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

remembered what she told me before I’d left. She was eight, old enough to take care of herself. But I felt a warmth coursing through my body now, knowing that she still needed me. She was my happiness, my heart.

“Come, lie in bed with me.” I patted Kaz’s empty side of the bed, and Klara ran up, got in. I held her close, smoothed back her tangled hair with my hands. “Do you want to tell me about your dream?” I asked her, kissing her head softly, reveling in the soft flower-petal feel of her hair. She shook her head vigorously. “Sometimes it helps to talk about it.”

“You went on the train again to Sweden,” she finally said a few moments later, her voice very quiet, very small. “And then something happened. You never came back.”

“Shhh.” I held her body tighter against mine. “It was only a bad dream, chicken. Mama is here. She’s not going anywhere.”

“Papa is here too.” I had not heard Kaz come in, but I looked up at the sound of his voice, and he stood in the doorway. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, listening.

He walked over to the bed, leaned in and kissed Klara gently on the forehead. Then he leaned across her and kissed my forehead too. His lips were cold, and he smelled like pipe smoke, the German tobacco he loved.

“There is room for me?” he asked. His voice rose and broke, a question.

Klara rolled in closer to me, and there was room. I patted the empty space with my hand, and Kaz took off his shoes, got into bed with us. After only a few minutes, Klara snored softly, back to sleep. “I did not know if you would ever come back to me either,” Kaz whispered into the darkness, a confession. He reached his hand across Klara for mine, grabbed my fingers and squeezed softly.

“I chose you,” I said squeezing his hand, after a few moments. “I will always come back.”

Marie

Paris, 1912–1914

Paul becomes a never-ending ache in my stomach, and after I return from Sweden it hurts worse and worse, and then one afternoon at the Sorbonne, I feel myself falling down, the ground collapsing beneath my feet. I’m unable to bear the pain any longer, unable to stand.

“We have to get her to the hospital,” I hear one of my students say. His voice cuts through a fog, a haze of pain.

And then, I am being carried, falling in and out of light and darkness. Jeanne will not have to kill me; the press will not have to crucify me. Here I am, dying, all on my own.

Paul is far away and blurry, out of my reach. I imagine him again, that snowy night in my lab when he came to me, held on to me, promised me, just this once. One time.

If I could go back to that moment now, I would pull away, say no. There is no man worth this pain, worth my career. Worth my life. If I could go back again, I would not choose him. I would choose myself.

BUT PAUL IS NOT THE TRUE CAUSE OF MY ACHE; THERE IS A scientific reason behind it. At the hospital, I am diagnosed with severe kidney problems, caused by lesions on my uterus. In the spring of 1912, I require surgery to remove the lesions.

It is meant to make me feel better. But instead, after the surgery, I feel profoundly worse. I am in so much pain, I can barely move. I lie in my bed, unable to work, unable to move or see the children. If I were to believe in any sort of penance, any sort of punishment for all those wonderful afternoons with Paul, then maybe this is it?

I spend weeks in bed, trying to organize my affairs. I write to Jacques in Montpellier and beg of him to see that all the radium I have in my possession stays safe if I die.

He writes back, saying that he will always help me with anything I want, of course. He will always be my brother. The girls’ uncle.

But you are not dying, Marie, he writes. You are much too young to die.

THE TRUTH IS, IN THE SPRING OF 1912, I AM FORTY-FOUR. THIS is two years older already than my mother was when she died. Only two years younger than Pierre was when he died. Over six times the age of Bronia’s Jakub, and five of my sister Zosia.

I have won two Nobel prizes, had so much success in my work. But I am empty and alone, and, even if I get well, I’m unsure I’ll ever be able to work again. The papers still report terrible things about me. One even reports that I am pregnant with Paul’s child, and that is why I have been out of view for so long.

It is a ridiculous fabrication, when I am in so much pain that I can barely move, barely breathe, hardly walk or get out of bed. When I haven’t even seen Paul in so many months.

Death is a shadow. It follows me and hovers over me. I am marked by death. Perhaps it is surprising that I have even made it to forty-four years of age. Perhaps I should just give in to it, let it take me now. If I were dead, I would no longer be in such pain.

WHAT IS IT PAUL SAID TO ME ONCE, IN THE HALF-LIGHT OF Arromanches?

That what he admires most about me is my strength. I don’t give up, I can never give up. I am brave and amazing. Or am I foolish and crazy?

For months and months, I am not feeling any better, and yet, I can’t stop trying a rest cure. I leave the girls with their nanny and tutor and check into a sanatorium in the Alps as Bronia, so the press can’t find me: Madame Dluska. Then in the summer, I take a boat to