Lessons in Chemistry

Elizabeth used to be a research chemist. She was “discovered” for Supper at Six because a child named Amanda Pine was consistently eating Madeline’s school lunches. Madeline’s lunches, prepared carefully by Elizabeth, were always hearty and delicious; Madeline began to offer them to Amanda, the only child in her class who didn’t make fun of Madeline, as a show of friendship. Over time, Elizabeth began to notice that Madeline was losing weight, leading her to discover what had been happening. Elizabeth promptly paid a visit to the television studio where Water Pine, Amanda’s father, worked, to berate him about Amanda’s theft.

Stunned by Elizabeth’s beauty, presence, and superior knowledge and skills around cooking, Walter proposed that she host a show that “teach(es) the entire nation to make food that matters” (6). Although hesitant, because she is a chemist and not a cook, Elizabeth nevertheless accepted, owing to the higher pay that would help her support Madeline better. Supper at Six debuted four weeks later. Despite being serious and forthright, unlike the hosts of other cooking shows, Elizabeth and her show quickly skyrocketed in popularity; she ends every episode with the signature line: “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself” (7). However, two years in, an article about the show referred to Elizabeth as “Luscious Lizzie,” and the name stuck.

Madeline recognizes how the nickname belittles her mother’s talents, and Elizabeth herself begins to feel self-conscious and ashamed. She lies awake at night and thinks about how her life has come to this because of a man named Calvin Evans.

In January 1952, Calvin Evans and Elizabeth both work at the Hastings Research Institute. A science prodigy who already has numerous accomplishments to his name, Calvin has a lab of his own, as well as a reputation for brilliance, impatience, and an ability to hold a grudge. Calvin is also a rower, the only other thing he is passionate about besides chemistry. Despite receiving numerous and more prestigious offers, he accepted a position at Hastings upon completing his PhD from Cambridge because the weather in Commons, California, was most conducive to rowing.

Elizabeth and Calvin meet when she barges into his lab to borrow some beakers, as the lab she works in is in short supply. Calvin turns her away, mistaking Elizabeth for a secretary, causing an enraged Elizabeth to pick up a box of beakers and march out, despite Calvin’s refusal. Calvin manages to track her down a week later and apologizes for his mistake before asking her out on a date, which Elizabeth turns down. A lab tech who sees this interaction is horrified to find out that Elizabeth had stolen the beakers from Calvin, informing Elizabeth that Calvin is famous for holding a grudge. This interests Elizabeth, who also holds grudges but reserves her for “a patriarchal society founded on the idea that women were less […] capable […] intelligent […] inventive” (14).

The lab tech insists that Elizabeth apologize to Calvin, but she brushes this off. However, the next morning someone else has returned the beakers to Calvin, and Elizabeth’s chemists are treating her coldly, believing she has jeopardized their lab by antagonizing Calvin. Elizabeth overhears them badmouthing her, and her boss, Donatti, calls her a “c***”; the slur makes her feel nauseated, remembering the last time she was called that word, back at UCLA.

Elizabeth had been working late one night, just a few days before her master’s graduation, when she was sexually assaulted by her advisor, Dr. Meyers, who called her the same word. Elizabeth stabbed Dr. Meyers with a number-two pencil in self-defense, but the police hadn’t believed her account of events. Dr. Meyers spread the story that he caught Elizabeth cheating on a study, and she had offered him sex to keep him quiet; when he refused her, she had stabbed him in anger. Although Dr. Meyers already had a reputation as a lecher and no one believed the story, he was important enough at UCLA that Elizabeth’s admission to the doctoral program was rescinded and she had been forced to leave with just her master’s degree.

Following the incident with Calvin and the beakers, Elizabeth is reassigned to a low-level amino acid study by Donatti, despite Elizabeth having been the one who pioneered the group research project. One evening, she runs into Calvin at the theater; he is not feeling well and accidentally vomits all over her. Elizabeth helps him get home and Calvin apologizes for throwing up on her, as well as for having assumed she was a secretary back when they first met. Elizabeth and Calvin begin to meet for coffee, and she tells him about being reassigned from her original study of abiogenesis to a lower level one. When Calvin is astonished that she was not allowed to continue working on something so important, she explains how sex discrimination has played a part in it. Calvin offers to help Elizabeth by telling Donatti that Calvin’s work needs Elizabeth’s research; Elizabeth reluctantly accepts but makes it clear that this is work and nothing personal.

Three weeks in and Calvin and Elizabeth are both attracted to each other. Elizabeth tries to confess her feelings by bringing up a scientific study on silkworms and pheromones, but Calvin misunderstands when she calls him a “problem” and thinks she is rebuffing him. They walk away from each other only for Calvin to return and angrily refuse that he is a “problem”. Elizabeth gives into her feelings and kisses Calvin, “their first kiss cementing a permanent bond that even chemistry could not explain” (31).

Calvin and Elizabeth love each other deeply, and their relationship is mutually stimulating, both creatively and intellectually. Over the course of a few months, they talk about almost everything except their families. Just before Thanksgiving, the subject comes up, when Calvin enquires whether Elizabeth will be going home for the holiday. Calvin reveals that his parents died when he was five, hit by a train; the aunt who raised him also died two years later. He was raised in a Catholic boys’ home in Iowa and had a rough childhood, although he doesn’t divulge any further details.

Elizabeth’s father, in turn, was a “God salesman”, who preached about the apocalypse and made money by selling amulets and baptisms that would protect against the end of the world; Elizabeth’s mother helped him. He was very convincing owing to both his charm and oratory skills, as well as his ability to fake “miracles” by engineering spontaneous combustion using chemistry, a subject he introduced to Elizabeth. She also had an older brother, who committed suicide after their parents found out he was gay and tormented him by calling him an “aberration.” Elizabeth was close to her brother and was practically on her own after he died, as her parents travelled a lot for work. She learned how to be self-sufficient, and even without formal schooling, educated herself from books in the library. Eventually Elizabeth’s mother divorced, remarried, and moved to Brazil to avoid extradition for tax evasion, while Elizabeth’s father was arrested and imprisoned after one of his “miracles” went wrong and killed three people.

Calvin and Elizabeth eventually go to sleep, neither revealing any more details about their respective families, nor intending to pick up the conversation ever again.

Calvin and Elizabeth are the envy of their colleagues because of how happy they are together. They are ruthlessly gossiped about in the cafeteria, particularly by Miss Frask, a secretary from Personnel.

Elizabeth and Calvin move in together; since Elizabeth cannot afford to pay half the rent owing to her much smaller paycheck, she offers to cook five dinners a week as part of a “trade […] for services rendered” (45). However, she refuses to work at Calvin’s lab, not wanting to be seen as riding his coattails when it comes to her work, especially since Calvin has just received his third Nobel nomination in five years. Elizabeth also makes it clear that she has no intention of getting married. Nevertheless, Calvin buys a diamond ring and carries it around for three months, waiting for the right moment.

During lunch in the cafeteria one day, Elizabeth tells Calvin about a last-minute invitation she has received to be a bridesmaid in a wedding. Assuming this would make a good moment, Calvin pulls out the ring box and proposes, even as their colleagues surreptitiously watch the scene unfold. Elizabeth refuses Calvin, not wanting to disappear into marriage and be known as “Mrs. Calvin Evans”, which will happen even if she retains her name.

Calvin is angry and upset at Elizabeth’s refusal. He was already having a bad morning, having received letters from supposed long-lost relatives, something that happens often now that he is famous: “A ‘great uncle’ wanted Calvin to invest in his alchemy scheme; a ‘sad mother’ claimed she was his biological mother and wanted to give him money; a so-called cousin needed cash” (54). Calvin implores Elizabeth to reconsider, stressing how important it is for him to have a family. Elizabeth is initially horrified, thinking that Calvin is proposing they have a baby, although they have already talked about this in the past and both agreed that they won’t have children. Calvin interrupts to explain that he was only suggesting they get a dog. Elizabeth is relieved, the two of them kiss and make up, and their colleagues are left looking on in “profound jealousy”.

A month later, a mangy dog follows Elizabeth home on her way back from a grocery run; he is named “Six-Thirty”, as that is the time Calvin and Elizabeth first notice him. They try to locate his owner but to no avail; at any rate, Six-Thirty seems to want to stay.

Six-Thirty is an unusually intelligent dog, picking up a large number of words very quickly. Although Calvin and Elizabeth don’t know it, he used to be a canine bomb-sniffer trainee at a camp at the local marine base. Although Six-Thirty was able to sniff out the bombs, he was so afraid of going near them, that he had failed his training. Following this, Six-Thirty’s handler had dumped him in the middle of the highway, and he had eventually made his way to the alleyway from which he had followed Elizabeth home. Calvin and Elizabeth begin to take Six-Thirty with them to Hastings, and no one dares complain directly to Calvin about bringing a dog in.

Elizabeth slowly begins to cook all their meals. For her it is chemistry, rather than “some preordained feminine duty” (59); she records and executes all meals and recipes the way she would a chemistry equation.

Calvin decides to teach Elizabeth how to row. Although she initially refuses, she eventually relents, wanting to prove that women can row, too. Calvin takes Elizabeth down to the boathouse to show her the technique on the erg. Despite her apprehensions, Calvin tells other people at the boathouse that Elizabeth is his new rowing partner; everyone who hears this looks at Elizabeth in new wonder, leading her to realize that Calvin is considered brilliant in this field, too.

Elizabeth’s initial sessions with Calvin are a disaster, and she consistently causes their boat to flip. Calvin tells her that she has the physics wrong which leads her to read up on the physics of rowing. Their next session sees Elizabeth rowing perfectly, as she applies the theoretical knowledge she has internalized.

Donatti denies Elizabeth’s request to work on abiogenesis, claiming that it exceeds her intellectual grasp. He notices Elizabeth’s bandaged fingers and learns that Elizabeth has been rowing. Donatti himself was a rower and had rowed against Calvin when they were both in college; his animosity towards Evans had begun then, further fueled by Calvin’s stellar reputation in the chemistry world. Donatti dislikes Elizabeth even more for being smart and opinionated, the opposite of what he believes women ought to be. He wants to crush her self-esteem, and in keeping with this, reasserts to Elizabeth that she is not smart enough to work on abiogenesis. A fuming Elizabeth leaves Donatti’s office and is approached by her lab mate, Dr. Boryweitz, with a question about his research. Boryweitz is not very good at his work and often approaches Elizabeth for help, as do many others when no one else is looking.

Despite Elizabeth explicitly telling Calvin that she doesn’t need his help, Calvin angrily approaches Donatti and demands that he let Elizabeth continue her research, threatening to leave Hastings if he doesn’t. Irrespective of Calvin’s interference, Donatti is forced to assign Elizabeth back to abiogenesis research, as a huge donor suddenly appears at the institute, wanting to fund this particulate area of research. Elizabeth is thrilled, as is Calvin, who believes he has engineered this; Elizabeth asks Calvin whether he had anything to do with it, and Calvin lies to her about never having spoken to Donatti.

Calvin approaches Dr. Mason, captain of the men’s rowing team at the boathouse, with a request that he allow Calvin and Elizabeth to join the team. Although skeptical, Dr. Mason allows it, and Calvin and Elizabeth row with the team. Elizabeth is convinced she performed poorly, but Calvin disagrees entirely.

There is one man in Calvin’s past whom he has sworn to hate until his dying day. Calvin first saw the man when he was ten: an elegantly dressed man had visited the boys’ home where Calvin lived. A month after the man’s visit, the home began to receive science textbooks, chemistry sets, and other math and science materials.

Over time, Calvin learned that the home is forced to accept the material in order to also receive funding from the man, whom the bishop claimed was Calvin’s biological father. He had come asking for the boy whose adoptive parents had died after being hit by a train. The bishop showed Calvin an adoption certificate and a death certificate, asserting that Calvin’s biological mother had died at birth, and his biological father couldn’t cope with the baby. When he returned this time, upon reading Calvin’s file the man decided it would be better for Calvin to stay on at the home and left after bestowing a sizable donation upon the home to use towards science and sports.

Calvin continued to hope, for a long time, that his father would come back and claim him, devouring all the science books and tools that arrived in the meantime. Eventually, he grew to hate his father, who never returned and who had rejected Calvin without even meeting him.