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

Fixed a broken spoke, and oiled it, and put air in the tires. And perhaps, he wrote, if she is old enough and wants to learn, you would let me teach your Klara to ride, too?

THE WEEK BEFORE I LEFT FOR PARIS, I RECEIVED A LETTER from Leokadia. She would be in Paris the week after Easter, too, giving a series of concerts at Montmartre. And she enclosed two tickets for me, should Hela and I wish to attend. She wrote how she would love to see me again, and though I folded the letter and tickets back up, thinking I would never actually go to her concert, I had brought them with me all the way to Paris, just in case I changed my mind.

The day of her concert, a Thursday, it was dreadfully dreary and rainy outside. Hela lay in her parlor moaning about her heaviness, her swollen ankles, and the way her mind felt as though it had been stretched and rolled into pastry dough, flat and malleable, and I can’t even concentrate on keeping up with the latest papers, she complained.

I sliced some bread for Klara and heated some water for Hela in the kitchen, squeezing a full lemon into it, before taking it to her. “This will help with your swelling,” I told her. “I promise.”

She frowned, as if to say, who was I? Not her sister-mother. Not her sister-doctor. Not even someone who had obtained a doctorate in science from the Sorbonne. But then she sighed and took the hot water from me. She blew on it before taking a sip. “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult,” she said. “I just feel so miserable. Tell me it gets easier when the baby gets here, Marya?”

I laughed a little, and lied to her, assured her everything would be easy. Everything would be easy, and harder, too. Though Hela, who already employed a servant to cook for her, would probably also be able to afford a wet nurse and a nanny to look after her baby. Perhaps nothing at all would ever be as hard for her as these last few exhausting weeks of her pregnancy had been. But poor Hela, she was in such a state right now. And I really didn’t know how to help her.

I pulled Leokadia’s tickets out of my valise. “Would it cheer you up to get out of the house, hear some music with me this afternoon?”

“Oh for heaven’s sakes no, Marya. For one thing, it’s miserable outside.” She gestured to the window, slick with raindrops. “And for another, look at me.” She put both her hands on her belly, just as Klara finished her bread and ran out from the kitchen, hugging herself to my legs.

I picked her up, though she was almost getting too heavy for that, kissed the top of her head. She no longer smelled like a baby, but like a child, one who loved to explore and dig in the dirt when I allowed it. Her aunt’s garden and the wetness today was her idea of perfection. “Oh my goodness, Klara, you are filthy,” I said, noticing now the streaks of brown across her little forehead. She giggled in response. Clearly, that was her intent.

Hela’s front door opened and shut; a man’s voice called hello. “Jacques is home early,” I remarked to Hela, who laughed, and shook her head.

“Not Jacques. That’s Pierre.” His voice was a strange echo of his brother’s, but Hela, who was used to them both, was right. Pierre walked into the parlor not a moment later. I put Klara down so I could look at him. He kissed Hela on the cheek, asked her how she was feeling, then stepped back, stared at me, and smiled.

“Hello, Pierre,” I said. “Nice to see you again.” Though nice was not the right word. I felt something else, something warm and wanting and disquieting too.

“You too, Marya,” he said. “And who’s this?” He kneeled down to Klara’s level, all without taking his eyes off my face. “Is this the one and only princessa Klara Zorawska I’ve heard so much about?”

Klara spent most of her time with women, and I’d never seen her warm up to any man, other than her father, and perhaps she was beginning to warm up to her uncle Jacques. But with Pierre she laughed and let him shake her little hand, seeming immediately at ease.

“Why don’t you take Pierre to your concert,” Hela said now, forcing herself into an awkward sitting position. “Pierre loves those sorts of cultural things. Don’t you, Pierre?”

“A concert?” Pierre said, raising his eyebrows.

“Her friend from Poland, the pianist . . . What’s her name?” Hela said.

“Leokadia,” I said. “But really you don’t have to, Pierre . . . And, Hela, Klara is a mess.”

“I can clean Klara up,” Hela said. “I haven’t moved all day. It will be good for me to get up, practice mothering.”

“But . . . it’s raining,” I protested.

“You don’t go out in the rain in Poland?” Pierre asked. It was hard to tell whether he was teasing me or asking a serious question.

“Of course she does,” Hela said. She waved us away with her hand, then patted the spot on the couch next to her. “Klara, do you want to sit down with me and hear a story about the rocks in my laboratory?” Klara, being the sweet and gentle and calm child she was, listened and sat down with her aunt. I bit my lip, knowing rocks could only get Hela so far before Klara began to squirm, but perhaps Hela was right. Perhaps she needed some practice at being motherly. Perhaps I was doing her a favor.

AS PIERRE AND I WALKED DOWN BOULEVARD KELLERMAN TO catch the carriage to Montmartre, he held his large black umbrella over both of us, and I told him a bit about Leokadia. About how I loved her, and how I hated her too. How I was in awe of her talent and also grateful that it had taken her somewhere away