Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but often manifests itself as standoffishness.

in her mind, she was not going to let some fat man at UCLA, or her boss, or a handful of small-minded colleagues keep her from achieving her goals. She’d faced tough things before. She would weather what came. But weathering is called weathering for a reason: it erodes. As the months went by, her fortitude was tested again and again.

And yet she had goals, and dammit, why should she just sit by? Sitting by never got anyone anywhere.

It’s one thing to be brilliant, but to be brilliant without opportunity—that was something else.

“One thing I’ve learned, Calvin: people will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems. It’s a lot easier to have faith in something you can’t see, can’t touch, can’t explain, and can’t change, rather than to have faith in something you actually can.” She sighed. “One’s self, I mean.” She tensed her stomach.

That had to be a special brand of bravery, for a child to endure the worst, and despite every law in the universe and all evidence to the contrary, decide the next day might be better.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t function without her, he told Four Seat, but rather that he didn’t see the point of functioning without her.

The truth was, she wasn’t good at making friends. She’d told herself it was because she’d moved so much, had bad parents, lost her brother. But she knew others had experienced hardships and they didn’t have this issue. If anything, some of them seemed better at making friends—as if the specter of constant change or profound sorrow had revealed to them the importance of making connections wherever and whenever they landed. What was wrong with her?

And then there was the illogical art of female friendship itself, the way it seemed to demand an ability to both keep and reveal secrets using precise timing.

These days he was an obstetrician. He already knew how tough women could be.

Still, he was a child, and as children do, he held on to his hope long after the hope should have expired.

She’d hate it if she knew how much he worried and fussed, so he kept it to himself. But how could he not fuss over the person he loved more than anything, more than seemed even possible?

making her happy made him happy. Which, he thought, as he grabbed his tennis shoes, had to be the very definition of love. To actually want to change for someone else.

Six-Thirty sensed her death wish, and because of it, had been on suicide watch all week. The only problem was, he wanted to die himself. Worse, he suspected she was in the same position—that despite her own deathly desires, she felt beholden to keep him alive. What a mess devotion was.

She supposed it took a certain type of skill to be able to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

Losing a loved one has a way of revealing a too-simple truth: that time, as people often claimed but never heeded, really was precious.

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun,” a quote from Marcus Aurelius,

we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world—as ordinary as stubbing a toe—when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.”

“What a pretty picture!” he heard a mother say earlier that week as she looked down on her child’s ugly, violent scribble. Human parents, he’d noted, had a tendency to lie to their children.

“Please,” Elizabeth whispered, sinking into a chair. “Please, please, please stop.” She nestled her daughter in the crook of her arm, nudged the bottle’s nipple against her doll lips, and although she’d refused it five times before, the little thing latched on voraciously as if she knew her ignorant mother would get there in the end. Elizabeth held her breath as if the smallest intake of air might cause the thing to go off again. The baby was a ticking time bomb. One false move and it was over. Dr. Mason had warned her that infants were hard work, but this wasn’t work: it was indenture. The tiny tyrant was no less demanding than Nero; no less insane than King Ludwig. And the crying. It made her feel inadequate. Worse, it raised the possibility that her daughter might not like her. Already.

“Take a moment for yourself,” Harriet said. “Every day.” “A moment.” “A moment where you are your own priority. Just you. Not your baby, not your work, not your dead Mr. Evans, not your filthy house, not anything. Just you. Elizabeth Zott. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment.” She gave a sharp tug to her fake pearls. “Then recommit.”

none of them were—or would ever be—ugly. Only Mr. Sloane was ugly, and that was because he was unattractive on the inside.

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?

“What? No. I’m—” “Tired? Busy? Probably going to argue you don’t have time.” “Because I don’t.” “Who does? Being an adult is overrated, don’t you think?” he said. “Just as you solve one problem, ten more pull up.”

Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied. The questions were daunting and there wasn’t nearly enough multiple choice. Occasionally she woke up damp with sweat, having imagined a knock at the door and some sort of authority figure with an empty baby-sized basket saying, “We’ve just reviewed your last parental performance report and there’s really no nice way to put this. You’re fired.”

Having a baby, Elizabeth realized, was a little like living with a visitor from a distant planet. There was a certain amount of give and take as the visitor learned your ways and you learned theirs, but gradually their ways faded and your ways stuck. Which she found regrettable. Because unlike adults, her visitor never tired of even the smallest discovery; always saw the magic in the ordinary.

“What I find interesting about rowing,” Dr. Mason was saying, “is that it’s always done backwards. It’s almost as if the sport itself is trying to teach us not to get ahead of ourselves.” He opened his car door. “Actually, when you think about it, rowing is almost exactly like raising kids. Both require patience, endurance, strength, and commitment. And neither allow us to see where we’re going—only where we’ve been. I find that very reassuring, don’t you?

wasn’t that the very definition of life? Constant adaptations brought about by a series of never-ending mistakes?

“No,” Mad said. “It’s my life story.” Elizabeth nodded in pretend understanding. A lawn mower? “And what’s this part?” Elizabeth asked, pointing at the swirl that dominated the picture. “That’s the pit of death,” Mad said. Elizabeth’s eyes widened in worry. “And this?” She pointed at a series of slanty lines. “Rain?” “Tears,” Mad said. Elizabeth knelt down, her eyes level with Mad’s. “Are you sad, honey?” Mad placed her small, chalky hands on either side of her mother’s face. “No. But you are.”

“out of the mouths of babes,”

unlike other species, which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice. You know how we say, ‘People never learn?’ It’s because they never do. But religious texts try to keep them on track.”

desperate people tend to overlook the most obvious signals.

“There’s nothing average about the average housewife,”

“I’d never planned to be a parent,” he told Elizabeth. “But here I am, a devoted father. Life’s a mystery, isn’t it? People who try and plan it inevitably end up disappointed.”

“It’s more that I want you to be you,” he said. “Not a scientist.” She tucked a few stray hairs behind her ears. “But I am a scientist,” she argued. “It’s who I am.” “That may be, Elizabeth Zott,” he said, not knowing how true this would turn out to be. “But it’s only a start.”

They either wanted to control her, touch her, dominate her, silence her, correct her, or tell her what to do. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t just treat her as a fellow human being, as a colleague, a friend, an equal, or even a stranger on the street, someone to whom one is automatically respectful until you find out they’ve buried a bunch of bodies in the backyard.

Often the best way to deal with the bad,” she said, feeling for her pencil, “is to turn it on end—use it as a strength, refuse to allow the bad thing to define you. Fight it.”

what underlay their passion was a mutual respect for the other’s capabilities.

Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counselors would go out of business. Do you see my point?”

He remembered feeling stunned by her. Yes, she was attractive, but it was only now that he realized it had little to do with how she looked. No, it was her confidence, the certainty of who she was. She sowed it like a seed until it took root in others.

“Whenever you start doubting yourself,” she said, turning back to the audience, “whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.”