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

Pierre walked up next to me, looked out, too. “I have felt very lost this past year, Marya,” he admitted. “I had a séance to talk to my father again, to ask him what I am supposed to do.” Hela had written me when her father-in-law passed away last year, and I know that Pierre now occupied that great big house in Sceaux all by himself. I thought about Leokadia, complaining about large empty lonely rooms. But at least she had her record sales. For Pierre, those empty rooms must only compound the failures he also had felt with his work these past years.

But I didn’t know anything about a séance, nor did I believe in anything like that. “And was this . . . séance successful?” I asked him, humoring him.

Pierre shrugged. “He wants me to marry, to have a child still.” I bit my lip. From what I knew of Dr. Curie, he would’ve made that fairly clear while he was still alive. “I am fifty-two years old.” Pierre was still talking. “I have become an old man. But how can that be? I still feel like a young man. And I don’t know that I will ever find my place in this world. Perhaps it is too late for me.”

He had climbed this mountain with a fierceness I’d had trouble keeping up with. His beard was grayer than it once was perhaps, but nothing about him seemed old. He was vibrant, brimming with vigor.

“It is not too late for you,” I reassured him. “It is only too late when you are dead. And you’re standing here with me, very much alive, Pierre.”

He reached out his hand for mine. I took it, held on to him. His skin was warm; his grip firm. And we stood there for just a little while before we turned to climb back down, holding on to each other, feeling, both of us, on top of the world.

Marie

Brussels & Paris, 1911

I have not seen Paul in months when I leave for Brussels for the Solvay Conference in the beginning of November. I am quite excited about the conference: physicists from all around Europe will convene and present our latest work. But Paul and Jean and I are to ride the train together, and as I get onto the train, I feel a nervous sort of anticipation building in my stomach at the thought of being close to Paul again.

Paul wrote me exactly one letter this summer when I was in Poland visiting Bronia. He and Jeanne had a terrible fight. She threw a plate at his head, and he left early with their two oldest boys for a vacation in Brittany. Then, she tried to file an abandonment claim, despite the fact he had planned the trip with the boys for months in advance.

Now, when I first see him again as he boards the train to Brussels after me, I notice how tired he looks. How he seems to have aged years since last spring when he begged me for five thousand francs in the street in front of my lab. I put my hand to my cheek, wondering if the same has happened to me. I stare at him, but he turns away, refusing to meet my eyes, and he sits as far away from me as he can, at the back of the train.

I keep glancing up from my reading on the journey to see what he is doing, but never once does he look up, toward me. Jean Perrin has taken the seat next to me, and he’s chattering away about what he believes to be the highlights of the upcoming conference—he is quite looking forward to talking with Albert Einstein, whose recent paper on quantum theory he found quite exciting. And he continues talking even as we all arrive at the hotel together and check into our separate rooms, while Paul and I say nothing.

It is only once I am in my own room, alone, in the quiet, that I close my eyes, lean against the door and allow myself a few tears. Paul and I are here, so close, and I want nothing more than to talk to him, to touch him. To hold on to him again.

There is a gentle knock on my door; I feel the vibration of it against my back, and I jump. I open the door slowly, and there Paul stands on the other side, his face reflecting the same sadness, the same longing, that I feel.

He walks into my room, quickly shuts the door behind him. And we are holding on to each other so fast, so tightly. I cling to the familiar feel of his tall body, the clover smell of his pipe on his neck. “Ma lumière rayonnante,” he whispers into my hair. “I have missed you so.”

We go to my bed, and we lie down together. But we keep our clothes on. We simply lie there, holding on to each other, staring at each other, whispering about our work, about the life we still long to have together. Next week it is my birthday—I will turn forty-four, and he says by the time I am forty-five we will figure out a way to have our future.

He promises me, kissing my face.

THE WEEK IN BRUSSELS IS GLORIOUS. PAUL AND I TALK ABOUT physics with our peers during the days and spend our nights inside my room together. There is nothing but science, no one else but us.

Paul stays an extra two days in Brussels for another meeting, and the morning Jean and I are to take the train back, Paul kisses me softly on the lips, one last kiss before I go.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I say, clinging to him. “Can’t we just stay here like this forever?”

“I promise you,” he says. “Bientôt.”

But soon is an intangible promise, and I already feel it—the happiness we found together this week is