“It’s going to be okay,” I said to Klara, or Kaz, or to myself. And that was the thing about being a mother, it had made me into a liar. And a good one at that. I forced myself to smile. “Everything is going to be okay.”
PANI JEWNIEWICZ PUT OFF THE FUNERAL FOR A WEEK, UNTIL Leokadia could make it back from Berlin. The day was rainy and quite cold for April, and it was the first time I ever left Klara. Agata offered to sit with her at the apartment so Kaz and I could both attend the funeral. And though part of me did not want to go, did not want to see Leokadia, I thought about how she had traveled with me to Warsaw when Papa was dying, and I knew I had to be there.
“Marya.” She smiled when she saw me, reached out to hug me, then stopped herself, put her arms at her sides.
As much as I wanted to hate her, wanted to be angry with her still, seeing her again I remembered exactly why I loved her. I’d missed my friend, and now here she was, right in front of me. She wore a black dress, but it did not dim the brightness of her rosy cheeks, her piercing blue eyes, her beautiful blond curls swept back tightly in a bun. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said. I reached for her, awkwardly patting her shoulders.
She reached up and grabbed my hand, and she squeezed it. “Marya,” she said my name again. “Can we talk later? I have so much to say to you.”
I did not want to talk, did not want to hear whatever she had to say. But how could I refuse her at her father’s funeral?
“IT WAS ONLY ONE TIME,” SHE SAID TO ME LATER THAT AFTERNOON, repeating what Kaz had written. As if that made it hurt any less.
We had all left the gray and the gloom of the cemetery to return to a lavish feast at the Jewniewiczes’ apartment. Kaz had gone to look through the papers Hipolit had left in his study, and Leokadia cornered me and asked if I would join her out on the balcony. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still steel-colored, the air cool and damp. “Just once,” Leokadia repeated.
I pressed my lips tightly together, not sure how to respond. What were you supposed to say to a woman who you’d loved as a sister, who had betrayed you? I missed her, and I loved her still. And I hated her.
“I know that doesn’t make it any better, what I did,” Leokadia said. She walked to the edge of the balcony, leaned on the iron railing, and stared off at the smokestacks, the industry of Loksow, in the distance. “But I wanted you to know,” she said. “I made a terrible mistake, a horrible lapse in judgment. And it never happened again. I would never let it happen again.”
Part of me wanted to ask her exactly when it had happened, wanted to reimagine where I had been at the time and how I might have changed things if I had noticed more, paid attention more. What if I had not lost my own self in my grief? What if I had reached for Kaz when we were both hurting, instead of pulling away from him? The other part of me knew it didn’t matter. Nothing could change or undo what had happened now. There was always a choice, and they had both made one. Choices had consequences.
“Do you love him?” I asked her. I’d asked Kaz the same question once about her, and he’d denied he’d ever loved anyone but me. I still didn’t know if I believed him.
“He’s your husband,” Leokadia said, a nonanswer.
“But what if he wasn’t?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Marya,” she said. “I’ve missed you,” she added softly. “I wish I could just… take it back.”
“You can’t,” I said, matter-of-factly. She could no more take back her one night with Kaz than I could take back not getting on that train to Paris so many years ago and choosing to marry Kaz instead.
She nodded. “I know. But I would, if I could.”
Would I?
Now that I had Klara, I could not imagine any path, any choice, that would not lead me to her. And now that Kadi was in Berlin, living her dream, I wondered if she could truly regret any choice she had made that had led her there. “You are happy in Berlin?” I asked her.
She turned away from the railing, back to face me, her mouth slightly open in surprise. She had been bracing herself, leaning against the iron, girding herself. “Berlin is… very nice,” she spoke cautiously, still staring at me. I nodded at her to continue. “I have learned so much and have so many opportunities to perform. That part has been quite wonderful,” she finally said. “I should’ve gone years ago.” She swallowed hard and looked at her boots, the weight of what was unsaid caught in her throat. Her father had died angry with her, and maybe if she had left years ago, he would’ve had a chance to get over it. Or she would’ve come to terms with it herself by now. “I miss Flying University, though,” she said now. “All the wonderful women.”
I nodded. “Well… now that you’re gone, we don’t have anyone teaching music lessons. No one else has the talent for it, you know.”
“I bet my old piano teacher would do it. I’ll ask her for you.”
“That would be nice,” I said softly. “Thank you.”
We stared at each other, so much still left unsaid, but neither one of us said anything for another moment. “If I wrote you letters from Berlin, do you think you might write me back?” she finally asked me. “I practice all day, and I barely know anyone still. It gets lonely.”
“Klara keeps me very busy,” I said quickly.
“Klara.” She smiled, and though I supposed she knew I’d had a baby—her mother must’ve relayed that detail—she hadn’t known her name until now. “That’s a beautiful name,” she said.
“Kaz wanted to call her Kazimiera, but that’s his mother’s name, and I said absolutely not. I didn’t think she should be Marya either. I wanted her to have her own name, be her own person, so Klara seemed a combination of both of us and that too.”
“It’s perfect.” Leokadia smiled, then added, “I will send you letters, and you will write back if you have the time?”
I thought about what she was asking. “I suppose I will write back,” I finally said. “If I have the time.”
Later that night, after Klara fell asleep, Kaz was restless in our bed, tossing and turning and pulling the sheets off of me. I put my hand on his arm to stop him from rolling, to steady him, and he reached up and grabbed my fingers, held on to me. He stopped moving, and for a few seconds we lay there touching.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” he said. “He’s gone, and he left no money to continue his research.”
It was hard to breathe for a moment in the darkness, and then I thought of Klara sleeping in the next room, and I forced myself to. Inhale, exhale. I thought about Hela and Jacques in their lab, about Pierre, who Hela said had done many studies with very little results, and how that was what prevented him from being hired. But Kaz had done so much work already, had so many results. Kaz did not have his head in the clouds; he was steady, practical. “You have all the elasticity research,” I said. “You’re going to publish it, and then you’re going to get a job in a lab or at a university. And we are going to be fine. We are going to be just fine.”
Marie
Sweden & Brittany, 1905
We finally make it to Stockholm to give our acceptance speech in June of 1905, and we are both feeling well and happy at last. This city is so beautiful and calm in the summer—no one from the press even realizes we are here! And I cannot have a bad thought about the world, even if I might still be inclined to.
All around us there is the bluest water and quaintest red roofs, and though we have been dreading and worrying about this journey for so long, now that we are here it feels like a holiday. Pierre and I hold hands as we walk along the river path in the beautiful, flowering Djurgården the afternoon before Pierre is to give his speech.