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.”