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

mouth slightly open in surprise. She had been bracing herself, leaning against the iron, girding herself. “Berlin is . . . very nice,” she spoke cautiously, still staring at me. I nodded at her to continue. “I have learned so much and have so many opportunities to perform. That part has been quite wonderful,” she finally said. “I should’ve gone years ago.” She swallowed hard and looked at her boots, the weight of what was unsaid caught in her throat. Her father had died angry with her, and maybe if she had left years ago, he would’ve had a chance to get over it. Or she would’ve come to terms with it herself by now. “I miss Flying University, though,” she said now. “All the wonderful women.”

I nodded. “Well . . . now that you’re gone, we don’t have anyone teaching music lessons. No one else has the talent for it, you know.”

“I bet my old piano teacher would do it. I’ll ask her for you.”

“That would be nice,” I said softly. “Thank you.”

We stared at each other, so much still left unsaid, but neither one of us said anything for another moment. “If I wrote you letters from Berlin, do you think you might write me back?” she finally asked me. “I practice all day, and I barely know anyone still. It gets lonely.”

“Klara keeps me very busy,” I said quickly.

“Klara.” She smiled, and though I supposed she knew I’d had a baby—her mother must’ve relayed that detail—she hadn’t known her name until now. “That’s a beautiful name,” she said.

“Kaz wanted to call her Kazimiera, but that’s his mother’s name, and I said absolutely not. I didn’t think she should be Marya either. I wanted her to have her own name, be her own person, so Klara seemed a combination of both of us and that too.”

“It’s perfect.” Leokadia smiled, then added, “I will send you letters, and you will write back if you have the time?”

I thought about what she was asking. “I suppose I will write back,” I finally said. “If I have the time.”

Later that night, after Klara fell asleep, Kaz was restless in our bed, tossing and turning and pulling the sheets off of me. I put my hand on his arm to stop him from rolling, to steady him, and he reached up and grabbed my fingers, held on to me. He stopped moving, and for a few seconds we lay there touching.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” he said. “He’s gone, and he left no money to continue his research.”

It was hard to breathe for a moment in the darkness, and then I thought of Klara sleeping in the next room, and I forced myself to. Inhale, exhale. I thought about Hela and Jacques in their lab, about Pierre, who Hela said had done many studies with very little results, and how that was what prevented him from being hired. But Kaz had done so much work already, had so many results. Kaz did not have his head in the clouds; he was steady, practical. “You have all the elasticity research,” I said. “You’re going to publish it, and then you’re going to get a job in a lab or at a university. And we are going to be fine. We are going to be just fine.”

Marie

Sweden & Brittany, 1905

We finally make it to Stockholm to give our acceptance speech in June of 1905, and we are both feeling well and happy at last. This city is so beautiful and calm in the summer—no one from the press even realizes we are here! And I cannot have a bad thought about the world, even if I might still be inclined to.

All around us there is the bluest water and quaintest red roofs, and though we have been dreading and worrying about this journey for so long, now that we are here it feels like a holiday. Pierre and I hold hands as we walk along the river path in the beautiful, flowering Djurgården the afternoon before Pierre is to give his speech.

Though we have written the speech together, wanting to focus on the way our discovery, and radium, might be a great help to humanity, only one of us can give the speech, as is customary. Neither one of us enjoys speaking, but we’ve decided Pierre, as the man, will be better received before the committee. Still, he is nervous about it, and he recites his way through it again as we walk and walk. It is seven pages long but he has memorized it over the course of the very long days of travel coming here. As have I.

“Pierre,” I tell him now. “Don’t worry any more about the speech. Enjoy the water and the flowers with me now. And oh.” I pull a letter from the pocket of my dress. “This was waiting for us at the hotel, from Irène.”

At the mention of our daughter’s name, he stops reciting his Nobel speech and smiles. “Writing us the moment after we left, was she?” He chuckles. “Une bonne petite fille.”

I nod. Irène really is a good child, exceptionally thoughtful and kind, and quite brilliant for an almost eight-year-old. We had left her and Ève in the care of Dr. Curie in Paris, and though I know they will be well taken care of, that we will be back soon, it was still hard to leave them. I unfold her letter and feel a surge of pride at how neat her handwriting is. “She wants to tell us that Ève is already making a mess and stealing her things.” I laugh. At only six months, Ève already feels very formed as a person, with a deep curiosity and spirit and a penchant for invoking jealousy in her older sister. “And she wants us to write back immediately to let her know exactly how long until we leave for Brittany, in minutes.”

Pierre smiles, shakes his head a little. When we return from Sweden, Hela and