The House of Seven Mabels

be a good sign or a sign of cheating. She had to ask. I don’t blame her. She hardly knows him and she’d never met me.“
    “Then I’ll put off beating her up,“ Shelley said with a grin. “You’ve just raised a mathematical genius and neither he nor you knew it until now. You’ve said he’s taking school seriously this year. This score is the payoff, Jane. Just go home and praise him.“
    “Thanks, Shelley. Maybe I did need that metaphorical slap.“
    Jane went home and thought a little more about it. There’s nothing worse for a single parent—maybe any parent—than to think a child has been ignored or neglected, but Shelley was right. She’d done right by Todd. He just wasn’t as blabby as the others. He didn’t even talk much until he was practically two years old. But he watched and listened to everything with interest.
    When he became older, he was obsessed for several years with Legos. Then he left that behind, put all the little pieces, hundreds of them, in a box still stored in the basement, and lived for soccer. But without explanation, he hadn’t even joined a team last summer. He’d left soccer behind for math. He made the decision himself, as he usually did. That was a good thing. Showed a sense of purpose. A willingness to take on a new obsession.
    She went upstairs to hunt him down to compliment him for his score, but he had the first word. “Mom, can you help me work out something on your computer?“
    “What’s that?“
    He showed her a big chart he was creating. “This isn’t a good way to do it. I’d have to copy it over and over again.“
    The sheet had a hand-drawn grid. Each square had a number. Some of the numbers were circled. “What is this?“ Jane asked. “Oh, wait. I think I might know.“
    “It’s about prime numbers. Do you know what they are?“ Todd asked.
    “Of course I do. They’re the numbers like seven and eleven that can’t be evenly divided by other numbers.“
    Todd was surprised. “So I was reading something this summer about prime numbers. Nobody’s ever found a pattern for them. The larger they get, the fewer there are.“
    “That’s right. They get so many new divisors.“
    “Right. So there must still be a pattern of some kind. Maybe it’s a spiral, maybe a long rectangle. Maybe the pattern goes from high to low. See why I need to do this on a computer?“
    Jane nodded. “So you can list a whole lot of them, mark the primes, and rearrange them.“
    Todd stared at her. “Gosh, Mom. I didn’t know you knew about this kind of stuff.“
    “I liked math when I was your age, come to think of it. And before you kids were born I did the bookkeeping for the Jeffry family pharmacy.“
    “So could we move your computer out of the basement? I hate it down there. Maybe we could set it up in the living room.“
    “How about the dining room? We don’t use it as often. Better yet, why don’t we get you your own computer and you can help me move mine to my bedroom.“
    His eyes lit up like beacons. “You’d really do that? Buy me a computer? All my own?“
    “It’s an investment in your future, kiddo. Who knows, you might turn into another Einstein and support me in my old age. Now, what I came up here to tell you about is this. I had a talk with your math teacher this afternoon. You know that test you took at the beginning of school? “
    “The math and language one? Yeah?“
    “You’re over the ninety-ninth percentile in math.“
    “Way cool! I’ll bet the teacher thought I cheated.“
    “No, of course she didn’t,“ Jane said. “Let’s go buy some computer magazines before I have to fix dinner and see what’s the best deal. But no modem. I don’t want you roaming the Internet. There’s a lot of nasty stuff there.“
    Todd rolled his eyes. “Mom, we have computers at school that block that stuff. You can do that yourself if you don’t trust me. But there’s got to be a lot of stuff on the Internet about prime numbers. You don’t want me to reinvent the wheel, do you?“
    “As much as I’ll eventually regret saying this, Todd, you’re right.“

Nine

    Jane spent the next two days studying computer magazines and making notes of costs and features. She and Todd went out both evenings looking them over. He was remarkably patient with her for being so thorough, especially because she had to keep asking clerks to remind her what the difference was between RAM and ROM. Todd knew which side his bread was buttered on and kept