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in an artistic sense she
did
abort. But at least she credited me for saving her years of time. Because of me, she said, she found out early that roundness was to be avoided at all costs in her art. And then you know what she did? She took up her chisel and mallet and knelt down and started hollowing out the belly so that the pelvic bones would have those uncanny jutting edges so characteristic of her work.”
    Christina was imagining Gertrude von Kohler Spezzi’s grimace of disgust as she applied cold wet plaster to her pregnant body. But wait a minute—who had knocked it off when it dried? However, she didn’t think they had the time to go there, as Eve Mallow’s chiropractor hour was almost up. And also, Christina was dying to be alone with Rudy, even though it was only the present-in-his-absence Rudy.

Rudy’s downstairs study
    Chapter Seven

    After Gil had gone, Christina decided to tackle some more letters of condolence, still coming in after seven months. She had them arranged in piles on Rudy’s downstairs bed. When Rudy could no longer climb stairs, he’d moved to the room they’d built in case Christina’s mother had to come and live with them when she was very old, but she had made a premature exit in a car accident. Yet they still called it “Mother’s room,” even after Rudy had been sleeping down there for five years.
    In the priority pile were the notes and letters that had been most instructive to Christina, either because they opened up new possibilities for her connection with Rudy after death or because they provided models for future condolence letters she would be writing to others. Her first prize, so far, in the possibility category went to a woman who had written:
    A widowed friend of mine told me recently that, in his experience, love operates at a higher frequency after the death of the partner, and so it’s easier to get through.
    First prize, so far, in the model category (say something that connects the influence of the departed with the future of the world) went to the wife of Dr. Gray:
    I remember several years ago at a concert I told Rudy about our daughter’s early attempts with the flute. He encouraged me to start her immediately with private lessons so she wouldn’t develop bad habits. Beth is now on her way to becoming an accomplished musician. Had it not been for Rudy’s prompting, I might not have acted so quickly.
    Christina picked out a deserving note from another fiction writer, a woman who had been at Yaddo the summer Christina and Rudy met and set fire to their respective lives in order to be together.
    The card, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was a reproduction of a page of Chinese characters from a T’ang dynasty album. It was called “Spiritual Flight Sutra.”
    Dear Christina,
    This is a very late note to say how sorry I was to hear of Rudy’s death. I remember the two of you at Yaddo in the summer of 1972, seeing you walk around the lake with your arms linked. You two were the romance of the summer. Such a loss must be hard to bear and you have my sympathy. I hope and pray you will soon be able to write again.
    Christina took out a note card with her name engraved on it and covered the front and back of it in her slanty convent script, saying more than she had planned and having to write in the space up the sides.
    Dear Lauren,
    Thank you for your kind note. He was a big man and he leaves a big space. I miss having Bach played while I prepare dinner. You will be glad to hear I never stopped writing. It was what I did for twenty-eight years while he was making up music under the same roof and it is good to go up every morning and keep doing it, just as if he were still downstairs. I miss hearing his little bursts of melody and all the rest that goes with capturing it, but in a way I still do hear. Recently, I went looking for his metronome and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t the wooden pyramid kind I’d thought, but a little quartz thing the