Lessons in Chemistry(34)

Just off in the distance, a minister appeared.

“Looks like the party’s starting,” he said, telling her what he could see. “People are taking seats, the minister is opening the Bible, and”—he leaned way back to see if more people were coming from the parking lot—“and yet no family. Where’s the family? There’s not a single soul in the front row. So maybe he really was a jerk.” He glanced back to get a response, surprised to see Elizabeth standing. “Lady?” he said. “You don’t have to go all the way over there; people understand a situation like yours.” She ignored him, feeling for her purse. “Well, if you’re really going, you better let me help you.” He reached for her elbow, but the second he touched her arm, Six-Thirty growled. “Geez,” he said. “I was only trying to help.”

“He wasn’t a jerk,” Elizabeth said through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed. “No. Of course not. I’m sorry. I was only repeating what I’d heard. You know—gossip. I apologize. Although I thought you said you didn’t know him that well.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I think you—”

“I said I didn’t know him long enough,” she quavered.

“That’s what I said,” he replied soothingly, reaching for her elbow again. “You didn’t know him very long.”

“Don’t touch me.” She wrested her elbow from his grip and with Six-Thirty at her side made her way across the uneven lawn, expertly avoiding stone angels and exhausted flowers as only one with twenty-twenty vision can do and, embracing the loneliness of the front row, selected a chair directly opposite his long, black box.



* * *



—

What followed was the usual refrain: the sad looks, the dirty shovel, the boring verse, the preposterous prayers. But when the first clods of dirt hit the coffin, Elizabeth interrupted the minister’s final tribute by announcing, “I need to walk.” And then she turned, and with Six-Thirty, walked away.

It was a long walk home: six miles, in heels, in black, just the two of them. And it was curious: both the route, which took them through as many bad sections as good, and the contrast, a colorless woman and injured dog planted against the conflict of an early spring. Everywhere they walked, even in the drabbest of neighborhoods, blooms poked their way up between sidewalk cracks and flower beds, shouting and boasting and calling attention to themselves, mingling their scents in hopes of creating complex perfumes. And there they were in the thick of it, the only living dead things.

The funeral car followed her for the first mile or so, the driver pleading for her to get in, informing her she’d last no more than fifteen minutes in those heels, reminding her that she’d already paid for the ride, and apologizing that while he wasn’t able to take the dog, he was certain someone from another car would. But she was as deaf to his pleas as she had been blind to the reporter’s nosiness, and eventually he and everyone else gave up and Elizabeth and Six-Thirty did the only thing that made sense: they just kept walking.



* * *



—

The following day, not able to be in her home, and with nowhere else to go, they went back to work.

This was a problem for her coworkers. They had already exhausted their full complement of things to say. I’m so sorry. If there’s ever anything you need. What a tragedy. I’m sure he didn’t suffer. I’m there for you. He’s in God’s hands now. So they avoided her.

“Take all the time you need,” Donatti had said to her at the funeral, putting his hand on her shoulder while at the same time noting with surprise that black really wasn’t her color. “I’m there for you.” But when he saw her sitting on her stool in the lab in a daze, he avoided her, too. Later, after it was clear that everyone was only going to “be there” for her as long as she was “not there,” she took Donatti’s advice and went away.

The only place left to go was Calvin’s lab.

“This might kill me,” she whispered to Six-Thirty as they stood in front of Calvin’s door. The dog pressed his head into her thigh, begging her to go no farther, but she opened the door anyway, and they both stepped through. The scent of cleaning fluid hit them like a locomotive.

Humans were strange, Six-Thirty thought, the way they constantly battled dirt in their aboveground world, but after death willingly entombed themselves in it. At the funeral, he couldn’t believe the amount of dirt needed to cover Calvin’s coffin, and when he saw the size of the shovel, he’d wondered if he should offer the help of his back legs to fill the hole. And now dirt was again the issue, but in the wrong direction. Every last trace of Calvin had been scrubbed away. He watched as she stood in the middle of the room, her face blank with shock.



* * *



—

His notebooks were gone. Boxed up and already stored while Hastings management waited nervously to see if a next-of-kin type might come forward and try to claim them. It went without saying that she, who knew and understood his research better than anyone, and whose kinship with him far surpassed the meaning of “kin,” would not qualify.

There was only one thing left; a crate where they’d tossed his personal effects: a snapshot of her, some Frank Sinatra records, a few throat lozenges, a tennis ball, dog treats, and at the very bottom, his lunch box—which she realized, with a heavy heart, probably still contained the sandwich she’d made him nine days before.