Half Life by Jillian Cantor

Author:Jillian Cantor [Cantor, Jillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2021-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Marie

Paris & Warsaw, 1906

The girls and Dr. Curie and I move into an unremarkable house on rue Chemin de Fer in Sceaux. It is not as nice or modern as our house on boulevard Kellerman was, but at least it is quieter here than in the city. And the backyard has a garden for the children to play and Irène to plant seeds. We are far from our neighbors, and perhaps in time I will miss having the Perrins and Langevins nearby, but now I am quite happy to be left alone.

I tell Dr. Curie I like the idea of bringing up the children in the very place Pierre was brought up, but the real reason I like our new house in Sceaux is because it is close to where Pierre rests now. When classes begin again in the fall, I will have a thirty-minute train ride into the city, rather than a short walk like on boulevard Kellerman, but I care less about that than about my distance from Pierre.

The first few days after we move, in the mornings, before the children wake, I take a walk and go and talk to Pierre’s tombstone. I tell him how Ève is so small, I think about all the years and years it will take for her to grow, and how I don’t know if I can continue to live for that many years on my own without him. How some people have been writing me to congratulate me on my new position at the Sorbonne. And how the very idea that someone might rejoice over me taking his position makes me impossibly angry.

Some mornings I linger too long, return to the house after breakfast, and Dr. Curie frowns at me. “It is not him. He is not there,” Dr. Curie chides me gently.

As a scientist, I know he is right. But Pierre had always believed in séances, hiring a woman to conduct them to speak to his mother after her death. And though I did not enjoy them, or even believe in them the way he had, now I can understand his need for the otherworldly, for something. I cannot keep away from his grave. And I continue to go each morning just to talk to him there. And sometimes, I go in the evenings before bed, too.

PIERRE AND I HAD PLANNED ON SPENDING MOST OF THE summer in Saint-Rémy—classes will not begin again until November. But I cannot bear the thought of going back there again now. The last time we went, Easter, Pierre and I had ridden bikes and lain in the grass together holding hands, touching sunlight, reveling in our luck. It feels like a cruel joke now. Dr. Curie offers to go with the girls, and I decide to go to Warsaw and spend time with Hela instead.

“It’ll be good for you to have a rest back in Poland,” Dr. Curie says. But what he really means is that we both know I cannot take care

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