Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

And her proof was irrefutable: her mother had never fit in and look what happened to her.

Instead, it was theft—specifically food theft—that led to her discovery.

What—what was that thing you just said? About teaching the whole nation how to make food that—that matters?” Supper at Six debuted four weeks later.

Madeline, called her Mom, and although she was just a child, Madeline could already see that the nickname belittled her mother’s talents. She was a chemist, not a TV cook. And Elizabeth, self-conscious in front of her only child, felt ashamed.

He had a lonesome look about him, like a child who’d had to raise himself, with large gray eyes and messy blondish hair and purplish lips, the latter of which were nearly always swollen because he tended to chew on them.

It’s legalized slavery.

Nor did he faint when she accidentally backed into him at the sink and he caught a whiff of her hair. He didn’t even know hair could smell like that—as if it had been washed in a basin of flowers.

He must have known what she was implying when she mentioned bombykol, the pheromone released by female silkworms to attract male mates. Worms, he’d said almost cruelly. What a jerk. And what a fool she’d been—so blatantly broaching the subject of love in a parking lot, only to get rejected.

their first kiss cementing a permanent bond that even chemistry could not explain.

how much he’d hoped to sit at a Thanksgiving table, surrounded by people who would finally be his because he was hers.

The best part was,” she said wistfully, “he knew about me, too.” “Knew you were—” “A scientist!”

In the past she was either the offspring of an arsonist, the daughter of a serial wife, the sister of a hanged homosexual, or the graduate student of a renowned lecher. Now she was the girlfriend of a famous chemist. But she was never just Elizabeth Zott.

Bombs, specifically.

Oop 👀

Rather, it was more that he couldn’t risk having her discover that he was obsessed with the notion that she might die.

He was dead thirty-seven minutes later.

😮

No surprise. Idiots make it into every company. They tend to interview well.

How would he feel when he learned that Zott was not only a woman, but a knocked-up, unwed woman at that?

“You have a lot of nerve,” Donatti said. “You know very well women do not continue to work when pregnant.

“How dare you,” he said, his voice rising. “A woman telling me what pregnancy is. Who do you think you are?” She seemed surprised by the question. “A woman,” she said.

“Have a bad day,” she said.

In TV, this is referred to as the Afternoon Depression Zone. Too late to get anything meaningful done; too early to go home.