Lessons in Chemistry(50)

That was the other revolting thing about him. Like so many undesirable men, Mr. Sloane truly believed other women found him attractive. Harriet had no idea where that specific brand of self-confidence came from. Because while stupid people may not know they’re stupid because they’re stupid, surely unattractive people must know they’re unattractive because of mirrors.

Not that there was anything wrong with being unattractive. She was unattractive and she knew it. She also knew that Calvin Evans was unattractive, and the sloppy dog Elizabeth brought home one day was unattractive, and there was a good chance Elizabeth’s future baby would be unattractive, too. But none of them were—or would ever be—ugly. Only Mr. Sloane was ugly, and that was because he was unattractive on the inside. In reality, the only physically beautiful thing on the entire block was Elizabeth herself, and Harriet had avoided her for that very reason. Like she’d said, pretty people were trouble.

But then Mr. Evans had died and those ridiculous men with their self-important briefcases kept stopping by Elizabeth’s house, and she realized that she might have picked up some of Mr. Sloane’s judgmental ways. That’s why she’d gone that day to check on Elizabeth. Because while she was stuck forever being Mrs. Sloane—she was a Catholic—she never wanted to turn into a Mr. Sloane. And besides, she knew what newborns were like.



* * *



—

Call me, she begged, peeking through her curtains at the house across the street. Call me. Call me. Call me.



* * *



—

On the other side of the street, Elizabeth had picked up the phone to dial Harriet Sloane at least a dozen times in the last four days, but each time she’d failed to complete the call. She’d always thought herself a capable human being, but suddenly, based solely on the small amount of time she’d spent in Harriet’s presence, she realized she was not.

She stood at the window and looked across the street. A sort of desperation gripped her. She’d had a baby and would be raising it to adulthood. My god—adulthood. From across the room, Madeline announced it was feeding time.

“But you just ate,” Elizabeth reminded her.

“WELL I DON’T REMEMBER,” Madeline screamed back, formally initiating the least fun game in the world: Guess What I Want Now.

She had another problem: every time Elizabeth looked into her daughter’s eyes, Calvin looked back. It was unnerving. The truth was, she was still mad at Calvin—the way he’d lied to her about her research funding, the way his sperm defied the contraceptive odds, the way he’d run outdoors when everyone else ran indoors in ballet slippers. She knew being mad at him was unfair, but grief is like that: arbitrary. Anyway, no one else knew how mad she was; she’d kept it to herself. Well, except during labor, when she might have shouted some regrettable things, her fingernails possibly digging into some unknown person’s forearm as the bigger contractions took hold. She remembered someone besides herself shrieking and swearing. It seemed strange and unprofessional.

So, sometime after it was all over, when a nurse came in with a stack of papers demanding to know something—how she felt?—she decided to tell her.

“Mad.”

“Mad?” the nurse had asked.

“Yes, mad,” Elizabeth had answered. Because she was.

“Are you sure?” the nurse had asked.

“Of course I’m sure!”

And the nurse, who was tired of tending to women who were never at their best—this one had practically engraved her name on her arm during labor—wrote “Mad” on the birth certificate and stalked out.

So there it was: the baby’s legal name was Mad. Mad Zott.

Elizabeth only discovered the issue a few days later at home when she’d stumbled across the birth certificate in a jumble of hospital paperwork still lumped on the kitchen table. “What’s this?” she’d said, looking at the fancy calligraphed certificate in astonishment. “Mad Zott? For god’s sake! Did I take off that much skin?”

She immediately set about to rename the baby, but there was a problem. She’d originally believed the right name would present itself the moment she saw her daughter’s face, but it hadn’t.

Now, standing in her laboratory, looking down at the small lump who lay sleeping in a large basket lined with blankets, she studied her child’s features. “Suzanne?” she said cautiously. “Suzanne Zott?” But it didn’t feel right. “Lisa? Lisa Zott? Zelda Zott?” Nothing. “Helen Zott?” she tried. “Fiona Zott. Marie Zott?” Still nothing. She placed her hands on her hips, as if bracing herself. “Mad Zott,” she finally ventured.

The baby’s eyes flew open.

From his station beneath the table, Six-Thirty exhaled. He’d spent enough time on a playground to understand one could not name a child just anything, especially when the baby’s name had only come about from misunderstanding or, in Elizabeth’s case, payback. In his opinion, names mattered more than the gender, more than tradition, more than whatever sounded nice. A name defined a person—or in his case, a dog. It was a personal flag one waved the rest of one’s life; it had to be right. Like his name, which he’d had to wait more than a year to receive. Six-Thirty. Did it get any better than that?

“Mad Zott,” he heard Elizabeth whisper. “Dear god.”