Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel

The first day on the water, she and Calvin flipped the pair and fell in the water. Second day, flipped. Third day, flipped.

“What am I doing wrong?” she gasped, her teeth chattering as they pushed the long, thin shell toward the dock. She had neglected to tell Calvin one little fact about herself. She couldn’t swim.

“Everything,” he sighed.

—

“As I’ve mentioned before,” he said ten minutes later as he pointed at the rowing machine, indicating that, despite her wet clothes, she should sit, “rowing requires perfect technique.”

While she adjusted the foot stretchers, he explained that rowers usually erged when the water was too rough, or they had to be timed, or when the coach was in a really bad mood. And, when done right, especially during a fitness test, there was vomiting. Then he mentioned that erging had a way of making the worst day on the water seem pretty good.

And yet, that is exactly what they continued to have: the worst of days. The very next morning they were back in the water. And it was all because Calvin continued to omit one simple truth: the pair is the hardest boat to row. It’s like trying to learn to fly by starting out in a B-52. But what choice did he have? He knew the men weren’t going to let her row with them in a bigger boat like an eight; besides being female, her lack of experience meant she’d ruin the row. Worse, she’d probably catch a crab and crack a few ribs. He hadn’t mentioned crabs yet. For obvious reasons.

They righted the boat and crawled back in.

“The problem is that you’re not patient enough up the slide. You need to slow the hell down, Elizabeth.”

“I am going slow.”

“No, you’re rushing. It’s one of the worst mistakes a rower can make. Every time you rush the slide, you know what happens? God kills a kitten.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Calvin.”

“And your catch is too slow. The object is to go fast, remember?”

“Well that certainly clears things up,” she snapped from the stern. “Go slow to go fast.”

He clapped her on the shoulder as if she was finally getting it. “Exactly.”

Shivering, she tightened her grip on the oar. What a stupid sport. For the next thirty minutes she tried to heed his contradictory commands: Raise your hands; no, lower them! Lean out; god not that far! Jesus, you’re slouching, you’re skying, you’re rushing, you’re late, you’re early! Until the boat itself seemed sick of the whole thing and pitched them back into the water.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Calvin said as they marched back to the boathouse, the heavy rowing shell biting into their sodden shoulders.

“What’s my main issue?” she said, bracing herself for the worst as they lowered the boat onto the rack. Calvin had always insisted that rowing required the highest level of teamwork— a problem since, according to her boss, she also wasn’t a team player. “Just tell me. Don’t hold back.”

“Physics,” Calvin said.

“Physics,” she said, relieved. “Thank god.”

—

“I get it,” she said, skimming a physics textbook later that day at work. “Rowing is a simple matter of kinetic energy versus boat drag and center of mass.” She jotted down a few formulas. “And gravity,” she added, “and buoyancy, ratio, speed, balance, gearing, oar length, blade type—” The more she read, the more she wrote, the nuances of rowing slowly revealing themselves in complicated algorithms. “Oh for heaven’s sake,” she said, sitting back. “Rowing isn’t that hard.”

“Jesus!” Calvin exclaimed two days later as their boat sped unimpeded through the water. “Who are you?” She said nothing, replaying the formulas in her head. As they passed a men’s eight sitting at rest, every rower turned to watch them go by.

“Did you see that?” the coxswain shouted angrily at his crew. “Did you see how she gets length without overreaching?”

—

And yet about a month later, her boss, Dr. Donatti, accused her of exactly that. “You’re overreaching, Miss Zott,” he said, pausing to squeeze the top of her shoulder. “Abiogenesis is more of a PhD-university-this-topic-is-so-boring-no-one-cares sort of thing. And don’t take this the wrong way, but it exceeds your intellectual grasp.”

“And exactly what way am I supposed to take that?” She shrugged his hand off.

“What happened here?” he said, ignoring her tone as he took her bandaged fingers in his hands. “If you’re struggling with the lab equipment, you know you can ask one of the fellas to help you.”

“I’m learning to row,” she said, snatching her fingers back. Despite her recent gains, the next several rows had been complete failures.

“Rowing, eh?” Donatti said, rolling his eyes. Evans.

—

Donatti had been a rower too, and at Harvard, no less, where he’d had the incredible misfortune to row just once against Evans and his precious Cambridge boat at the fucking Henley. Their catastrophic loss (seven boat lengths), witnessed only by a handful of people who’d managed to glimpse it over a sea of impossibly big hats, was carefully blamed on some fish and chips they’d ingested the night before, instead of the tonnage of beer that had washed it down.

In other words, they were all still drunk at the start.

After the race, their coach had told them to go over and congratulate the la-di-dah Cambridge crew. That’s when Donatti had first learned one of the Cambridge boys was an American—an American who held some sort of grudge against Harvard. As he shook Evans’s hand, Donatti managed “Good row,” but instead of responding in kind, Evans said, “Jesus, are you drunk?”

Donatti took an instant dislike to him, a dislike that tripled when he found out that Evans was not only studying chemistry as he was, but he was that Evans—Calvin Evans—the guy who’d already made a major mark in the chemistry world.

Was it any surprise that, years later, when Evans accepted the incredibly insulting Hastings offer Donatti himself had crafted, Donatti wasn’t overly enthusiastic? First, Evans didn’t remember him—rude. Second, Evans appeared to have maintained his fitness—annoying. Third, Evans told Chemistry Today that he took the position, not based on Hastings’s sterling reputation, but because he liked the fucking weather. Seriously—the man was an asshole. However, there was one consolation. He, Donatti, was director of Chemistry, and not just because his father played golf with the CEO, or because he happened to be the man’s godson, and certainly not because he’d married the man’s daughter. Bottom line, the great Evans would be reporting to him.

To enforce that pecking order, he called a meeting with the blowhard, then purposely showed up twenty minutes late. Unfortunately, to an empty conference room, because Evans hadn’t shown up at all. “Sorry, Dino,” Evans later informed him. “I don’t really like meetings.”

“It’s Donatti.”

—

And now? Elizabeth Zott. He didn’t like Zott. She was pushy, smart, opinionated. Worse, she had terrible taste in men. Unlike so many others, though, he did not find Zott attractive. He glanced down at a silver-framed photograph of his family: three big-eared boys bracketed by the sharp-beaked Edith and himself. He and Edith were a team the way couples were meant to be a team—not by sharing hobbies like rowing for fuck’s sake—but in the way their sexes deemed socially and physically appropriate. He brought home the bacon; she pumped out the babies. It was a normal, productive, God-approved marriage. Did he sleep with other women? What a question. Didn’t everyone?

“—my underlying hypothesis—” Zott was saying.

Underlying hypothesis his ass. This was the other thing he hated about Zott: she was tireless. Stiff. Didn’t know when to quit. Standard rower attributes, now that he thought about it. He hadn’t rowed in years. Was there really a women’s team in town? Obviously, she couldn’t possibly be rowing with Evans. An elite rower like Evans would never deign to get in a boat with a novice, even if they were sleeping together. Scratch that; especially if they were sleeping together. Evans probably signed her up for some beginner crew, and Zott, wanting to prove that she could hold her own—per usual—went along with it. He shuddered at the thought of a bunch of struggling rowers, their blades hitting the water like out-of-control spatulas.

“—I’m determined to see this through, Dr. Donatti—” Zott asserted.

Yes, yes, there it was. Women like her always used the word “determined.” Well, he was determined, too. Just last night he’d come up with a new way to deal with Zott. He was going to steal her away from Evans. What better way to fix the big man’s wagon? Then, once he’d made the Evans-Zott romance a crash scene with no survivors, he’d dump her and return to his once-again pregnant housewife and impossibly loud children, no harm done.

His plan was simple: first, attack Zott’s self-esteem. Women were so easily crushed.

“Like I said,” Donatti emphasized as he stood, sucking in his gut as he shooed her toward the door. “You’re just not smart enough.”

—

Elizabeth stalked down the hallway, her heels hitting the tile in a dangerous staccato. She tried to calm herself by taking a deep breath in, but it came rushing back out at hurricane speed. Stopping abruptly, she slammed her fist against the wall, then took a moment to review her options.

Replead case.

Quit.

Set fire to the building.

She didn’t want to admit it, but his words were like fresh fuel to her ever-growing pyre of self-doubt. She had neither the education nor the experience of the others. She not only lacked their credentials but their papers, peer support, financial backing, and awards. And yet, she knew—she knew—she was onto something. Some people were born to things; she was one of those people. She pressed her hand on her forehead as if that might keep her head from exploding.

“Miss Zott? Excuse me. Miss Zott?”

The voice seemed to come from out of nowhere.

“Miss Zott!”

From just around the next corner peeked a thin-haired man with a sheaf of papers. It was Dr. Boryweitz, a lab mate who often sought her help, as most of the others did, when no one else was looking.

“I was wondering if you could take a look at this,” he said in a low voice as he motioned her off to the side, his forehead rutted with anxiety. “My latest test results.” He thrust a sheet of paper into her hands. “I’d call this a breakthrough, wouldn’t you?” His hands trembled. “Something new?”

He wore his normal expression—frightened, as if he’d just seen a ghost. It was a mystery to most how Dr. Boryweitz had ever gotten a PhD in chemistry, much less a job at Hastings. He often seemed just as mystified.

“Do you think your young man might be interested in this?” Boryweitz asked. “Maybe you could show it to him. Is that where you were headed? His lab? Maybe I could tag along.” He reached out, grasping her forearm as if she were a life buoy, something he could cling to until the big rescue ship in the form of Calvin Evans pulled up.

Elizabeth carefully pulled the papers from his grip. Despite his neediness, she liked Boryweitz. He was polite, professional. And they had something in common: they were both in the wrong place at the wrong time, albeit for entirely different reasons.

“The thing is, Dr. Boryweitz,” she said, trying to put aside her own troubles as she studied his work, “this is a macromolecule with repeating units linked by amide bonds.”

“Right, right.”

“In other words, it’s a polyamide.”

“A poly—” His face fell. Even he knew polyamides had been around forever. “I think you might be mistaken,” he said. “Look again.”

“It’s not a bad finding,” she said gently. “It’s just that it’s already been proven.”

He shook his head in defeat. “So I shouldn’t show this to Donatti.”

“You’ve basically rediscovered nylon.”

“Really,” he said, looking down at his results. “Darn.” His head submerged. An uncomfortable silence followed. Then he glanced at his watch as if there might be an answer there. “What’s all this?” he finally said, pointing to her bandaged fingers.

“Oh. I’m a rower. Trying to be.”

“Are you any good?”

“No.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“I’m not sure.”

He shook his head. “Boy, do I get that.”

—

“How’s your project going?” Calvin asked Elizabeth a few weeks later as they sat together at lunch. He took a bite of his turkey sandwich, chewing vigorously to disguise the fact that he already knew. Everybody knew.

“Fine,” she said.

“No problems?”

“None.” She sipped her water.

“You know if you ever need my help—”

“— I don’t need your help.”

Calvin sighed, frustrated. It was a form of naïveté, he thought, the way she continued to believe that all it took to get through life was grit. Sure, grit was critical, but it also took luck, and if luck wasn’t available, then help. Everyone needed help. But maybe because she’d never been offered any, she refused to believe in it. How many times had she asserted that if she did her best, her best would win? He’d lost count. And this was despite significant evidence to the contrary. Especially at Hastings.

As he finished their lunch—she barely touched hers—he promised himself he would not intervene on her behalf. It was important to respect her wishes. She wanted to handle this on her own. He would not get involved.

—

“What’s your problem, Donatti?” he roared approximately ten minutes later as he burst into his boss’s office. “Is it an origin of life issue? Pressure from the religious community? Abiogenesis is just more proof that there actually is no God and you’re worried this might not play well in Kansas? Is that why you’re canceling Zott’s project? And you dare to call yourself a scientist.”

“Cal,” Donatti had said, his arms stretched casually behind his head. “As much as I love our little chats, I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Because the only other viable explanation,” Calvin accused, shoving his hands in the front pockets of his voluminous khakis, “is that you don’t understand her work.”

Donatti rolled his eyes as a puff of stale air escaped his lips. Why were brilliant people so dumb? If Evans had any brains at all, he’d accuse him of attempting to horn in on his good-looking girlfriend.

“Actually, Cal,” Donatti said, stubbing out a cigarette, “I was trying to give her career a little boost. Giving her a chance to work with me directly on a very important project. Help her grow in other areas.”

There, Donatti thought. Grow in other areas—how obvious could he be? But Calvin started in on her latest test results as if they were still talking about work. The guy was clueless.

“I get offers every week,” Calvin threatened. “Hastings isn’t the only place I can conduct my research!”

This again. How many times had Donatti heard it? Sure, Evans was a hot ticket in the research world, and yes, much of their funding was based on his mere presence. But that was only because funders erroneously believed that Evans’s name attracted other big-brained talent. Hadn’t happened. Anyway, he didn’t want Evans to leave; he only wanted Evans to fail—to become so unhinged by love lost that he self-destructed, ruining his reputation and tanking all research opportunities going forward. Once that happened, then he could leave.

“Like I said,” Donatti replied in a measured voice, “I was only trying to give Miss Zott a chance for personal growth—I’m trying to help her career.”

“She can take care of her own career.”

Donatti laughed. “Really. And yet here you are.”

—

But what Donatti didn’t tell Calvin was that a huge fly had recently landed in his get-rid-of-Evans-via-Zott ointment. A donor with impossibly deep pockets.

The man had appeared, out of the blue, two days ago, with a blank check and an insistence to fund—of all things—abiogenesis. Donatti mounted a polite argument. What about lipid metabolism, he suggested. Or cell division? But the man insisted: abiogenesis or nothing. So Donatti had no choice: he put Zott back on her ridiculous mission to Mars.

Truth was, he wasn’t making much headway with her anyway. She’d steadily refused to yield to his repeated “you’re not smart” put-downs. No matter how many times he said it, she hadn’t once responded in the proper fashion. Where was the low self-esteem? Where were the tears? If she wasn’t restating her boring case for abiogenesis in a professional way, then she was saying, “Touch me again and live to regret it.” What the hell did Evans see in this woman? He could keep her. He’d have to find some other way to fix the big man’s wagon.

—

“Calvin,” Elizabeth said, rushing into his lab later that afternoon. “I have great news. I’ve been keeping something from you and I apologize, but it was only because I didn’t want you to get involved. Donatti canceled my project a few weeks back and I’ve been fighting to get it back. Today that fight paid off. He reversed his decision—said he’d reviewed my work and decided it was too important not to move forward.”

Calvin smiled broadly in what he hoped was the appropriate expression of surprise—he’d left Donatti’s office less than an hour ago. “Wait? Really?” he said, clapping her on the back. “He tried to cancel abiogenesis? Well that must have been a mistake from the start.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it. I wanted to handle it on my own and now I’m glad I did. I feel like it’s a real vote of confidence in my work—in me.”

“Definitely.”

She looked at him more closely, then took a step back. “I did get this on my own. You had nothing to do with it.”

“First time I’ve heard about it.”

“You never talked to Donatti,” she pressed, “you never got involved.”

“I swear,” he lied.

After she left, Calvin clasped his hands together in a silent fit of glee and flipped on the hi-fi, dropping the needle on “Sunny Side of the Street.” For a second time, he’d saved the person he loved the most, and the best part was, she didn’t know.

He grabbed a stool, opened a notebook, and began to write. He’d been keeping journals since age seven or so, jotting down the facts and fears of his life between lines of chemical equations. Even today his lab was full of these nearly illegible notebooks. It was one of the reasons everyone assumed he was getting a lot done. Volume.

—

“Your handwriting is hard to read here,” Elizabeth had noted on several occasions. “What’s that say?” She’d pointed to an RNA-related theory he’d been toying with for months.

“A hypothesis about enzymatic adaptation,” he answered.

“And this?” She pointed farther down the page. Something he’d written about her.

“More of the same,” he said, tossing the notebook aside.

It wasn’t that he was writing anything terrible about her—just the opposite. Rather, it was more that he couldn’t risk having her discover that he was obsessed with the notion that she might die.

—

He’d long ago decided that he was a jinx and he had solid proof: every person he’d ever loved had died, always in a freak accident. The only way to put an end to this deadly pattern was to put an end to love. And he had. But then he’d met Elizabeth and, without meaning to, had stupidly and selfishly gone on to love again. Now here she was, standing directly in line of his jinx fire.

As a chemist, he realized his fixation on jinxes was not at all scientific; it was superstitious. Well, so be it. Life wasn’t a hypothesis one could test and retest without consequence—something always crashed eventually. Thus he was constantly on the lookout for things that posed a threat to her, and as of this morning, that thing was rowing.

They’d flipped the pair yet again—his fault—and for the very first time, they’d ended up in the water on the same side of the boat and he’d made a terrifying discovery: she couldn’t swim. By the looks of her panicked dog paddle, she’d never had a swim lesson in her life.

That’s why, while Elizabeth was off in the bathroom at the boathouse, he and Six-Thirty had approached the men’s team captain, Dr. Mason. It was bad-weather season: if he and Elizabeth were going to continue to row—she actually wanted to—it was best to be in an eight. Safer. Plus, if the eight did flip—unlikely—there’d be that many more people to save her. Anyway, Mason had been trying to recruit him for more than three years; it was worth a shot.

“What do you think?” he’d asked Mason. “You’d have to take both of us, though.”

“A woman in a men’s eight?” Dr. Mason had said, readjusting his cap over his crew cut. He’d been a marine and hated it. But he’d kept the hairstyle.

“She’s good,” Calvin said. “Very tough.”

Mason nodded. These days he was an obstetrician. He already knew how tough women could be. Still, a woman? How could that possibly work?

“Hey, guess what,” Calvin told Elizabeth a minute later. “The men’s team really wants both of us to row in their eight today.”

“Really?” Her goal had always been to join an eight. The eights rarely seemed to flip. She’d never told Calvin she couldn’t swim. Why worry him?

“The team captain approached me just now. He’s seen you row,” he said. “He knows talent when he sees it.”

From below, Six-Thirty exhaled. Lies, lies, and more lies.

“When do we start?”

“Now.”

“Now?” She felt a jolt of panic. While she’d wanted to row in an eight, she also knew the eight required a level of synchronization she had not yet mastered. When a boat succeeds, it’s because the people in the boat have managed to set aside their petty differences and physical discrepancies and row as one. Perfect harmony—that was the goal. She’d once overheard Calvin telling someone at the boathouse that his Cambridge coach insisted that they even blink at the same time. To her surprise the guy nodded. “We had to file our toenails to the same length. Made a huge difference.”

“You’ll be rowing two seat,” he said.

“Great,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the violent shake in her hands.

“The coxswain will call out commands; you’ll be fine. Just watch the blade in front of you. And whatever you do, don’t look out of the boat.”

“Wait. How can I watch the blade in front of me if I don’t look out of the boat?”

“Just don’t do it,” he warned. “Throws off the set.”

“But—”

“And relax.”

“I—”

“Hands on!” yelled the coxswain.

“Don’t worry,” Calvin said. “You’ll be fine.”

—

Elizabeth once read that 98 percent of the things people worry about never come true. But what, she wondered, about the 2 percent that do? And who came up with that figure? Two percent seemed suspiciously low. She’d believe 10 percent—even 20. In her own life it was probably closer to 50. She really didn’t want to worry about this row, but she was. Fifty percent chance she was going to blow it.

As they carried the boat to the dock in the dark, the man in front of her glanced over his shoulder as if to try to understand why the guy who usually rowed two seat seemed smaller.

“Elizabeth Zott,” she said.

“No talking!” shouted the coxswain.

“Who?” asked the man suspiciously.

“I’m rowing two seat today.”

“Quiet back there!” the coxswain yelled.

“Two seat?” the man whispered incredulously. “You’re rowing two seat?”

“Is there a problem?” Elizabeth hissed back.

—

“You were great!” Calvin shouted two hours later, pounding on the car’s steering wheel with such excitement that Six-Thirty worried they might crash before they reached home. “Everyone thought so!”

“Who’s everyone?” Elizabeth said. “No one said a single word to me.”

“Oh, well, you only hear from the other rowers when they’re pissed. The point is, we’re in the lineup for Wednesday.” He smiled, triumphant. Saved her again—first at work and now this. Maybe this was the way one ended a jinx—by taking secret but sensible precautions.

Elizabeth turned and looked out the window. Could the sport of rowing really be that egalitarian? Or was this just the usual fear from the usual suspects—rowers, like scientists, were afraid of Calvin’s legendary grudge holding.

As they drove along the coast toward home, the sunrise illuminating a dozen or so surfers, their longboards pointed at the shore, their heads turned, hoping to catch a few waves before work, it suddenly occurred to her that she’d never seen this supposed grudge holding in action.

“Calvin,” she said, turning back toward him, “why does everyone say you hold a grudge?”

“What’s that?” he said, unable to stop smiling. Secret, sensible precautions. The solution to life’s problems!

“You know what I mean,” she said. “There’s an undertone at work—people say if they disagree with you, you’ll ruin them.”

“Oh that,” he said cheerfully. “Rumors. Gossip. Jealousy. There are people I don’t like, certainly, but would I go out of my way to ruin them? Of course not.”

“Right,” she said. “But I’m still curious. Is there anyone in your life you’ll never forgive?”

“No one comes to mind,” he answered gaily. “You? Anyone you plan to hate the rest of your life?” He turned to look at her, her face still flushed from the row, her hair damp with ocean spray, her expression serious. She held out her fingers, as if counting.