Bronia writes to thank me for the money, and I suppose it is strange the way neither one of us mentions this cloud that still hangs over us, the darkness that continues to embrace us, or the way that money, even money, which we have needed and needed for so very long, does nothing to ease that. Jakub and Val are still dead. It is almost hard to remember a time back in Szczuki and in Warsaw when I believed that, if only I had money, surely happiness and everything else I ever wanted would follow.
Then with our new money comes more money: Pierre is finally admitted into the Academy and hired as a professor at the Sorbonne. So we have not only our prize money but his steady and good salary. And we can, for the first time, afford to hire a research assistant for our lab.
But strangest of all is our new notoriety, our sudden fame. The press clamors on boulevard Kellerman outside our home, snapping photos of us as we leave for the lab in the morning. Jeanne Langevin makes her way through the garden, into my kitchen, to complain how they are waking her baby with their noise and disturbing the entire street. Paul walks in behind her, shushing her, saying, It is not their fault the press won’t leave them alone.
“Believe me,” I tell Jeanne, throwing my hands up in the air in annoyance. “I do not want them here. I cannot make them stop.”
We go to work, but then there is another bunch of them waiting for us at the lab, shouting at us to grant them an interview, to answer their questions. I begin receiving fan letters in the mail, and hundreds of requests for autographs. I throw them all away, unanswered. Or else I would spend my entire day wasted, signing my name instead of continuing with my work.
“They are enamored of you,” Pierre says with a chuckle, as if it tickles him. “The first woman to win a Nobel Prize.”
But it is not me they want exactly, it is us. They want to write us a great romantic love story. And when we refuse to grant interviews, they write their stories anyway. I am a genius and great light to my husband, or I am a shackle to my husband’s genius and his success, depending on where the story is printed, who has written it. No one cares that it was my idea to extract the radium. No one cares that I was born poor and Polish. One of the dailies calls me France’s Greatest Living Gem. Another one makes up a quote of me saying that everything I do, it is in deference to my great husband.
“Perhaps we should just grant a few interviews,” Pierre says. “They might realize how dreadfully hard and tedious our work is and leave us alone.”
“It would be a waste of our time,” I say. “Let them write whatever they like. What do I care?”
Pierre has his classes at the Sorbonne to prepare for now, and I still have my classes to teach at the girls’ school in Sèvres. And there is so much more to be done in the lab. We are trying to assess the atomic weight of radium, and in the bustle of everything, we have mistakenly misplaced some materials; we are dreadfully behind. The committee in Sweden gave us only six months to come in person to make our acceptance speech, but Pierre has been struck with his most violent attack of rheumatism yet, and neither one of us can imagine making the journey to Sweden in that time frame.
When spring semester ends, Pierre and I are both aching and exhausted, and who cares that we have money now? Happiness feels so far out of our reach.
But Pierre has an idea. He has found us a secluded little cottage to rent in Saint-Rémy to while away the first month of summer. “The press will never find us there,” he tells me, with a satisfied grin. “And we can, at long last, get some rest.”
I GO BAREFOOT IN SAINT-RÉMY IN JUNE, OR SOMETIMES I wear sandals when we take the bicycles out and ride through the pastures, to Lac du Peiroou. And then, even though the water is freezing, Pierre insists on a swim, while I am content to dip my toes in at the edge.
Away from the city, Irène wiles away the days with her grand-père, and Pierre and I spend the days together, devoid of responsibilities. Pierre’s leg pains ease, and without the constant buzz and hum of the reporters, I should be able to breathe a little easier here too. But for some reason, I can’t. We have promised each other to clear our minds of work for the few weeks that we are here. We want to revel in the country air and Irène and each other. And it is only then, only after a week away, that I realize the truth of it: the tiredness, my aching body, my nausea, even all the way out here. I am pregnant again. For heaven’s sakes, how had I missed this in Paris? I count back… I must already be a few months along.
The realization should buoy me, but instead it sinks me, like I’ve dived into the cold waters of the lake and I can barely breathe.
I whisper my revelation to Pierre in the darkness of our bed that night.
He lowers his face to my belly, kisses me softly. I can feel the warmth of his lips, even through the fabric of my nightgown.
“I am terrified,” I admit to him. I think about last time, how the baby came much too soon, only five months along. Not a boy at all as Pierre had felt but a girl, perfectly formed, only born before she could breathe.
“No, mon amour,” Pierre whispers into my belly, his words tickling the fibers of my gown against my skin. “Everything is going to be exactly right this time, I can feel it.”
THE NEXT MORNING I AWAKE BEFORE DAWN. PIERRE IS ACTUALLY asleep, snoring softly beside me. His pains and his mind calm enough to rest out here.
I get up and dress in an old smock I’d brought for bike riding, and I go outside to take a walk to the lake. The sun rises, and the sky turns pink and purple. The world feels beautiful here, like a world that will never harm us again, and I inhale, letting the warm country air wash over me.
“Excuse me,” a young man calls out to me, and as I do not recognize him, I keep on walking. “Excuse me, Madame,” he calls out again, his French racked with a terrible American accent. I stop if only to get him to leave me alone. I need quiet. I need time for my mind to absorb what my body already understands. Six more months of worry and waiting and aching, and then if the world spins exactly as it should, and if there are no more accidents of science, another baby. Another baby. “I’ve heard the Curies are staying here for a holiday,” the man says. “Have you seen them? I hear they like to ride bicycles along here, and I’d really like to catch them for an interview.”
I reach up to touch my hair. It’s out of its usual bun, as I haven’t taken the time this morning. My feet are bare, and my smock is old and torn and ragged. He has no idea who I am, and somehow that thought gives me strength to remember exactly who I am. “I haven’t seen them,” I say. “You must be mistaken.”
I walk back toward the cottage, a smile creeping across my face. Saint-Rémy is otherworldly and strangely magical, and when I find Pierre in the cottage preparing breakfast I tell him that I think if we can just stay here forever everything is going to turn out okay.
His eyes light up, and he embraces me. And for just a moment, I can breathe again.
BUT WE CANNOT STAY IN SAINT-RÉMY. OUR LAB CALLS TO US, and we have classes to teach. In the fall we are back in Paris, but I am so heavy with the baby and exhaustion and worry that I take a short leave from teaching my classes in Sèvres. Still, every day, I am in the lab, working. The months go slowly: four, then five, then six, then seven. Each one like an experiment. I hold my breath to see if I will make it through, if the results will be good.