Chemistry Lessons

by Meredith Goldstein

  “It’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “Go back to the lab. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day. I’ll text you when . . . when the last serum is ready. And then that’s it. Then we’re done.”

  I bolted out of the bathroom, my ponytail smacking my neck as I turned the hallway corner. Just a few more days and we’d be on to the next phase of the experiment, which was the whole point in the first place.

  19

  I texted Ann to say that I would help her in the basement, but she said we shouldn’t be seen there together again. She said that this time, if she was caught, she would say she was testing an experiment for a lecture she’d give to an undergraduate class in the fall. She’d be scolded for borrowing items from the lab without documentation, but that would be the worst of it. Hopefully.

  That left me nervous and with nothing to do. Bryan had Shakespeare duty, so I went straight home after lab, surprised to find my dad’s car in the driveway. At this hour, he was usually on his way to do something athletic, but he was there, sitting in a wooden chair at the dining room table we almost never used, with a stack of paperwork fanned out in front of him. There was an open pizza box in the center of the table. Two slices had already been consumed.

  “We have coupons for that,” I said as I dropped my backpack by the staircase and joined him at the table.

  “The coupon on the fridge? I used it. We got free breadsticks. They’re on the kitchen counter.” He removed his reading glasses and wiped his eyes.

  I was distracted by the shoes on the floor next to his feet. They were running shoes, but the kind that looked like gloves for toes. They were thin and mesh with spaces for each digit.

  “Oh, no, Dad, please tell me you did not buy the toe running shoes. They are so gross-looking.”

  “It’s minimalist footwear. It’s good for my feet.”

  “It can’t be good for anyone to have finger toes. They’re so ugly.”

  He scowled. “Can you give me a break?”

  He looked stressed, so I let it go.

  “What’s happening?” I dragged the pizza box toward me and grabbed a slice. My dad almost never looked stressed, and it had been months since I’d seen him use his reading glasses.

  “I’m paying your college tuition.”

  “I thought I had a tuition grant because Mom worked there.”

  “It doesn’t cover everything. And then there’s some housing costs and paperwork. Student activity fees,” he said, gesturing to the table. “I’m pretending to be one of those parents who turns everything in on time.”

  “Impressive,” I said, my mouth full.

  I looked around and began to imagine what our house would look like after I moved into the dorm. It’d be so quiet. I had chosen a school that was only about a mile from my house, so I knew I’d be home more often than the average freshman, but my dad would still be alone every night.

  “You okay?” he asked, looking up.

  “Nope,” I said. It felt good to answer a question honestly for once.

  “Is this about Whit?”

  “Sort of.”

  The truth was that it was about Whit and Kyle, and about lying to friends and wishing I could travel back in time to the start of the summer, when everything felt normal. It was about Bryan going to college five hours away. It was about people disappearing.

  “I feel ridiculous getting upset about my stupid life around you,” I said after swallowing another bite.

  He took off his glasses and gave me his concerned-dad face, which only made me feel worse.

  “What is that supposed to mean? Your life isn’t stupid, Maya.”

  “I had a bad breakup. It happens. You lost Mom—​forever—​after years of marriage. You’re, like, a widower, and you’re not even fifty.”

  “Thanks for reminding me!” my dad said, his voice bright with sarcasm.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . . Who cares if I had a breakup, right? It shouldn’t feel this bad. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re right. But honey, let me tell you something I learned from this one guy in the bereavement group I went to.”

  “You quit that group.”

  “I went twice. That was enough. But this man in the group—​his wife had been dead for two years, and I’ll never forget what he told me. He said that losing a partner to a breakup is sometimes more difficult than losing a partner to death. I’ll never forget it.”

  “But death is death. It’s fatal, forever. Breakups can’t ever be worse than death.”

  “Hear me out,” he said in his teacher voice. “We all just want to be loved, right? And your mom did love me. She loved me like crazy. When she died, it’s not as though she left me by choice. If she’d kept on living, she would have stayed with me and continued to love me. But this thing with Whit—​well, honey, it’s about him being content to let you go. I can see how accepting that is harder than it seems.

  “I think that’s what the guy at the bereavement group was trying to say—​that if someone leaves by choice, it’s a different kind of devastation. It’s about rejection. Whit rejected you.”

  I swallowed a big bite of crust. “Thanks, Dad. That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Excuse me while I go run into traffic.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Shoot, Maya, I’m trying to validate you. I’m telling you that I get it, and that you have every right to be really sad about the whole thing.”

  “It’s weird. I never got it, the whole heartbreak thing. It just seemed like—​if someone doesn’t want to be with you, then why would you want to be with them, you know? But with Whit, it’s like I know something he doesn’t. Like, I just want to tell him that what we had isn’t easy to find. I think about how we appreciated each other, and how we’d talk for hours. How could he let go of that, right when we were finally going to be in the same place in life? It was only going to get better when I got to school.”

  My dad nodded and leaned over the table, pushing the pizza box closer to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, joining him for another slice as I thought about what he said. “Dad . . . did you ever get sick of Mom after all those years together? I know you loved her, but did you ever have a rut or ever think about leaving?”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “Of course,” he responded. “I got married young. She was older than I was, so she was sure, and I thought I was sure too, but I was crazy young. There were certainly times when I wondered what life would have been like had I been with more women—”

  I winced. “Gross.”

  “No, look, just hear me out. Be a grownup for a second. You asked the question.”

  “Fine, fine,” I said, reaching across the table to steal his glass of fizzy water.

  “Your mom and I had a few ruts over the years, but I wouldn’t say I was ever sick of her. In fact, it’s weird; during those last few years of her life, we were like kids again. It was strange. There was this second wave of attraction that no one told me about. Or maybe it was a third wave. We were married more than twenty years. I lost count of all our waves.”

  “What started that last wave of attraction?” I prodded, my heart sinking as I realized that the third wave probably started when my mom began manipulating him with her experiment. “Were you just suddenly attracted to her again?”

  “I’d like to think that’s between me and your mom,” he said, shrugging. “Let’s just say we always found creative ways to get back to where we started.”

  He smiled, but his eyes were glassy.

  “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to bring up all this stuff.”

  “No apology needed. It’s nice to talk about it. I know we’re close, but sometimes I wish we were closer, like you and your mom were. Talking like this is nice.”

  “Yeah,” I said, adding, “you think you’ll date again?”

  We’d never talked about his romanti
c prospects for the future; only about the recreational activities that filled the void.

  “Probably,” he conceded quickly. “There’s a woman I bike with. She also does some rock climbing. She’s about ten years younger. I think she’s waiting for me to ask, and it’s all very strange.”

  “She’d be, like, fifteen years younger than Mom,” I said without thinking.

  “Weird, right?”

  I nodded, feeling a little defensive on behalf of my mom, even though I knew better. “You know,” I said, “I’m okay with you dating. As long as she’s cool.”

  My dad laced his fingers together, his elbows on the table. “I know. And I’ll let you know when I’m ready. I’m just not there yet.”

  20

  There was something different about the third serum.

  Whereas the first tasted like children’s vitamins and the second was even more sugary, the third was a little bitter.

  I’d thought about Goldilocks when Ann first handed me the small bottle. Maybe the third serum, for Whit, would be “just right.” But within seconds of my dropping the liquid under my tongue, my mouth started to itch. I didn’t tell Ann; I was too afraid she’d tell me to stop taking it if she suspected I might have an allergic reaction.

  After taking the first dose at Ann’s apartment, I’d lied and said there were no symptoms. I kept my mouth shut and rubbed my teeth against the back of my lips to quell the irritation. Then, while Ann was checking her email on her laptop on the couch, I went into the kitchen, grabbed a fork, and raked it down my tongue. Later, when I got home, I took a Benadryl and felt normal again. That became my routine at home for the next few days; I’d take an allergy pill, then the serum, and then I’d pass out from the side effects of the antihistamine as I imagined the liquid embedding itself in my system.

  Now, a few days into Phase Three of the experiment, my only problem was finding any privacy to complete the routine. Two of Bryan’s older brothers were in town with their wives and kids to see his last performance, so he had given up his bedroom and was staying with us every night.

  I thought it’d be easy to sneak away to take the drops while he was watching television, but every time I excused myself to go into the kitchen to grab the serum from the refrigerator, he followed me to get something for himself. It was like I had a shadow.

  Finally, he received a phone call from the guy who’d be his roommate at Syracuse. Bryan rolled his eyes as he said, “Hi, Paul,” and then walked to the other side of the living room. “No, Paul, I didn’t see your email. Yeah, I must have missed it.”

  Bryan already hated the guy, who was an incoming economics major from Ohio.

  “What does that even mean?” Bryan had said when he received his room assignment.

  “I think it means he studies economics,” my dad had said.

  “No, I mean the Ohio part. What is even in Ohio?”

  “Be nice,” my dad said.

  “Only for you,” Bryan had responded. “You make me a better person, Kirk.”

  Now Bryan was lying on the floor, his back against our fluffy brown area rug. “I don’t see the need for two refrigerators, Paul. One is plenty. I can share if you can share.”

  Once I was convinced he was trapped in a long conversation about who’d be bringing what to campus, I scurried to the kitchen, reached behind the bottle of ketchup, grabbed the small vial, and ran to my bathroom upstairs, shutting the door behind me.

  I ran the water, making it sound like I was washing my face and brushing my teeth before bed. Usually I wasn’t so paranoid, but keeping a secret from Bryan was harder than keeping one from my dad.

  I moved fast, unscrewing the top of the bottle and making sure the dropper was filled with the liquid. I took a breath as I prepared myself for the side effects; even with Benadryl in my system, there’d be a few minutes of a dull itch.

  Just as I was about to squeeze the first drop under my tongue, the liquid already pearled at the tip of the dropper, the bathroom door swung open and Bryan came at me, knocking my arm so hard that that the dropper flew from my hand.

  “Dammit!” I yelled, watching the dose and the tiny dropper fall to the floor. “What are you doing?”

  “I knew it!” Bryan yelled, his body looming in front of the door frame.

  “You knew what?” I yelled back.

  He opened and shut his mouth and then eyed the dropper on the floor. “I don’t know what I knew, but I knew something was up,” he continued, surveying the room. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  He wore orange cotton boxers and a Wicked T-shirt that he’d owned since he first saw the musical at the Opera House. The shirt was old now, discolored from overwashing.

  I grabbed the dropper from the floor and held it behind my back.

  “What is that?” Bryan asked, looking hurt in a way that stunned me for a moment. I couldn’t think of anything to say to put him at ease. I didn’t even know how to describe what I was hiding. “Is it a laxative?”

  “What?” I whispered, bewildered.

  “Is this an eating-disorder thing? That’s what this is, right?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Maya, Whit never cared about your weight. He was just finished with the relationship. He’s just in college now and doesn’t know what he wants. He always thought you were beautiful, and I never want you to think that you are anything but perfect.”

  I registered what he was saying—​what he assumed I was doing in the bathroom—​and let my hands drop to my sides. “I’m not taking laxatives, Bryan.”

  Bryan eyed the dropper in my hand.

  “Not a laxative!” I yelled, holding it up for his inspection.

  “Then what is it?”

  In that moment, I scanned my brain for possible lies.

  “It’s an eyedropper,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  He placed his hands on his head, exasperated.

  “You can’t do this to me, Maya, okay? You can’t keep secrets. You can’t, like, change on me all the time. It’s like, you lose your mom and it’s the three of us—​you, me, your dad. We were getting through it together. And then you meet Whit, and he’s suddenly the center of the universe. Like, Whit, Whit, Whit. All the time. And I couldn’t even be mad at you, because you deserved it. I wanted you to be happy. But then he dumps you, and you start behaving like someone I don’t even know. You make long trips to the bathroom. You hook up with Asher Forman and act like it’s no big deal—​like it isn’t the biggest deal in the world.

  “I just don’t know what the hell is going on anymore. I mean, is that a drug? Are you on drugs now? What would your mom say?”

  I lowered the lid of the toilet and sat down.

  “This,” I said, waving the eyedropper back and forth, “this was my mom’s idea.”

  Bryan cocked his head to the side. Then he closed the bathroom door behind him and lowered himself to the ground in front of it.

  He stared at me, his elbows on his knees, waiting for an explanation.

  “I don’t have an eating disorder. I’m not on drugs,” I said, pausing for a moment to figure out how I could explain the truth, because I wanted to. “I’m ingesting a pheromone-masking formula to get Whit back.”

  The words echoed in the tiled room.

  Bryan’s eyes narrowed. He tucked his hair behind his ears and crossed his legs in a way that suggested we wouldn’t be leaving the bathroom for a while.

  I bent over and put my head in my hands, my elbows on my black cotton pajama pants. Part of me was relieved that this was happening. It had always felt wrong, having this experience on my own, without him.

  When I sat back up, I placed the eyedropper on the sink in front of me and started telling him the story from the beginning, how Cindy had told me about the research, and how I convinced Ann to continue the work.

  “She did this—​your mom did this—​with your dad?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I know he was
her test subject. I don’t know whether they were having marital troubles, or why she wanted to do it in the first place.”

  Bryan looked solemn. “If I was your mom and thought I might lose your dad, I would do science on him to make him stay too. I’d do all the science in the world on him.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  Bryan shot me a weak smile.

  “So you’ve just been taking these drops all summer, waiting for them to kick in?”

  “I’ve only taken these particular drops for about four days. Whit isn’t the first subject . . . We sort of did some test runs first.”

  I told him about Kyle then, about the night we went bowling, and what I learned from Yael about his feelings for me. Bryan slapped his hand over his mouth more than once.

  “I know, I know; it’s horrible,” I said.

  “Do you know, Maya?”

  “I never thought it would go that far!” I yelled at Bryan. “I thought Kyle was my friend. Things were platonic until I took the serum. And since then, it’s just been confusing.”

  “Maya . . . this feels, like, gross. Unethical.”

  “But . . . don’t we mask ourselves all the time to seem more attractive to other people? This is like . . . wearing the perfect perfume for someone. People wear perfume all the time.”

  Bryan scowled.

  “It’s not really like that,” he said. “If it was like perfume, you’d just be wearing perfume.”

  I looked away, not wanting to see his expression.

  “You know, this reminds me of Proof,” Bryan continued.

  “Proof of what?” I asked.

  “The play Proof. You know this one. I’ve told you about it. It’s the play about the woman whose father dies and leaves behind some big equation, and she tries to figure it all out.”

  “I don’t remember that one. You’ve told me about, like, six thousand plays.”

  “No, you know this one. They made it into a movie.”

  I shook my head.

  “You’d think you’d remember the one play that’s about math,” Bryan said, eyeing me. “The more important point is that this is not okay, Maya.” He pointed to the small bottle on the sink. “I mean, are those Whit’s pheromones? Like, in a tube? You took ‘Essence of Kyle’ and now you’ve moved on to ‘Essence of Whit’? It’s that easy?” He threw his air quotes up so high that his left hand hit the towel rack next to him.