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

am sometimes referred to as Madame Sklodowska Curie instead of Madame Curie. But no one, not even my sisters, has called me Marya in so many years. The sound of it shocks me now, and there is a moment of both dread and nostalgia, the memory of being so poor and desperate, so sad, so certain that my life would never take the path it has. And I think about what would I say to that girl now, if I could speak to her in this café. If I could tell her that she would someday have everything she ever dreamed and desired and more. And then, it would be pulled away from her, bloodied and trampled. And crushed. Just like that.

“Marya Sklodowska? Is that you?” I look up, and a vaguely familiar man stands in front of me. He is tall and brown-eyed, with a round face and a beard shorter and grayer than Pierre’s was.

“I’m not Marya,” I say. Marya was a poor, helpless Polish girl I have left behind forever.

“Oh.” He casts his eyes down, disappointed. That look. I know that look. It is the same one he had on his face once when he came to me in Szczuki, when he turned me away and then he begged me for my forgiveness all at once. When he told me what his mother said, that I was penniless, that I would amount to nothing.

“Kazimierz Zorawski?” I say, disbelieving the words even as they escape my lips. He looks up again; he smiles. “I did not recognize you at first. No one has called me Marya in so long. I’ve been going by Marie for years.”

“Ah yes,” he says. “Marie Curie, world-famous scientist, winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics.” He speaks quickly, confidently, in a way that tells me he believes he knows everything there is to know about me. That he has followed my career.

I smile, remembering that once his mother believed him to be much too good for me, and how much that hurt me at the time. And now I try to remember the last time I have even thought of him. Not for so many years, since Hela sent me the newspaper clipping about his marriage to that pianist. Her name escapes me now. “How have you been, Kazimierz?” I ask, to show him I have not done the same. I have not followed after him.

“I’ve been well,” he says. “I’ve recently been named the dean of faculty at Jagiellonian in Krakow. We’re back in Warsaw for the summer visiting my mother, who has been ill.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I murmur. All these many years later, I cannot bring myself to muster ill will for Pani Zorawska, who was perhaps only acting out of a simplistic protective instinct. Besides, she was very wrong about me, and that in itself is satisfying enough.

“Leokadia and I have three children.” Kazimierz is still talking.

Leokadia, yes, that was her name. I remember again the clipping Hela had sent, that I had placed away in a textbook, so long ago. “And your wife . . . she is a pianist?”

He laughs. “Once, she played, yes. But now the children keep her very busy. She doesn’t have time for piano any longer.”

I feel a sudden sadness for her, this woman, Leokadia, this wife of Kazimierz’s who I’ve never met. It is hard for me to understand a life where having children would force a woman to give up on her own work. “She can’t do both?” I say, frowning. “Be a mother and a pianist?”

“She loves being a mother, looking after the children.” He shrugs. “And I make a good living.”

I nod and think about that morning so long ago at the train station, the last time I saw Kazimierz. What if I had not gotten on that train, but stayed here, married him instead? Would Leokadia’s life be my life? I love my children, but I cannot imagine a life without my work. I cannot imagine who I would’ve become without it.

“You have children,” Kazimierz says, more a statement than a question.

“Two daughters,” I say. “Irène is almost nine and Ève is almost two. And I’ll be starting as a full professor at the Sorbonne in the fall, and of course I have my work in the lab, too.”

Kazimierz nods. Somehow he already knows this also. But my life has been detailed in the press for the past few years. Maybe it would not be so hard to keep up with me. “I was very sorry to hear about Pierre’s accident,” he says softly. At the mention of Pierre’s name, I quickly look away from him.

“Please don’t say his name,” I say. It is warm inside the café; I’m sweating. I stand up quickly, too quickly, and my coffee begins to tip. Kazimierz and I both reach for it. He catches it just in time, and then catches onto my elbows.

“I’m so very sorry,” he says softly. He holds onto my elbows for a moment, his eyes wide with sympathy, or maybe it is regret. I remember that he is a good man, a kind man. I am happy for him that his life has turned out well, that he has love and a family. But none of that belongs to me.

I gently pull out of his grasp. “I should get going,” I say. “My sister will worry.”

He nods, but keeps his eyes on my face for another moment. “It was so good to see you again, Marya.”

“You too,” I say. The air in here is stifling; being this close to him is stifling. I gather up my notebook and quickly walk out of the café, not turning back to see if he’s still watching me.

Though somehow, I know he is. I can feel his eyes on my back.

ON THE LONG WALK BACK TO HELA’S, I THINK ABOUT KAZIMIERZ and his three children, his wife who gave up her work to look after them. His mother, who lies in