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

mouth, but did not say anything in response. Kaz wasn’t wrong. Krakow was a bustling, cosmopolitan city, vibrant, cultural, and modern, and unoppressed by Russian rule. It was where we should’ve lived all along, if Kaz’s parents hadn’t disowned him after our marriage and he had been able to continue his education then.

In Loksow, we had a very nice two-bedroom apartment, but when we opened the windows and the wind blew just right, it smelled as though the red-and-white smokestacks that hovered at the edge of the city were in our very backyard. And the girls’ gymnasium in Loksow would provide nothing but the most basic of educations for Klara.

And still, I pressed my lips tightly together. My school. Agata and I had worked so hard, so many years. I could not just move away, leave it. Just like that.

“Kochanie.” Kaz kissed my forehead softly. “I will finally be able to give you everything you want, everything you desire. You just have to let me.”

I did not want Kaz to give me everything; I wanted to take everything I wanted for myself. And perhaps if it hadn’t been for Klara, I would’ve told him that. I would’ve pulled away from his embrace, planted my feet firmly on the floor and refused to move from Loksow and everything I had built here.

But when I looked up, Klara stood in the doorway, watching us intently, hanging on our every word to each other.

Marie

France, 1908–1909

We rent a place near the beach in the Normandy region of France for the summer of 1908, my family and the Langevins all staying together in one large house. It is perfect for Ève and Irène—Paul and Jeanne Langevin have four children now, so my girls have built-in summer playmates. And also, they have me for continued lessons in science and Paul for continued lessons in mathematics. Our collective school takes no breaks; learning is a year-round endeavor, after all.

I like Arromanches simply for the fact that it is not Saint-Rémy or Brittany. There are no old memories here, haunting me. Jeanne is just glad to be out of the city. And Dr. Curie enjoys the mornings by the water, the sea air. Good for the lungs, he tells me, and we both pretend not to notice the reoccurring bronchial spasm that has begun to rattle his chest at alarming intervals.

All six children love the sand and the water, and we send them outside to go and play and come back to us for supper, then lessons. They return dirty and exhausted and starving for a feast Dr. Curie prepares. During the days I catch up on my reading, and I write notes in my journal. My body is away from my lab; my mind never leaves it.

It is only Paul who seems unhappy here. He will disappear for the afternoon, and whenever I go to look for him to let him know supper is ready, I find him sitting alone in an empty corner of the beach, gazing off into the water with a steady frown on his face.

“Are you feeling ill?” I ask him one afternoon in early June. I put the back of my hand to his forehead, but his body temperature feels normal. I sit down next to him on the beach, gaze off into the water, but it is infinite and boring. I don’t understand what he’s doing out here.

He turns away from the water and offers me a wan smile. “I just need a break sometimes. You know how that is, Marie?”

“From work?” I ask him, not knowing how that is at all. Whenever I try to take time away from my work, I feel lost. Work is what nourishes me, keeps me alive.

He shakes his head. “It’s just . . . do you ever feel that everything around you is crushing you? So much so that it is impossible to breathe.”

It is strange the way he describes a feeling I’ve known well my whole life: when Mama died, when Kazimierz left me, and most recently when I lost my Pierre. “The dark fog,” I say, resting my hand gently on his arm. “The heaviness.”

He turns his eyes back to the water, but he moves his hand up to hold on to mine. “When I lose myself in the expanse of the sea,” he says softly. “I can remember how to breathe again.”

SINCE WE HAD LIVED NEXT TO THE LANGEVINS ON BOULEVARD Kellerman for years, I count both Paul and Jeanne among my before and after friends, along with the Perrins (who have decided to spend the summer in Brittany with family this summer, instead of with us). The Langevins were a part of my other, married life, and they have remarkably stayed my friends through the endless black tunnel of my grief and our move to Sceaux. It is both wonderful and terrible to have friends who have known you in both your best and darkest times.

Jeanne acts as though nothing has happened, nothing is different here in Arromanches than it ever was back on boulevard Kellerman when Pierre was alive. I find that to be her most remarkable quality; the way she just simply ignores my loss and the changes in my life. And mostly that is why I make a point to eat breakfast with her each and every morning during the month of June. We sip coffee, and Jeanne talks about herself, about her own marriage. “Paul is horrible to me,” she confides one morning, about a week after Paul told me of his darkness on the beach. Jeanne’s favorite topic of conversation is, and always has been, her marriage.

I sip my coffee, and nod and murmur softly. My friendship with Paul has always relied upon my balancing and ignoring Jeanne’s badmouthing of him with what I know and see to be true with my own eyes. I have watched him teaching maths to our children these last months: He is soft-spoken, so unbelievably patient and kind, even with