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

Hanna are taking the train from Warsaw to Paris so they can travel together with me and the children to Brittany for a holiday. Hela’s husband, Stan, has to stay in Poland to work. Pierre will stay in Paris to work at first, but he will join us by the end of July.

It will be Hela’s first time seeing the ocean, and Irène’s first time spending weeks on end with her seven-year-old cousin, Hanna. I cannot blame Irène for her excitement. I feel it too, anxious to be with my sister-twin again. Life has been tough for them in Poland, the revolution there making money tighter, food scarcer, and I am excited for her to have rest and relaxation by the sea. I send Hela money whenever I can, and I’ve already sent money for their train tickets, even bought them clothing for the summer and the beach so Hela will not have to worry about a thing.

It is strange and wonderful the way this summer is filled with lightness, after last summer was filled with such darkness. Ève is growing, and Irène is becoming a young woman. We are a family of four, with Dr. Curie extending us to five, and our summer will be filled with a little work and more travel and seawater and family time.

“Mon amour,” Pierre says now, tugging gently on my hand. “Look across the water. Swans.”

There they are, swimming toward us, an entire splendid family of them, their beautiful white long necks bobbing into the water. The male and female peck at each other playfully, and then Pierre grabs me and laughs, and he joyfully plants a kiss on my lips.

A FEW WEEKS LATER, THE NOBEL SPEECH IS FINALLY, FINALLY behind us, and it feels like a weight has been taken away, we have been worrying about it for so very long. The journey to Brittany is easy, and the days there are slow and mostly free of work. We go to the beach, and the older girls play, their laughter a balm.

Hela is afraid of the water, terrified by the waves. “I cannot go in,” she protests from the edge of the surf as I run into the sea with the older girls, while Hela stays behind with Ève. “I cannot watch,” Hela yells after us, covering her eyes and squealing.

Hela looks so much older than I picture her in my head, paler and with new wrinkles framing her eyes. Her blond hair is half gray, and I wonder if she sees the same in me, if I have changed in so many ways I have not noticed, but she can.

I leave Hanna and Irène running into the cold surf, jumping in between waves. I go back for Hela, offer to hold her hand in the waves. But she still refuses.

She dips only her toe into the water, testing, and then she screams. The girls come running, alarmed. “What is it?” I reach for her, worried she’s hurt or falling ill.

She reaches down and pulls something from her toes, and there in her hand is a small shell, a hermit crab. I begin to laugh.

“Stop it,” she says to me. But she puts the shell in her palm; the crab crawls slowly across her hand and then her fingers. The girls are out of the water now, giddy and anxious, and in awe of this smallest creature, coming out of his shell. Then Hela begins to laugh too.

“Come,” I say to the children. “Pierre will be arriving soon and he knows all about hermit crabs. Let’s put this one in a basin in the house, and he will study the creature with us when he gets here.”

PIERRE ARRIVES THE NEXT MORNING WITH A BAG FULL OF heavy equipment. And I can tell his rheumatism is acting up again because he walks hunched over, slowly, and limping. “This dampness,” he laments, eyes toward the sea. But is it more than that? It has been years and years now that his bones have been aching, and no doctor can really tell him why. He has finally been elected into the Academy of Sciences, has a good teaching position at the Sorbonne, and we have been given a larger lab in the negotiations. Professionally, he has everything, but he does not have his health, and it feels tremendously unfair that he suffers so.

“You brought too much with you from Paris,” I chide him, remarking on his bag of heavy equipment. “I thought we were only going to work a little here? On papers?”

“Yes, mon amour, but this equipment is not for work. This is for fun. I’ve hired a carriage to take us all to Mont-Saint-Michel to watch the eclipse this week. And I brought special viewing equipment with me from Paris so we can all get a better look.”

“Of course you did.” I laugh, shake my head at his foolishness, while also delighting in it. I have never seen an eclipse before, and I am now quite excited about the prospect of viewing it, and though I have chided him, I am actually quite thrilled that he thought to bring the equipment along.

A FEW DAYS LATER, WE ALL PILE INTO THE CARRIAGE: HELA and the older girls, Pierre, Dr. Curie, and then me with Ève on my lap. The ride isn’t too long, the driver gentle, and we are there by late morning, enough time to get out and explore the ruins and the castle and prison of Louis XI. As the sky begins to darken, we go to a viewing terrace in the castle. And Pierre explains the science of it all to the older children, who delight in his explanations and explode with their questions. They spent the whole evening last night studying their hermit crab with Pierre, and today it is the sun and the moon and the sky.

The midday sky grows black, and birds flutter around us, restless and confused. Hela puts her arms around me in the darkness. “Remember