Half Life

turned around, and there he stood at the doorway, his face now bright red with distress, not joy. I wondered how much he had heard. I guessed, everything.
I moved to stand, to go to him, but Pani Zorawska was quicker than me. She got to him first, put her wrinkled hand to his cheek. “I just want what’s best for you, kochanie. That is all. That is all I’ve ever wanted.”
He reached up, removed her hand from his cheek, and walked to me swiftly, in two large strides. “Marya,” he said. “I think it is time for us to go home.”
“But you just got here,” Pani Zorawska cried out.
LATER, ON THE TRAIN BACK TO LOKSOW, KAZ RESTED HIS face against the window, watching the devious blue Baltic drift away behind us. His expression was stony, resolute, and I could not tell if he was sad or angry. I reached for his hand, and when he took my hand, covered it with his own, squeezed gently, I felt myself exhale for the first time. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. The lull of the train, the warmth of my husband, made me feel so very tired.
“What were you going to say, kochanie?” he said softly.
“Hmmm?” I murmured, on the brink of sleep.
“To Matka. When she offered you that money to leave me?”
I sat up and opened my eyes. Suddenly the rocking of the train made me feel nauseated, not relaxed. “I was going to say no, of course,” I said quickly. I moved my hand up to Kaz’s face, traced his jawline with my finger. “I love you. You know that.”
His expression relaxed, and he put his arm around me, pulled me closer to him, kissed the top of my head. I leaned my head against his shoulder, closed my eyes again.
I did love him, but deep down I worried that Pani Zorawska was right. That she had always been right. And the truth was, I wasn’t sure what I really would have said to her, had he not walked out onto the sun porch when he had.

Marie
Paris, France, 1898
I am so focused on the pitchblende that I have not even heard Pierre walk into our lab, and when he says my name, I jump, nearly hitting my head on the wooden grocery crates we’d used to construct our ionization chamber a few weeks ago.
In the past weeks, I have decided to look further into Henri Becquerel’s research on uranium compounds, and Pierre and I acquired a large ore sample, pitchblende from Bohemia, and built our own little rickety ionization chamber for testing. At present, I am so caught up in the peculiar readings coming out of the chamber that Pierre’s voice barely even registers with me.
“Marie,” he says again, a little louder.
“This can’t be right,” I say to him, no time for pleasantries, or to ask where he has been or what he wants of me now. I put the pitchblende back into the chamber. It is heavy and has a terrible dirty smell, and I am sweating, breathing hard. But I must test it again. My reading shows the radioactivity is so much greater than in uranium alone. But if it is right . . . then I have discovered something new. Something different. Something no scientist before me has found, and at that thought, my hands begin to tremble.
Pierre reaches out to steady them in his own. “Deep breath, mon amour,” he says, his voice softening, his face arched into a deep frown. Then, “I need to tell you something.”
I turn my attention fully to him finally, alarmed. “Is it Irène? Is she sick?”
“No, no. It’s not Irène at all. I’ve just received word . . . I didn’t get the professorship at the Sorbonne.”
Pierre had applied for a vacancy in the science department, and he had gotten the highest recommendation from the esteemed Monsieur Friedel, a brilliant chemist who’d mentored him and his brother, Jacques, with some of their earliest experiments. Jacques had gone on to become a professor of mineralogy in Montpellier on his recommendation. We’d felt certain Pierre would get the position here, and with it would come a higher-paying salary and better lab space, which would allow me to focus on my doctoral studies.
“What do you mean, you didn’t get it?” The words erupt from me in disbelief. I’m still sweating from the exertion of my experiment, my breath ragged in my chest. “No one else who applied is more qualified than you.”
“They gave it to Monsieur Perrin,” Pierre says quietly. He has already taken a moment to digest the news before sharing it with me; he’s already accepted it.
I shake my head. Of course they did. Jean Perrin is younger, but with a fancier degree, from one of the grandes écoles.
“Oh darling.” I reach up and touch his cheek, stroke his beard softly. My fingers are filthy from the pitchblende, but it’s not something Pierre will notice, nor care about. I’ll have to remind him to wash it away later. “Everything will turn out all right. You’ll see.”
Pierre sighs; he’s not sure he believes me. His mother passed away just two weeks after Irène was born, and he has been swimming slowly through his grief ever since. I have left Pierre’s father in charge of looking after Irène, and that has helped Dr. Curie immensely. It brings him such joy to care for her, and for me, so little worry. I can fully concentrate on my work again. But Pierre is struggling, having trouble focusing, even asking me to attend séances with him, of all things.
I see it in his eyes sometimes still now, months later, that vacant look he gets as he stares off into the distance or loses his train of thought, midsentence. Pierre has always been absentminded in his brilliance, but lately he has been almost beyond distraction. I had truly believed he would get this job and it would bring him out of his darkness, bring him