CHAPTER NINETEEN

And this was called inheritance. Her own name had gone on the program documentation three weeks earlier, three weeks till she graduated and whenever she looked at it on the printed page it felt like the word was settling more completely into its flesh. It wasn't the work of words to wield, but the true passport of what she had built.

Every bit of the ten projects originated in something given to her: patience from her mother, her mother's documentation, the money remaining in a safe in Greenpoint, the biting specificity of the attention her mother had dedicated to her last years, in such a way that Aria, who learned everything from it, learned everything without learning it, what it looks like to carry out a hard task in right." The work was the inheritance.

Not just the collection. All of it. That nine months in this apartment, the program, the mornings at the island, the knowledge that had been developing since October of what she was able to do when she had the space to do it. She wore one jacket to the exhibition.

The honey-amber one. The opening, from which it all had come. She had thought of taking the coat, the concluding one. But the opening seemed more truthful. She was not at the climax yet.

She was at the conclusion of the opening, which was an altogether different and earlier position. 'Compared to the assessment of national educational systems and the education that is provided and experienced in them, the assessment of local education is likely to be more 'open to separate and quantified information'.

Included in the journal were the following statements; 'she woke at five' on the morning of her graduation, 'she woke at four' the 7 days she was in hospital, 'she woke at 3:30 the night she received her first results of treatment…

Not anxiously. She'd slept better than she had thought she would, and that was a revelation.

She had needed all the sleep she could get who ever did the night before the showcase?

and yet she had gone to sleep at eleven and slept right through until the dog had come and nudged her awake in the pitch blackness of the June morning, as if this was how she'd wanted to be disturbed: one last duty before she went finally and fully to bed.

And she made tea. She sat at the kitchen island with her book of collection notes (not that she was going to revise anything but because the notes captured the work's progression, because today she wanted to be close to that record). She had arrived here last September with a briefcase, three bags, and a contract and had nothing to lose.

She was leaving today with ten pieces and a diploma and a beginning of a professional practice more fully developed than almost every graduating student she had encountered. She was leaving here with Marianna's number in her bag. She was leaving here with the fact that Elena called twice a week and was planning to continue calling.

She was departing with the knowledge of what she was that she had not possessed in September. She signed the divorce papers at 12 noon.

Her lawyer had done the paperwork for her. She did not intend to sign them today. But the papers were ready and she thought: if not today, when. She signed.

Sent them back. Went to the Institute. This summary highlights the distinct benefits of undergoing a citizen review process.

However, it should not be inferred that one process is any better than the other. Here are the potential advantages of a citizen review process.

She separated the ten-minute window leading into the grand opening for the graduating designers to get ready. She came backstage and looked at all of them.

She said a compliment. She said:(here Delacroix's words go) the work that you have made is what it is. Nothing that happens in the next two hours will change what you have already done.

Show it as the thing it already is. And then she left. Aria stepped back in front of the first piece on its dress form. The honey-amber jacket.

She looked at her sleeve, and to it softly in the particular manner in which she had been addressing the work, the baby, the mother all the way through the program: we made something. You and I and every one of the elements that we're made of.

We made something that is precisely what it is.

The show started. And much easier to overcome is corrosion which forms not on the bare metals or alloys. I had promised not to look for him in the crowd.

She looked nonetheless, throughout the designer's walk, with the helpless urge of the person who is looking for a face he is used to seeing. She looked at the full room as a vast audience and she did not find him. He was not there.   She took it in as she walked and as she bowed and as the applause did not diminish. He had a board meeting. She had known about it since April, the immovable event in the Morelli Group quarterly cycle, and he had tried to have it moved. It had been vetoed.

He had told her in May he'd try to get away for the last few pieces and she'd said: do not worry if not. She had been sincere then, and she was sincere now. But she also felt the vacuum and that was information too.

Delacroix was coming off the stage, and she was waiting in the wings. She nodded at Aria as she always did at finishing things too thoroughly, too unhurried. And then she said: 'that will be talking about this collection for a long time'.

Aria said thank you. "Head on over and get your 'opidama. And go home.

The next step begins tomorrow." Obtained the diploma. Shook, the hands need to be shaken. Came briefly at the side of the reception Cassandra.

Arrived at Aria and said: the coat is extraordinary. When I have room in the production schedule, I want one. Then stared at Aria and said: he wanted here.

Incidence turned out. Aria said: I know. Cassandra said: he knows he was missed. Aria said: tell him I know he tried. nodded with Cassandra and has left. She returned to the penthouse.

The apartment was silent. Marianna had left for home. Marcus sat in the lobby.

She shrugged off the jacket and draped it conveniently over the back of the studio room door, not on the dress form like you would do to a piece you will use again soon but on the door.

He stood in the studio room with the ten pieces all around, still on their forms and the coat at the end.

She uttered to herself: This I created.

In this room. With these hands. Whatever will be, this is what I created.

She went to the kitchen. She made her mother's chicken. The hard-day recipe she called it, for today felt like such a good day and such a hard day, and that recipe worked for both.

She cooked it how she always cooked it, attention wholly on it, and the kitchen was filled with the smell of preserved lemon and the heat of something making itself right. No, he arrived home at nine fifteen. She heard the door.

He was walking in the corridor. That tiny difference that would distinguish a man who'd been in a very long meeting and was wearing its weight on his body. He came into the doorway of the kitchen.

He looked at her at the stove. He looked at the kitchen, the pans, how the smell of the chicken was just right, how an evening that he hadn't been part of was already there. I missed it, he said.

Yes, she said. She didn't turn from the stove.

The meeting went till eight. I went in straight from work. I believe so. A pause.

She could hear him searching for the precise sentence and not finding it, which was highly out of character. her.

Sorry was all I could say, I should have made a way. She looked over then.

You tried, she said. I know you tried. The meeting was what it was. That's not enough, he said. No. But it is. And true is where you start.

She looked at him. Delacroix says it'll be a long discussion about this collection. Cassandra wants a coat. There was a long silence.

Then he said: tell me about it. All of it. From the very beginning.

She told him. She went back to the chicken, and she told him about the room, how good the audience had been, how suddenly the coat came out and everything went quiet.

He sat at the island and listened intently and asked questions, attempting to make sure he was understanding.

When she was finished, she laid the chicken on the table and sat across from him and they ate.

Marianna left bread, ' he said, getting up to go and find it. She'll write it back, of course, said Aria.

He found it and put it on the table and drew back again and they ate the chicken and the bread and the city did the business it did on the June evenings up in the street window.

All morning she'd been thinking about the papers that she'd signed at noon all that those papers were and weren't, all that those papers said and didn't say about what had actually happened over the course of the nine months in between.

She wasn't going to bring up the papers tonight.

Tonight was the showcase, the chicken, the bread, his undivided attention, the kitchen.

Tomorrow was tomorrow. This was This..