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

Papa’s credenza, which I’d dusted and polished in hopes of selling it before we left. “Paris is . . . becoming too much. It’s not home. I’m ready to come back for good, Marya.”

I nodded, but I thought of the school my niece, Lou, attended in Paris, a real school, where she was getting a real well-rounded education, not a girls’ gymnasium like in Poland. “What about Lou’s education?” I asked. My younger nephew, Jakub, would be fine, but he would grow up to be a man, and it wouldn’t matter as much for him where: Poland or Paris. A man could be a man anywhere.

“We’d go to Austrian Poland, of course,” Bronia said. “And we could afford a private tutor for the children.” I knew about their dream of opening their very own sanatorium in the peaceful environs of the mountains. But before now I’d envisioned it more like my dream of one day moving to Paris, somewhere hazy, far off. Hearing her speaking of it with such clarity made me understand how much she wanted it, right now.

“Hela would be fine without you in Paris,” I reassured her. “And selfishly, I would enjoy having you closer if you do move back.” Jakub was now five, and I’d only met him twice. I’d only seen Lou a handful more times. It would be a wonderful thing to be closer to my niece and nephew, for me and for Kaz, who longed for children of our own still.

Bronia smiled a little and squeezed my hand. She closed her eyes. “If only you could know how tired I am,” she said. “Two children and city life and working full-time as a doctor.”

“But you have it all,” I said, not meaning to sound bitter, though finding it hard to keep the edge from creeping into my voice.

“Hmmm,” she murmured. “I suppose I do.”

I ARRIVED HOME AGAIN ON A THURSDAY EVENING, AND EVERYTHING looked different than it had when I left. The dusky sky seemed blacker, the street from the train to our apartment longer. Even our apartment itself felt smaller after having spent months in Papa’s more spacious place in Warsaw. But Bronia and I had sold all of his things, split the rubles between us with a share for her to take back for Hela too, and now with them heavy in a purse in my valise, I wondered if we might finally have enough to move into a bigger place in Loksow.

Inside my apartment, I washed my face, took my hair from its bun, and ran a comb through it. And then I began to feel an impatient longing for my husband again, whom I hadn’t seen in seven whole weeks. We had written weekly letters while I was away—I knew he was busy with Hipolit’s research, doing almost all the work himself now, which as I’d written to him really made it his research, didn’t it? Kaz had written back, deferred to Hipolit’s brilliance, but I’d told him he needed to give himself the credit he deserved, to which he replied how much he loved me for writing that.

When the door opened at last, and he walked inside, I felt a light inside my body, the memory of what it felt like to skate with him on the pond in Szczuki so many years earlier. So young and alive and free. I felt that again, suddenly.

He smiled widely, when he saw me. He felt it too. He came to me quickly, ran his fingers softly through my long untangled hair, leaned in and pressed his lips tenderly to my forehead. “Kochanie, why didn’t you send a telegram? I would’ve met you at the train.”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I told him. “I know how busy you are with your work.”

“Never too busy for you,” he whispered into my hair. “Oh, I have missed you so.”

We stood like that for a while, holding on to each other in the darkness of our apartment. I clung to him, inhaling his familiar pine scent. I had not cried, not the whole time, since Papa’s death. I had moved ahead, making plans, helping my sisters, ordering the disorder in the aftermath of death. But now that Kaz was holding on to me again, steady, I could finally let go. And the tears I hadn’t even understood I’d needed to cry came quickly, furiously.

Kaz lifted my head up gently, wiped away at my tears with his thumbs. He leaned down and kissed my cheeks softly.

In the years since my baby Zosia had died, I’d pulled away when he reached for me, afraid to be close to him in that way again, afraid of what would happen if there were another pregnancy, another baby growing inside of me. I never forgot the doctor’s words, that it was my fault, my body to blame.

But now I was overcome by a need to be with him, and when he tugged at the buttons on my nightgown, I leaned in closer, kissed him, found a desperate sort of comfort in his body that I hadn’t even realized I’d been longing for.

KAZ AND I USED OUR NEWFOUND RUBLES TO MOVE INTO A two-bedroom apartment on Złota Street, a few blocks closer to Hipolit and to Kaz’s research. Here, on a street named for gold, the buildings were a little nicer, the sky strangely less gray, and flowerpots filled with corn poppies lined the steps in front of our new building.

Kaz quit his teaching position and began assisting Hipolit full-time. He was now doing all the research on elasticity on his own, with only guidance from Hipolit, who was mostly bedridden. Hipolit was paying him well to conduct the research, and Kaz promised Hipolit that he would publish the findings, even if it wasn’t during his lifetime. I encouraged Kaz to tell him that whatever findings were published, they should have both their names on it. It might’ve started as Hipolit’s idea but now Kaz was the one doing the work.

I put