The House of Seven Mabels

Before Shelley could draw breath to tell him off, Bitsy screamed, 'Neville, leave my friends alone. If you don't get out of here this instant, I'm calling the police.'

He bowed to her with mock respect and turned and slowly, arrogantly, let his driver open the door for him. 'Have fun, dear,' he said before it closed.

Bitsy actually stomped her feet like a child getting ready to have a tantrum.

Jane and Shelley strolled away. 'She's tougher than I suspected,' Jane said, chuckling. 'I don't think this is the day we want to put her over the edge.'

Eight

When jane and Shelley returned home, Shelley said, 'I think we ought to just stay away until the stink's gone.'

'Okay by me. There's no rush,' Jane replied.

'It'll give me time to write up a new contract,' Shelley said.

'You're starting over?'

'From scratch. It's going to be a big job to rekey the whole thing into the computer. Making it fair is only one part. Trying to figure out how to make the sentence fragments make sense is another, and the third is correcting the grammar and spelling.'

'Better you than me,' Jane said with relief.

After Shelley went home to start her project, Jane checked the answering machine and found a message to call Todd's math teacher, Miss Milton. That was ominous. She returned the call and was told the teacher was in class, but would call back on her break. When Miss Milton called, she wouldn't commit to what she had to say without

a face-to-face meeting. They set it up for immediately after school that afternoon.

Jane did a couple of loads of laundry. Up and down the basement stairs. When all the kids were gone, she was going to convert their bathroom upstairs to a laundry room. Clothes tended to lie neglected in the basement. And they often came up smelling ever so slightly of kitty litter in the winter, when Max and Meow didn't go outside much.

What on earth was the teacher after her for? she wondered as she sorted darks from lights and came up with too many darks for one load and too few lights for a full load. Todd's best grades had always been in math. That wasn't saying much. They were usually B's and the rest were C's. And the way he was staying in his room in the evenings and actually studying… it couldn't be terrible news, could it?

Jane hadn't met this teacher yet. School had started only a short time ago, and the dreaded parents' night when they had to sit in little chairs and be bored senseless hadn't occurred yet. But when Jane found the room, the chairs and tables were normal size for the older kids. The teacher met her with a smile as they introduced themselves.

'Mrs. Jeffry, I'm sorry to inconvenience you this way, but did you hear about our testing this year?' Meeting a blank look, she went on, 'We don't normally test first thing, but this year we wanted to get a handle on what we were up

against. There's a movement to give vouchers for private schools when the public ones don't perform as well as they should.'

'I do know that,' Jane said pleasantly. She'd expected a Miss Milton to be straight out of college, but the woman was nearly Jane's age.

'This school district isn't in any danger, mind. But the school board decided to test first thing this year and again at the end of the year, and see what sort of improvement was made.'

'I see,' Jane said, wondering when Miss Milton would get to the point.

'This is a national test. I forgot to say that up front. And your Todd tested into the high ninety-ninth percentile.'

Jane was too astonished to speak for a moment. 'Are you sure of that?' she finally managed to ask.

Miss Milton nodded. 'It's a remarkable skill that he's never shown. His previous scores in past years on the same sort of test put him in the upper sixtieth percentile. That's good, of course. But we have no idea why this great leap of skill happened.'

'He went a few weeks to that half-day summer school the district set up,' Jane said, 'but didn't seem to enjoy anything but the math class. And he's become unusually studious this year. He's never really cared what kind of grades he gets, but seems to have turned a corner. Hormones, maybe,' Jane finished with a smile.

'You're sure that's it?'

The smile faded. 'Excuse me, Miss Milton. You're not suggesting that Todd cheated, are you?'

'I'm not suggesting it at all, but I'm forced to ask when there's such a remarkable difference.'

'When was this test taken?' Jane asked.

Miss Milton told her date.

'I've got my datebook in the car. Let me get it.'

When Jane returned, she had the datebook open to the week in question. 'Monday he did his social studies homework right after school and was allowed to go to a seven o'clock showing of a movie. I picked him up. Here's the note of the time I was to be there,' she said, pointing to the entry. 'It's not noted here, but he came home, watched a television program with me about some sort of little furry African animals I've forgotten the name of, and went to bed with the lights out.'

'So he wasn't memorizing something late into the night?'

'Certainly not.'

'Mrs. Jeffry, I'm sorry I had to ask. Todd is a nice boy and you have a reputation for raising bright children. I've checked Mike's and Katie's records. I'm simply required to confirm that he's actually made this improvement.'

'Miss Milton, Todd's always been a lazy student. He's very bright about things he wants to be bright about. But it's too easy to slide by with a B

average. I think I can promise you there was no cheating done.'

'Mrs. Jeffry, I believe you a hundred percent. As I said, I'm required to ask.'

Good news, bad vibes, Jane thought as she drove home. With a bit of the third child syndrome thrown in. Had she failed Todd? Was there the slightest chance he would cheat? No.

She stopped at Shelley's house before going home. 'Sorry to interrupt you, but I want to tell you something,' Jane said. She recounted the conversation with the teacher.

'How outrageous!' Shelley exploded. 'Todd? Todd cheat? No way, Jane.'

'He's always been the quietest and most self-sufficient of my kids,' Jane said. 'I didn't have to badger and nag him as I did Mike and am still doing with Katie. Have I completely misjudged him? Have I accidentally neglected him?'

'I'd like to slap you upside the head for even saying that,' Shelley said. 'Of course not. How many of his soccer games have you sat through, even though soccer bores you senseless? How much did you spend on Legos when he was only interested in them? You didn't leave the house for a full week when he had his tonsils out. He told my son that you treated him like a baby and nearly drove him crazy bringing him Jell-O and soft drinks. You've driven him all over the place for camps. You've done the room-mother thing for

him. He's a thoroughly nice kid. Just quiet and self-contained compared to your older kids. Come to think of it, I'd rather slap that teacher upside the head instead for even putting the thought in your mind.'

'I would, too. But she was right. When a kid improves that dramatically, it could 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