Lessons in Chemistry
- Автор: Garmus Bonnie
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Doubleday Canada
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Lessons in Chemistry». Краткое содержание книги:
They both took another sip of coffee.
“Hello there, Six-Thirty,” she said, extending her free hand. He went to her.
“You know Six-Thirty?”
“Miss Zott. I live just there — across the street! I often see him out and about. By the way, there’s a leash law in effect—”
At the word “leash,” Madeline opened her tiny mouth and let loose a bloodcurdling cry.
“Oh Jesus Mary mother of god!” Mrs. Sloane swore as she leapt up, Madeline still in her arms. “That is truly hideous, child!” She looked into the small red face and bounced the bundle around the laboratory, her voice raised above the noise. “Years ago, when I was a new mother, Mr. Sloane was away on business and a horrible man broke into the house and said if I didn’t give him all our money, he’d take the baby. I hadn’t slept or showered in four days, hadn’t combed my hair for at least a week, hadn’t sat down in I don’t know how long. So I said, ‘You want the baby? Here.’ ” She shifted Madeline to the other arm. “Never seen a grown man run so fast.” She glanced around the room uncertainly. “Do you have some fancy way of fixing a bottle too, or can I make it like normal?”
“I’ve got one ready,” Elizabeth said, retrieving a bottle from a small pan of warm water.
“Newborns are horrible,” Mrs. Sloane said, clutching at the fake pearls around her neck as Elizabeth took Madeline from her. “I thought you had some help; otherwise I would have come earlier. You’ve had so many, well, so many men dropping by at the oddest hours.” She cleared her throat.
“It’s work,” Elizabeth said as she coaxed Madeline to take the bottle.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Mrs. Sloane said.
“I’m a scientist,” Elizabeth said.
“I thought Mr. Evans was the scientist.”
“I’m one, too.”
“Of course, you are.” She clapped her hands together. “All right, then. I’ll get going. But now you know — whenever you need a spare pair of hands, I’m across the street.” She wrote her phone number in thick pencil directly on the kitchen wall just above the phone. “Mr. Sloane retired last year and he’s at home all the time now, so don’t think you’ll be interrupting anything because you won’t; in fact, you’ll be doing me a favor. Understood?” She bent down to retrieve something from her shopping bag. “I’ll just leave this here,” she said, removing a foil-wrapped casserole. “I’m not saying it’s good, but you need to eat.”
“Mrs. Sloane,” Elizabeth said, realizing she did not want to be alone. “You seem to know a lot about babies.”
“As much as anyone can ever know,” she agreed. “They’re selfish little sadists. The question is, why anyone has more than one.”
“How many did you have?”
“Four. What are you trying to say, Miss Zott? Are you worried about something in particular?”
“Well,” Elizabeth said, trying to keep her voice from wavering, “it’s…it’s just that…”
“Just say it,” Sloane instructed. “Boom. Out.”
“I’m a terrible mother,” she said in a rush. “It’s not just the way you found me asleep on the job, it’s many things — or rather, everything.”
“Be more specific.”
“Well, for instance, Dr. Spock says I’m supposed to put her on a schedule, so I made one, but she won’t follow it.”
Harriet Sloane snorted.
“And I’m not having any of those moments you’re supposed to have — you know, the moments—”
“I don’t—”
“The blissful moments—”
“Women’s magazine rot,” Sloane interrupted. “You need to steer clear of that stuff. It’s complete fiction.”
“But the feelings I’m having — I…I don’t think they’re normal. I never wanted to have children,” she said, “and now I have one and I’m ashamed to say I’ve been ready to give her away at least twice now.”
Mrs. Sloane stopped at the back door.
“Please,” Elizabeth begged. “Don’t think badly of me—”
“Wait,” Sloane said, as if she’d misheard. “You’ve wanted to give her away…twice?” Then she shook her head and laughed in a way that made Elizabeth shrink.
“It’s not funny.”
“Twice? Really? Twenty times would still make you an amateur.”
Elizabeth looked away.
“Hells bells,” huffed Mrs. Sloane sympathetically. “You’re in the midst of the toughest job in the world. Did your mother never tell you?”
And at the mention of her mother, Sloane noticed the young woman’s shoulders tense.
“Okay,” she said in a softer tone. “Never mind. Just try not to worry so much. You’re doing fine, Miss Zott. It’ll get better.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Elizabeth said desperately. “What if…what if it gets worse?”
Although she wasn’t the type to touch people, Mrs. Sloane found herself leaving the sanctuary of the door to press down lightly on the young woman’s shoulders. “It gets better,” she said. “What’s your name, Miss Zott?”
“Elizabeth.”
Mrs. Sloane lifted her hands. “Well, Elizabeth, I’m Harriet.”
And then there was an awkward silence, as if by sharing their names, they’d each revealed more than they’d planned.
“Before I go, Elizabeth, can I offer just one bit of advice?” Harriet began. “Actually no, I won’t. I hate getting advice, especially unsolicited advice.” She turned a ruddy color. “Do you hate advice givers? I do. They have a way of making one feel inadequate. And the advice is usually lousy.”
“Go on,” Elizabeth urged.
Harriet hesitated, then pursed her lips side to side. “Well, fine. Maybe it’s not really advice anyway. It’s more like a tip.”
Elizabeth looked back expectantly.
“Take a moment for yourself,” Harriet said. “Every day.”
“A moment.”
“A moment where you are your own priority. Just you. Not your baby, not your work, not your dead Mr. Evans, not your filthy house, not anything. Just you. Elizabeth Zott. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment.” She gave a sharp tug to her fake pearls. “Then recommit.”
And although Harriet didn’t mention she’d never followed this advice herself — that she’d actually only read it in one of those ridiculous women’s magazines — she wanted to believe that someday she would recommit to her goal. To be in love. Real love. Then she opened the back door and gave a small nod and pulled the door closed behind her. And as if on cue, Madeline began to cry.
Chapter 18
Legally Mad
Harriet Sloane had never been pretty, but she’d known pretty people and they always seemed to attract trouble. They were either loved for being pretty or hated for exactly the same reason. When Calvin Evans began dating Elizabeth Zott, Harriet assumed pretty was why. But when she first spied on them from her perch in her living room, their curtains obligingly parted to give her an unobstructed view into their living room, she had to rethink her assumption.
To her it seemed Calvin and Elizabeth had enjoyed a strange relationship — almost supernatural — like identical twins separated at birth who accidentally stumble upon each other in a foxhole and despite death all around, are amazed to discover that not only do they look alike and share a serious allergy to clams, but neither liked Dean Martin. “Really?” she imagined Calvin and Elizabeth saying to each other all the time. “Me, too!”
It hadn’t been that way with her and the now-retired Mr. Sloane. The only excitement had come at the beginning but it had worn off like cheap nail polish. She’d found him bold because he had a tattoo and seemed not to notice that her ankles were thick and her hair was thin. In retrospect, that should have been a clue — that he didn’t notice her — because then maybe she would have realized he was never going to notice her.