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

It fills me with rage that she would blame my work and make it seem like this is my fault for pursuing science as well as motherhood. She has had two healthy children, and she is a practicing physician. That seems more dangerous than working in a lab, as she is exposed to diseases. I tear her letter into pieces, scattering them carelessly all about my bedroom floor. Later, Pierre will come in and pick them up one by one, tiptoeing around the room, believing me to be asleep.

And anyway, Bronia does not know my radium. It is not harmful; it can’t be harmful. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, the brightest thing I have left. Bronia knows nothing.

NOT EVEN TWO WEEKS LATER, PIERRE RUSHES INTO OUR BEDROOM in the middle of the afternoon with a telegram, his face white as dolomite, his hands shaking. I am still in bed, and Pierre has been telling everyone I’ve now taken ill with a summer influenza. But here I am, not ill at all, flattened by grief, spending my afternoon staring out the window at all the flowers in our garden. How dare they bloom? How dare the pinks and reds and yellows flare so brightly?

“What is it?” I ask Pierre, his countenance startling me. Pierre is the one who manages to smile still, who wakes each morning kissing my face, promising me that today will be better than yesterday. That tomorrow will be best of all. And though I turn away from him, his words seep through my skin, lighten me, little by little, piece by piece, day by day.

“Terrible,” Pierre says. “Terrible, terrible. It can’t be.”

He’s scaring me, and I get out of bed, my legs unsteady. I take a moment to regain my footing, then walk to him, take the telegram from his shaking hands. It’s come from Zakopane, from Bronia. I read the words, as disbelieving of them as Pierre is. Our nephew, little Jakub, took ill, and he died suddenly. Died. Oh Bronia, no. My anger for her dissipates, just like that. How could this happen? Jakub was just seven years old, nearly the same age as Irène.

Irène.

I haven’t seen our daughter in days, or has it been weeks? I have been so distracted by my grief over this baby I never met. And I run out of the bedroom now, calling for my real living breathing child. “Irène! Irène!” I am shouting, crying, but I cannot stop myself. I want to hold on to her, wrap her into my body, keep her forever safe and still and healthy.

We are marked by death.

“Maman?” Irène’s small voice comes from the dining room, sounding frightened.

I run in there and she is sitting at the table, working on her lessons with Dr. Curie. Someone has put her hair into two pigtails, and as it wasn’t me, they are parted crookedly, so she looks out of sorts, disheveled.

“Oh, darling.” I open my arms and she gets up and runs to me. I smooth back her uneven hair, kiss the top of her head, inhale the little girl scent of her, rose petals and dirt from the garden, where her grand-père must’ve allowed her to play with the Perrins this morning while I was still sleeping. “I am never letting you go,” I say into her hair. “I am never letting you go.”

Marya

Paris, 1903

The sun was shining so brightly the first morning I arrived in Paris, streaming in through the glass ceiling of the Gare du Nord, that for a moment it was hard to see, the light blinding me, turning the station and the people and even the exquisite sounds of French yellow and gold and glimmering.

Then I blinked, and there in front of me was my sister-twin, Hela, laughing, grabbing onto me for a hug. We walked outside the station together, and there was the bustle of a vibrant city, a beautiful city, with wholly different architecture than I’d ever seen before in Poland, and even the air smelled different. I inhaled; all around me, the scent of flowers. “Marya, you finally made it!” Hela said.

Yes, I had made it, on a lie and by dipping into Papa’s rubles that I was saving for my school. I’d written ahead to my sisters, told them Kaz was so busy with his research and he was sending me to Paris alone, knowing how good the time with my sisters would be for me, for all of us. And how excited I was to help Hela plan her wedding and to make up for some lost time with my niece, Lou, and nephew, Jakub, too. Those things were, at least, true. But on the very long, very uncomfortable hours and hours on the train, the ache in my chest over Kaz grew larger and larger, so that when I first breathed in the flowers of Paris, it was already a chasm: giant and gaping and nauseating all over again. I clutched my stomach.

“Are you hungry?” Hela asked. “I can take you to my favorite pâtisserie before we get the omnibus to Bronia’s.” Hela had moved out of Bronia’s home, into an apartment closer to the Sorbonne, but it was just one small room. Bronia had offered me Hela’s old room at her home in La Villete for the duration of my stay, but as Hela was closer to the train, and didn’t have the constraints of the children, she’d offered to come and fetch me and take me to Bronia’s today.

I shook my head. I should be hungry, but I wasn’t. I’d fled Poland days earlier, leaving while Kaz was at work, without even a goodbye, and I’d barely eaten anything but some stale bread on the train. Kaz had left a letter for me on the table, and though I’d put it in my bag, had even been tempted on the train to read it, I hadn’t opened it yet. I wasn’t ready for whatever he’d felt