trying to get away from everybody and find some room to breathe.
There’s a long plate-glass wall over there. Sumac can see the city skyline, gray against pink, and the red lights coming on to mark the Big-Mac-speared-on-an-umbrella silhouette of the CN Tower. Such an alien sight for a small-town man like Grumps.
There? Right by the window, beside a white pillar, where there’s a bit of space. Just a sleeve visible behind a cart with five massive suitcases stacked on it.
Sumac takes a step to the left, craning. She almost doesn’t want it to be him.
&
nbsp; That’s Grumps’s balding head leaning against the glass. Knobbled fingers locked together, as if he’s worn out, or waiting. Not the best of grandfathers. Not even an averagely good one. Not the one any of the Lotterys would have chosen, or he them. But he’s theirs.
Aspen’s made binoculars of her hands, and she’s humming the Mission: Impossible theme, so she doesn’t even notice Sumac going.
She walks over very slowly. “Hi, Grumps.”
The old man blinks, startles. She sees his mouth struggle. “Sue. Sue?”
“Sumac, the tree. But people sometimes hear it as Sue — like, Sue MacClottery,” she adds, just to keep the conversation going. Sumac always imagines Sue as a regular girl, an all-rounder, wonderfully average.
“Knew some McLaughterys back in Glasgow.”
That surprises her. “It’s a real surname?”
“McLaughtery? Of course. A sight realer than Lottery, let me tell you.”
That almost makes Sumac smile. “How do you spell it?”
“Like laughter, but it rhymes with otter. If you ever go to Scotland,” says Grumps, “you could introduce yourself as Sue McLaughtery.”
She’ll travel to Scotland some day, Sumac decides, then go south to England and have more laughs with her cousin Seren. She’ll go right around the world on her own, and she won’t be just one of the Lotterys, she’ll be Sumac Lottery. (Or even Sue McLaughtery, if she prefers.)
A plane takes off, heading west. Grumps’s eyes follow it. “They canceled my blasted credit card,” he says, as if to himself.
Sumac thinks about all the special powers you get when you turn into an adult: credit cards and driver’s licenses and stuff. She never knew they could get taken away again when you’re old. “Were you trying to go back to Faro?”
A nod. “My wee house. My car. Still got my driver’s license.” He pats his back pocket. Then scowls. “Unless they’ve canceled that too.”
“They just want you to be —” Safe? Well? Happy? Sumac doesn’t know what to say. “We want you to stay.”
His dribbly eyes fix on her.
Only now does she register the shouting in the background. “Sumac!” “Sumac!” Her family must think she’s lost too now. “We all came to find you,” she tells Grumps.
“What, the whole lot of ye?”
“Sumac!”
She turns around and waves until they see her.
All the way home in the van — the one Grumps isn’t in — Sumac says nothing. She’s so tired, she’s dizzy.
Instead of dinner, it’s buttered toast all round. White bread, even; PapaDum must have bought it specially for Grumps.
After Oak is asleep — and Brian has refused to go to bed or even get into pajamas, despite the fact that Sumac’s read her Room on the Broom three times — there’s a Fleeting at the Trampoline. (Well away from the house, so Grumps won’t hear them, Sumac guesses.)
Brian’s lying on her back in her fire truck in the middle, waving her arms and legs, a stranded beetle. Aspen is moonwalking around the trampoline to try to flip Brian the right way up.
“Yesterday we called Sunset Vista Residence,” MaxiMum begins.
Sumac flinches. The one she showed in her awful presentation? The one her family gave her such grief about?
“The one with the movie theater?” asks Catalpa.
Sic groans.
“We’re going to bring Iain there for a visit tomorrow to see how he likes it,” says MaxiMum.
He won’t. Sumac’s sure of that suddenly.
“He doesn’t want to watch movies,” says Wood between his teeth. “Can’t you guys punish him some other way?”
“It’s not a punishment,” says PapaDum.
Grumps will hate Sunset Vista, even more than he hates Camelottery, Sumac decides. He’ll call the resistance pool unnatural; he’d rather swim in the lake, and the round-the-clock nurses won’t let him. He’ll refuse to play billiards or euchre with other random oldies, or go sightseeing. He probably won’t be allowed to smoke even in the pergolas in the garden. Nobody there will give a hoot about him because they don’t know Iain Miller; he’s nobody to them.
“It’s about making sure your grandfather gets the care he needs,” says MaxiMum.
“Yeah, right,” says Sic.
Aspen bounces wordlessly, for once, watching faces. Brian yawns, watching the stars. The monitor on MaxiMum’s belt transmits Oak’s small dreaming murmurs.
“Attacking Oak, then running off … Iain’s dementia’s clearly getting worse fast,” says PapaDum.
Sumac can’t speak: It’s as if her throat’s been filled up with cement.
A tear runs down CardaMom’s nose, and MaxiMum slides an arm around her. “Maybe we were naive,” CardaMom sobs. “Bit off a lot more than we could chew.” Almost laughing: “This is what comes of being the family that likes to say why not.”
PopCorn speaks up hoarsely. “My bad. My dad. My big dumb idea in the first place.”
“It was worth a try,” PapaDum tells him.
“Experiments always are,” says MaxiMum.
“No!” Sumac blinks the tears away. “Listen. There’s something — I — I — I —”
“Take a breath, beta,” says PapaDum.
What Sic said to Grumps about her: Was it true? “I’m not a cheetah, I mean, a cheater,” Sumac wails. “But I am a liar.” Agony to say the word. “I’m really, really sorry, it was a lie not to explain about the game.”
“What game?” asks CardaMom.
“It was Blind Man’s Buff we were playing, like in Napoleon — olden times. Grumps was blindfolded, see? When he stepped on Oak.”
MaxiMum nods, getting it.
“Well. That’s a relief,” says PopCorn, almost in a whisper.
And it is: Sumac feels so much lighter already, as if she’s dropped a heavy bag.
Aspen’s accusing stare breaks; she grins. “You’re not a cheetah, Sumac, you’re a lion.”
“Huh?”
“Lying, get it? Get it?”
With a great effort, Sumac ignores her sister. She asks the adults, “So he can stay?”
But their long faces tell her she’s miscalculated.
“It was an accident,” she rushes on, “a total fluke that Oak crawled right under Grumps’s boot!” Was this the Lotterys’ bad luck that’s been waiting for them all these years?
“Still,” says MaxiMum, “Iain needs constant, professional supervision so he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else.”
“Or wander off again,” PapaDum puts in.
“He didn’t wander!” The last word comes out in a squeak. “Not like across a train track. He took a taxi to the airport, which is a perfectly sensible thing to do, and he’d have gotten as far as Faro if you meanie pigs hadn’t canceled his credit card.”
“True,” says PopCorn with a sigh. “But my dad needs so much help.”
Sumac flails for a second. The dads and moms didn’t see Grumps the way she did, all knobbly and out of place against the massive glass wall of the airport. They don’t realize that he belongs to the Lotterys now.
Then, noticing that Brian’s conked out in the middle of the trampoline, still wearing her fire truck, she thinks of something. “Oak needs help too,” she says, “but we’re never going to send him away to live with strangers!”
“Eminently logical, as usual,” murmurs MaxiMum.
“Oh, come on….” That’s PapaDum.
“It’s neur, neuro —” Argh, thinks Sumac, what’s that word?
“Nureyev? The ballet dancer?” suggests PopCorn, puzzled.
“Brains not being the same as each other,” says Sumac, “and that’s OK.”
“Neurodiversity,” supplies MaxiMum, nodding.
“The difference is that we all love Oak,” says PapaDum.
“Well, I bet if we practiced a bit more, we could love Grumps,” Sumac tells them, looking from face to face. “It’s only been three and a half weeks. Surely it’ll get easier? Like the elderberri
es that need cooking before they’re friendly to stomachs.”
CardaMom reaches out for Sumac’s hand.
She scrabbles for a good argument. “It’s like your proverb,” she tells PapaDum. “We’re only halfway up the coconut tree, and there’s no point stopping there, because we don’t even have half a coconut yet.”
“But, Sumac —”
“He’s our plus one,” she roars at them all. “Like it or lump it.”
* * *
Brian’s been watching Grumps with a scowl all week, in case he’s going to stamp on Oak again. Finally she announces at dinner, “I don’t be hating you now.”
An awful silence, and then Grumps says, “Thanks.”
“Oak don’t be hating you too.”
“Glad to hear it.” Grumps shakes Oak by the hand (not the one with the taped fingers). Then he does the craziest thing: He folds his huge, brown-blotched, red-veined ear into its hole, holds his nose, and blows, and the ear pops out.
Oak laughs so much his diaper leaks.
Either Grumps is making a mega effort to fit in, Sumac thinks, or his pills are helping to slow down the hole-forming in his brain. CardaMom says maybe the Lotterys are just getting to know the man better. (Like, those stuffed heads on his wall — the wolverine and the caribou and the sheep — it turns out he didn’t shoot them at all; he just collected them at yard sales.) Also, the parents are getting the hang of taking turns keeping an eye on Grumps, without him noticing and losing his temper. He even seems to be eating more of PapaDum’s weirdy salads, but maybe PapaDum’s making them a bit less weirdy so Grumps will eat them?
Their grandfather comes along to the next Fleeting and puts toilets at the top of the agenda. The Lotterys compromise on a flush-every-time policy, but with a dam installed in each tank to reduce the water used by about a third. (Brian’s totally confused now; Sumac thinks her little sister may be flushing before she pees as well as after, and sometimes — judging by startled yelps that are heard from the washroom — during.)
Grumps still spends a lot of the time on his own in his room. (Several Lotterys have offered to paint over the sky and clouds and sun, but he keeps saying not to bother, so Sumac suspects he likes it.) But he’s sometimes to be found down in the Orchestra Pit — turns out he can play the piano pretty well — or reading the paper on the Derriere, or even (slowly) walking on the treadmill.
The Lotterys Plus One Page 17