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ordinary Peter, who was sent off to school every morning like a package.
    This time, having been blessed with a truly gifted child, Raymond intended to encourage her learning as much as possible. He resented having to surrender Isabel to some brainless nursery for three hours each morning. But since her mother insisted that she needed the playtime for her social development, Ray disguised his displeasure and rescheduled his afternoon commitments at the lab.
    He reread Piaget, which made him passionately curious to learn when his daughter’s mind would be capable of making the connection to abstract thought. He devised a simple test.
    “Isabel, I’m picking a number, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. I’ll call it
x.
”
    “Okay,” she replied enthusiastically.
    He took a piece of paper and scribbled:
    x
+
5
=
12

x
=
12
–
5

x
=
7
    “Do you understand, darling?”
    “Sure.”
    “Now I’ll write a secret formula:
x
+
7
=
4
+
11
    “So—what does
x
stand for?”
    The little girl pondered for a moment and then blithely announced, “Eight.”
    Raymond gaped. She had not merely crossed the threshold of abstract thought, but pirouetted through it like a ballerina.
    From this apocalyptic moment onward, life in the da Costa household changed. Isabel became like a princess in a fairy tale—an almost divine creature guarded by a fierce dragon. And Raymond breathed fire on anyone who dared approach Isabel with the innocent hope of becoming her friend.
    Muriel concurred that their daughter was a prodigy, but was determined that she would not become a freak. She tried to insulate Isabel’s genius with as much normalcy as possible. This intensified her confrontations with Ray.
    They were at loggerheads on the question of sending her to elementary school.
    “Elementary school will just hold her back,” he argued. “Don’t you think that would be unfair to her?”
    Yet, at this point, his wife had misgivings. “Raymond, I don’t doubt that Isabel would learn more with you as a teacher. But what’s she going to do about friends?”
    “What do you mean?” he demanded.
    “She needs playmates her own age. That is, if you expect her to grow up to be normal.”
    He did not, as she had feared, lose his temper.
    “Look, honey,” he reasoned quietly. “ ‘Normal’ is simply not an adjective that applies to Isabel. There are no real precedents for someone with her ability. Believeme, she enjoys the time we spend together. In fact, her appetite is insatiable. She can’t seem to learn enough.”
    Muriel did some painful soul-searching. Despite everything, she loved her husband and wanted to preserve their marriage. To continue disputing his every move would put an unnatural strain not only on them, but on both the children.
    It was far from easy, but she realized there was no alternative. Though inwardly angry, she kept a stoic silence when Raymond took the inevitable step and informed the Board of Education that he would no longer send his daughter to school, but was himself assuming full responsibility for her education.
    She simply stayed firm and, despite Ray’s grumbling, enrolled Isabel in grammar school with her peers.
    With the proviso—and with Ray there was always a proviso—that the moment Isabel came home from school, she would be under his exclusive tutelage. With no distractions.
    Of course, Muriel took pride in her daughter’s intelligence. But she was equally aware of Isabel’s ability to relate to children of her own age. She could still discuss Winnie the Pooh with her nursery school classmates. There was only one difference: Isabel had read the book herself.
    Two afternoons a week, Muriel would see pupils at home—children who were learning the rudiments of the violin—sometimes lending them Peter’s long discarded quarter-size fiddle.
    One day Muriel left the violin on the coffee table. And while Ray was grading lab papers and she was preparing dinner, Isabel picked it up. Copying the