Half Life Jillian Cantor (trending books to read .txt) 📖

from me. I felt an openness with Pierre that led me to share honestly with him in a way I couldn’t with Agata or my sisters. There was a comfort in how he listened to me speak and then continued on walking without making any harsh judgments about my marriage or my continued friendship with Kadi.

“But she is a good piano player, you say?” Pierre finally said, his only comment on my story.

“Yes,” I said. “Wonderful, really.”

“Ah, very nice then. We should be in for a treat this afternoon. I do not like to walk in the rain for nothing.” I glanced at him, and a smile grazed his lips. He was making fun of me. As if he felt my eyes on his face, he turned too, so he was looking at me. We were both looking at each other as we walked. We didn’t say anything more, just walked for a moment in the pouring rain, staring at each other.

I looked away first, and that’s when I suddenly noticed Pierre stepping into the street to cross at just the wrong moment, inches away from an oncoming horse.

“Pierre!” I yelled his name, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him back toward me as hard as I could. He nearly lost his footing, and let go of his umbrella, which tumbled out in front of us and was promptly run over. His umbrella was trampled by the horse, crushed and flattened by the wheels of the carriage.

We both stood unmoving for a moment. My heart pounded furiously in my chest, my hands shook. The rain poured down upon us, drowning my bun and my face, but I could not feel the wetness.

Pierre spoke first: “Marya,” he said. “You saved my life.”

I shook my head. No. Surely he would’ve looked up at the last moment, stopped himself from walking in front of that horse even if I hadn’t been here.

He walked ahead, retrieved his umbrella, tried to put it up again above our heads, but the spokes were broken and bent and the linen torn, providing no cover from the rain at all any longer. We both stared at the umbrella, and I wondered if Pierre was thinking what I was thinking, that this could’ve been him: broken, bent, torn. That life was delicate and fleeting, that we were all just one wrong step away from death, at any moment.

And here we both were, standing together in the pouring rain, alive and breathing.

Marie

Paris, 1906

I am walking with Pierre in the rain, holding on to him so tightly. I love our life together, he says, turning to me, smiling. How did I ever get so lucky?

There is no such thing as luck, I tell him, as he walks out into the street, one step ahead of me. His eyes, bright blue and filled with light, are still on my face. And then I see the horse, coming right at him. Pierre, stop! I cry out. I try to reach for him, to pull him back. But I can’t grab ahold of him in time.

Why can’t I just pull him back?

I sit up in bed, startled. Disoriented. I reach for Pierre next to me, but his side of the bed is empty. And I remember again, he is dead, dead, dead. Trampled and crushed. His beautiful brain broken. I am haunted by this cruel and recurring dream where I try to stop him, try to save him. But he’s gone. I can’t save him, can’t help him, can’t fix him as Hela once believed I would.

WE BURY PIERRE IN SCEAUX BY HIS MOTHER’S SIDE, ON April 21st, only two days after the accident. The press began clamoring immediately, and there were so many telegrams, and I just wanted them all to leave me alone; I just want quiet. We rush through everything, have a private family burial, in hopes the press will leave, and then in the days after, everything has happened so fast that I can’t understand yet it’s true. He’s gone. How can he really be gone?

When I first tell Irène the news, she runs to her bedroom to weep. But then, only hours later, she comes to me, seeming completely untouched, asking if it is still all right if she goes and plays in the Perrins’ garden with her friend. She is young, she does not understand the power this loss will hold over her for the rest of her life. And because of that, I forgive her insensitivity.

Yes, I tell her. Go play next door. Be home for supper.

Ève has no idea what she has lost. Fifteen months old, she toddles around the house, still pulling off her clothing at will and stealing Irène’s toys. She will never remember him. She will never know him. I walk through days and days carrying that thought in my head, and that becomes my undoing. Pierre’s loss is a great loss for the scientific community, a great personal and professional loss for me. But more than anything it is Ève’s loss that breaks me. She will never know her father.

JACQUES AND BRONIA BOTH LINGER IN PARIS FOR WEEKS, HOVERING. Bronia looks after the children, stepping in for Dr. Curie in the evenings when normally I would. Jacques says he is straightening Pierre’s affairs with the university and that he will go home when he is sure we are okay.

“We will never be okay,” I tell him flatly, and he frowns, making his face look more angled, more like Pierre’s.

“In time,” Jacques says kindly, patting my shoulder. “In time.”

But what does Jacques know? What does Bronia know? He will return soon to Montpellier to his own wife, Marie. Bronia will return to Zakopane and Mier and Lou. They will not work and live and breathe and raise their children alone.

I spend days in bed, not having the energy to get up, much less care for the children or tend the house. Bronia and Jacques do these things for me. Jeanne Langevin and