Irène.
I haven’t seen our daughter in days, or has it been weeks? I have been so distracted by my grief over this baby I never met. And I run out of the bedroom now, calling for my real living breathing child. “Irène! Irène!” I am shouting, crying, but I cannot stop myself. I want to hold on to her, wrap her into my body, keep her forever safe and still and healthy.
We are marked by death.
“Maman?” Irène’s small voice comes from the dining room, sounding frightened.
I run in there and she is sitting at the table, working on her lessons with Dr. Curie. Someone has put her hair into two pigtails, and as it wasn’t me, they are parted crookedly, so she looks out of sorts, disheveled.
“Oh, darling.” I open my arms and she gets up and runs to me. I smooth back her uneven hair, kiss the top of her head, inhale the little girl scent of her, rose petals and dirt from the garden, where her grand-père must’ve allowed her to play with the Perrins this morning while I was still sleeping. “I am never letting you go,” I say into her hair. “I am never letting you go.”
Marya
Paris, 1903
The sun was shining so brightly the first morning I arrived in Paris, streaming in through the glass ceiling of the Gare du Nord, that for a moment it was hard to see, the light blinding me, turning the station and the people and even the exquisite sounds of French yellow and gold and glimmering.
Then I blinked, and there in front of me was my sister-twin, Hela, laughing, grabbing onto me for a hug. We walked outside the station together, and there was the bustle of a vibrant city, a beautiful city, with wholly different architecture than I’d ever seen before in Poland, and even the air smelled different. I inhaled; all around me, the scent of flowers. “Marya, you finally made it!” Hela said.
Yes, I had made it, on a lie and by dipping into Papa’s rubles that I was saving for my school. I’d written ahead to my sisters, told them Kaz was so busy with his research and he was sending me to Paris alone, knowing how good the time with my sisters would be for me, for all of us. And how excited I was to help Hela plan her wedding and to make up for some lost time with my niece, Lou, and nephew, Jakub, too. Those things were, at least, true. But on the very long, very uncomfortable hours and hours on the train, the ache in my chest over Kaz grew larger and larger, so that when I first breathed in the flowers of Paris, it was already a chasm: giant and gaping and nauseating all over again. I clutched my stomach.
“Are you hungry?” Hela asked. “I can take you to my favorite pâtisserie before we get the omnibus to Bronia’s.” Hela had moved out of Bronia’s home, into an apartment closer to the Sorbonne, but it was just one small room. Bronia had offered me Hela’s old room at her home in La Villete for the duration of my stay, but as Hela was closer to the train, and didn’t have the constraints of the children, she’d offered to come and fetch me and take me to Bronia’s today.
I shook my head. I should be hungry, but I wasn’t. I’d fled Poland days earlier, leaving while Kaz was at work, without even a goodbye, and I’d barely eaten anything but some stale bread on the train. Kaz had left a letter for me on the table, and though I’d put it in my bag, had even been tempted on the train to read it, I hadn’t opened it yet. I wasn’t ready for whatever he’d felt the need to write. Whatever happened between us, whatever would happen between us, now resided in my stomach, a giant nauseating punch.
“All right,” Hela said with a shrug, then a laugh. “You know Bronia. She will have prepared a feast for you already.”
Hela walked briskly, and I followed after her. My sister-twin had a lightness about her that I’d never seen in her before. Her cheeks glowed pink, her stride was quick, and she bounced a little as she went. I practically had to run to keep up with her.
ONE HOUR AND TWO DIZZYING OMNIBUS RIDES LATER, WE were in La Villette, standing in front of Bronia’s home. It was three stories tall and built of red bricks, and it sat on a quaint cobblestone street, reminding me of something from a storybook I might have found in the Kaminskis’ nursery once upon a time. But no, this was my sister’s real life here in Paris. The life she told me was too much, the life she would be escaping soon to move to Zakopane. I stood in the street, staring up at her house for a moment before walking inside, stifling a laugh, or maybe a scream. It was hard to believe anyone would want to leave this. It was hard to believe that a woman with a wonderful professional life, two beautiful children, and a very nice husband would ever want for anything different than what she had. Maybe happiness was a bubble, floating by us, something none of us could quite hold in our hands. Not even Bronia.
“Marya,” Hela called my name. “You’re catching flies.”
I shut my gaping mouth and followed her up the front steps and into Bronia’s home. The way she skipped up the steps, opened the front door without knocking, she was at ease here. I, on the other hand, stepped carefully, keeping a distance behind her, looking all around me as I walked inside.
Hela had been right, of course. The inside smelled strongly of my favorite Polish food: Bronia’s zupa grzybowa, and I supposed that here, in Paris, the mushrooms were fresh and affordable, and her broth would be savory and rich. I inhaled, and then my stomach turned again. I was somehow both starving and still overwhelmed with nausea.
“Bron,” Hela called out. “I’ve found our little sister, wandering off a train from Poland, and now I’ve brought her here and we’ll keep her forever.” She smiled at me, reached for my hand, and squeezed it. I knew she was joking, but still, I wondered: Could I stay here forever? What would Kazimierz do back in Poland without me? What would I do here, on my own? Could I use the remainder of Papa’s rubles to finally pay tuition at the Sorbonne? They would only cover a semester, a year at most. But that could be a start.
Bronia rushed down the stairs, looking uncharacteristically unkempt, her hair askew, wisps tumbling out of her normally neat bun. “Shhh, Hela. The children have finally gotten to sleep.”
“Sleep? It’s the middle of the afternoon,” Hela said.
“Marya, moja mała siostrzyczka,” Bronia called out to me as her little sister affectionately, her tone softening as she noticed me standing there behind Hela. “How was the trip? It’s very long, hmmm? You must be exhausted.” She didn’t give me a chance to answer before she turned back to Hela and kept talking. “Both the children got suddenly ill with a summer flu, and they were up all night coughing. Dr. Curie just came to administer breathing treatments, and now they’ve both finally fallen asleep.”
“Dr. Curie—Jacques’s father—is quite good with the children,” Hela said to me, beaming.
Bronia frowned, as if the implication was that she wasn’t, and maybe she resented Hela for saying this. But then she sighed and hugged Hela’s shoulders, and I wondered if perhaps I was misreading their faces. Bronia looked exhausted herself, and I guessed she’d been up all night, tending to the children and their coughing. “I’ve discussed it with Dr. Curie, and Marya can stay there until the children are better,” Bronia said more to Hela than to me. “They have plenty of room for her.”
I opened my mouth to object—I had not come all the way to Paris to stay with Jacques’s family, strangers. And besides, I needed my sisters now. More than either one of them knew. But before I could get a word in, Hela was already talking over my head. “Oh yes, and the estate in Sceaux is lovely this time of year. Marya will adore the flowers.”