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

to remember the sound of his voice, or the feel of his hands, but all at once, my senses flood with him, and I cannot breathe.

Here it is again, right in front of me, typed across the telegram from Sweden. I am being awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize. In Chemistry this time, to recognize the advancements I have made by discovering radium and polonium, the isolation of radium, and the study of the nature and the compounds of this remarkable element.

I read the words, and then I read them again, disbelieving them, my eyes stinging with tears. I want to run and tell Pierre. Look, look what we have done, my love! But I can’t even leave my house, much less go to his grave now. Not with all the reporters outside. And it’s not as if it matters anyway. Pierre is dead.

Then, I long for Paul, but he has returned from Brussels and is hiding out somewhere in France—Jean Perrin has not told me where, and even if I were to know, it would be impossible to go to him without making everything worse.

“What is it, Maman?” Irène stands close to me, her worried eyes peering over my shoulder, trying to make sense of what news I’ve just received.

I turn to look at my eldest daughter. She is tall and slender and serious, more a woman now than a girl. The intensity of her eyes reminds me of her father’s. But she is not him, and she is not Paul. She is an apparition of my younger self. And just like me, she has a propensity for science. I hand her the telegram, let her read the news for herself.

“Another Nobel! Maman, this is wonderful.” Her face alights with joy, and it is strange how just moments ago she had been crying. It is strange how life has a way of being terrible and wonderful all at once.

I RECEIVE A SECOND TELEGRAM FROM SWEDEN A WEEK LATER, this one asking me not to come to Stockholm for the ceremony in December to accept my prize. Jeanne has now given all our letters to the press and copies of them run in the papers for all of France to read. It seems everyone in the country, all of Europe maybe, knows every detail of mine and Paul’s innermost thoughts. And no one even seems to care or notice that I am being awarded a second Nobel Prize. I am not simply the only woman to achieve this honor now, but the only one to do it twice.

But the Swedish Academy writes that they are worried about all this embarrassing press. Their concern is that it might follow me all the way to Sweden, distract from the ceremonies. We think it might be better if you don’t attend, they write.

Better for whom?

I write back and tell them that my personal life has nothing to do with my scientific endeavors. They have awarded me a prize, a prize that I deserve for my work, and I plan to come to Stockholm to accept it.

“Do you think they will be angry with you?” Irène asks, when I show her the telegram exchange. Within the space of two weeks trapped inside our house, in hiding from the press, isolated from my lab and the world, and Paul, Irène has become more than my daughter. Now she is also my confidante.

“I am a woman, Irène,” I tell her. “And I have now won two Nobels, two more than almost any man scientist ever receives in the course of his career. And you see what they’re doing to me in the papers now, don’t you? They will continue to viciously attack me. They will do anything, anything they can to bring me down. To try and ruin me. I cannot worry about people being angry with me. I deserve this prize.”

Irène bites her lip, trying not to cry, but we are not going to be sad about people trying to ruin me. We are going to choose to be happy about what I have accomplished. We are going to celebrate my accomplishment.

“No tears,” I say to her, more gently. “Go pack your things. I’m taking you to Sweden with me. Aunt Bronia will meet us there and you can both watch me accept my Nobel Prize.”

Marya

Krakow & Stockholm, 1911

In November, I received the most wonderful news in a letter from Hela. She and Jacques had been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work with elemental magnetism. They would accept the prize in Stockholm in December, and she invited me and Bronia both to come to Sweden and watch her, wanting us to attend so badly that she sent money for our train tickets along with her letters.

I was thrilled for her, but I felt something else too. It was a little bit of jealousy, or, maybe it was wanting. What if I had been the one to go to Paris all those many years ago, instead? Could I have accomplished all that Hela had by now? And if I had, would I feel happier, be more fulfilled? I loved my life with Klara, working in Professor Mazur’s lab, but could there have been more for me?

I told Professor Mazur about Hela and Jacques’s prize, the day after I received her letter. We were in the lab, working on trying to condense hydrogen to liquid in a vacuum flask. Professor Mazur had recently gotten the funds from the university to acquire the materials in Brussels when she’d gone to the Solvay Conference there, a few weeks earlier.

“Marya,” Professor Mazur said my name sharply, instructing me to hold on to the flask just the way she’d showed me earlier to keep it still for her now. We wore masks today, in addition to our glasses, so her voice came through more muffled than usual. And we had rid the lab of any fire today, as liquefied hydrogen, should we succeed in our task, was