Lessons in Chemistry(112)
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.”