“This is where we’ll put the shelves,” she said to him, pointing at the pockmarked walls. “And over there is where we’ll put the centrifuge.” She produced a tape measure, and gesturing him out from under the table, inserted one end in his mouth while pointing to the other end of the kitchen. “Take it just down there, Six-Thirty. A little farther. A little farther. Good. Hold it right there.”
She jotted some numbers in a notebook.
By eight a.m. she’d sketched out a rough plan; by ten, a shopping list; by eleven, they were in the car and headed to the lumberyard.
People often underestimate what a pregnant woman is capable of, but people always underestimate what a grieving pregnant woman is capable of. The man at the lumberyard eyed her curiously.
“Your husband doing some remodeling?” he asked, noticing her small bump. “Getting ready for the baby?”
“I’m building a laboratory.”
“You mean a nursery.”
“I don’t.”
He glanced up from her sketch.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
The materials were delivered later that same day, and armed with a library-obtained set of Popular Mechanics magazines, she set to work.
“Tenpenny nail,” she said. Six-Thirty had no idea what a tenpenny nail was; nevertheless, he followed the nod of her head to an array of small boxes that lay close by, selected something, then put it in her open palm. “Three-inch screw,” she’d ask a minute later, and he’d dig into another box. “That’s a lag bolt,” she said. “Try again.”
This work would continue all day and often into the night, broken only by their word lessons and the ringing of the doorbell.
* * *
—
About two weeks after she’d been fired, Dr. Boryweitz had dropped by, ostensibly to say hello, but really because he was having trouble interpreting some test results. “It’ll only take a quick sec,” he promised, but it took two hours. The next day the same thing happened, but this time it was another chemist from the lab. The third time, yet another.
That’s when it came to her. She would charge. Cash only. If anyone had the gall to suggest payment was unnecessary because they were simply “keeping her in the loop,” she would charge double. An offhand remark about Calvin: triple. Any reference to her pregnancy—the glow, the miracle—quadruple. That was how she made a living. By doing other people’s work without any credit. It was exactly like working at Hastings, but without the tax liability.
* * *
—
“Coming up the walk I thought I heard banging,” one of them said.
“I’m building a lab.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
“But you’re going to be a mother,” he said, tutting.
“A mother and a scientist,” she said, brushing sawdust off her sleeve. “You’re a father, aren’t you? A father and a scientist.”
“Yes, but I have a PhD,” he emphasized as proof of his superiority. Then he pointed to a set of test protocols that had confounded him for weeks.
She looked at him, perplexed. “You have two problems,” she said, tapping the paper. “This temperature is too high. Lower it by fifteen degrees.”
“I see. And the other?”
She cocked her head to the side, taking in his blank expression. “Unsolvable.”
* * *
—
The transformation of kitchen into laboratory took about four months, and when it was done, she and Six-Thirty stood back to admire their work.
The shelves, which spanned the length of the kitchen, were freshly lined with a wide array of laboratory materials: chemicals, flasks, beakers, pipettes, siphon bottles, empty mayonnaise jars, a set of nail files, a stack of litmus paper, a box of medicine droppers, assorted glass rods, the hose from the backyard, and some unused tubing she’d found in the trash bin in the alley behind the local phlebotomy lab. Drawers that once stored utensils were now taken up by acid-and puncture-resistant mitts and goggles. She’d also installed metal pans under all the burners to aid in alcohol denaturation, purchased a used centrifuge, cut up a window screen to create a set of 4 x 4 wire flats, dumped out the last of her favorite perfume to create an alcohol burner—including cutting one of her lipstick containers, which she then stuck into Calvin’s old thermos bottle cork, creating the stopper—made test tube holders out of wire hangars, and converted a spice rack into a suspension structure for various liquids.