Lessons in Chemistry(62)

Still, while conferences with Walter Pine were irritating, they paled in comparison to the sessions she had with Zott. Wasn’t it just her luck that the two parents she liked least she saw the most? Although admittedly, that’s how it always was. Child behavior problems started at home. Still, if she had to choose between Amanda Pine, lunch thief, and Madeline Zott, inappropriate question asker, she’d take Amanda any day.



* * *



—

“Madeline asks inappropriate questions?” Elizabeth said, alarmed, during their last meeting.

“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Mudford said sharply, plucking lint from her sleeve like a spider attacking its prey. “For instance, yesterday during circle time, we were discussing Ralph’s pet turtle, and Madeline interrupted to ask how she might become a freedom fighter in Nashville.”

Elizabeth paused as if trying to understand the underlying issue. “She shouldn’t have interrupted,” she finally said. “I’ll speak to her.”

Mrs. Mudford clicked her teeth. “You misunderstand me, Mrs. Zott. Children interrupt; that I can deal with. What I can’t deal with is a child who wants to change the discussion to civil rights. This is kindergarten, not The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Furthermore,” she added, “your daughter recently complained to our librarian that she was unable to find any Norman Mailer on our bookshelves. Apparently, she tried to put in a request for The Naked and the Dead.” The teacher raised one eyebrow, her eyes zeroing in on the E.Z. machine-stitched above the breast pocket in a slutty-looking cursive.

“She’s an early reader,” Elizabeth said. “I may have forgotten to mention that.”

The teacher folded her hands together, then leaned forward threateningly. “Norman. Mailer.”



* * *



—

Back in the kitchen, Elizabeth unfolded the note Harriet had given her. On it screamed two words in Mudford’s handwriting.

VLADIMIR. NABOKOV.



* * *



—

She placed a serving of baked spaghetti Bolognese on Madeline’s plate. “Other than show-and-tell, did you have a good day?” She’d stopped asking Mad if she’d learned anything at school. There was no point.

“I don’t like school.”

“Why?”

Madeline looked up from her plate suspiciously. “No one likes school.”

From his position beneath the table, Six-Thirty exhaled. Well, there it was: the creature didn’t like school, and since he and the creature agreed on everything, now he didn’t like school either.

“Did you like school, Mom?” Mad asked.

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “we moved a lot, so sometimes there weren’t schools for me to go to. But I went to the library. Still, I always believed going to a real school could be lots of fun.”

“Like when you went to UCLA?”

A sudden sharp vision of Dr. Meyers floated in front of her. “No.”

Madeline cocked her head to the side. “Are you okay, Mom?”

Without realizing it, Elizabeth had covered her face with her hands. “I’m just tired, bunny,” she said as the words slipped out between her fingers.

Madeline laid down her fork and studied her mother’s stricken posture. “Did something happen, Mom?” she asked. “At work?”

From behind her fingers, Elizabeth considered her young daughter’s question.

“Are we poor?” Madeline asked, as if that question naturally followed the former.

Elizabeth took her hands away. “What makes you say that, honey?”

“Tommy Dixon says we’re poor.”

“Who’s Tommy Dixon?” she asked sharply.

“A boy at school.”

“What else did this Tommy Dixon—”

“Was Dad poor?”

Elizabeth flinched.



* * *



—

The answer to Mad’s question lay in one of the boxes she and Frask had stolen from Hastings. At the very bottom of box number three lay an accordion folder labeled “Rowing.” When she first spied it, Elizabeth naturally assumed it would be filled with newspaper clippings recording the glorious wins of his Cambridge boat. But no; it was stuffed with Calvin’s post-Cambridge employment offers.

She’d skimmed the offers jealously—chairs at major universities, directorships at pharmaceutical companies, major stakes in privately held concerns. She’d sifted through the stack until she found the Hastings offer. There it was: the promise of a private lab—although all the other places had guaranteed that, too. The only thing that made the Hastings offer stand out from the others? A salary so low it was insulting. She glanced down at the signature. Donatti.

As she jammed the letters back in, she wondered why he’d even labeled this folder “Rowing”—there wasn’t anything rowing-like about it. Until she noticed two quick penciled notations at the top of each offer: distance to a rowing club and area precipitation. She returned to the Hastings offer letter—yes, the computations were there, too. But there was one other thing: a big, thick circle drawn around the return address.

Commons, California.



* * *



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