Gabe’s ghost seems to hover at her elbow that evening, as she tries to help Penelope with her math homework. Lu has a firm rule that homework must be done on Friday nights, not Sundays. She is a big believer in getting unpleasant things out of the way, and homework has become particularly unpleasant. In her heart of hearts, she hadn’t really believed the dire warnings she heard from other parents about how difficult and demanding homework had become. She never believed any of the dire things people told her about raising children, and yet every stage seemed to arrive as foretold by the Oracle of Delphi. Now multiply that by two children, subtract one spouse—there was a math problem even more daunting than the multiplication tables that Penelope was struggling with long after Justin had breezed through them and earned his hour of screen time.
“It’s so unfair,” Penelope whines, her hazel eyes filmed with tears, a strand of hair in her mouth. The thing is, it is unfair. Lu knows firsthand what it’s like to have a brother who’s better than you in everything. But at least AJ was eight years older than she was, so she had the consolation of thinking she would catch up to him—in height, in talent, in looks, in social skills. Penelope is six minutes older than Justin and they look so much alike that they could be twins in a Shakespearean comedy, destined to switch identities at some point. They look nothing like Lu, although people claim to see a resemblance. As babies, they were little Gabes, dark and beetle-browed. Now they have that magical combination of olive skin and light eyes, with brown hair that turns golden in the summer sun. They are close, as twins tend to be, and that only aggravates Penelope’s frustration.
“Take a deep breath,” Lu says, stroking Penelope’s hair, even as she yearns to move two hours ahead into the future, when she can sit by herself for a few minutes. She had been a good student and has no idea what to say to a bad one. And how can Gabe’s daughter not have an affinity for math? Lu has a brainstorm, tells Penelope that she can put her homework away for now, come back to it tomorrow. “You’re tired, I think. That’s all. Your brain is fogged.” At bedtime, she reads Penelope a chapter from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the one where Francie conquers arithmetic by turning it into a story. If Penelope did not inherit Gabe’s genius for numbers, maybe she can learn Lu’s talent for creating narratives. While many prosecutors consider their most violent cases to be their most pivotal, Lu is perversely proud of a theft case she had to try, one that involved a complicated accounting scheme at a city hospital. Any jury can follow a story of murder or rape. Leading them through a thicket of numbers required much more skill.
“Make the numbers live,” she says to Penelope, “and they’ll make more sense.”
“Do they have to be people? Because three makes me think of a bear and eight is a snowman.”
“They can be whatever you want them to be,” she says, savoring the moment.