“Ellie, Max doesn’t want to hear about my achievements. I’ll bet he’s curious about yours.”
“I am,” Max said. “What was she like as a child?”
“Difficult,” he said, grinning.
“I’m not surprised,” Max said.
“Hey…,” she began in protest.
“And challenging,” her father added. “She kept… amazing us.”
“How?”
Pausing in his task, William held the roller over the pan while he considered which story to tell.
“She was about seven or eight, and there was a visiting professor…”
“Oh, Daddy, don’t tell the auditorium story.”
“Ellie, it’s one of my favorites,” he protested.
She knew it was pointless to argue. When her father was set on something, no one could change his mind.
“I was much older,” she muttered.
He ignored her correction. “There was this professor in mathematics from England. Dr. Nigel Goodrick was his name, and he was a real interesting fellow. He never would have lectured at such a small university, but he was visiting a relative who happened to live here, and so he agreed. Goodrick was a bit persnickety and quite arrogant. Wasn’t he, Ellie?”
“I thought he was mean,” she said. “And he smelled funny, like mothballs.”
“Ellie was spending a couple of hours with me at the university that afternoon, and it just happened to be the time Dr. Goodrick had picked to give a lecture to our math students on the great nineteenth-century German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. We anticipated a large gathering, so the lecture was moved to the main auditorium. He was down on the stage, and Ellie and I were sitting on the aisle about fifteen or twenty rows back. The kids, the students… were bored. I’ll admit Professor Goodrick was a little dull.”
“He was a snooze,” Ellie interjected. She was working on the windowsill and stepped back to check her work.
“No one left the auditorium, though. The students were getting extra credit by attending, but instead of signing in, they had to sign out after the lecture was over. Otherwise, they would have left. Most of them zoned out the minute he began his dissertation on Gauss’s life and his contributions to mathematics.”
“Can’t say that I would have been any different,” Max admitted. “Afraid I’ve never heard of Gauss.”
“If you’re not in the field, it’s unlikely that you would know much about him,” William said. “You could have heard a pin drop in that auditorium, but it was because most of the audience was asleep-which made what Ellie did all the more conspicuous.”
“What was that?” Max asked.
“Dr. Goodrick had just told one of the legends about Gauss. It’s said that he was quite precocious as a youngster and was always getting in trouble in school. One day a teacher, for punishment, told him to add all the numbers between one and one hundred. Of course, the teacher assumed that this would keep young Friedrich busy for quite some time, but when Gauss completed it in just seconds, the teacher was astonished.
“Dr. Goodrick told this story, and then he asked if any of the students in his audience could tell him the answer that Gauss came up with or how he did it. The room was silent. Several moments passed, and then Ellie stood up and looked around the auditorium…”
“I was waiting for one of the big kids to raise a hand.”
“But no one did,” her father said. “And so my daughter raised her hand. I remember Goodrick had a smirk on his face as he berated the students for not having even a guess, and he accused them of not paying attention-which, if you think about it, was actually a criticism of his lecturing skills-but he finally noticed Ellie and pointed to her. ‘A child has a question for me?’ he asked.”
Max smiled. He had a feeling he knew what was coming.
“Ellie looked embarrassed because now everyone was staring at her, but she said, ‘No, sir. I know the answer-five thousand fifty.’ Goodrick then saw me sitting beside her and, thinking I had fed the answer to her, wagged the marker at her and challenged her to show the audience how she arrived at the conclusion.”
Ellie turned around and interrupted her father’s account. “I’m finished with this window. Want me to help you finish yours?” she asked Max.
“And did she?” Max asked William, ignoring her.
“She certainly did,” he answered. “She went up on the stage, took the marker from him, and showed that the problem could be broken down into fifty pairs of identical sums of one hundred one. And fifty times one hundred one gives the answer: five thousand fifty. Goodrick looked thunderstruck, but to his credit, he did congratulate her on getting it right. He then asked if she could solve another problem. I realized he was trying his best to trick her with the second one, but she got that right, too.”
Ellie waved her brush at her father. “Dad, Max doesn’t want to hear-”
“Yes, I do,” Max said.
Her father continued, “I put a stop to it after those two problems and took Ellie home.”
“He made me promise not to tell Mom what happened,” she said.
“How come?” Max asked.
“Claire and I had agreed to help our daughter lead as normal a life as possible,” William said. “Getting up onstage and drawing attention to her capabilities at such a young age… her mother and I didn’t want that, and…”
“And what?”
He looked sheepish. “And I knew I’d catch hell if my wife found out.” He laughed and said, “I swear it was the only time I allowed her to perform in public. Ellie always loved math. She read all the books I brought home, and she and I would do problems together every now and then at night when the twins were having their baths or doing their homework.”
Fortunately, her father resisted the need to tell more stories about her, and Ellie was thankful. She finished the painting, and while her father took Max out to the garage to show him the apartment, she showered and changed into clean jeans and a blouse.
Her mother didn’t approve of the outfit. “You should put on a skirt. We have company.”
“Mom, he’s just a friend.”
“Set the table in the dining room.”
“We have a huge, round kitchen table. Max will be just as comfortable here. Besides, you’ve already got it set for dinner.”
“I just thought it should be a little more formal. When Ava and John come for dinner, she always insists we dine in the dining room.”
Of course she does, Ellie thought. Ava was all about appearances.
“We don’t need to impress him.”
“Oh, all right. Go ahead and set a place for him at the kitchen table.”
“Thanks, Mom.” She kissed her mother on the cheek.
“Since you’re in such a good mood…,” her mother began.
Ellie got a plate down from the cabinet. “The answer is still no.”
She carried the silverware and linen napkin to the table and set a place for Max. Never in a million years would she have guessed she’d be doing this for him.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask,” her mother said as she began to gather vegetables from the refrigerator.
Ellie took them from her and put them on the counter next to the sink. Her mother handed her a chopping board.
“I was just saying that since you’re in a good mood, you might want to reconsider…”
“I’m not going to be in the wedding.”
“Now, Eleanor Kathleen…,” her mother said.
“You’re wasting your time.”
“You’ll break your sister’s heart.”
Ellie shook her head slowly. “Guilt isn’t going to work. The answer is no.”
“No, what?” her father asked as he came in the back door with Max.
“Your daughter is being stubborn,” her mother said.
Max was carrying tomatoes from the garden William had proudly shown him. He laid them in the sink and turned the water on to wash them. Next to him, Ellie was chopping vegetables. Her mother saw how fast she was working and immediately cautioned her.