Lessons in Chemistry(88)
“A soup manufacturer? I only work with fresh ingredients.”
“Can you at least try to meet me halfway?” he begged. “It’s one can of soup. Think of the others—all the people who work on your show. We all have families to feed, Elizabeth; we all need to keep our jobs.”
From her end of the phone came silence, as if she were weighing his words. “I’d like to meet with Phil face-to-face,” she said. “Clear the air.”
“No,” Walter emphasized. “Not that. Never that.”
She exhaled sharply. “Fine. Today is Monday. Bring the can in on Thursday. I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
—
But the week steadily got worse. The next day—Tuesday—Mudford’s tree assignment revelations were the talk of the school: Madeline had been born out of wedlock; Amanda didn’t have a mother; Tommy Dixon’s father was an alcoholic. Not that any of the children themselves cared about these facts, but Mudford, her mean eyes wet with excitement, ate up the data like a hungry virus, then fed it to the other mothers, who spread it around school like frosting.
On Wednesday, someone surreptitiously shoved a sheet of paper listing the compensation of every KCTV employee under Elizabeth’s door. Elizabeth stared at the figures. She made a third of what the sports guy did? A guy who was on the air less than three minutes a day and whose only skill involved reading scores? Worse, apparently there was something called “profit-sharing” at KCTV. But only the male employees had been invited to take part.
But it was the way Harriet looked when she arrived on Thursday morning that made Elizabeth rage.
She’d just finished tucking a note into Madeline’s lunch box—Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be rearranged. In other words, don’t sit next to Tommy Dixon—when Harriet sat down at the table, and despite the darkness of the morning, did not remove her sunglasses.
“Harriet?” Elizabeth said, instantly alarmed.
In a voice that was trying very hard to make it seem like it was no big deal, Harriet explained that Mr. Sloane had been out of sorts last night. She’d tossed some of his girlie magazines, the Dodgers had lost, he didn’t approve of the way Elizabeth encouraged that woman to be a heart surgeon. He winged an empty beer bottle at her and she’d fallen back like a target at a shooting range.
“I’m calling the police,” Elizabeth said, reaching for the phone.
“No,” Harriet said, resting her hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “They won’t do anything and I refuse to give him that satisfaction. Besides, I belted him with my purse.”
“I’m going over there right now,” Elizabeth said. “He needs to understand this sort of behavior will not be tolerated.” She stood up. “I’ll get my baseball bat.”
“No. If you attack him, the police will be all over you, not him.”
Elizabeth thought about this. Harriet was right. Her jaw tensed and she felt the too-familiar rage from her own police encounter years ago. No statement of regret, then? She reached back and felt for her pencil.
“I can take care of myself. He doesn’t scare me, Elizabeth; he disgusts me. There’s a difference.”
Elizabeth knew this feeling exactly. She bent down and put her arms around Harriet. Despite their friendship, the two women rarely touched. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” Elizabeth said, pulling her close. “You know that, don’t you?”
Harriet, surprised, looked up at Elizabeth, tears forming. “Well me, too. Ditto.” Then the older woman finally pulled away. “It’ll be okay,” Harriet promised, wiping her face. “Just let it go.”
But Elizabeth was not the type of person who let things go. When she pulled out of the driveway five minutes later, she’d already formulated a plan.
* * *
—
“Hello, viewers,” Elizabeth said three hours later. “And welcome back. See this?” She held a soup can close to the camera. “It’s a real time-saver.”
From his producer’s chair, Walter gasped in gratitude. She was using the soup!
“That’s because it’s full of chemicals,” she said, tossing it with a clunk into a nearby garbage can. “Feed enough of it to your loved ones and they’ll eventually die off, saving you tons of time since you won’t have to feed them anymore.”
The cameraman turned to look at Walter, confused. Walter glanced down at his watch as if he’d forgotten an important appointment, then got up and walked out, making his way directly to the parking lot, where he got in his car and drove home.
“Luckily, there are much faster ways to kill off your loved ones,” she continued, walking to her easel, where a selection of mushroom drawings was on display, “and mushrooms are an excellent place to start. If it were me, I’d opt for the Amanita phalloides,” she said, tapping one of the drawings, “also known as the death cap mushroom. Not only does its poison withstand high heat, making it a go-to ingredient for a benign-looking casserole, but it very much resembles its nontoxic cousin, the straw mushroom. So if someone dies and there’s an inquiry, you can easily play the dumb housewife and plead mistaken mushroom identity.”
Phil Lebensmal looked up from his desk at one of the screens in his TV-littered office. What did she just say?