Half Life by Jillian Cantor (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

I can see the shape of her when I open my eyes again, more a shadow than my beautiful daughter. Play for me, I tell her. Play me a song.

Her sweet music floods my ears, a balm, a memory. A dreamscape.

Promise me something, I say to her. You never stop playing that music. And if you fall in love, you make sure he is your equal. That he will not hold you back in your career. You never stop, Klara. You reach for everything you want, and, you never stop.

From the other room, the sound of her piano goes and goes and goes, and I close my eyes listening to it, smiling.

MAMA. KLARA’S VOICE AGAIN.

Hours have passed, or maybe just minutes? Or has it been days? My beautiful daughter, mój mały kurczak, she is a shadow, hovering again. No, there are two shadows now.

Someone came to see you, Klara says. He came all the way from Paris!

His shape becomes a memory, and my sense of smell has not left me yet. I inhale: the flower gardens in Sceaux. The cherry blossoms as we rode bicycles through the streets of Paris, pedaling too hard, the sun on our faces.

Slow down, mon amie. You are much too fast.

Marya, he says my name. Oh, Marya. I remember the way his face fell in Sweden, standing by the river, wanting to kiss me. The way he looked when he swirled his vodka glass by the sea, finally understanding that his work mattered. That his life meant something. Means something. He is here now, and he is alive and breathing, and he will continue on, even after I am gone.

He must’ve sat down in a chair by my bed, because when I open my eyes again, his shadow is smaller, closer to me. I am young again, riding a bicycle through the cobblestone streets of La Vilette, climbing through the Carpathians on the bluest-sky day of July. We are standing on top of the world together, staring out at the valley below us.

You came all this way? I think I say. Or maybe I don’t say anything at all.

Imagine, Pierre says. If we had met when we were younger. If we had married. Imagine what our life could’ve been, Marya.

I close my eyes again, and somewhere between sleep and waking, somewhere between life and death, between breathing still and taking my very last breath, I imagine it.

Marie

France, 1934

The end seems to come upon me fast, even though it has been coming upon me for so very long. I have been ill and tired, having trouble with my eyes and with my ears and with my legs for so long, that it seems I will exist and exist and exist this way forever.

I continue in my lab until I cannot stand any longer. I am struck by a terrible grippe, and then I cannot move from my bed for days. Ève sends in doctor after doctor to examine me.

“I will find someone to make you better, Maman,” she insists, squeezing my hand too hard in the darkness of my bedroom.

Ève is not a scientist. She does not know, does not understand the body the way I do. “It is time,” I tell her, and now I know that it truly is. “It is time to let go.”

But I am very weak, very tired. Maybe I do not tell her this at all?

Then, one morning, I awake in a sanatorium in Sancellemoz, and Ève sits by my bedside, crying, and I know. She understands now.

I AM SIXTY-SIX YEARS OLD AND I CONVALESCE, MY BONES NO longer able to carry the weight of me out of this bed. Nearly all day I sleep, but still I dream. Pierre comes back to me most of all, and the pain of losing him catches again in my chest, and I stop breathing for a moment. Then I awaken, and I start again. I am not dead just yet.

Ève does not leave me. She calls my name out in the darkness.

Maman, is there anything you need?

I can see the shape of her when I open my eyes again, more a shadow than my youngest daughter. The girl with the radium eyes. I wish I’d learned to understand her piano music more when I’d had the chance. I wish I’d held her closer to me, loved her better, enjoyed her talent. Maybe there is more than science for you, I want to tell her now. Play all the concert halls you dream of, find a man who is your equal and love each other. But the words don’t quite come out.

Of course, I will play you a song, she says.

So maybe that is what I have asked of her instead. Because then, there it is, the tinkling of piano keys, like raindrops on the metal roof of our laboratory the last morning I ever saw Pierre.

MAMAN. ÈVE’S VOICE AGAIN.

Hours have passed, or maybe just minutes? Or has it been days? My beautiful daughter, she is a shadow, hovering again. No, there are two shadows now. I wish for the second one to be Irène, my eldest daughter, my heart, my companion, my confidante. But it is not she. The shadow is much too large, much taller than Ève.

Someone came to see you, Ève says. He says you were friends long ago, back in Poland.

He?

The shape becomes a memory, and my sense of smell has not left me yet. I inhale: peppermint and pipe smoke. And then the icy river in Szczuki; the pine cones and fir trees lining the road where we last walked together.

Why is he here? He has lived his entire life without me, married Leokadia and became a well-respected mathematician in Poland, just as his mother dreamed he would.

Marya, he says. He must’ve sat down in a chair by my bed, because when I open my eyes again, his shadow is smaller, closer to me. I feel the weight of a hand on mine, and I know.