Half Life

alone, wanting. And what was I even doing here now, on a train to Krakow, wrapped up in a lie to the one person who was still completely mine in Poland?
“And perhaps you and Kaz will join us soon, too, and all three of us sisters can be together again?” Hela said, her songbird voice light and hopeful.
“Perhaps,” I said softly, my response swallowed by the noise of the train. Suddenly Paris felt further out of my reach than ever before.

Marie
Paris, France, 1895
Marry me,” Pierre says, out of nowhere, one afternoon in the lab in early March.
We’d been in the middle of a conversation about alloy steel, as I hunch over a piece of it, heating it with a fire iron. I’m wearing my dirty linen smock and a pair of lab glasses much too big for my small face. They’re made with a man in mind, and it’s dreadfully annoying, how I must continually push them up the bridge of my nose as they slip down, again and again.
This is the third time Pierre has repeated such nonsense since I’ve returned to Paris after a summer back in Warsaw visiting with Papa and Hela. Papa is doing quite well, and Hela has found a lovely position teaching at a girls’ school. She’s even recently met a man, a photographer named Stanislaw, whom I suspect she might have feelings for, as she could not stop talking about how beautiful his work is throughout my entire visit. It was hard for me to leave them again, return to Paris, and I even considered staying in Poland for good. But there is much more to be done in the lab—before I left, Pierre and I had stumbled into a fascinating experimentation on paramagnetic properties and temperature variance. Pierre had written me daily while I was away, reminding me of all the work I must return for.
I’d moved my equipment into Pierre’s lab a few weeks after we met last spring, and from there Pierre and I quickly became good working partners. He was happy to assist with my study, performing any tasks I asked of him, but also offering his intelligent and unassuming suggestions. I’ve been doing the same in return with his work on temperatures. Working in the lab with him, I am not a woman and he is not a man—we are just two scientists who respect each other’s minds. Which is why his marriage proposals have caught me so much by surprise. And I already told Pierre the last two times he’s asked: I cannot marry you.
For one thing, he is French; he belongs in France. I am a Pole, I belong in Poland and will eventually move back to work there and be closer to my family. But for another thing, after Kazimierz, I promised myself I would never get engaged again. I am bound to live the life of a scientist now, not of a wife. It doesn’t matter how much I respect Pierre, or even enjoy his company, our marriage is an impossibility, any way I look at it.
“Consider it, Marie,” he prods again now. “We would be so wondrous together, you and I.”
Wondrous. It is so very Pierre to make us sound whimsical, instead of logical, scientific. We are lab partners, not lovers.
“You are like lodestone, and I am your magnet.” He’s still talking.
Lodestone, the most magnetic of all the materials we have tested. The magnet cannot stay away, even from an almost unexplainable distance. I have to bite my lip to keep from smiling. “Pierre.” I shake my head, without looking up from the fire iron. The silly glasses slide down the bridge of my nose and I push them back up, again. “We’ve been through this already.”
“And nothing you’ve told me has changed my mind. I still want to marry you.”
I glance up from my steel. Pierre has crossed his arms in front of his chest, resting them across the vest of his well-tailored suit. He is such a stubborn, beautiful, brilliant man. For a second, I cannot look away.
“You can be a scientist and my wife,” he says. “I fully support you and your work, you know I do. I want us to work together, to continue to be partners in the lab, yes, but everywhere else too.”
I enjoy working with him in a way I’ve never enjoyed working with anyone before. Science burns brighter; my mind feels even more alive. But that doesn’t mean we must get married. “We already are lab partners,” I say.
“Yes,” Pierre says. “But I mean permanently. Forever.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Nothing is forever.”
“I beg to differ,” Pierre says. “What about atoms?”
It’s hard to tell whether he’s teasing now, or whether he’s hurt that I’ve refused him yet again. But when I glance at him, the corners of his lips upturn ever so slightly above his beard. This conversation, this proposal of his, is far from over in his mind.
“Oh, Pierre,” I say, shaking my head. But I am still biting back a smile as I turn my attention to the steel and the fire iron.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, PIERRE AND I TAKE A BIKE RIDE TO the Bois de Vincennes, as we have been doing each weekend the weather is warm enough, riding on old bicycles that belong to him and his brother, Jacques. I pedal ahead of him, my hair coming loose from my bun, blowing back behind my shoulders as the wind whips around my face. I enjoy knowing that he is here, riding with me, but also that I am faster.
“Slow down,” Pierre calls from behind me. But he’s laughing.
I’m breathless and sweating even though the almost-spring air is cool and crisp. Away from the lab, and science, my mind is a sieve, and time and knowledge slip away, my head gloriously empty for the afternoon. I pedal and pedal like fire ripping through accelerant. Past the gates of the park and the still bare-branched cherry trees.
As we near the water,