Lessons in Chemistry (30 page)

Sold Out

Elizabeth Zott is, without a doubt, the most influential, intelligent person on television today,
he wrote from seat 21C on the plane heading back to New York. He paused, then ordered another scotch and water as he looked out on the nothingness below. He was a good writer and a good reporter and the combined skills, mixed with a hearty amount of alcohol, meant he would come up with something—he hoped. Her story was not a happy one, and in his line of work, this was usually a good thing. But in this case, and with this woman—

He drummed his fingers on the airline tray table. As a rule, reporters never want to find themselves in any place other than the middle: unbiased and impervious to emotion. But there he was, somewhere off to the side; more specifically, on
her
side and completely unwilling to see the story any other way. Roth shifted in his seat and downed his new drink in one long swallow.

Dammit. He’d interviewed plenty of others—Walter Pine, Harriet Sloane, a few Hastings people, every crew member of
Supper at Six.
He’d even been given access to the kid, Madeline, who’d wandered into the lab reading—had it really been
The Sound and the Fury
? But he didn’t ask the child anything because it felt all wrong, but also because the dog had physically intervened. When Elizabeth was tending to a small cut on Madeline’s leg, Six-Thirty turned to him and bared his teeth.

But never mind what the others had said, it was her words that would stay with him the rest of his life.

“Calvin and I were soulmates,” she began.

She went on to describe her feelings for the awkward, moody man with an intensity that left him feeling bereft. “You don’t need to understand chemistry at an advanced level to appreciate the rarity of our situation,” she said. “Calvin and I didn’t just click; we collided. Literally, actually—in a theater lobby. He vomited on me. You’re familiar with the big bang theory, aren’t you?”

She went on to talk about their love affair using words like “expansion,” “density,” “heat,” emphasizing that what underlay their passion was a mutual respect for the other’s capabilities. “Do you know how extraordinary that is?” she said. “That a man would treat his lover’s work as seriously as his own?”

He took a sharp breath in.

“Obviously I’m a chemist, Mr. Roth,” she said, “which on the surface would explain why Calvin was interested in my research. But I’ve worked with plenty of other chemists and not a single one of them believed I belonged. Except for Calvin and one other.” She glowered. “The other being Dr. Donatti, director of Chemistry at Hastings. He not only knew I belonged, he also knew I was onto something. The truth is, he stole my research. Published it and passed it off as his own.”

Roth’s eyes widened.

“I quit the same day.”

“Why didn’t you tell the publication?” he said. “Why didn’t you demand credit?”

Elizabeth looked at Roth as if he lived on some other planet. “I assume you’re kidding.”

Roth felt a flush of shame. Of course. Who was going to take a woman’s word over the male head of the entire department? If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t even sure he would have.

“I fell in love with Calvin,” she was saying, “because he was intelligent and kind, but also because he was the very first man to take me seriously. Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counselors would go out of business. Do you see my point?”

He did, but he really didn’t want to. His wife had recently left him, saying that he didn’t respect her job as a housewife and mother. But being a housewife and mother wasn’t really a job, was it? More like a role. Anyway, she was gone.

“That’s why I wanted to use
Supper at Six
to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.”

Roth looked confused.

“I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.”

“You mean by men.”

“I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.”

“Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.”

“Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.”

“But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.”

“I’m speaking of fixing
us,
Mr. Roth—our mistakes. Nature
works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race. It infuriates me and it should infuriate you. Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy. Hastings Research Institute is full of them.”

Roth stopped writing. This rang a bell. He worked for a well-regarded magazine, yet his new editor had come from
The Hollywood Reporter
— a rag—and he, Roth, despite his Pulitzer, now reported to someone who referred to news as “buzz,” who insisted “dirty laundry” was a key part of every story.
Journalism is a for-profit enterprise!
his boss was always reminding him.
People want the sleaze!

“I’m an atheist, Mr. Roth,” she said, sighing heavily. “Actually, a humanist. But I have to admit, some days the human race makes me sick.”

She got up, collecting their cups, and set them down near the eye wash station sign. He had the strong feeling that their interview was over, but then she turned back to him.

“As for my undergraduate degree,” she said, “I don’t have one, nor have I ever claimed I did. My entry into Meyers’s graduate program was based solely on self-study. Speaking of Meyers,” she said, her voice hard as she removed the pencil from her hair. “There’s something you should know.” Then she told him the whole story, explaining that she’d had to leave UCLA because when men rape women, they prefer women not to tell.

Roth swallowed hard.

“As for my background, it was my brother who raised me,” she continued. “He taught me how to read, he introduced me to the wonders of the library, he tried to shield me from my parents’ devotion to money. The day we found John hanging from the shed rafters, my father didn’t even wait for the police to
arrive. Didn’t want to be late for a performance.” Her father, she explained, was a doomsday showman now serving twenty-five years to life for killing three people as he performed a miracle, the true miracle being that he hadn’t killed more. As for her mother, she hadn’t seen her in more than twelve years. Gone for good in Brazil with an all-new family. Avoiding taxes turns out to be a lifetime commitment.

“But I think Calvin’s childhood really takes the cake.” She went on to explain the death of his parents, then his aunt—the result of which had landed him in a Catholic boys home, where he’d experienced abuse at the hands of priests until he’d grown big enough to stop it. She’d found his old diary buried in the boxes she and Frask had stolen. Although his childish scrawl was often impossible to read, his sorrow sang.

What she didn’t tell Roth was that it was within the pages of Calvin’s diary that she’d discovered the source of his permanent grudge.
I’m here even though I should not be,
he’d written, as if implying that there’d been an alternative.
And I will never ever forgive that man, him. Never. Not as long as I live.
After reading his correspondence with Wakely, she now understood that this was the father he’d hoped was dead. The one he promised to hate until the day he died. It was a promise he’d kept.

Roth stared down at the table. He’d had a normal upbringing—two parents, no suicides, no murders, not even a single wayward touch by the priest in his parish. And yet he still found plenty to complain about. What was wrong with him? Just as people have a bad habit of dismissing others’ problems and tragedies, so too did they have a bad habit of not appreciating what they have. Or had. He missed his wife.

“As for Calvin’s death,” she said, “I’m one hundred percent responsible.” He paled as she went on to describe the accident and the leash and the sirens, and how because of it, she would never hold anyone back in any way, ever again. As she saw it, his death spawned a series of other failures: blindsided by Donatti’s theft, she’d given up her research; determined to help her daughter
fit in, she’d enrolled her in a school where she did not; worse, she’d become the very person she least wanted to be, a performer like her father. Oh, and also, she’d given Phil Lebensmal a heart attack. “Although I don’t actually consider that last one a failure,” she said.

“What were you guys talking about in there?” the photographer asked on the way to the airport. “Did I miss anything?”

“Not a thing,” Roth lied.

Before he’d gotten in the cab, Roth had already decided he wouldn’t reveal what he’d learned. He would write his piece on deadline, to spec, and not a word over. He would write plenty but say nothing. He would tell about her, but not tell
on
her. In other words, he would meet his deadline, and in journalism, that is 99 percent of the law.

Despite what Elizabeth Zott will tell you,
Supper at Six
is not just an introduction to chemistry,
he wrote that day on the plane.
It’s a thirty-minute, five-day-a-week lesson in life. And not in who we are or what we’re made of, but rather, who we’re capable of becoming.

In lieu of any personal information, he wrote a two-thousand-word description of abiogenesis, followed by a five-hundred-word section on how the elephant metabolizes its food.

“This is not a story!” his new editor had written after reading the first draft. “Where’s the dirt on Zott?”

“There wasn’t any,” Roth said.

Just two months later, there she was, on the cover of
Life
magazine, arms folded across her chest, countenance grim, flanked by a headline that read “Why We’ll Eat Whatever She Dishes Out.” The six-page article included fifteen photographs of Elizabeth in action—on the show, on her erg, in makeup, petting Six-Thirty, in conference with Walter Pine, adjusting her hair. The article opened with Roth’s line about her being the most intelligent person
on television today, except the editor had swapped out “intelligent” and replaced it with “attractive.” It then included a short description of her show’s biggest hits—the fire extinguisher episode, the poison mushroom episode, the I-don’t-believe-in-God episode, and countless others—ending with his observation that hers was a show of life lessons. But the rest?

“She’s the angel of death” was the quote a hungry cub reporter got from Zott’s father in the visitation room at Sing Sing. “The devil’s spawn. And she’s uppity.”

The cub reporter had also managed to get a quote from Dr. Meyers at UCLA, who characterized Zott as a “lackluster student more interested in men than molecules,” adding that she wasn’t nearly as good-looking in person as she was on TV.

“Who?” Donatti had asked when the cub reporter first brought up Zott’s employment record. “Zott? Oh wait—you mean Luscious Lizzie? ‘Luscious’ is what we all called her,” he said, “which she used to protest in that way women do when they aren’t
actually
protesting.” He smiled, proving his point by producing her old lab coat, which still sported her initials, E.Z. “Luscious was a great lab tech—that’s a position we have for people who want to be in science but don’t have the brains.”

The last quote was from Mrs. Mudford. “Women belong in the home, and the fact that Elizabeth Zott is not in the home has proven to be disruptive to her child’s well-being. She often exaggerated her child’s abilities—the first sign of a status-conscious parent. Naturally, when her daughter was my student, I worked very hard to counter that effect.” Mudford’s quote was accompanied by, of all things, a copy of Madeline’s family tree.
Lies!
Mudford had written across the top.
See me!

Out of everything in the article, it was the tree that did the most harm. Because on it, Madeline had not only written in Walter as a relative—readers instantly assumed this meant Elizabeth was sleeping with her producer—but had also included a small
drawing of a grandfather in prison stripes, a grandmother eating tamales in Brazil, a large dog reading
Old Yeller,
an acorn labeled “Fairy Godmother,” a woman named Harriet poisoning her husband, a dead father’s tombstone, a kid with a noose around his neck, as well as some hazy ties to Nefertiti, Sojourner Truth, and Amelia Earhart.

The magazine sold out in under twenty-four hours.

Brownies

Some say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and in this case, they were right.
Supper at Six
exploded in popularity.

“Elizabeth,” Walter said as she sat facing him in his office, her face stony. “I know you’re upset about the article—we all are. But let’s look on the bright side. New advertisers are lining up in droves. Several manufacturers are begging to create all-new lines in your name. Pots, knives, all sorts of things!”

She pursed her lips in a way he knew meant trouble.

“Mattel even sent over specs for a girl’s chemistry set—”

“A chemistry set?” She perked up slightly.

“Keep in mind, these are just specs,” he said carefully, handing her a proposal. “I’m sure some things can—”

“ ‘Girls!’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Make your very own perfume…using science!’ ” Good god, Walter! And the box is pink? Get these people on the phone right now— I want to tell them where they can stick their plastic vial.”

“Elizabeth,” he said soothingly, “we don’t have to say yes to everything, but there’s some potential here for lifelong financial security. Not just for us, but for our girls. We have to think beyond ourselves.”

“This isn’t thinking, Walter, this is marketing.”

“Mr. Pine,” a secretary said, “Mr. Roth is on line two.”

“Do not,” Elizabeth warned, her face still holding the hurt of how she’d been maligned, “take that call.”

“Hello,” Elizabeth said several weeks later, “my name is Elizabeth Zott, and this is
Supper at Six
.”

She stood behind a cutting board, an array of vegetables set before her in a dazzling pile of color. “Tonight’s dinner features eggplant,” she said, picking up a large purplish vegetable. “Or aubergine, as it’s referred to in other parts of the world. Eggplant is highly nutritious, but it can be bitter due to its phenolic compounds. To remove its bitterness—” She stopped abruptly, turning the vegetable over in her hands as if she wasn’t at all satisfied. “Let me rephrase. To guard against eggplant’s
tendency
toward bitterness—” She stopped again and exhaled loudly. Then she tossed the eggplant aside.

“Forget it,” she said. “Life is bitter enough.” She turned and opened a cupboard behind her, withdrawing all new ingredients. “New plan,” she said. “We’re making brownies.”

Madeline lay on her stomach in front of the television, her legs crossed in the air behind her. “Looks like we’re having brownies again tonight, Harriet. That’s five days in a row.”

“I make brownies on my bad days,” Elizabeth confessed. “I’m not going to pretend that sucrose is an essential ingredient required for our well-being, but I personally feel better when I eat it. Now let’s get started.”

“Mad,” Harriet said over Elizabeth’s voice as she applied fresh lipstick and fluffed her hair. “I have to run out for a bit, all right? Don’t answer the door or the phone, and don’t leave home. I’ll be back before your mom gets here. Understand? Mad? Do you hear me?”

“What?”

“See you soon.” The door clicked shut behind her.

“Brownies are best when made from either a high-quality cocoa powder or unsweetened baking chocolate,” Elizabeth continued. “I prefer Dutch cocoa. It contains a high level of polyphenols, which, as you know, are reducing agents that protect the body against oxidative…”

Madeline watched the TV closely as her mother combined the cocoa powder with the melted butter and sugar, whipping the wooden spoon around the bowl with such vigor, it seemed likely the bowl would break. When
Life
hit the stands, she’d been so proud. Her mother—on the cover! But before she could read it, her mother stuffed all of her copies—Harriet’s too—in a garbage bag and tossed the heavy bag to the curb. “You are
not
to read this pack of lies,” she’d told Madeline. “Do you understand? Under no circumstances
.
”

Madeline nodded. But the next day she went straight to the library and read without stopping, her finger guiding her eyes down the columns. “No,” she choked. “No, no, no.” Tears spilled all over a photograph of her mother fixing her hair as if that’s what she did all day. “My mom’s a scientist. A chemist.”

She turned her attention back to the television, where her mother was chopping walnuts. “Walnuts contain an unusually high level of vitamin E in the form of gamma-tocopherol,” she said. “Proven to protect the heart.” Although the way she continued to chop, it seemed clear the walnuts weren’t going to make much difference to the damage done to her heart.

From out of nowhere came the doorbell, and Mad jumped. Harriet never let her answer the door anymore, but Harriet wasn’t there. She peeked out the window, expecting to see a stranger, but saw Wakely instead.

“Mad,” Reverend Wakely said as she opened the door. “I’ve been so worried.”

From the television, Elizabeth Zott was explaining how air was being carried along on the rough surfaces of the sugar crystals and then encased by a film of fat, creating a foam. “When I add the eggs,” she said, “their protein will prevent the fat-coated air bubbles from collapsing when heat is applied.” She set down the bowl. “We’ll be back after this station identification.”

“I hope it’s all right that I dropped by,” Wakely said. “I thought I’d be able to find you at home during your mother’s show. Is she really making brownies for dinner?”

“She’s having a bad day.”

“That
Life
article— I can only imagine. Where’s your sitter?”

“Harriet will be back in a bit.” She hesitated, knowing this was probably the wrong thing to ask. “Wakely. Want to stay for dinner?”

He paused. If bad days dictated dietary menus, he’d be eating brownies at every meal for life. “I would never intrude like that, Mad. I really did just want to make sure you’re okay. I feel terrible that I wasn’t able to help you more with that family tree, although I’m proud of what you did. You’ve defined your family with broad, honest strokes. Family is far more than biology.”

“I know.”

He glanced around the small room crowded with books, his eyes taking in the erg. “There it is,” he said in wonder. “The rowing machine. I saw it in the magazine. Your dad was very handy.”

“My
mom
is very handy,” she asserted. “My mom turned our kitchen into a—” But before she could show him the lab, from the television Elizabeth announced she was back. “One of the things I like about cooking,” she said as she added flour, “is its inherent usefulness. When we make food, we don’t just create something good to eat—we create something that provides energy to our cells, something that sustains life. It’s very different from what others create. For instance”—she paused, then looked directly into the camera, narrowing her eyes—“magazines.”

“Your poor mother,” Wakely said, shaking his head.

The back door banged open.

“Harriet?” Mad called.

“No honey, it’s me.” The voice was weary. “I’m home early.”

Wakely froze. “Your mother?”

He wasn’t prepared to meet Elizabeth Zott. It was enough just being in the home where Calvin Evans had once lived, but to suddenly meet the woman he’d failed to console at Evans’s funeral? The famous atheist TV show host? The person recently gracing the cover of
Life
? No. He had to leave immediately—now, before she saw a grown man alone with her young daughter in an otherwise empty house. My god! What had he been thinking? Could this look any worse?

“Bye,” he hissed to Mad, turning to the front door. But before he could open the door, Six-Thirty trotted to his side.

Wakely!

“Mad?” Elizabeth called as she dropped her bags in the lab and wandered into the living room. “Where’s—” She stopped. “Oh.” She frowned, surprised to see a man wearing a clerical collar gripping her front doorknob.

“Hi, Mommy,” Madeline said, attempting to sound casual. “This is Wakely. He’s a friend of mine.”

“
Reverend
Wakely,” Wakely said, reluctantly letting go of the knob as he extended his hand. “First Presbyterian. I’m so very sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Zott,” he said in a rush. “So, so very sorry. I’m sure you’re tired after your long day, Madeline and I met at the library a while back, and she’s right, we’re friends, we’re— I was just leaving.”

“Wakely helped me with the family tree.”

“Terrible assignment,” he said. “Completely wrongheaded. I very much oppose homework assignments that tread on private family business—but no, I really didn’t help at all. I wish I
could
have helped. Calvin Evans was a huge influence in my life—his work—well, it may sound odd seeing the line of work I’m in, but I was an admirer, a fan, even; Evans and I were actually—” He stopped. “Again, I’m so very sorry for your loss—I’m sure it hasn’t been—”

Wakely could hear himself running on like a swollen river. The more he babbled the more Elizabeth Zott looked at him in a way that scared him.

“Where’s Harriet?” she asked, turning to Madeline.

“Errands.”

From the television, Elizabeth Zott said, “I have time to take a question or two.”

“Are you really a chemist?” someone asked. “Because
Life
magazine said—”

“
Yes,
I am,” she barked. “Does anyone have a real question?”

From her living room, Elizabeth looked panicked. “Shut this off now,” she said. But before she could reach the dial, a woman from the studio audience pried, “Isn’t it true that your daughter is illegitimate?”

Wakely took two steps toward the television and snapped it off himself. “Ignore that, Mad,” he said. “The world is full of ignorance.” Then he glanced around as if he wanted to make sure he left nothing behind and said, “I am so very sorry to have disturbed.” But as he placed his hand on the front doorknob again, Elizabeth Zott laid a hand on his sleeve.

“Reverend Wakely,” she said in the saddest voice he’d ever heard. “We’ve met before.”

“You never told me that,” Madeline said as she reached for a second brownie. “Why didn’t you tell me you were at my dad’s funeral?”

“Because,” he said, “I was a bit player, that’s all. I very much admired your dad, but it doesn’t mean I knew him. I wanted to help— I wanted to find the right words to help your mom with her loss, but I failed. I’d never met your dad, you understand—but I felt like I understood him. That probably sounds pompous,” he said, turning to Elizabeth. “I’m sorry.”

Throughout dinner, Elizabeth had said very little, but Wakely’s confession seemed to touch her in some distant way. She nodded.

“Mad,” she said. “Illegitimate means that you were a child born out of wedlock. It means your dad and I weren’t married.”

“I know what it means,” she said. “I just don’t know why it’s a big deal.”

“It’s only a big deal to the very stupid,” Wakely interjected. “I talk with the stupid all day long, I know the territory. As a minister, I had hoped to put a dent in that type of stupidity—to make people see their actions cause such needless…anyway, your mother is absolutely correct when she was quoted in the article saying our society is based largely on myth, that our culture, religion, and politics have a way of distorting the truth. Illegitimacy is but one of those myths. Pay no attention to that word or anyone who uses it.”

Elizabeth looked up, surprised. “That didn’t make it into the
Life
article.”

“What didn’t?”

“That part about myth. About the distortion of truth.”

It was his turn to look surprised. “Right, not in
Life.
But in Roth’s new—” He looked at Mad, as if just now remembering why he’d stopped by. “Oh dear god.” He bent down and retrieved an unsealed manila envelope from his satchel and laid it in front of Elizabeth. Three words were written across the front:
Elizabeth Zott. PRIVATE.

“Mom,” Mad said quickly. “Mr. Roth came by a few days ago. I didn’t answer the door because I’m not supposed to, but also because it was Roth, and Harriet says Roth is Public Enemy Number One.” She paused, hanging her head. “I read his
Life
article,” she confessed. “I know you told me not to, but I did and it was awful. Also, I don’t know how Roth got my family tree, but he did and it’s my fault, and—” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Honey,” Elizabeth said, her voice dropping as she drew the child onto her lap. “No, of course it’s not your fault; none of this is your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh yes I did,” Mad choked as her mother stroked her hair. “That,” she said, pointing to the manila envelope Wakely had
placed on the table, “that’s from Roth. He left it on the doorstep and I opened it. And even though it said private, I read it. And then I took it to Wakely.”

“But Mad, why would you—?” She stopped and looked at Wakely, alarmed. “Wait. You read it, too?”

“I wasn’t in when Mad dropped by,” Wakely explained, “but my typist told me she’d been there and Mad was very upset. So I confess— I also read the article. Actually, so did my typist—it’s quite—”

“My god!” Elizabeth exploded. “What is wrong with you people? Does the word ‘private’ mean nothing anymore?” She snatched the envelope off the table.

“But Mad,” Wakely said, ignoring Elizabeth’s ire, “why did it upset you so? At least Mr. Roth is trying to make it right. At least he wrote the truth.”

“What do you mean by
truth
?” Elizabeth said. “That man wouldn’t know how to—” But as she reached into the envelope and withdrew the contents, she stopped. “Why Their Minds Matter” read the headline of the new piece.

It was an article mock-up—not yet published. Under the headline was a photograph of Elizabeth in her home lab, a goggled Six-Thirty by her side. Surrounding her, a photographic border of other women scientists from around the world in their labs. “The Bias of Science,” read the subhead, “and What These Women Are Doing About It.”

A note was clipped to the top.

Sorry, Zott. Quit
Life.
Still trying to get the truth out, not that anyone wants it. Been rejected from ten scientific publications so far. Off to cover a developing story in a place called Vietnam. Yours, FR.