Radium Girls, and: The Laboratory at Night, and: Marie Curie and Albert Einstein Hike in Engadine, and: Dr. Tobé Attends Mme. Curie on Her Deathbed

RADIUM GIRLS/Eleanor Sxvanson We sat at long tables side by side m a big dusty room where we laughed and carried on until they told us to pipe down and paint. The running joke was how we glowed, the handkerchiefs we sneezed into lighting up our purses when we opened them at night, our lips and nails, painted for our boyfriends as a lark, simmering white as ash Ui a dark room. "Would you die for science?" the reporter asked us, Edna and me, the main ones Ui the papers. Science? We mixed up glue, water and radium powder Ulto a glowing greenish white paint and painted watch dials with a little brush, one number after another, taking one dial after another, all day long, from the racks sitting next to our chairs. After a lew strokes, the brush lost its shape, and our bosses told us to point it with our lips. Was that science? I quit the watch factory to work in a bank and thought Td gotten class, more money, a better life, until I lost a tooth in back and two in front and my jaw ftiled up with sores. We sued: Edna, Katherine, Quinta, Larice and me, but when we got to court, not one of us could raise our arms to take the oath. My teeth were gone by then. "Pretty Grace Fryer," they called me Ui the papers. AU of us were dying. We heard the scientist in France, Marie Curie, could not believe "the manner in which we worked" and how we tasted that pretty paint a hundred times a day. Now, even our crumbling bones will glow forever Ui the black earth. The Missouri Review · 27 THE LABORATORY AT NIGHT/ Eleanor Swanson Hand Ui hand we walk m the darkness, beneath the stars where all but the simplest atoms are made. Helium and hydrogen alone belong to earth, the rest to space, to these stars, glowing with a tight of their own, tight overlapping tight across the dusty Milky Way. I feel the damp grass through my shoes, smeU the night's perfume of beast and flower, earth and air. We have just kissed our daughters good night. My heart's wings are green and gossamer. It leaps like a springfly, up and down. I unlock the door and it swings open, squeaking loudly on its ancient hinges. I must fix it so that finaUy we may enter the laboratory Ui süence, undistracted. Marie puts her hand upon my own. "Don't tight the lamps," she whispers. Suddenly we stand among a roomful of stars caught Ui vials and tubes placed on tabletops and shelves, everywhere, phosphorescent bluish light, our radium. I am dreaming. I have entered an unearthly garden. I am trembling. I want to Uve in my body forever. "You see, Pierre," Marie says, her voice fuU of happiness, and echoing Ui the spacious room, "your wish has come true, that our discovery be beautiful." Ah, my dear. 28 · The Missouri Review The beauty of the stars, ancient cosmic particles colliding to form atoms, such as this very atom. StarUght distiUed, this light that glows around us on all sides. This startling tight. Eleanor Swanson The Missouri Review · 29 MARIE CURIE AND ALBERT EINSTEIN HIKE IN ENGAOlNE/Eleanor Swanson Before first we met, M. Einstein let it be known he admired my scientific work, my discoveries. When he came to Paris Ui the spring of 1913, 1 invited him and Mileva to my flat on quai de Bethune, near the Seine and the pont SuUy, just across the river from my laboratory at the Sorbonne, where I said Td be pleased to take him. One evening, after dinner, he told us we must visit him in Switzerland and hike the upper Engadine traU. His voice was half wild with excitement, so intent he was upon persuading us of the mountains' beauty. That summer, rucksack on my back, as I looked with wonder at those soaring granite spires, I couldn't stop myself from thinking of Pierre, my Pierre, and how he would have first looked down, at Etan—a doll village our girls might have fashioned—nestled...