Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  “Or purgatory,” Bronia said, almost under her breath.

  I turned and looked at her, surprised. I’d had no indication from her letters that she had anything but happiness in her life. But now that I thought about it, her letters recounted mostly day-to-day minutiae, the pursuits of the children, what they were doing and eating and learning, and how much they were growing.

  “It’s just,” Bronia clarified, “in Paris there was so much going on all around us. Concerts, and lectures. Professors and doctors stopping by the house for a salon any night of the week. And there were so many opportunities to learn.” She held her hands up in the air. “We have a wonderful tutor for the children here, but Helena finds her disagreeable, and all she wants to do is climb in the mountains all day. The truth is, there is not much else here to tempt her with.”

  We had called Bronia’s Helena Lou since she was born, and hearing Bronia refer to her by her given name now only seemed to underscore her frustration. Suddenly, I had an idea. “What if she came back to Loksow with me for the fall term? She could take courses at my university. The women who teach are all wonderful, and we have everything, sciences and maths, piano and art. She could find an academic or artistic pursuit there perhaps?” Bronia wrinkled her forehead, considering it. “Kaz will be in Vienna, so I could use the help with Klara anyway.”

  Bronia nodded. “It’s so kind of you to offer.” She leaned in and kissed me on the forehead, sweeping a wayward hair out of my eyes. “I know she is fifteen, but still, I don’t know if I can let my baby go, just like that.”

  “Well,” I told her. “Papa let you go.”

  “I was much older,” she said quickly.

  “Think about it.” I put my hand on her shoulder, gently. And for just a moment, I wondered which one of us was the sister-mother now.

  KLARA SLEPT IN LOU’S BEDROOM, AND KAZ AND I HAD A ROOM all our own—Bronia’s house was large enough to accommodate all of us, even Hela and Jacques and Marie when they arrived in a few weeks.

  “I told Bronia Lou should come back with us. Live with me while you’re away. Attend my school,” I whispered to Kaz that night in the darkness in our bed.

  “That will be good, for both of you,” Kaz said, approvingly.

  Like we always did at home, we lay on opposite sides of the large bed, untouching. But when he spoke now, Kaz suddenly, unexpectedly, reached his hand across the empty space for mine. His fingers trailed against my palm, softly, slowly tracing a line. I hesitated for a moment, before taking his hand, interlacing his fingers with my own.

  “Everything feels different here,” Kaz said.

  He was right. The past finally felt put away, the future felt spread out, wide and more hopeful before us. Kaz had made a mistake once, but I could remember again now that he was a good man, a kind man. He was my husband and Klara’s devoted father. I squeezed his hand.

  He moved across the bed, closer to me, closer still, and when he wrapped his arms around me, I reveled in his closeness, his warmth. “What will you do in Vienna all alone without us?” I whispered.

  “I will miss you and Klara,” he said. “I will write you every day. I will be desperately lonely.” It sounded like a vow, a promise. He gently touched my face with his hands, and then he kissed me. For the first time in so long, I kissed him back, deeply, with feeling.

  And I suddenly understood how lucky I was to be here this summer with him. To be lying here next to him now, sun-kissed and warm, his heart beating on next to mine.

  Marie

  Paris, 1906–1907

  Time moves forward on Pierre’s pocket watch, and somehow, so do I.

  I wake and I breathe and I eat, and I still cry at strange times, in the middle of the morning when no one is around to see me, when I wonder again about all the things I might have done differently in my life. And, if I had, would Pierre still be here? If I had stayed in Poland with Kazimierz . . . or, if I had turned down Pierre’s endless marriage proposals . . . or if we had stayed in Saint-Rémy just a few days longer last April. Any of that might have changed the entire trajectory of our lives.

  But time only moves forward on his pocket watch, not in reverse. There are no choices to be redone, nothing now that I can take back or change, no matter how much I might want to.

  IN NOVEMBER, I BEGIN TEACHING AT THE SORBONNE, AND IT should be a happy moment in my life. Here I am, the first woman to have achieved this position. I am worthy and deserving of it in my own right, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics, after all. But instead all I can think is how it is supposed to be Pierre up here teaching this class; these are Pierre’s students sitting before me, and it is very heard to breathe all throughout my lecture.

  Still, somehow I do it, and then again and again. I take the train thirty minutes each morning into the city, then back at night. I leave most mornings before the children are awake, arrive home after they are in bed. Dr. Curie looks after them, and I hire a Polish governess to look after them too and work on their Polish. They are fed and clothed and well taken care of, and they want for nothing. As it goes, they are blessed and healthy. So long as they should not want for a mother who hovers over them, or smothers them with affection.

  Grief is heavy and overbearing; it tugs me down. It fills my coat pockets with rocks and drags me to the bottom of the cold dark sea, holding me under so I can barely breathe. Days pass, seasons come and go. Time moves forward, but I feel heavier and heavier.

  ONE WINTER EVENING, FAR TOO LATE, I GET HOME FROM THE city. It is cold inside the house and the fire is not lit properly—no one does it the way I do with exactly the right amount of paper and coal. It is simple science, the proper amounts of all things, kindling and accelerant, and why can no one understand fire but me? I add paper now, poke at the coals, stoking the flames. Smoke erupts, and tears suddenly burn my eyes.

  And then I just find myself on the floor. The house is dark, but for the flames of the fire, and I lie down, unable to move, unable to get up, unable to do anything but lie on that floor and cry.

  “Maman?” Ève’s small voice calls out for me. “Are you all right?” She must have heard something, gotten out of bed, and now she has found me here. More than anything I wish to stand up and carry her back to bed, rock her back to sleep, tell her that everything is okay and that she is a young sweet girl and should worry for nothing. I have made such an effort that no one, none of them should see me this way. Until now.

  But I cannot move. I cannot do anything but lie here and cry. Ève comes and sits down next to me. Strokes at my hair, like she is the mother and I am her daughter.

  “It’s okay, Maman,” she says. “You are crying because you’re tired. I can help you go to bed.”

  “YOU HAVE TO GET YOURSELF TOGETHER,” BRONIA SAYS sharply. She has come for a visit in the beginning of the new year, not at my request, but she simply shows up late one evening at my front door. I suppose that Dr. Curie must have written her, told her I am worrying him. But he will never admit that to me if that is the case. And Bronia simply says she is overdue for a visit, which is also true.

  “I am perfectly together,” I say back, just as sharply.

  She frowns; we both know I am lying. “It has been almost a year.” She emphasizes year, like I am still her little sister-child, who can barely count.

  I know. I know. I know.

  It has been 302 days, 7,250 hours. I count them in my head each morning, keep track of them in a data chart in my mind, as if this life of mine were now an experiment. How long can I live without him? How many hours can I force myself to breathe? How many days can I continue to awake in my bed alone, forgetting in the first few seconds before opening my eyes, remembering all over again once I do open them that he’s still gone? And I do not appreciate being shouted at like a toddler now, in my own home. “You don’t know,” I say, my voice shaking. “You don’t know.”

  “Don’t I?” Bronia’s voice softens. She sits down in a parlor chair, rests her head in her hands.

&n
bsp; I put my hands to my mouth, thinking about her sweet Jakub, seven years old and taken from her just like that.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, walking to her, putting my arms around her. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  She pushes me away gently. “After Jakub died, Mier almost went crazy. He started climbing, in the mountains. Him and Lou. The two of them still go, every morning. Lou tells me it is the way she breathes. Mountain climbing. Everyone needs something. You need something.”

  “And what did you do?” I ask her. I can’t imagine Bronia climbing mountains. Physical exertion has always been one of her least favorite things. She never understood why I loved to bicycle so with Pierre. And perhaps if I could do that now, if I could pedal and pedal until my legs ache and I am too tired to breathe, then I would feel something again, other than the heaviness of my grief. But the bicycle is something I only ever did with Pierre, and the idea of riding it alone is too much to overcome.

  “I worked,” Bronia finally says. “I worked and I worked and I studied, and I sank myself into the latest research, became a better physician for my patients.”

  “Well, that is what I am doing,” I say.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “You are taking the train into the city, teaching a class. What have you done in the lab?”

  “How do you know what I do in my lab?” I snap at her.

  But Bronia is right. I’ve read Pierre’s journals over and over again, tracing my fingers over his script. But I have not done anything new, anything important. I haven’t been able to bear it, the thought that I might discover something on my own, without him here beside me.

  “Life is so very hard and tragic,” Bronia says, matter-of-factly, and I hate her for the scientific way she bears it out to me. “But you have this brilliant mind, and more resources here in Paris than we ever dreamed as girls. You cannot waste that.” She grabs my shoulders and holds on to them. “You cannot waste that.”

  EVERYONE NEEDS SOMETHING, BRONIA SAID.

  I think of that as I sit down to help Irène with her studies, and when I pay attention, look at what she has been doing, what she has been learning here in Sceaux, I feel like I have been asleep for 302 days, and I have let my daughter’s mind wither. She has not been learning anything! This will not do at all. The revelation that I have been so drowned in grief that I have let my daughter’s education lapse shocks me.

  What have I done, moving us out to Sceaux, where it is so very quiet? In our old house on boulevard Kellerman, we were surrounded by neighbors who were friends and academics, professors. There were always lively conversations and debates in our garden with the Perrins and the Langevins, and the children would play, and they would listen, and they would learn. Irène has nothing here.

  “You are not going to attend this school any longer,” I tell Irène. “I am going to start my own school.”

  Her eyes widen a little. I am either frightening her or exciting her, or both.

  The next morning, back at the university, I tell Jean Perrin and Paul Langevin about my desire. “If we all enroll our children together, we can make a collective school among us. We can all take turns teaching them. They can learn from real academics.”

  Paul Langevin considers my idea, pulling on his mustache. Paul was Pierre’s student, once, long ago, and now he is a brilliant academic in his own right. He was also a good friend to Pierre before he died. I want his approval, as if in some strange way it is akin to Pierre’s approval. When he nods vigorously, I exhale. He is either as excited about this idea as I am, or excited that I have a new idea again. Any idea.

  “The children will learn so much more from us. We will give them the best education,” I say. I had participated in Flying University once in Poland, self-taught in Szczuki. Learned from the best professors in Paris and have become one here myself.

  Everyone needs something, Bronia said.

  Then I remember: I need now what I have always needed—education.

  BUT ORGANIZING OUR COLLECTIVE SCHOOL TO TEACH THE children isn’t enough for me. I need science too. I begin making plans for the lab, my lab now. The lab was where I felt most happy, most at home, even before I met Pierre. And I know it can be my place again, after him, too.

  There is a generous donation from Andrew Carnegie from America, and I use it to hire several research assistants, including my nephew, Maurice, Jacques’s son. Jacques writes a very kind letter to thank me for my generosity, but he does not understand at all—Maurice, like Jacques, like Pierre, has a brilliant mind, and that is the reason why I hire him. He works hard, and he is very smart, and there is so much work to be done. We are attempting to purify radium chloride, isolating the radium metal. And we are trying again to determine the atomic weight of radium.

  But when my assistants leave for the day, I stay in the lab often much too late, working on my own, too. I am developing a new method of measuring radium, a way to give weight to it. This excites me wildly, because if I can perfect it, it will allow radium to be used widely outside my laboratory, for the greater good of other scientists, or perhaps even doctors. And this, most of all, is what Pierre would’ve wanted.

  The strangest thing is, when I am back in the lab again, back in the place Pierre and I fell in love and lived so many hours of our lives, that is the place where my mind can begin to carry on, where everything inside of me starts to lighten again. Late at night, all alone, the radium glows all around me, bright and beautiful and phosphorescent.

  Marya

  Loksow, Poland, 1908

  Leokadia’s mother died in the beginning of February—I heard about it from her cousin, Zuzanna, who was a student in my introductory chemistry course. Leokadia and I still exchanged the occasional letter, but I hadn’t known her mother was sick, and the news from Zuzanna hit me with a sadness I did not expect.

  Leokadia had done quite well for herself in the past few years; her career as a concert pianist was blossoming as she was traveling around Europe giving concerts to large, paying crowds. According to her most recent letter, she had spent the last months in Berlin, making a record. But no matter all that, I still imagined her mother’s death would hit her hard, and I felt for her, remembering her kindness to me the week Papa had died.

  Even knowing she would have to come back to Loksow for the funeral, it was a shock when I nearly walked right into her, as I was leaving my advanced physics class.

  I had not seen her in almost two years—since I’d gone with Pierre to hear her concert in Montmartre, and then we had shared only a brief exchange and a quick hug just after her performance. Seeing her again now I was struck by how remarkably she appeared not to have aged a single bit. Somehow time had made her only more beautiful, more full of light in person.

  “Marya!” She grabbed me in a hug before I could react to her unexpected presence outside of my school. Klara clutched my hand, pulled close to my leg. Leokadia pulled back from me and noticed her. “And who is this?” She bent down to Klara’s level, and extended one of her petite hands for a shake. Klara hesitated for a moment before accepting.

  “Klara,” I said. “This is Mama’s friend who plays beautiful music. Remember I have told you about her?”

  Klara shook her head, confused, and I was caught inside my lie. I had never mentioned Leokadia to Klara before. Not because I wasn’t proud and happy for what Leokadia had done with her talent, what she had become these past few years. But because talking about her out loud with Klara felt as if it would be admitting other things that I would never want to admit to her. We were a family, Kaz and Klara and I, and inside the bubble of our family there was a delicate balance. Move any wrong way and the whole thing would burst.

  “Yes.” I wrapped myself tighter in my lie. “She used to teach piano here with me, many years ago. Before you were born. I told you, chicken, you just don’t remember.”

  My sweet Klara nodded now.

  She didn’t have the capacity to believe I’d lie to her, and perhaps to make up for it, I kept on ta
lking. “I bet Leokadia would show you the piano while she’s visiting. Teach you a song.” I stood back up and turned to her. “Only if you have time.”

  “Yes.” Leokadia clapped her hands together. “I am here until the end of the week. I would love to see you both. Would tomorrow morning work?”

  KLARA KNEW THE WOMEN I TAUGHT WITH, THE WOMEN IN MY classes, her aunts and her cousins, especially Lou, who had been living with us the past few months. But none of them played music, none of them sparkled with the radiance Leokadia had. And even at five years old, Klara had somehow picked up on this.

  “Today we are learning piano with your very beautiful friend, aren’t we, Mama?” We had gotten fresh eggs from the Nowaks’ farm yesterday, and I boiled them for our breakfast now.

  Lou sat across the table from Klara and looked up from her textbook. She had become quite interested in studying biology, and it amused me that it was only here, away from both her physician parents, that she had come to find a new scientific fascination with the body. “Piano?” Lou asked, her eyes lighting up a little.

  “Yes,” I told her. “My friend, she’s a concert pianist. She’s come to visit for the week. Would you like to come with us for a lesson this morning, too?” Lou nodded, looking delighted. She was sixteen, and looked every bit like a woman, the spitting image of Bronia at that age. But unlike sixteen-year-old Bronia she seemed not to have a mothering instinct in her entire body. Mostly, she acted like a little girl. And though I left her in charge of Klara from time to time, whenever I came home she was on the floor, playing whatever game Klara had commanded, a look of glee on her face. Sometimes I would stifle a laugh, thinking of how the whole scene would shock Bronia. In my letters to her, I told her only about how well Lou was doing in her biology courses.

  And though there were no mountains in Loksow, Lou still went on very long daily walks, or else she said she got restless. I often sent her to the Nowaks’ farm, and then we had fresh eggs for breakfast nearly every morning.