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

“Well, who cares about them,” I finally say. “I’m going to need your help with my pitchblende anyway.”

He laughs a little, shakes his head. “What could you possibly need my help for? You have it all under control here, mon amour.”

And then I tell him about my peculiar readings of the degrees of radiation this morning, and that, if I can duplicate it, if it was not wrong, there is so much more to Becquerel’s research and the pitchblende itself than any of us had ever dreamed, even me. That I might have just discovered an entirely new element, inside our tiny, rickety laboratory and our grocery carton ionization chamber. That I may be onto something so new, so very exciting.

Pierre cuts me off. “You are on the brink of something brilliant. I can feel it.” His voice is wild. “Maybe you will need me, to be your assistant, help rush your findings out to the Academy.”

“Yes, darling, I will need you for all of that. But first we have to replicate my results with the pitchblende. Make sure I haven’t simply made a mistake.”

“You? Make a mistake?” He laughs and shakes his head. His eyes finally brim with something other than loss, the excitement I feel too, the excitement that shakes my entire being. And then, buoyed by his belief in me, I stand up on my toes and kiss him softly.

IT ALL HAPPENS QUITE FAST, AND IN A MATTER OF DAYS, I AM certain there are two new elements in the pitchblende based on the levels of radioactivity in my testing. I name the first element polonium after my native Poland, the second radium, for its greater radioactivity. We are in a frenzied rush to write up the paper, because once we understand what we have found, we worry someone else will write it up first. We get the paper to the French Academy of Sciences, trusting Monsieur Lippman to present it on our behalf, as the Academy will not accept Pierre nor I as members yet. And when the Academy responds, they remark with interest, but they say we do not have enough evidence. To truly prove this, we will have to actually isolate these elements from the pitchblende.

“Impossible,” Pierre says, shaking his head. “It would take years and . . . a ton of pitchblende.”

“Difficult, yes.” I agree. “But not impossible.” We will do it ourselves, I tell him. We will chemically wash away at the rock, little by little, piece by piece, grueling and disgusting work. But we will do it and we will isolate the new elements, if only to prove them all wrong. If only to prove that we can. If only to earn our own place in the Academy.

“YOU LOOK QUITE TIRED,” BRONIA SAYS TO ME, A MONTH later. She and Lou have come over on Sunday to teach me how to make jam. I’ve spent the entire last week in the lab, using chemicals on the pitchblende. My fingertips are raw, my nail beds ugly and scabbed. “Are you ill?” Bronia asks, putting her hand on my forehead. It doesn’t matter that I am a mother myself, an accomplished scientist. She will always be my sister-mother. “Pregnant again?” she asks.

I shake my head. The truth is, I feel more exhausted than I’ve felt in my entire life, worse even than in my terrible condition with Irène. It is grueling and tedious work we are doing in the lab now. And though today it is Sunday, my day of rest, I cannot shake the tiredness, the ache of the work. Pierre, similarly exhausted, has decided to spend the entire day in bed. My fingers ache, my eyes burn. But I’d extended this invitation to Bronia weeks ago, and she has brought little Lou over, and I cannot disappoint them.

“Where’s Irène?” Bronia asks now, looking around the kitchen.

“Dr. Curie took her to the park,” I say.

Bronia frowns, but Irène is too young to understand jam making yet, and I am too tired to keep her from making a mess. When Dr. Curie offered the park, I’d gratefully accepted.

Bronia is an expert at jam making, having learned from our mother before she died. It is her reward for being older than me, more time with Mama. And I envy her ease now. I wish I could be more wifely, more motherly, like my sister, but it does not come naturally to me the way it does to her. Bronia can somehow manage to be all things: mother, wife, sister, doctor, and still never look tired. I imagine if I can just master jam making, I will master everything else as well.

“All right then, eight pounds of gooseberries,” Bronia says now, recording her recipe in my household journal in her neat and perfect script as she speaks. “And an equal amount of crystalized sugar.”

There it is, like an equation. And making jam, being wifely, cannot be so hard if you treat it just like this, just like science, can it? My kitchen is my laboratory, the gooseberries my minerals. I squash them beneath my fingertips, the warm juices running down my aching fingers.

Lou mashes the berries with me, and the sound of her little girl giggle, the feeling of the fruit on my fingers is relaxing, and I close my eyes and let the process soothe me. Perhaps when Irène is a little older, we will do this together, too. And I understand now why Bronia enjoys this. For a moment I almost don’t realize Bronia is still talking to me. “. . . back to Poland,” she says.

“What?” I open my eyes, remove my hands from the berries. My fingers are stained red, as if I’m bleeding.

“Zakopane,” she says. “Mier and I are building a sanatorium there to live and work at, and when it’s finished next year, we will finally return back to Poland.” Her face has softened, her smile is wider than I’ve seen it in recent memory. Zakopane is