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

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.

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,