Lessons in Chemistry(21)

“Elizabeth?” he called again. “Where’s Six-Thirty? Happy’s on.”

Happy was Jack LaLanne’s dog. Sometimes he was on the show, sometimes he wasn’t, but when he was, Six-Thirty always left the room. Elizabeth sensed there was something about the German shepherd that made Six-Thirty unhappy.

“He’s with me,” she called back.

Holding an egg in the palm of her hand, she turned to him. “Here’s a tip, Six-Thirty: never crack eggs on the side of a bowl—it increases the chance of shell fragments. Better to bring a sharp, thin knife down on the egg as if you’re cracking a whip. See?” she said, as the egg’s contents slipped into the bowl.

Six-Thirty watched without blinking.

“Now I’m disrupting the egg’s internal bonds in order to elongate the amino acid chain,” she told him as she whisked, “which will allow the freed atoms to bond with other similarly freed atoms. Then I’ll reconstitute the mix into a loose whole, laying it on a surface of iron-carbon alloy, where I’ll subject it to precision heat, continually agitating the mix until it reaches a stage of near coagulation.”

“LaLanne is an animal,” Calvin announced as he wandered into the kitchen, his T-shirt damp.

“Agreed,” Elizabeth said as she took the frying pan off the flame and placed the eggs on two plates. “Because humans are animals. Technically. Although sometimes I think the animals we consider animals are far more advanced than the animals we are but don’t consider ourselves to be.” She looked to Six-Thirty for confirmation, but even he couldn’t parse that one.

“Well, Jack gave me an idea,” Calvin said, lowering his large frame into a chair, “and I think you’re going to love it. I’m going to teach you to row.”

“Pass the sodium chloride.”

“You’ll love it. We can row a pair together, maybe a double. We’ll watch the sun rise on the water.”

“Not really interested.”

“We can start tomorrow.”

Calvin still rowed three days a week, but only in a single. That wasn’t uncommon for elite rowers: once in a boat oared by teammates who seemed to know one another at a cellular level, they sometimes struggled to row with others. Elizabeth knew how much he missed his Cambridge boat. Still, she had no interest in rowing.

“I don’t want to. Besides, you row at four thirty in the morning.”

“I row at five o’clock,” he said as if this made it so much more reasonable. “I only leave the house at four thirty.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“No.”

“But why?”

“Because that’s when I sleep.”

“Easily solved. We’ll go to bed early.”

“No.”

“First I’ll introduce you to the rowing machine—we call it the erg. They have some at the boathouse, but I’m going to build one for home use. Then we’ll move to a boat— a shell. By April we’ll be skimming across the bay, watching the sun rise, our long strokes clicking along in perfect unison.”

But even as he said it, Calvin knew the rowing part wasn’t possible. First, no one learns to row in a month. Most people, even with expert instruction, can’t row well within a year, or sometimes three years, or for many, ever. As for the skimming part—there is no skimming. To get to the point where rowing might resemble skimming, you’ve probably reached the Olympic level and the look on your face as you fly down the racecourse is not one of calm satisfaction but controlled agony. This is sometimes accompanied by a look of determination—usually one that indicates that right after this race is over, you plan to find a new sport. Still, once he’d hatched the idea, he loved it. Rowing a pair with Elizabeth. How glorious!

“No.”

“But why?”

“Because. Women don’t row.” But as soon as she’d said it, she regretted it.

“Elizabeth Zott,” he said, surprised. “Are you actually saying women can’t row?”

That sealed it.



* * *



—

The next morning they left their bungalow in the dark, Calvin in his old T-shirt and sweatpants, Elizabeth in whatever she could find that looked remotely sporty. As they pulled up to the boathouse, both Six-Thirty and Elizabeth looked out the car window to see a few bodies on a slick dock doing calisthenics.

“Shouldn’t they be doing that inside?” she asked. “It’s still dark.”

“On a morning like this?” It was foggy.

“I thought you didn’t like rain.”

“This isn’t rain.”

For at least the fortieth time, Elizabeth found herself doubting this plan.



* * *



—

“We’ll start off easy,” Calvin said as he led her and Six-Thirty into the boathouse, a cavernous building that smelled of mildew and sweat. As they walked past rows of long wooden rowing shells layered to the ceiling like well-stacked toothpicks, Calvin nodded at a bedraggled-looking person who yawned and nodded back, conversation not yet possible. He stopped when he found what he was looking for— a rowing machine, the erg—which had been tucked in a corner. He pulled it out, positioning it in the middle of the bay between the stacks of boats.