The Lotterys Plus One Page 6

  Though tonight there’s only actually ten of them, because PopCorn and his dad have stayed home to eat something called bangers and mash.

  The first quarter of an hour is mostly chat about canoeing and portaging and tumplines, though it’s hard to make out every detail through the teenagers’ facefuls of pizza. Oak manages to wrap his fingers around one of the mini triangles and cram his whole fist into his mouth. Tomato sauce leaks out like fake blood.

  “So, about my learning to drive,” says Sic, shooting out a deft arm to take a fourth slice and fold it on the way to his mouth.

  “Not this again,” groans PapaDum.

  CardaMom takes Sic’s stubbly cheeks between her hands. “Firstborn. We don’t have a car.”

  “Aha. Glad you raised that,” says Sic, “because there’s a 1992 Camry with a slightly cracked windshield on Autotrader going for a mere three hundred and fifty bucks.”

  “Sounds like a chick magnet all right,” says Catalpa mockingly.

  “The technical term would be a lemon,” says PapaDum.

  Aspen, who finds food a chore, has eaten the dry crust of her slice, picked the cheese off and made a ball of it, and abandoned the rest.

  Sic’s still smiling. “But with a bit of luck …”

  “We’ve used up all our luck with the lottery and you lot.” CardaMom’s shaking her head so hard, her braid is a jumping snake. “The universe doesn’t owe this family another thing.”

  Oak has a piece of pizza pasted to his round cheek, Sumac notices.

  “Besides,” says MaxiMum, “we don’t have a parking space for a hypothetical car.”

  “We could convert the Hoopla back into one,” suggests Sic.

  “No way!”

  All three parents shush Wood as Luigi (their favorite waiter) frowns across the patio.

  The Hoopla’s the space in front of Camelottery that used to be for parking. When the moms and dads first moved in, they tried to rewild it with native plants, but it was always scruffy with broken bottles and the pee of passersby. As soon as Wood could talk, he successfully campaigned for concrete and a basketball hoop instead.

  “Convert your room into a compost heap,” Wood throws in Sic’s direction.

  Aspen snorts with laughter. She’s practicing bending her thumbs back now; Sumac can’t look.

  “Anyway,” says PapaDum, “there’s something important we have to talk about.”

  “Gelato,” says Wood, “that’s important.”

  “Vanilla,” cries Brian. “Vanilla, Oaky-doke!”

  Oak squeaks with excitement.

  “Could I have blood orange, passion fruit, and stracciatella, because it’s been a whole month since I’ve tasted anything in the frozen dessert line?” asks Sic.

  That sounds to Sumac like a disgusting combination, but her big brother was born experimental.

  MaxiMum nods, trying to catch Luigi’s eye while she cleans Oak up with a wet wipe.

  “So why didn’t the old codger come along tonight, doesn’t he like pizza?” asks Wood.

  Us, Sumac thinks, her throat tightening as she swallows the last of her crust. It’s us he doesn’t like.

  The parents exchange a slow, three-way look. “Actually, Iain is what — who — we need to talk about,” says PapaDum, putting his knife and fork together neatly.

  “How long’s he here for?” asks Catalpa. “Because I told Olivia and Mackenzie and Celize they could come anytime this summer.”

  “Ah, possible problem. I said the same to Baruch and Ben-Zion,” says Sic.

  Sumac remembers to ask, “Can I have Isabella over for a double sleepover this weekend, with hot dogs?”

  “Camp behind the house, softies,” Wood tells his siblings scornfully.

  “Listen,” says MaxiMum, “no visitors till further notice. It looks like your grandfather’s going to live with us for the moment.”

  Goggle eyes all round, except for Aspen, who’s preoccupied with trying to tie three of her fingers in a knot.

  Catalpa asks what Sumac would have asked if she could control her voice: “The moment, what does that mean?”

  “For the present,” says CardaMom, making a wobbling gesture with her hand, “depending on how it goes.”

  “He not a present,” says Brian mutinously.

  Sic’s the first to recover. “Well, this should be good for a few laughs. Does he have a car?”

  “Give it a rest!” That’s Wood.

  “Not one he’ll be bringing all the way from Yukon,” says PapaDum.

  “But Camelottery’s ours!” Catalpa shakes back her black hair like a rock star. “You can’t just ship in some random old guy behind our backs the minute we’re out of contact range.”

  For once, Sumac finds herself in total agreement with her big sister, which feels odd.

  “He’s PopCorn’s dad,” CardaMom reminds them.

  “The fact is, Iain doesn’t seem to be safe driving or living on his own anymore,” says PapaDum.

  “And he’s got nowhere else to go,” adds CardaMom.

  MaxiMum raises one elegant eyebrow.

  “Well — nowhere else that —” CardaMom hesitates. “I mean, of course there are homes, but …”

  “Places where he very well might be happier,” murmurs MaxiMum.

  “Isn’t Camelottery a home?” Sumac asks, puzzled.

  “She means, like, orphanages for oldies,” Wood tells her.

  “Yeah, we could pay for him to be looked after by strangers,” says CardaMom, “but luckily we have enough folks and time and room to take him in, so we’ve decided to try this first.”

  “Luckily?” echoes Catalpa, as if she’s about to be sick. “We haven’t even had a Fleeting.” That’s Lottery for a family meeting. “Call this a democracy!”

  “It’s not, tsi’t-ha, it’s a family,” says CardaMom.

  “Sometimes,” says MaxiMum, “as the parents, it’s our job —”

  “The Council of Four has spoken,” Sic interrupts in a sinister video-game voice.

  “I’m afraid this is a like-it-or-lump-it situation,” says PapaDum.

  “Come on, kids,” says CardaMom, “let’s open our hearts. There’s room for another, said Mrs. —” She breaks off. “Macroom? McCrone?”

  “Huh?” says Wood.

  “Some old song.”

  Sumac should look it up for CardaMom. She’s the Lotterys’ good girl, the practical one, the helper, the one who solves problems instead of causing them. Isn’t she?

  And Oak starts to wail, because he’s rubbed pizza sauce into his eye.

  The next morning, Sumac’s in ancient Sumer. Well, actually, in her room sitting right against the vent with a tablet. (Every summer, PapaDum resists putting on the air-conditioning because it guzzles so much power and hurts the planet, but he cracked a week ago and turned it up high.) She’s researching magic spells, boastful inscriptions, weird recipes, poems by Enheduanna — priestess of Ur — who may have been the first writer ever…. Dumu looks like dummy but actually means child. To call someone a dummy you say ludima, which Sumac remembers because it’s like ludicrous.

  “Busy?” MaxiMum leans in around the door.

  “My head’s too full,” says Sumac, “like my tummy after too much pie.”

  “So, about Iain. We’ve been talking about where would be best for him.”

  Aha. Maybe the parents have slept on it and realized that Camelottery’s not right for him after all?

  “We’re thinking ground floor, so he’ll have a bathroom close by, and no stairs and baby gates to deal with.”

  Sumac keeps her face blank to hide her disappointment.

  “I thought you’d understand. You’re such a rational being.” MaxiMum bends to kiss the part in her hair.

  MaxiMum doesn’t kiss the kids very often, so it’s worth at least double when she does. Also, rational is her highest compliment because it means your brain works logically.

  “OK, then. We’re assuming you’d prefer Spare Oom to
the Overspill in the basement? I’ll —”

  MaxiMum breaks off as a squawk goes up in the Hall of Mirrors outside the door: “Somebody!” (That’s how Brian calls for help, because there are so many Lotterys. Not that Brian admits to needing help very often.)

  Hang on a second, thinks Sumac. What was that about preferring Spare Oom?

  But MaxiMum’s gone, leaving Sumac pop-eyed with outrage. Ground floor. Bathroom close by. That means this room, her room. The one that’s had the sign on the door — Sumac’s Room, with a picture of a red, flame-shaped sumac berry cluster — since she was one day old. Do the dads and moms seriously expect her to give it up?

  Rational, my butt! She kicks her beanbag, almost hoping to send polystyrene peas snow-showering all over the room, but instead her foot skids off and she stubs it on the leg of her desk.

  Curled up on the floor, Sumac sobs as she rubs her toe, which is probably broken. She’ll have to wear a cast, and then she won’t be able to manage stairs and baby gates either, and they’ll have to let her stay in this room instead of banishing her three flights up to spidery old Spare Oom.

  When Sumac emerges, it’s with her sheets and pillows wrapped up in her rainbow-striped duvet, a bad limp, and a story that’s nearly true. When asked what happened to her foot, she’s going to say she hurt it moving all her stuff because of having to sacrifice her room to the new grandfather.

  She manages to open the first baby gate, but shutting it — without getting sheets caught in the hinges — is the problem. She hobbles up to the second floor and blows crossly up at the mobile of the solar system, making Jupiter bang into Saturn. Not a peep from the moms’ room, or the dads’. No sound from behind the sign in Brian’s scrawl, with half the letters backward:

  Sumac’s foot still hurts. But she stops limping, because there’s no point unless someone’s there to see.

  A terrible thumping up on the landing. Sumac heaves her bedding over the next gate, then climbs over, trampling the sheets with her dusty sandals.

  “Why are you pogoing?” she asks her red-faced oldest brother.

  “This is just” — thunk — “a brief interval” — thunk, thunk — “in my strawberry training.”

  “Your what?”

  Sic pulls the plastic strawberry kitchen timer out of his pocket. “It’s a thing.” Thunk, thunk, thunk, he goes on his pogo stick. “Brainwork for twenty minutes, recap for two, then take a four-minute break and get your pulse up.”

  Today’s silkscreened T-shirt says Bad Spellers of the World, Untie! “But why are you pogoing inside?” Sumac asks.

  “Because it’s disgustingly hot out there.”

  PapaDum puts his head out of the Loud Lounge. “Son, you’re going to smash the floor.”

  “It’s a calculated risk, and I’ve calculated that it’s unlikely,” Sic assures him. “These boards have stood up to a lot of punishment since 1884.”

  Oak squeals, so PapaDum disappears back inside without a word to Sumac about her trailing roll of bedding. She sniffs, rage building up again.

  “What about you, what are you up to?” Sic asks.

  At last, someone’s asking. “Well, I was studying Sumerian —”

  Most people would laugh or not believe her, but her brother nods. “I went on an Elvish kick when I was nine. What can you say so far?”

  “Mostly insults.” Sumac puts on a gravelly voice: “Nuzu egalla bacar! That’s a proverb that means Ignoramuses are numerous in the palace.”

  Sic sniggers. “I like it! A laid-back way of calling the people you live with idiots.”

  “Yeah,” says Sumac, “like, as it happens, right now, all the parents are being —”

  And she’s about to tell the whole story about being forced practically at gunpoint to move out of her own lovely blue-sky-room-since-she-was-born, but the strawberry in Sic’s hand buzzes, and he swings the pogo stick over his shoulder like a battle-weary soldier with his rifle and heads back to his room.

  “What’s your next strawberry?” she asks.

  “Regulatory, Warning, Temporary Conditions, and Information and Direction Signs.”

  Sumac frowns in puzzlement. And only figures it out after he’s disappeared behind the door marked Sic Planet, which has a funny cartoon Catalpa did for him of the earth looking nauseous. In spite of the dads and moms quashing the idea last night, Sic must be learning to drive.

  She wonders if Sumerians put up clay signs to direct cart traffic through the cities of Uruk or Ur.

  She needs somebody else to gripe to. The door of the Wood Cabin hangs open. (It’s wallpapered to look like bare boards — a visual pun on her brother’s name.) Wood’s probably in the Ravine, with Diamond on a leash so she won’t chase or trample anything.

  The door to Catalpa’s Turret — painted to trick the eye into thinking that it’s ancient iron — is shut too. Oh yeah, Catalpa’s off feeding and playing with her guide dogs in training. She even cleans out their kennels, which she says is yuck but not as much as diapers. Catalpa hates volunteering unless it involves animals, so if it wasn’t for the dogs she’d probably be spending all of July flat on her bed rereading her Tamora Pierce and Suzanne Collins novels.

  Nobody’s here to be interested in why Sumac’s toiling up to the attic under a gigantic ball of bedding.

  Up to the attic she goes. Grumps’s possessions are out of Spare Oom already — his cases standing zipped up on the landing — but the room’s still cramped, crammed with boxes of the Lotterys’ junk. A dark curtain blocks out one miserable window. A rowing machine leans against one wall, metal arms out to grab Sumac. The ceiling slants right over the bed, so she’ll probably bang her head on it when she sits up in the night all confused about where she is. (Then she’ll need to stumble down to the third floor for the toilet, in the dark, with a concussion, probably, as well as her broken toe.) This is more of a bat roost than a bedroom. How can the parents, how dare they —

  Sumac makes the bed, wearing a fixed scowl. Her sheets don’t seem to fit right; she wrenches at the corner so hard, she hears something rip. She puts boxes out onto the landing, stacking them up to form a barricade. The closet rail falls down as soon as she touches it, and wire hangers jangle in a big tangly mess.

  She stomps up and down through Camelottery three times, leaving all the gates open, because she has to haul her stuff to the attic in garbage bags, and she can’t do that and keep Oak safe too, and nobody even comes out and asks what she’s doing and can they help her with that!

  Sumac tosses her clothes into the stiff drawers of the old dresser. No point in being tidy, because this room’s never going to look nice anyway. She shoves her corkboard and blackboard into the dusty space under the bed. Same goes for her rolled-up fluffy white rug. She crams her books onto the shelves any which way, in a double layer because there isn’t enough room. She dumps her dolls in a bag at the back of the closet, because there’s nowhere to display them. She tosses the Sumac’s Room sign on top; she’s not going to nail it up on the door, because it isn’t true.

  On her last trip to the room she’s lived in for nine years, Sumac gives it a sorrowful glance. She yanks her gauze canopy out of the ceiling, and she doesn’t bother picking up the nail that rolls away across the floor. Bare, the room looks weird now: a prison cell muraled with a summer sky.

  Up on the third floor, limping into the Loud Lounge, Sumac collapses in a swivel chair.

  Nobody asks why she seems too tired to speak. Aspen’s playfighting with her rat on a big cushion. CardaMom and PapaDum are in the middle of a game of Slo-Mo Catch with Oak, who’s hiccuping with mirth. Then they put him down beside the sofa, so he can practice pulling himself up and cruising around it.

  “How’s your new room?” asks CardaMom, putting her hand on Sumac’s neck. “Sumac’s being extraordinarily generous and giving your grandfather her bedroom,” she tells the others.

  Which makes Sumac kind of want to spit, because how can she burst out complaining now?

  A
spen’s jaw drops. “How come?”

  “The guy’s eighty-two years old,” snaps Sumac. “He can’t be expected to climb all the way up to the attic every time he wants a pair of socks.” Trying to sound noble, but it comes out more like haughty.

  PapaDum stands up. “Shall we get started on moving your stuff upstairs, hon?”

  “Actually, I’ve done it all.” Her voice wobbles a little with a mixture of self-pity and pride.

  “What a star,” cries CardaMom.

  “Anything need fixing?” PapaDum asks.

  “Lots of things,” says Sumac, thinking about the rail in the closet, for starters.

  MaxiMum puts her head in the door. “Sumac, I’ve cleaned your window, baseboards, and floor, so it’s looking brighter, at least. If somebody can help me shift that old rowing machine and bring in another bookcase —”

  “On it,” says PapaDum.

  And Sumac feels even worse, because she wants to hug her parents and kick them in the butts at the same time.

  * * *

  Twelve for brunch, and Sumac has no elbow room at all. Aspen bounces up and down on her ball right opposite her, then braces her hands on the table and bends her elbows so far forward that they touch, like some giant spider.

  Sumac looks away from her mutant sister and pours a careful trickle of maple syrup on her stack of pancakes.

  “Doing OK this morning, Iain?” CardaMom puts her hand on the sleeve of Grumps’s long flannel shirt. “It must all be a bit overwhelming, after your nice, quiet little house.”

  He stares at his plate as if he hasn’t heard her.

  “Bet it’s a tad hotter than you’re used to as well,” says Sic.

  “We get all weathers in Faro.” A heavy pause. “Are there no pancakes except the speckledy kind?”

  “They’re thirteen-grain, really delicious,” CardaMom assures him.

  “Plus, they keep you regular,” jokes Sic.

  The old man gives him a baleful stare.

  PapaDum sets down a huge platter of bacon.