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Summary
Chapters 33-36
Chapter 33, Faith
Many of the sponsors of “Supper at Six” are appalled by Elizabeth’s statement about atheism and threaten to pull their funding from the show. Unshaken, she also tells her audience to stop taking methamphetamine diet pills, and that she stands with the Civil Rights leaders and Rosa Parks. Meanwhile Reverend Wakely meets with Mad and Six-Thirty in a park, and tells her it’s okay if not everyone believes in God. He also tells her that he called the boys’ home they researched, only to be told that they never had a Calvin Evans. Mad doesn’t believe it, telling him flatly that “everybody lies.”
Chapter 34, All Saints
The narrative returns to Calvin's past, this time in 1933. The bishop who has been assigned to run the All Saints boys home knows that they desperately need money. Back in the present, his secretary tells him that the Reverend Wakely has called again, and the bishop tells her Calvin was a curse on the home. He remembers how Mr. Wilson had come to visit All Saints soon after he started, looking for Calvin. In a moment of inspiration, he told him that Calvin had caught pneumonia and died. As the bishop hoped, Mr. Wilson was deeply upset by the news and promised that the Parker Foundation—of which he is the public face and representative—will endow a memorial fund on Calvin’s behalf. He does, and all seems well until Calvin appears in the media as an adult. The bishop is sick of talking about Calvin’s family: he’s been answering for his lies about the boy for thirty years. When Calvin appeared (very much alive) on the cover of Chemistry Today as an adult, his funding plans were ruined. He started getting lawsuit threats from Avery Parker, and soon after she saw the photograph of Calvin as an adult, the Parker Foundation pulled their funding for Hastings. Because of this, when speaking to Wakely, the bishop twists the story. He makes it seem as though All Saints had established the endowment for Calvin after he died. bishop. In the present, Wakely returns to Mad, telling her that he’s found Mr. Wilson ’s address in Boston and they can meet him.
Chapter 35, The Smell of Failure
Dr. Mason is furious because Elizabeth’s discussion of rowing on “Supper at Six” has inspired lots of women to exercise, including Betsy, his wife. It turns out that women all over the country have begun rowing: less happily, people all over the country have also begun to send Elizabeth death threats and to picket her shows. After she returns to the studio, Six-Thirty unexpectedly shows up, Elizabeth brings him onto the show, and he then begins to regularly appear on “Supper at Six.” One day, he notices that there’s a woman in the audience who never claps. He recognizes the smell of nitroglycerin—a bomb!—coming from her handbag. Although he’s scared, he gets rid of the bag. A reporter interviews the bemused guard who later finds it, along with several terrorist pamphlets.
Chapter 36, Life and Death
Walter excitedly shares the news that Life magazine might want to do a magazine cover story on Elizabeth. She has absolutely no desire to be interviewed, but the reporter, Franklin Roth, comes to her show anyway and finds her backstage. She takes him to her house so they can speak privately, but is frosty and refuses to speak candidly to him. The interview seems like a total failure until Roth crosses a line by asking about Calvin Evans. Despite her misgivings, which are many, Elizabeth decides to share Calvin's story with Roth and to tell him about her work at Hastings, warts and all.
Analysis
The sponsors’ threat to withdraw funding from “Supper at Six,” and the bishop’s deceit about Calvin’s death demonstrate that there’s tension between moral and financial considerations in Lessons in Chemistry. Funds for the sciences are scarce, salaries seem generally low, and there’s a general fug of hardship around Elizabeth’s life that centers around making ends meet. Her father was more than willing to scam people and exploit them for money, and her first experiences with chemistry in action involved her father pretending to do "miracles" using burning pistachio nuts. Her discomfort with his deception is partially why Elizabeth herself takes a very strong stance on moral integrity, almost never changing her opinions or demeanor for the sake of her audience. Elizabeth's stance on societal issues like weight loss drugs and the bravery of Rosa Parks are important to her and reflect her character. However, these stances are politically polarizing and might jeopardize the show's financial backing, as might Elizabeth’s regular refusals to endorse substandard products on “Supper at Six.”
Similarly, the bishop’s willingness to engage in unethical behavior for financial gain shows how financial need can make almost any action seem justifiable. When he first came to All Saints, it was clear it was on the brink of closing because it lacked funds. He knew he could probably get money from the Parker Foundation, and that the orphanage sorely needed it, and to him, this justified lying to Mr. Wilson that Calvin had died as a child. In doing so, the bishop thought that he could sacrifice Calvin’s chance for a life with his family in exchange for All Saints keeping its doors open. However, the consequences of this one cruel, split-second decision have echoed forward into his old age. Looking at the numbers, Mad is quickly able to work out that the math of All Saints’ timelines is wrong, and she starts to get suspicious.
Mad isn’t the only character who makes an important decision on behalf of the Zott family in this section. When Six-Thirty smells the bomb that the “non-clapper” has in her handbag at the “Supper at Six” shoot, he has to face his biggest fear. When he was a bomb-sniffing dog he was always able to smell the chemical ingredients that signaled explosives were near. However, he’d often pretend he couldn’t because he was too frightened of getting close to them. He certainly didn’t want to copy the “show-offs—the German Shepherds” who occasionally blew themselves up actually moving the bombs after finding them. However, he knows that the “smell of nitroglycerin. The “smell of failure” is coming from this dour woman’s handbag and realizes that Elizabeth’s life will be in danger if he doesn’t act. Remembering the smell also triggers a traumatic memory of the day Calvin died. All of this compels Six-Thirty to overcome his own terror and remove the bomb. He loves Elizabeth and knows he can’t fail her again, as he still believes Calvin’s death was his fault. His actions go beyond instinct: they are a conscious choice to guard and preserve the family he has left. The language of this passage breaks down his agonizing choice in detail, making the moment he chooses to grab the bag seem far longer than it actually takes.
