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

of it, that the committee would simply ignore both of us for the award. A woman has never been nominated before, even for part of the prize. Now, the fact that we have both won it, together, science’s biggest prize, should elicit something more in me than disbelief. I should be thrilled. The Nobel Prize. Pierre and I?

“There will be prize money, seventy thousand francs.” Pierre is still talking. His voice quivers with excitement as he reads the telegram aloud to me. Then he rereads it again, a second time, as if he didn’t quite believe it in his own voice the first time through. His words wash through me and over me. “Seventy thousand,” he repeats.

Seventy thousand francs is a lot of money. It will go a long way in improving our lab from the small shed we’ve been using for years. And that alone should make me quiver with the same excitement in Pierre’s voice, and I want to. I really do. But I cannot make myself actually feel it. Instead I am very tired and my legs ache, and inside I am hollow.

“They want us to go to Sweden to accept, mon amour,” Pierre says. I look up again, and his blue eyes glimmer in the morning light.

“Sweden? Sweden is much too far,” I say quickly.

Pierre opens his mouth as if to protest, then closes it, says nothing for a moment. “The Nobel Prize, mon amour,” he finally says again, more gently.

But I am still stuck on Sweden.

I envision it in my mind: the trip would take at least forty-eight hours, more if we stop along the way. And what about Irène? We would have to leave her here with Dr. Curie, and I cannot bear the idea of letting her out of my sight for so long. Or, risk traveling with her, and to think of all the diseases she might be exposed to on the trains. Besides all that, I can barely get out of bed and make it to the lab these days. How will I ever make it all the way to Sweden?

“We can’t go to Sweden,” I say again. Pierre folds the telegram, puts it in his jacket pocket, and reaches out to hug me. He clings to me, kisses the top of my head. “I can’t. Go without me if you must.”

“This prize is for both of us,” he says gently. “I will not go without you.” He stands back, puts his hand on my cheek, stares into my eyes. “I will write them and tell them you have been ill over the summer and are still not yourself. The journey is too much right now. Perhaps next year we will make it to Sweden, and we can give our acceptance speech then?”

“Perhaps,” I murmur back, but I do not fully believe that we might ever make it there. I say it now to placate him more than anything. If only I could take my seventy thousand francs and use it to buy back time, to take us all back before the summer, and somehow, somehow keep mine and Bronia’s children safe.

“Next year, mon amour,” Pierre murmurs. “In 1904 everything will be better for us.” Pierre places his hand over his heart. “I can feel it.”

What a ridiculous notion. His heart pumps blood, beats to keep his body alive. It does not hold a feeling, a silly premonition.

And still, Pierre is my glimmer of hope. I want so very much to believe he has a magical heart, not a scientific one.

Marya

Paris, 1903

The summer in Paris was hot, the heat rising off the streets, visible in cloudy waves that trailed behind the horse-drawn omnibuses. But after only a few weeks, my French improved, and with Pierre’s help, I learned how to take the omnibuses in and out of Sceaux, and I became comfortable getting places in the city on my own.

Pierre conducted his paramagnetism work in a small back space inside Hela and Jacques’s lab. Hela and Jacques had tables and tables lined with rocks, as they were investigating mineral compositions. My sister’s cheeks glowed pink as she showed me the rocks she and Jacques were sampling. As she spoke, my eyes wandered toward the back of the lab, toward Pierre, who had lined up sheets of metals so close together that he barely had any room to work among them. But he was quite thin, and he squeezed in and out of the metals, remarking on measurements to himself.

“Marya, are you listening?” Hela asked, following my eyes toward Pierre. She looked at me and frowned, then leaned in and lowered her voice. “Jacques feels sorry for him,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“He doesn’t have the right schooling,” she whispered. “He never did well in traditional schools the way Jacques did, and even with many scientific studies, he’s had very little in the way of findings. The university won’t hire him to teach. If we don’t make the space for him in our lab, who will?”

“But he’s very kind,” I said to her, narrowing my eyes. Perhaps it was all the food he’d continually offered me in Sceaux or the peaceful moments our morning bicycle rides had brought to me, or the way he had delighted in the idea of my women’s university in Poland. But I felt defensive of him now.

“Yes, so very kind.” Hela smiled at me and shrugged. “But he is lucky to have Jacques, that is all. His head is in the clouds. Who knows where he would be if left on his own.”

BRONIA’S CHILDREN WERE FEELING MUCH BETTER BY THE END of June, and so it was time for me to leave Sceaux and go stay with her for the remainder of my time in France. I felt a little sad to leave the expanse of the Curies’ house and my morning bicycle rides with Pierre. So much so that when Pierre offered to give me Jacques’s bicycle to take to La Villete with me, to