Still, somehow I do it, and then again and again. I take the train thirty minutes each morning into the city, then back at night. I leave most mornings before the children are awake, arrive home after they are in bed. Dr. Curie looks after them, and I hire a Polish governess to look after them too and work on their Polish. They are fed and clothed and well taken care of, and they want for nothing. As it goes, they are blessed and healthy. So long as they should not want for a mother who hovers over them, or smothers them with affection.
Grief is heavy and overbearing; it tugs me down. It fills my coat pockets with rocks and drags me to the bottom of the cold dark sea, holding me under so I can barely breathe. Days pass, seasons come and go. Time moves forward, but I feel heavier and heavier.
ONE WINTER EVENING, FAR TOO LATE, I GET HOME FROM THE city. It is cold inside the house and the fire is not lit properly—no one does it the way I do with exactly the right amount of paper and coal. It is simple science, the proper amounts of all things, kindling and accelerant, and why can no one understand fire but me? I add paper now, poke at the coals, stoking the flames. Smoke erupts, and tears suddenly burn my eyes.
And then I just find myself on the floor. The house is dark, but for the flames of the fire, and I lie down, unable to move, unable to get up, unable to do anything but lie on that floor and cry.
“Maman?” Ève’s small voice calls out for me. “Are you all right?” She must have heard something, gotten out of bed, and now she has found me here. More than anything I wish to stand up and carry her back to bed, rock her back to sleep, tell her that everything is okay and that she is a young sweet girl and should worry for nothing. I have made such an effort that no one, none of them should see me this way. Until now.
But I cannot move. I cannot do anything but lie here and cry. Ève comes and sits down next to me. Strokes at my hair, like she is the mother and I am her daughter.
“It’s okay, Maman,” she says. “You are crying because you’re tired. I can help you go to bed.”
“YOU HAVE TO GET YOURSELF TOGETHER,” BRONIA SAYS sharply. She has come for a visit in the beginning of the new year, not at my request, but she simply shows up late one evening at my front door. I suppose that Dr. Curie must have written her, told her I am worrying him. But he will never admit that to me if that is the case. And Bronia simply says she is overdue for a visit, which is also true.
“I am perfectly together,” I say back, just as sharply.
She frowns; we both know I am lying. “It has been almost a year.” She emphasizes year, like I am still her little sister-child, who can barely count.
I know. I know. I know.
It has been 302 days, 7,250 hours. I count them in my head each morning, keep track of them in a data chart in my mind, as if this life of mine were now an experiment. How long can I live without him? How many hours can I force myself to breathe? How many days can I continue to awake in my bed alone, forgetting in the first few seconds before opening my eyes, remembering all over again once I do open them that he’s still gone? And I do not appreciate being shouted at like a toddler now, in my own home. “You don’t know,” I say, my voice shaking. “You don’t know.”
“Don’t I?” Bronia’s voice softens. She sits down in a parlor chair, rests her head in her hands.
I put my hands to my mouth, thinking about her sweet Jakub, seven years old and taken from her just like that.
“I’m sorry,” I say, walking to her, putting my arms around her. “I didn’t mean…”
She pushes me away gently. “After Jakub died, Mier almost went crazy. He started climbing, in the mountains. Him and Lou. The two of them still go, every morning. Lou tells me it is the way she breathes. Mountain climbing. Everyone needs something. You need something.”
“And what did you do?” I ask her. I can’t imagine Bronia climbing mountains. Physical exertion has always been one of her least favorite things. She never understood why I loved to bicycle so with Pierre. And perhaps if I could do that now, if I could pedal and pedal until my legs ache and I am too tired to breathe, then I would feel something again, other than the heaviness of my grief. But the bicycle is something I only ever did with Pierre, and the idea of riding it alone is too much to overcome.
“I worked,” Bronia finally says. “I worked and I worked and I studied, and I sank myself into the latest research, became a better physician for my patients.”
“Well, that is what I am doing,” I say.
“No.” She shakes her head. “You are taking the train into the city, teaching a class. What have you done in the lab?”
“How do you know what I do in my lab?” I snap at her.
But Bronia is right. I’ve read Pierre’s journals over and over again, tracing my fingers over his script. But I have not done anything new, anything important. I haven’t been able to bear it, the thought that I might discover something on my own, without him here beside me.
“Life is so very hard and tragic,” Bronia says, matter-of-factly, and I hate her for the scientific way she bears it out to me. “But you have this brilliant mind, and more resources here in Paris than we ever dreamed as girls. You cannot waste that.” She grabs my shoulders and holds on to them. “You cannot waste that.”
EVERYONE NEEDS SOMETHING, BRONIA SAID.
I think of that as I sit down to help Irène with her studies, and when I pay attention, look at what she has been doing, what she has been learning here in Sceaux, I feel like I have been asleep for 302 days, and I have let my daughter’s mind wither. She has not been learning anything! This will not do at all. The revelation that I have been so drowned in grief that I have let my daughter’s education lapse shocks me.
What have I done, moving us out to Sceaux, where it is so very quiet? In our old house on boulevard Kellerman, we were surrounded by neighbors who were friends and academics, professors. There were always lively conversations and debates in our garden with the Perrins and the Langevins, and the children would play, and they would listen, and they would learn. Irène has nothing here.
“You are not going to attend this school any longer,” I tell Irène. “I am going to start my own school.”
Her eyes widen a little. I am either frightening her or exciting her, or both.
The next morning, back at the university, I tell Jean Perrin and Paul Langevin about my desire. “If we all enroll our children together, we can make a collective school among us. We can all take turns teaching them. They can learn from real academics.”
Paul Langevin considers my idea, pulling on his mustache. Paul was Pierre’s student, once, long ago, and now he is a brilliant academic in his own right. He was also a good friend to Pierre before he died. I want his approval, as if in some strange way it is akin to Pierre’s approval. When he nods vigorously, I exhale. He is either as excited about this idea as I am, or excited that I have a new idea again. Any idea.
“The children will learn so much more from us. We will give them the best education,” I say. I had participated in Flying University once in Poland, self-taught in Szczuki. Learned from the best professors in Paris and have become one here myself.
Everyone needs something, Bronia said.
Then I remember: I need now what I have always needed—education.
BUT ORGANIZING OUR COLLECTIVE SCHOOL TO TEACH THE children isn’t enough for me. I need science too. I begin making plans for the lab, my lab now. The lab was where I felt most happy, most at home, even before I met Pierre. And I know it can be my place again, after him, too.