Lessons in Chemistry Read Online Free PDF

it twice before placing it in a knot on top of her head. Then she secured it with her pencil. “When you were at Cambridge,” she said carefully, placing her hands back on the table, “how many women scientists did you know?”
    “None. But my college was all-male.”
    “Oh, I see,” she said. “But surely, women had the same opportunities elsewhere, correct? So how many women scientists do you know? Do not say Madame Curie.”
    He looked back at her, sensing trouble.
    “The problem, Calvin,” she asserted, “is that half the population is being wasted. It’s not just that I can’t get the supplies I need to complete my work, it’s that women can’t get the education they need to do what they’re meant to do. And even if they do attend college, it will never be a place like Cambridge. Which means they won’t be offered the same opportunities nor affordedthe same respect. They’ll start at the bottom and stay there. Don’t even get me started on pay. And all because they didn’t attend a school that wouldn’t admit them in the first place.”
    “You’re saying,” he said slowly, “that more women actually want to be in science.”
    She widened her eyes. “ Of course we do. In science, in medicine, in business, in music, in math. Pick an area.” And then she paused, because the truth was, she’d only known a handful of women who’d wanted to be in science or any other area for that matter. Most of the women she’d met in college claimed they were only there to get their MRS. It was disconcerting, as if they’d all drunk something that had rendered them temporarily insane.
    “But instead,” she continued, “women are at home, making babies and cleaning rugs. It’s legalized slavery. Even the women who wish to be homemakers find their work completely misunderstood. Men seem to think the average mother of five’s biggest decision of the day is what color to paint her nails.”
    Calvin pictured five children and shuddered.
    “About your work,” he said, trying to redirect the battle. “I think I can fix it.”
    “I don’t need you to fix anything,” she said. “I’m perfectly capable of fixing my own situation.”
    “No, you’re not.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You can’t fix it because the world doesn’t work that way. Life isn’t fair.”
    This infuriated her—that he would tell her about unfairness. He wouldn’t know the first thing about it. She started to say something, but he cut her off.
    “Look,” he said, “life has never been fair, and yet you continue to operate as if it is—as if once you get a few wrongs straightened out, everything else will fall into place. They won’t. You want my advice?” And before she could say no, he added, “Don’t work the system. Outsmart it.”
    She sat silently, weighing his words. They made annoying sense in a terribly unfair way.
    “Now here’s a lucky coincidence: I’ve been trying to rethink polyphosphoric acids for the last year and I’m getting nowhere. Your research could change that. If I tell Donatti I need to work with your findings, you’ll be back on it tomorrow. And even if I didn’t need your work—which I do— I owe you. Once for the secretarial remark, and again for the vomit.”
    Elizabeth continued to sit silently. Against her better judgment, she felt herself warming to the idea. She didn’t want to: she didn’t like the notion that systems had to be outsmarted. Why couldn’t they just be smart in the first place? And she certainly didn’t like favors. Favors smacked of cheating. And yet she had goals, and dammit, why should she just sit by? Sitting by never got anyone anywhere.
    “Look,” she said pointedly, as she brushed a strand of hair off her face. “I hope you won’t think I’m jumping to conclusions, but I’ve had trouble in the past and I want to be clear: I’m not dating you. This is work, nothing more. I am not interested in a relationship of any kind.”
    “Nor am I,” he insisted.