Lessons in Chemistry(61)

“Walter Pine,” Elizabeth said, gritting her teeth, “is Amanda Pine’s father. I drove to his office a few days back to talk with him about the lunch issue.”

“How did the talk go?”

“It was more of a confrontation.”

“Violent, I hope.”

“Mom?” a voice said, appearing in the doorway.

“Hi, bunny,” Elizabeth said, attempting to sound calm as she encircled her gangly child with one arm. “How was school?”

“I made a clove hitch knot,” Madeline said, holding up a rope. “For show-and-tell.”

“Did everyone enjoy it?”

“No.”

“That’s okay,” Elizabeth said, pulling her close. “People don’t always like what we like.”

“No one ever likes my show-and-tell stuff.”

“Little bastards,” muttered Harriet.

“They liked that arrowhead you brought in.”

“No.”

“Well, next week why not try the periodic table? That’s always a crowd pleaser.”

“Or you could try my bowie knife,” Harriet suggested. “Let them know where you stand.”

“When’s dinner?” Madeline said. “I’m hungry.”

“I put one of your casseroles in the oven,” Harriet said to Elizabeth as she heaved herself toward the door. “I need to go feed the beast. Call Pine back.”

“You called Amanda Pine?” Madeline gasped.

“Her father,” Elizabeth said. “I told you. I visited him three days ago and got the entire lunch business straightened out. I think he understood our position, and I am certain Amanda will not be stealing your lunch ever again. Stealing is wrong,” she snapped, thinking of Donatti and his article. “Wrong!” Both Madeline and Harriet jumped.

“She…she brings a lunch, Mom,” Madeline said carefully. “But it’s not normal.”

“That’s not our problem.”

Madeline looked at her mother as if she was missing the point.

“You need to eat your own lunch, bunny,” Elizabeth said more quietly. “To grow up tall.”

“But I’m already tall,” Madeline complained. “Too tall.”

“One can never be too tall,” Harriet said.

“Robert Wadlow died from being too tall,” Madeline said, tapping the cover of The Guinness Book of Records.

“But that was a pituitary gland disorder, Mad,” Elizabeth said.

“Nine feet tall!” Madeline emphasized.

“Poor man,” Harriet said. “Where does someone like that shop?”

“Height kills,” Madeline said.

“Yes, but everything kills eventually,” Harriet said. “That’s why everyone ends up dead, sweetheart.” But when she noticed Elizabeth’s mouth drop and Madeline slump, she instantly regretted her words. She opened the back door. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning before rowing,” she said to Elizabeth. “And I’ll see you, Mad,” she said to the little girl, “when you get up.”

This was the schedule she and Elizabeth had worked out ever since Elizabeth had returned to work. Harriet took Mad to school, Six-Thirty picked Mad up from school, Harriet watched her until Elizabeth got home. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She extracted a slip of paper from her pocket. “You got another note.” She gave Elizabeth a meaningful look. “From you-know-who.”



* * *



—

Mrs. Mudford.

Elizabeth already knew Mudford didn’t approve of Madeline. She did not approve of the way Mad could read, or the way she could kick a ball, or the way she knew a complicated series of nautical knots— a skill she practiced frequently, including in the dark, in the rain, without help, just in case.

“Just in case of what, Mad?” Elizabeth had asked her once, finding the child huddled outside at night covered in a tarp, rain coming in from every direction, a piece of rope in her hands.

Mad had looked up at her mother, surprised. Wasn’t it obvious that “just in case” wasn’t an option but rather the only option? Life required preparedness; just ask her dead father.

Although, honestly, if she’d been able to ask her dead father anything it would have been how he’d felt the first time he saw her mother. Was it love at first sight?



* * *



—

His ex-colleagues too still had questions for Calvin—like how he managed to win so many awards when he never seemed to be doing anything. And what about sex with Elizabeth Zott? She seemed like she’d be frigid—was she? Even Madeline’s teacher, Mrs. Mudford, had questions for the long-gone Calvin Evans. But obviously asking Madeline’s father anything was out of the question, not just because he was dead, but because in 1959, fathers had nothing to do with their children’s education.

Amanda Pine’s father was the exception, but that was only because there was no longer a Mrs. Pine. She’d left him (and quite rightly, Mudford believed), followed by a loud and public divorce where she claimed the much older Walter Pine was not fit to be a father, much less a husband. There’d been an embarrassing sexual connotation to the whole thing; Mrs. Mudford didn’t like to think of the specifics. But because of it, Mrs. Walter Pine ended up with everything Walter Pine had, including Amanda, whom, as it turned out, she hadn’t actually wanted. And who could blame her? Amanda wasn’t the easiest child. Thus Amanda went back to Walter, and Walter came to school, where Mrs. Mudford was forced to listen to his poor excuses regarding the contents of Amanda’s highly unusual lunch boxes.