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

I have ideas rolling through my mind I must jot down. “I can see the water from here.” I point to the wide picture window behind me. “I need to get some more work done before dinner.”

Hela frowns and puts her hand on my shoulder. “You work so much,” she says, “and one day you will blink and your girls will be grown. And you will wonder how you missed it all.”

But I tell Hela she is being silly; the girls have her and their Polish governess with them on the beach. They don’t need me outside with them too. And besides, I’ll see everyone later, at dinner.

Marya

Krakow, 1910

Klara made it into the Chernikoff Institute of Music on her first try, and at only seven years old, she became their youngest female student ever. It was a rigorous course of study on piano—four to six hours of playing and piano studies daily, except for Sundays. And I worried it would be too much for my sweet young child. But Klara insisted that it was what she wanted, what she loved more than anything, anything in the whole entire world. And so Kaz agreed that the hefty tuition was worth it, and I agreed that she could give up her primary maths and sciences lessons, as long as she would allow me to continue to teach her those subjects at home at night.

“Do you really think we should let her do this?” I worried to Kaz in a whisper in our bed, the night before she was to begin her studies in the program in November. It was much warmer, more temperate in Krakow than it was in Loksow, but in only two years living here, I had adjusted to the climate so that now I was chilly during the mild falls and winters, and I needed an extra blanket even on temperate nights like tonight.

“Can you imagine?” Kaz whispered into my hair. “If your parents had the resources to help you reach your dreams?” His parents had; they had chosen not to after we got married. He had gotten here with his own hard work and determination. And if Papa had the money to send me to Paris right after I’d finished at the girls’ gymnasium, I never would’ve become a governess, never would’ve met Kaz.

I reminded him of that now, and he pulled the blanket tighter around us, pulled me closer to him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I believe I still would’ve met you somewhere, somehow, kochanie.”

And even after he fell asleep, after I heard him snoring softly next to me, I wondered if that was true. If no matter what choices we made, what we had and what we were given and what we took for ourselves or not, if there were certain people in our lives who we would find our way to, no matter what.

I COMPLETED MY FIRST TWO UNIVERSITY COURSES WITH PERFECT marks, scoring the highest of anyone in my classes on my exams in both chemistry and physics. But the remainder of the money from the sale of my bicycle went to Klara’s Chernikoff tuition. And I didn’t return in the fall.

Professor Mazur noticed my absence, and I was both astounded and pleased to find her knocking on my front door one morning, the week after Klara began at her new school. She was a small woman, smaller than me, and she wore her dark black hair in a bun so tight it almost appeared to raise the lines of her face into a permanent state of questioning.

“Marya,” she said, when I answered the door. “Are you ill?”

“Ill? No. I am perfectly well, professor.”

“Then why aren’t you in school this term?” I was surprised she’d noticed, that she had come here looking for an explanation. But I had been the only woman in her chemistry course last term. The best performing and oldest student, too.

I invited her in. Offered her a coffee, which she declined, and then I sat with her in my parlor, and I explained to her about Klara’s new piano school, both the expense and the time I would need to devote to teaching Klara other subjects in the evenings. And how I would no longer have the money nor time for my own studies this term.

She frowned. “But you showed so much promise, Marya. You can be a mother and a scientist. I promise you, you can. I am. I have two girls.”

She said it like it was so easy, and that perhaps I was crazy for thinking that it wasn’t. But I assumed, with her full teaching schedule, her time in the lab, either her girls were older than Klara or she was paying someone else to look after them. I had neither the money nor desire for that. Klara was my heart and my breath, and as much as I loved learning and science, I would always love Klara more. I did not want to pay someone else to raise her; not that I could afford it either.

But I smiled at her, genuinely flattered by her attention. “I hope to come back next fall, professor. Perhaps I could save up and manage by then.”

She frowned again, looked down at her shiny black boots. I had the feeling she was not used to people saying no to her, and I felt bad that I was. Because truly, I wanted to continue at the university. Nothing made me feel happier and more content than when I was learning, studying, working. Nothing except for Klara.

She looked up again. “What if we could work out an arrangement? I need an assistant in my lab, but I do not have a stipend to pay for one. You could work in my lab for free, and I could ask the university to enroll you in classes as payment.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but then didn’t know what to say. No one had insisted upon my education like this, not since