“Kaz.” I finally found my voice. “Kazimierz?”
“I’m here,” he said, and it was only then that I saw him, sitting by the bed. He reached out and stroked my hair.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Tell me.”
“Kochanie,” he said. “The doctor says there is a problem with your body, and that the baby might not be okay.” He choked on the last words, so that it sounded like he was gasping for air.
The baby might not be okay?
“If only you had come to me sooner,” the doctor said now, his tone accusing. Come to him? Kaz and I did not have the money for a private doctor. Women had been having babies since the beginning of time on their own, with midwives and female friends to help them. And I hated this man, this doctor, for blaming me for whatever was happening now, and worse, making Kaz believe it too.
“This isn’t my fault,” I whispered, but the words came out sounding meek, defensive, useless even to me.
Kazimierz turned and exchanged a look with someone, maybe his mother, but I couldn’t see her, only hear her sigh from somewhere across the room.
“All you can do now,” the doctor said, “is stay in this bed and rest until the baby comes. And pray to our Lord that He forgives you. That He lets you have this baby.”
I DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. I HAD NOT EVER SINCE MAMA DIED of tuberculosis when I was ten, and just before her, my eldest sister, Zofia, of typhus. It was then that I decided I would put any faith I had into science, not into religion. Science, medicine, could have saved them. God had not. Bronia had felt the same as me. It was why she’d gone to Paris to become a doctor.
But then it was only me and my bed each day, and this baby inside of me. Every time I felt a kick, the small angle of an elbow, I closed my eyes and silently thanked this God that the doctor, and my husband, and probably all the rest of Poland, thought I should believe in.
For an entire week I lay there, my mind numb and blank, my body a useless and terrible vessel. Every kick, I tried so hard to believe.
But then the kicking stopped. My stomach grew hard and still and tight.
And later that night, Kaz summoned the doctor again, and the baby came. She was too early. Everything was wrong.
She left my body still and quiet, her skin icy cold and blue.
Marie
Paris, 1897
My body is not built to carry a baby.
I am ill and tired, nauseated for months on end, and suddenly instead of my haven, the lab becomes my purgatory. The smells of the fire and metal I used to love incite my nausea so that I often have to run outside and vomit out back.
It had been Pierre’s idea to start our family in the first place. Imagine how beautiful and brilliant our child would be! Pierre had traced a line on my bare shoulder with his finger, and in an instant I had seen it, too, this imaginary, luminescent child of ours. That had been enough to believe I wanted what he wanted. Besides, Bronia has two children now, and she is still practicing medicine. Pregnancy had agreed with her, too. A few years ago, she’d even helped me move into my first room alone in Paris: eight months along and she was pushing a handcart of my things down rue Flatters. I’m angry with my condition, with my own body for its betrayal, for its inability to succeed at its most base biological function.
“Mon amour, you need a break,” Pierre insists, but I am not about to give up my work, my research. Then Papa writes that he is returning to France on vacation, and Pierre says it would upset Papa were I to not go see him for a few weeks. Deep down I know the two of them have perhaps conspired on this plan to take care of me: poor, mad Marie, refusing to take some time for herself. But I am so tired, and I truly do need a break, so I go off to Port-Blanc without much argument.
Papa and I spend most of July at the Hotel of the Grey Rocks. The sunshine and the sea are glorious and rejuvenating. As I breathe the country air and take my meals with Papa in the hotel dining room, my nausea subsides more than it has in months.
“You are getting color in your cheeks,” Papa says, with a slow smile. He is older than I picture him in my head; his voice is gravelly and his hands shake a little as he cuts up his meat. I feel both guilt at not living near him in Poland, and a moment of gratefulness to have this time with him, that being so ill forced me here, now. And maybe it is the sunshine, or being with Papa, or maybe it is that away from the lab and the city, my body understands how to perform its biological functions, but I do actually feel better.
Pierre stays behind in Paris, as his mother, Sophie-Claire, is very ill with incurable cancer of the breast, and we’d both agreed before I left that he could not leave her. But this is the first time I’ve been away from him for more than a few hours since we got married, and I am shocked by how desperately I miss him. We write each other daily, but it is not the same as being together, and when after three whole weeks apart, he shows up one morning at the hotel, surprises me, I cannot contain my glee. I reach up and touch his beautiful face, trailing my fingers softly through his beard.
“Mon amour, the sea air agrees with you,” he tells me. “Your eyes have light again.”
He’s right. I feel so happy, so much like my old self, that I suggest a bicycle ride. Pierre worries it will be too much for me, but I push away his concern. I feel so much better here. We borrow two bicycles from the hotel, and go out and ride all afternoon. I forget it alclass="underline" feeling ill and about the baby coming so soon. And there is nothing but the wind in my hair and my husband pedaling behind me. I am too fast for him, even with the weight of pregnancy. He still cannot catch me, or perhaps he is letting me ride ahead to make me feel good again. His laughter trails in my dust, and he calls out that our baby might be born riding.
When we get back to the hotel that night, I get off the bicycle, and suddenly I am unsteady, shaky and weak. The nausea hits me, worse than before. I lean over the side of the bicycle, heaving.
“Marie?” Pierre’s voice is alarmed, and I look up, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. He points to my shoe. I look down, and it is dotted with red. “Are you bleeding?”
IN THE DEEPEST, HOTTEST HOUR OF AUGUST, I LIE IN MY BED back in our apartment on rue de la Glacière, heavy and restless. Pierre and I rushed back to Paris, those drops of blood on my shoe enough to turn me cold with terror. Pierre had summoned his father, Dr. Curie, who’d examined me, ordered me to stay in bed for the remainder of my pregnancy, stay as still as I possibly can. He has been checking on me and the baby twice a day, looking for more signs of overexertion or distress. But so far, there have been none. And now that I have lain here for two whole weeks, I believe I will either have this baby soon or I will die of boredom and despair.
Pierre brings me breakfast of toast and tea this morning before leaving for the lab.
“Pierre, I can’t.” I push the plate away, and he sets it gingerly on my night table.
“You need to eat, mon amour.” He bends down, brushes his lips gently across my forehead. “It is simple science. The baby needs nutrients from you.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say. Then the baby kicks inside of me, as if in protest. My stomach swells again with more nausea.
Pierre rests his hand gently on my belly, then on my forehead. He strokes his thumb softly across my temple. “If I could trade places with you, you know I would.”
He’s said this so many times these past few weeks, I actually believe him. But biology, science, prevents this, of course, and it is the angriest I have ever felt at something so scientific. “I will have the toast in a bit,” I relent. “Go, get to the lab. Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”