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

I followed her instructions, precisely, as always, then helped her seal the flask. She put it into the cooling chamber we’d constructed last week, and then removed her mask, wiping at the sweat on her brow with the back of her arm. That’s when I told her about Hela.

“The Nobel?” Professor Mazur said, her voice thick with disbelief. But then she smiled warmly. “How wonderful for Hela. She was so kind when I saw her at Solvay. Especially when I told her what a great help you are to me in the lab. It is so very rare for someone to be both kind and brilliant. It must run in your family.”

I felt my face reddening a bit at the unusual compliment. Professor Mazur was intense, always focused on the work, with little time for chatter or compliments. “Hela really wants me to go to Stockholm next month, but it will be too hard to get away from Klara. And from the lab,” I added. After the long summer away, we had settled into our routine again: Klara at school, me working in lab, Kaz teaching his fall courses. I devoted all my time out of the lab to Klara, helping her with her studies, listening to her piano music.

“Marya Zorawska! Your sister is going to be the first woman to receive the Nobel. I command you to go to Stockholm and report back every detail to me when you return. I want to know all of it. In case I should ever win someday.” She chuckled a little, but I doubted she was kidding. “And my governess can help you out with Klara for a few weeks,” she offered. “So there, now you have no excuses.”

Later that night I talked to Klara about it, asked her if she would mind being looked after by Professor Mazur’s governess while I was gone. Her eyes lit up, repeating what I’d told her back very slowly. “Aunt Hela has won the biggest scientific prize in the world. The first woman?”

I nodded and bit my lip a little. I was so deeply proud of my sister-twin. But I couldn’t help but think of what Pierre had written to me once, about how it was hard to be the sibling to brilliance. I was so deeply proud. But I was still that something else too. The feeling sank in my stomach, aching just a little.

“Mama, you have to go,” Klara insisted. “I’m almost eight. I can take care of myself.”

I smiled and leaned over to kiss her forehead. “I know you can, mój mały kurczak.”

THE TRAIN RIDES TO STOCKHOLM WERE VERY LONG, AND after nearly twenty-four hours alone in a cold and bumpy train car, I wondered whether going all alone to Sweden, leaving Klara and my life in the beginning of winter, had been a mistake. But then I finally made it, and Hela hugged me so tightly. Her face glowed pink; I had never seen her so beautiful, so happy.

Hela and Jacques had splurged for the occasion—the Nobel came with a handsome amount of prize money—and got us lovely large hotel rooms. Bronia and I shared a room, and Pierre stayed next to us in his own room. It felt very strange, all of us here without our children, without our adult responsibilities. We went out to eat dinner and stayed out very late, talking and talking and drinking brännvin.

Bronia and Jacques got into a heated discussion about the potential uses of his and Hela’s magnets in the field of medicine—Jacques believing they could be helpful, Bronia arguing they could not be. She told Jacques he should stick to the lab and let her understand medicine. Hela tried to mediate, posing her own arguments on both sides. And me? I just sipped my brännvin slowly, careful not to have too much. Pierre caught my eye across the table, shrugged a little, smiled at me, and raised his glass in my direction. “Do you want to go back?” he mouthed to me.

I nodded, and we excused ourselves. Bronia and Hela and Jacques were still arguing back and forth and barely seemed to notice us.

“Tell me about your work with combustion,” Pierre said as we walked slowly back toward the hotel. The night air was crisp, quite chilly. I shivered a little. “Are you warm enough? Would you like my coat?” Pierre asked.

“I’m fine,” I lied, not wanting to take his coat. I had this strange feeling if I put it on, if I wrapped myself up in the warmth and the smell and the feel of him, I would never be able to take it off.

Hela had asked about my combustion work at dinner, but just as I’d begun to speak about it, Bronia had interrupted with a question for Jacques about his speech tomorrow. “There’s not too much to tell,” I said to Pierre now. “It is Ola Mazur’s work, really. I’m helping her. We’re trying to liquefy gas right now, to see how it works as a detonator.”

“That sounds . . . dangerous,” Pierre said.

I shrugged. “We take all the proper precautions. Neither of us has exploded yet.” I was making a joke, but Pierre didn’t laugh. I was used to the fires and smoke and the explosions in the lab now. It didn’t feel dangerous. It simply felt like my job. “What have you been working on Pierre?”

“Becquerelium,” he said with a sigh. Then he added, “Sort of.” I slowed down my pace and turned to look at him, wanting to know more. “I think there’s a second element with radioactive properties in the pitchblende. My readings can’t be explained by becquerelium alone. I believe there is another element with an entirely different chemical composition, too.”

“That’s fascinating,” I said.

“Yes.” He rubbed his beard. “But I haven’t the space in the lab or the strength as one man to try to chemically wash the ore on my own.”

“Perhaps you could publish a paper explaining your theory?” I suggested.

He laughed, bitterly. “Yes, I have