Still, she appears frail before me, her wrinkled skin sagging from her bones. But I ask her to tell me about the people she’s treating here, and her face lights up a little. Even after all this time, my sister-mother wants to be needed, needs to be needed. It is the people of Poland who need her now, to treat them with my cancer cure.
“I’m tired,” Bronia says, finished speaking about her patients now. “It is time to go home.”
But I am not ready to let her—or my time with my sisters—go yet. I grab her hand and beg of her to walk along the Vistula with me. To examine the bright blue water, to let it calm us and carry us as it did when we were girls. She protests that it is getting late, but Hela agrees with me, insists.
“Life is so strange and too short,” Hela says. “What if we are never all together again?” And now it is true, that all three Sklodowska sisters have outlived their husbands, and that Bronia has also outlived her children. Bronia and Hela do hold each other close here in Warsaw, but my life is still in Paris, my lab in Paris. The very long trip here has exhausted me more than I have ever felt before, and I do not know if I will ever make it home again.
But I will not admit that out loud to my sisters. Instead I say, “Who knows when we sisters will be together again, hmm?”
Finally Bronia relents, and the three of us walk toward the river.
We are older now, and we all move slowly. My eyes give me so much trouble that I am holding on tightly to my sisters, counting on them to lead the way, to guide me.
“Do you remember when we walked here after Mama died?” Hela says. “What you told us about the river, Bron?”
“It was so long ago,” Bronia says. “I don’t know.”
But I remember. We were so young then, so sad. So lost. We knew nothing of the world outside of Warsaw or all the things the future would hold for us. We knew nothing of men or love, of science or of war. We had lost our mother; we thought we had lost everything. We did not know that we could lose so much more, that we could survive so much more, too. We did not know what we were capable of, what we would become, how we would change the course of science.
Bronia had insisted then that the fresh air, the water, it would do us some good. She had grabbed on to mine and Hela’s hands and practically dragged us here, and then we had stood by the banks of the big blue river and Bronia had said, Look, my sisters! Look at the way the water moves, on and on and on. It never stops. It can’t stop.
Once we reach the river again now, it is just as blue, just as beautiful and striking as I remember it being when we were girls.
“Look,” I say to Bronia. “It is still moving. Always moving. It never stops. It can’t stop.”
Marya
Warsaw, 1934
I am sixty-six years old and I convalesce, my lungs no longer able to carry the weight of my breath. Nearly all day I sleep, but still I dream, comforted by the sounds of Klara’s concertos in my mind. In waking moments, Bronia and Lou and Kaz tend to me, bringing me soup and flowers and sitting by my bedside, talking to me softly. Outside my window I can catch a glimpse of the palest summer Polish sky, or, on days when I am well enough to sit up, the sparkling blue waters of the Vistula in the distance.
Klara comes from London, and that is when I know, it is truly the end, that the cancer has grown larger than my will to breathe. Kaz must’ve called her and told her to come as fast as she could.
Mama, is there anything you need?
I can see the shape of her when I open my eyes again, more a shadow than my beautiful daughter. Play for me, I tell her. Play me a song.
Her sweet music floods my ears, a balm, a memory. A dreamscape.
Promise me something, I say to her. You never stop playing that music. And if you fall in love, you make sure he is your equal. That he will not hold you back in your career. You never stop, Klara. You reach for everything you want, and, you never stop.
From the other room, the sound of her piano goes and goes and goes, and I close my eyes listening to it, smiling.
MAMA. KLARA’S VOICE AGAIN.
Hours have passed, or maybe just minutes? Or has it been days? My beautiful daughter, mój mały kurczak, she is a shadow, hovering again. No, there are two shadows now.
Someone came to see you, Klara says. He came all the way from Paris!
His shape becomes a memory, and my sense of smell has not left me yet. I inhale: the flower gardens in Sceaux. The cherry blossoms as we rode bicycles through the streets of Paris, pedaling too hard, the sun on our faces.
Slow down, mon amie. You are much too fast.
Marya, he says my name. Oh, Marya. I remember the way his face fell in Sweden, standing by the river, wanting to kiss me. The way he looked when he swirled his vodka glass by the sea, finally understanding that his work mattered. That his life meant something. Means something. He is here now, and he is alive and breathing, and he will continue on, even after I am gone.
He must’ve sat down in a chair by my bed, because when I open my eyes again, his shadow is smaller, closer to me. I am young again, riding a bicycle through the cobblestone streets of La Vilette, climbing through the Carpathians on the bluest-sky day of July. We are standing on top of the world together, staring out at the valley below us.
You came all this way? I think I say. Or maybe I don’t say anything at all.
Imagine, Pierre says. If we had met when we were younger. If we had married. Imagine what our life could’ve been, Marya.
I close my eyes again, and somewhere between sleep and waking, somewhere between life and death, between breathing still and taking my very last breath, I imagine it.
Marie
France, 1934
The end seems to come upon me fast, even though it has been coming upon me for so very long. I have been ill and tired, having trouble with my eyes and with my ears and with my legs for so long, that it seems I will exist and exist and exist this way forever.
I continue in my lab until I cannot stand any longer. I am struck by a terrible grippe, and then I cannot move from my bed for days. Ève sends in doctor after doctor to examine me.
“I will find someone to make you better, Maman,” she insists, squeezing my hand too hard in the darkness of my bedroom.
Ève is not a scientist. She does not know, does not understand the body the way I do. “It is time,” I tell her, and now I know that it truly is. “It is time to let go.”
But I am very weak, very tired. Maybe I do not tell her this at all?
Then, one morning, I awake in a sanatorium in Sancellemoz, and Ève sits by my bedside, crying, and I know. She understands now.
I AM SIXTY-SIX YEARS OLD AND I CONVALESCE, MY BONES NO longer able to carry the weight of me out of this bed. Nearly all day I sleep, but still I dream. Pierre comes back to me most of all, and the pain of losing him catches again in my chest, and I stop breathing for a moment. Then I awaken, and I start again. I am not dead just yet.
Ève does not leave me. She calls my name out in the darkness.