Lessons in Chemistry(49)

Mrs. Sloane stopped at the back door.

“Please,” Elizabeth begged. “Don’t think badly of me—”

“Wait,” Sloane said, as if she’d misheard. “You’ve wanted to give her away…twice?” Then she shook her head and laughed in a way that made Elizabeth shrink.

“It’s not funny.”

“Twice? Really? Twenty times would still make you an amateur.”

Elizabeth looked away.

“Hells bells,” huffed Mrs. Sloane sympathetically. “You’re in the midst of the toughest job in the world. Did your mother never tell you?”

And at the mention of her mother, Sloane noticed the young woman’s shoulders tense.

“Okay,” she said in a softer tone. “Never mind. Just try not to worry so much. You’re doing fine, Miss Zott. It’ll get better.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Elizabeth said desperately. “What if…what if it gets worse?”

Although she wasn’t the type to touch people, Mrs. Sloane found herself leaving the sanctuary of the door to press down lightly on the young woman’s shoulders. “It gets better,” she said. “What’s your name, Miss Zott?”

“Elizabeth.”

Mrs. Sloane lifted her hands. “Well, Elizabeth, I’m Harriet.”

And then there was an awkward silence, as if by sharing their names, they’d each revealed more than they’d planned.

“Before I go, Elizabeth, can I offer just one bit of advice?” Harriet began. “Actually no, I won’t. I hate getting advice, especially unsolicited advice.” She turned a ruddy color. “Do you hate advice givers? I do. They have a way of making one feel inadequate. And the advice is usually lousy.”

“Go on,” Elizabeth urged.

Harriet hesitated, then pursed her lips side to side. “Well, fine. Maybe it’s not really advice anyway. It’s more like a tip.”

Elizabeth looked back expectantly.

“Take a moment for yourself,” Harriet said. “Every day.”

“A moment.”

“A moment where you are your own priority. Just you. Not your baby, not your work, not your dead Mr. Evans, not your filthy house, not anything. Just you. Elizabeth Zott. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment.” She gave a sharp tug to her fake pearls. “Then recommit.”

And although Harriet didn’t mention she’d never followed this advice herself—that she’d actually only read it in one of those ridiculous women’s magazines—she wanted to believe that someday she would recommit to her goal. To be in love. Real love. Then she opened the back door and gave a small nod and pulled the door closed behind her. And as if on cue, Madeline began to cry.





Chapter 18



Legally Mad

Harriet Sloane had never been pretty, but she’d known pretty people and they always seemed to attract trouble. They were either loved for being pretty or hated for exactly the same reason. When Calvin Evans began dating Elizabeth Zott, Harriet assumed pretty was why. But when she first spied on them from her perch in her living room, their curtains obligingly parted to give her an unobstructed view into their living room, she had to rethink her assumption.

To her it seemed Calvin and Elizabeth had enjoyed a strange relationship—almost supernatural—like identical twins separated at birth who accidentally stumble upon each other in a foxhole and despite death all around, are amazed to discover that not only do they look alike and share a serious allergy to clams, but neither liked Dean Martin. “Really?” she imagined Calvin and Elizabeth saying to each other all the time. “Me, too!”

It hadn’t been that way with her and the now-retired Mr. Sloane. The only excitement had come at the beginning but it had worn off like cheap nail polish. She’d found him bold because he had a tattoo and seemed not to notice that her ankles were thick and her hair was thin. In retrospect, that should have been a clue—that he didn’t notice her—because then maybe she would have realized he was never going to notice her.

She couldn’t remember how soon into their marriage she began to realize she wasn’t in love with him, nor he with her, but it was probably somewhere between the way he pronounced drawer “joor” and the way his thicket of body hair constantly detached itself like seeds from a dandelion head, blanketing their home.

Yes, living with Mr. Sloane was revolting, but Harriet was not completely repelled by his physical defects—she shed herself. Rather, it was his low-grade stupidity she abhorred—his dull, opinionated, know-nothing charmless complexion; his ignorance, bigotry, vulgarity, insensitivity; and above all, his wholly undeserved faith in himself. Like most stupid people, Mr. Sloane wasn’t smart enough to know just how stupid he was.



* * *



—

When Elizabeth Zott moved in with Calvin Evans, Mr. Sloane took instant notice. He talked about her constantly, his comments lewd and low like a mangy hyena. “Would you look at that,” he’d say, staring out the window at the young woman getting in her car while rubbing his naked belly in a circular motion, dispersing tiny black curls to every corner of the room. “Yeah.”

Whenever this happened, Harriet left the room. She knew she should be used to it by now, his desire for other women. It was on their honeymoon that he’d first masturbated to girlie magazines right next to her in bed. She’d gone along with it because what else was she supposed to do? Besides, she’d been told it was normal. Healthy, even. But as the magazines got raunchier, the habit grew, and now here she was, fifty-five years old, neatening his sticky stack of periodicals with a stone in her heart.