Writing Widowhood by Berman Jeffrey;

Author:Berman, Jeffrey;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Setting Fire to Their Respective Lives

Godwin implies in Evenings at Five that Christina and Rudy were immediately attracted to each other at Yaddo and that they “set fire to their respective lives in order to be together” (77). She doesn’t elaborate on the nature of the fire or the opposition to their relationship, but she suggests that each made a major sacrifice to be with the other. “Rudy had left his ordered family life in Manhattan, and Christina had given up her tenure-track teaching job in Iowa” (16). They sacrificed everything except their work, to which they remained committed. A few pages later she refers to “having burned their bridges” at Yaddo by publicly announcing their intention to live together (87). The beginning of their relationship was tumultuous; she would jump into her blue 1970 Mustang, with her blue IBM Selectric, every time she and Rudy had a “big fight for the next ten years, until both machines were replaced and the fights got less dramatic” (85). She describes some of the reasons behind their arguments, such as his complaint that she didn’t listen to her, along with her denial, and the different ways they responded to arguments: “Rudy blew up quickly, but he blew over almost as quickly. Christina marinated her resentments, then simmered them over a low flame for days” (10).

Nowhere in Continuo or Evenings at Five do we learn why Godwin and Starer never married. That information appears in an interview Godwin gave in 1989. “Robert and I have lived together for a blissful seventeen years, but we’re not married. What—who—would we have been marrying for? (We would definitely have, if we decided to have a child). There was no one we wanted to impress or please except ourselves. Our whole tax situation would have been a mess. … It’s not my time of life to be a bride. That time is over” (Westerlund 38–39, n. 27).

Rudy doesn’t keep a journal, but Godwin quotes some of the entries from his appointment diary to indicate his visits to a long list of medical specialists who treated him for multiple myeloma, cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow. The physicians include an oncologist, hematologist, nephrologist, and ophthalmologist. He receives chemotherapy for multiple myeloma along with blood transfusions. On five separate occasions Christina calls 911 for medical emergencies. Godwin doesn’t give us a chronology of his illness, but she does refer to the “fifteen-year-long saga of Rudy’s organs betraying one another and breaking down” (51). Six attendants transported him on a stretcher during his final trip to the ER. “You look like Pharaoh being carried forth on his litter,” Christina mordantly tells him (43), eliciting his wan smile behind an oxygen mask.

Rudy reminds himself throughout his medical ordeal to remain “Positive but not exuberant, Resigned but not depressed” (37). He never loses his passion for work, his love for Christina, his will to live, or his sense of humor. Godwin quotes one of the remarks he always made to

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